T
here is, as the conjurers say, no deception about this tale. Jukes by
accident stumbled upon a village that is well known to exist, though he is
the only Englishman who has been there. A somewhat similar institution
used to flourish on the outskirts of Calcutta, and there is a story that
if you go into the heart of Bikanir, which is in the heart of the Great
Indian Desert, you shall come across not a village but a town where the
Dead who did not die but may not live have established their headquarters.
And, since it is perfectly true that in the same Desert is a wonderful
city where all the rich money lenders retreat after they have made their
fortunes (fortunes so vast that the owners cannot trust even the strong
hand of the Government to protect them, but take refuge in the waterless
sands), and drive sumptuous C-spring barouches, and buy beautiful girls
and decorate their palaces with gold and ivory and Minton tiles and
mother-n'-pearl, I do not see why Jukes's tale should not be true.
He is a Civil Engineer, with a head for plans and distances and things of
that kind, and he certainly would not take the trouble to invent imaginary
traps. He could earn more by doing his legitimate work. He never varies
the tale in the telling, and grows very hot and indignant when he thinks
of the disrespectful treatment he received. He wrote this quite
straightforwardly at first, but he has since touched it up in places and
introduced Moral Reflections, thus:
In the beginning it all arose from a slight attack of fever. My work
necessitated my being in camp for some months between Pakpattan and
Muharakpur - a desolate sandy stretch of country as every one who has had
the misfortune to go there may know. My coolies were neither more nor less
exasperating than other gangs, and my work demanded sufficient attention
to keep me from moping, had I been inclined to so unmanly a weakness.
On the 23d December, 1884, I felt a little feverish. There was a full
moon at the time, and, in consequence, every dog near my tent was baying
it. The brutes assembled in twos and threes and drove me frantic. A few
days previously I had shot one loud-mouthed singer and suspended his
carcass in terror about fifty yards from my tent-door. But his friends
fell upon, fought for, and ultimately devoured the body; and, as it seemed
to me, sang their hymns of thanksgiving afterward with renewed energy.
The light-heartedness which accompanies fever acts differently on
different men. My irritation gave way, after a short time, to a fixed
determination to slaughter one huge black and white beast who had been
foremost in song and first in flight throughout the evening. Thanks to a
shaking hand and a giddy head I had already missed him twice with both
barrels of my shot-gun, when it struck me that my best plan would be to
ride him down in the open and finish him off with a hog-spear. This, of
course, was merely the semi-delirious notion of a fever patient; but I
remember that it struck me at the time as being eminently practical and
feasible.
I therefore ordered my groom to saddle Pornic and bring him round quietly
to the rear of my tent. When the pony was ready, I stood at his head
prepared to mount and dash out as soon as the dog should again lift up his
voice. Pornic, by the way, had not been out of his pickets for a couple of
days; the night air was crisp and chilly; and I was armed with a specially
long and sharp pair of persuaders with which I had been rousing a sluggish
cob that afternoon. You will easily believe, then, that when he was let go
he went quickly. In one moment, for the brute bolted as straight as a die,
the tent was left far behind, and we were flying over the smooth sandy
soil at racing speed.
In another we had passed the wretched dog, and I had almost forgotten why
it was that I had taken the horse and hog-spear.
The delirium of fever and the excitement of rapid motion through the air
must have taken away the remnant of my senses. I have a faint recollection
of standing upright in my stirrups, and of brandishing my hog-spear at the
great white Moon that looked down so calmly on my mad gallop; and of
shout-log challenges to the camel-thorn bushes as they whizzed past. Once
or twice I believe, I swayed forward on Pornic's neck, and literally hung
on by my spurs - as the marks next morning showed.
The wretched beast went forward like a thing possessed, over what seemed
to be a limitless expanse of moonlit sand. Next, I remember, the ground
rose suddenly in front of us, and as we topped the ascent I saw the waters
of the Sutlej shining like a silver bar below. Then Pornic blundered
heavily on his nose, and we rolled together down some unseen slope.
I must have lost consciousness, for when I recovered I was lying on my
stomach in a heap of soft white sand, and the dawn was beginning to break
dimly over the edge of the slope down which I had fallen. As the light
grew stronger I saw that I was at the bottom of a horse-shoe shaped crater
of sand, opening on one side directly on to the shoals of the Sutlej. My
fever had altogether left me, and, with the exception of a slight
dizziness in the head, I felt no had effects from the fall over night.
Pornic, who was standing a few yards away, was naturally a good deal
exhausted, but had not hurt himself in the least. His saddle, a favorite
polo one was much knocked about, and had been twisted under his belly. It
took me some time to put him to rights, and in the meantime I had ample
opportunities of observing the spot into which I had so foolishly
dropped.
