Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/75

 stamp, addressed to "Miss Mon—" (rest illegible) "ham"—"nt."

5. Imitation crocodile-skin note-book with pencil. First forty-five pages blank; four and a half illegible; fifteen others filled with private memoranda relating chiefly to three persons—a Mrs. L. Singleton, abbreviated several times to "Lot Single" or "Mrs. S." "May" and "Garmison," referred to in places as "Jerry" or "Jacky."

6. Handle of small-sized shikár knife. Blade snapped short. Buck's horn diamond-cut, with swivel and ring on the butt; fragment of cotton cord attached.

It must not be supposed that I inventoried all these things on the spot as fully as I have here written them down. The note-book first attracted my attention, and I put it in my pocket with a view to studying it later on. The rest of the articles I conveyed to my burrow for safety's sake, and there, being a methodical man, I inventoried them. Then I returned to the corpse and ordered Gunga Dass to help me to carry it out to the river front. While we were engaged in this, the exploded shell of an old brown cartridge dropped out of one of the pockets and rolled at my feet. Gunga Dass had not seen it; and I fell to thinking that a man does not carry exploded cartridge-cases, especially "browns," which will not bear loading twice, about with him when shooting. In other words that cartridge-case had been fired inside the crater. Consequently there must be a gun somewhere. I was on the verge of asking Gunga Dass, but checked myself, knowing that he would lie. We laid the body down on the edge of the quicksand by the tussocks. It was my intention to push it out and let it be swallowed up—the only possible mode of burial that I could think of. I ordered Gunga Dass to go away.

Then I made shift to put the corpse out on the quicksand. In doing so, it was lying face downward, I tore the frail and rotten kháki shooting-coat open, disclosing a hideous cavity in the back. I have already told you that the dry sand had as it were mummified the body. A moment's glance showed a shikári like myself that the gaping hole had been caused by a gun-shot wound; the gun must have been fired from behind with the muzzle almost touching the back. The shooting-coat, being intact, must have been drawn over the body after death, which must have been instantaneous. The secret of the poor wretch's death was plain to me in a flash. Someone in the crater, presumably