At the risk of being considered tedious, I must describe it at length:
inasmuch as an accurate mental picture of its peculiarities will be of
material assistance in enabling the reader to understand what follows.
Imagine then, as I have said before, a horseshoe-shaped crater of sand
with steeply graded sand walls about thirty-five feet high. (The slope, I
fancy, must have been about 65 degrees.) This crater enclosed a level
piece of ground about fifty yards long by thirty at its broadest part,
with a crude well in the centre. Round the bottom of the crater, about
three feet from the level of the ground proper, ran a series of
eighty-three semi-circular ovoid, square, and multilateral holes, all
about three feet at the mouth. Each hole on inspection showed that it was
carefully shored internally with drift-wood and bamboos, and over the
mouth a wooden drip-board projected, like the peak of a jockey's cap, for
two feet. No sign of life was visible in these tunnels, but a most
sickening stench pervaded the entire amphitheatre - a stench fouler than any
which my wanderings in Indian villages have introduced me to.
Having remounted Pornic, who was as anxious as I to get back to camp, I
rode round the base of the horseshoe to find some place whence an exit
would be practicable. The inhabitants, whoever they might be, had not
thought fit to put in an appearance, so I was left to my own devices. My
first attempt to "rush" Pornic up the steep sand-banks showed me that I
had fallen into a trap exactly on the same model as that which the
ant-lion sets for its prey. At each step the shifting sand poured down
from above in tons, and rattled on the drip-boards of the holes like small
shot. A couple of ineffectual charges sent us both rolling down to the
bottom, half choked with the torrents of sand; and I was constrained to
turn my attention to the river-bank.
Here everything seemed easy enough. The sand hills ran down to the river
edge, it is true, but there were plenty of shoals and shallows across
which I could gallop Pornic, and find my way back to terra firma by
turning sharply to the right or left. As I led Pornic over the sands I was
startled by the faint pop of a rifle across the river; and at the same
moment a bullet dropped with a sharp "whit" close to Pornic's head.
There was no mistaking the nature of the missile - a regulation
Martini-Henry "picket." About five hundred yards away a country-boat was
anchored in midstream; and a jet of smoke drifting away from its bows in
the still morning air showed me whence the delicate attention had come.
Was ever a respectable gentleman in such an impasse? The treacherous sand
slope allowed no escape from a spot which I had visited most
involuntarily, and a promenade on the river frontage was the signal for a
bombardment from some insane native in a boat. I'm afraid that I lost my
temper very much indeed.
Another bullet reminded me that I had better save my breath to cool my
porridge; and I retreated hastily up the sands and back to the horseshoe,
where I saw that the noise of the rifle had drawn sixty-five human beings
from the badger-holes which I had up till that point supposed to be
untenanted. I found myself in the midst of a crowd of spectators - about
forty men, twenty women, and one child who could not have been more than
five years old. They were all scantily clothed in that salmon-colored
cloth which one associates with Hindu mendicants, and, at first sight,
gave me the impression of a band of loathsome fakirs. The filth and
repulsiveness of the assembly were beyond all description, and I shuddered
to think what their life in the badger-holes must be.
Even in these days, when local self government has destroyed the greater
part of a native's respect for a Sahib, I have been accustomed to a
certain amount of civility from my inferiors, and on approaching the crowd
naturally expected that there would be some recognition of my presence. As
a matter of fact there was; but it was by no means what I had looked for.
The ragged crew actually laughed at me - such laughter I hope I may never
hear again. They cackled, yelled, whistled, and howled as I walked into
their midst; some of them literally throwing themselves down on the ground
in convulsions of unholy mirth. In a moment I had let go Pornic's head,
and. irritated beyond expression at the morning's adventure, commenced
cuffing those nearest to me with all the force I could. The wretches
dropped under my blows like nine-pins, and the laughter gave place to
wails for mercy; while those yet untouched clasped me round the knees,
imploring me in all sorts of uncouth tongues to spare them.
In the tumult, and just when I was feeling very much ashamed of myself
for having thus easily given way to my temper, a thin, high voice murmured
in English from behind my shoulder: - "Sahib! Sahib! Do you not know me?
Sahib, it is Gunga Dass, the telegraph-master."
I spun round quickly and faced the speaker.
Gunga Dass, (I have, of course, no hesitation in mentioning the man's
real name) I had known four years before as a Deccanee Brahmin loaned by
the Pun-jab Government to one of the Khalsia States. He was in charge of a
branch telegraph-office there, and when I had last met him was a jovial,
full-stomached, portly Government servant with a marvelous capacity for
making had puns in English - a peculiarity which made me remember him long
after I had forgotten his services to me in his official capacity. It is
seldom that a Hindu makes English puns.
Now, however, the man was changed beyond all recognition. Caste-mark,
stomach, slate-colored continuations, and unctuous speech were all gone. I
looked at a withered skeleton, turban-less and almost naked, with long
matted hair and deep-set codfish-eyes.
But for a crescent-shaped scar on the left cheek - the result of an
accident for which I was responsible I should never have known him. But it
was indubitably Gunga Dass, and - for this I was thank-full - an
English-speaking native who might at least tell me the meaning of all that
I had gone through that day.
The crowd retreated to some distance as I turned toward the miserable
figure, and ordered him to show me some method of escaping from the
crate?. He held a freshly plucked crow in his hand, and in reply to my
question climbed slowly on a platform of sand which ran in front of the
holes, and commenced lighting a fire there in silence. Dried bents,
sand-poppies, and driftwood burn quickly; and I derived much consolation
from the fact that he lit them with an ordinary sulphur-match. When they
were in a bright glow, and the crow was nearly spitted in front thereof,
Gunga Dass began without a word of preamble:
"There are only two kinds of men, Sar. The alive and the dead. When you
are dead you are dead, but when you are alive you live." (Here the crow
demanded his attention for an instant as it twirled before the fire in
danger of being burned to a cinder.) "If you die at home and do not die
when you come to the ghat to be burned you come here."
The nature of the reeking village was made plain now, and all that I had
known or read of the grotesque and the horrible paled before the fact just
communicated by the ex-Brahmin. Sixteen years ago, when I first landed in
Bombay, I had been told by a wandering Armenian of the existence,
somewhere in India, of a place to which such Hindus as had the misfortune
to recover from trance or catalepsy were conveyed and kept, and I
recollect laughing heartily at what I was then pleased to consider a
traveler's tale.
Sitting at the bottom of the sand-trap, the memory of Watson's Hotel,
with its swinging punkahs, white-robed attendants, and the sallow-faced
Armenian, rose up in my mind as vividly as a photograph, and I burst into
a loud fit of laughter. The contrast was too absurd!
Gunga Dass, as he bent over the unclean bird, watched me curiously.
Hindus seldom laugh, and his surroundings were not such as to move Gunga
Dass to any undue excess of hilarity. He removed the crow solemnly from
the wooden spit and as solemnly devoured it. Then he continued his story,
which I give in his own words:
"In epidemics of the cholera you are carried to be burned almost before
you are dead. When you come to the riverside the cold air, perhaps, makes
you alive, and then, if you are only little alive, mud is put on your nose
and mouth and you die conclusively. If you are rather more alive, more mud
is put; but if you are too lively they let you go and take you away. I was
too lively, and made protestation with anger against the indignities that
they endeavored to press upon me. In those days I was Brahmin and proud
man."
"Now I am dead man and eat" - here he eyed the well-gnawed breast bone with
the first sign of emotion that I had seen in him since we met - "crows, and
other things. They took me from my sheets when they saw that I was too
lively and gave me medicines for one week, and I survived successfully.
Then they sent me by rail from my place to Okara Station, with a man to
take care of me; and at Okara Station we met two other men, and they
conducted we three on camels, in the night, from Okara Station to this
place, and they propelled me from the top to the bottom, and the other two
succeeded, and I have been here ever since two and a half years."
"Once I was Brahmin and proud man, and now I eat crows."
"There is no way of getting out?"
"None of what kind at all. When I first came I made experiments
frequently and all the others also, but we have always succumbed to the
sand which is precipitated upon our heads."
"But surely," I broke in at this point, "the river-front is open, and it
is worth while dodging the bullets; while at night" - I had already matured
a rough plan of escape which a natural instinct of selfishness forbade me
sharing with Gunga Dass. He, however, divined my unspoken thought almost
as soon as it was formed; and, to my intense astonishment, gave vent to a
long low chuckle of derision - the laughter, be it understood, of a superior
or at least of an equal.
"You will not" - he had dropped the Sir completely after his opening
sentence - "make any escape that way. But you can try. I have tried. Once
only."
The sensation of nameless terror and abject fear which I had in vain
attempted to strive against overmastered me completely. My long fast - it
was now close upon ten o'clock, and I had eaten nothing since tiffin on
the previous day - combined with the violent and unnatural agitation of the
ride had exhausted me, and I verily believe that, for a few minutes, I
acted as one mad.
I hurled myself against the pitiless sand-slope I ran
round the base of the crater, blaspheming and praying by turns. I crawled
out among the sedges of the river-front, only to be driven back each time
in an agony of nervous dread by the rifle-bullets which cut up the sand
round me - for I dared not face the death of a mad dog among that hideous
crowd - and finally fell, spent and raving, at the curb of the well. No one
bad taken the slightest notion of an exhibition which makes me blush hotly
even when I think of it now.
Two or three men trod on my panting body as they drew water, but they
were evidently used to this sort of thing, and had no time to waste upon
me. The situation was humiliating. Gunga Dass, indeed, when he had banked
the embers of his fire with sand, was at some pains to throw half a cupful
of fetid water over my head, an attention for which I could have fallen on
my knees and thanked him, but he was laughing all the while in the same
mirthless, wheezy key that greeted me on my first attempt to force the
shoals. And so, in a semi-comatose condition, I lay till noon.
Then, being only a man after all, I felt hungry, and intimated as much to
Gunga Dass, whom I had begun to regard as my natural protector. Following
the impulse of the outer world when dealing with natives, I put my hand
into my pocket and drew out four annas. The absurdity of the gift struck
me at once, and I was about to replace the money.
Gunga Dass, however, was of a different opinion. "Give me the money,"
said he; "all you have, or I will get help, and we will kill you!" All
this as if it were the most natural thing in the world!
A Briton's first impulse, I believe, is to guard the contents of his
pockets; but a moment's reflection convinced me of the futility of
differing with the one man who had it in his power to make me comfortable;
and with whose help it was possible that I might eventually escape from
the crater. I gave him all the money in my possession, Rs. 9-8-5-nine
rupees eight annas and five pie-for I always keep small change as bakshish
when I am in camp. Gunga Dass clutched the coins, and hid them at once in
his ragged loin cloth, his expression changing to something diabolical as
he looked round to assure himself that no one had observed us.
"Now I will give you something to eat," said he.
What pleasure the possession of my money could have afforded him I am
unable to say; but inasmuch as it did give him evident delight I was not
sorry that I had parted with it so readily, for I had no doubt that he
would have had me killed if I had refused. One does not protest against
the vagaries of a den of wild beasts; and my companions were lower than
any beasts. While I devoured what Gunga Dass had provided, a coarse
chapatti and a cupful of the foul well-water, the people showed not the
faintest sign of curiosity - that curiosity which is so rampant, as a rule,
in an Indian village.
I could even fancy that they despised me. At all events they treated me
with the most chilling indifference, and Gunga Dass was nearly as bad. I
plied him with questions about the terrible village, and received
extremely unsatisfactory answers. So far as I could gather, it had been in
existence from time immemorial - whence I concluded that it was at least a
century old - and during that time no one had ever been known to escape from
it. [I had to control myself here with both hands, lest the blind terror
should lay hold of me a second time and drive me raving round the crater.]
Gunga Dass took a malicious pleasure in emphasizing this point and in
watching me wince. Nothing that I could do would induce him to tell me who
the mysterious "They" were.
"It is so ordered," he would reply, "and I do not yet know any one who
has disobeyed the orders."
"Only wait till my servants find that I am missing," I retorted, "and I
promise you that this place shall be cleared off the face of the earth,
and I'll give you a lesson in civility, too, my friend."
"Your servants would be torn in pieces before they came near this place;
and, besides, you are dead, my dear friend. It is not your fault, of
course, but none the less you are dead and buried."
At irregular intervals supplies of food, I was told, were dropped down
from the land side into the amphitheatre, and the inhabitants fought for
them like wild beasts. When a man felt his death coming on he retreated to
his lair and died there. The body was sometimes dragged out of the hole
and thrown on to the sand, or allowed to rot where it lay
The phrase "thrown on to the sand" caught my attention, and I asked Gunga
Dass whether this sort of thing was not likely to breed a pestilence.
"That," said he, with another of his wheezy chuckles, "you may see for
yourself subsequently. You will have much time to make observations."
Whereat, to his great delight, I winced once more and hastily continued
the conversation: - "And how do you live here from day to day? What do you
do?" The question elicited exactly the same answer as before coupled with
the information that "this place is like your European heaven; there is
neither marrying nor giving in marriage."
Gunga Dass had been educated at a Mission School, and, as he himself
admitted, had he only changed his religion "like a wise man," might have
avoided the living grave which was now his portion. But as long as I was
with him I fancy he was happy.
Here was a Sahib, a representative of the dominant race, helpless as a
child and completely at the mercy of his native neighbors. In a deliberate
lazy way he set himself to torture me as a schoolboy would devote a
rapturous half-hour to watching the agonies of an impaled beetle, or as a
ferret in a blind burrow might glue himself comfortably to the neck of a
rabbit. The burden of his conversation was that there was no escape "of no
kind whatever," and that I should stay here till I died and was "thrown on
to the sand."
If it were possible to forejudge the conversation of the
Damned on the advent of a new soul in their abode, I should say that they
would speak as Gunga Dass did to me throughout that long afternoon. I was
powerless to protest or answer; all my energies being devoted to a
struggle against the inexplicable terror that threatened to overwhelm me
again and again. I can compare the feeling to nothing except the struggles
of a man against the overpowering nausea of the Channel passage - only my
agony was of the spirit and infinitely more terrible.
|