h excitement before
me. I own I was moved at the chance of my getting away.

"Don't skip! Explain yourself. Do you mean to say that this slip of
paper will help us? What does it mean?"

"Read it aloud! Read it aloud! I beg and I pray you to read it aloud."

I did so. Gunga Dass listened delightedly, and drew an irregular line in
the sand with his fingers.

"See now! It was the length of his gun-barrels without the stock. I have
those barrels. Four gun-barrels out from the place where I caught crows.
Straight out; do you follow me? Then three left. Ah! how well I remember
when that man worked it out night after night. Then nine out, and so on.
Out is always straight before you across the quicksand. He told me so
before I killed him."

"But if you knew all this why didn't you get out before?"

"I did _not_ know it. He told me that he was working it out a year and a
half ago, and how he was working it out night after night when the boat
had gone away, and he could get out near the quicksand safely. Then he
said that we would get away together. But I was afraid that he would
leave me behind one night when he had worked it all out, and so I shot
him. Besides, it is not advisable that the men who once get in here
should escape. Only I, and _I_ am a Brahmin."

The prospect of escape had brought Gunga Dass's caste back to him. He
stood up, walked about and gesticulated violently. Eventually I managed
to make him talk soberly, and he told me how this Englishman had spent
six months night after night in exploring, inch by inch, the passage
across the quicksand; how he had declared it to be simplicity itself up
to within about twenty yards of the river bank after turning the flank
of the left horn of the horseshoe. This much he had evidently not
completed when Gunga Dass shot him with his own gun.

In my frenzy of delight at the possibilities of escape I recollect
shaking hands effusively with Gunga Dass, after we had decided that we
were to make an attempt to get away that very night. It was weary work
waiting throughout the afternoon.

About ten o'clock, as far as I could judge, when the Moon had just risen
above the lip of the crater, Gunga Dass made a move for his burrow to
bring out the gun-barrels whereby to measure our path. All the other
wretched inhabitants had retired to their lairs long ago. The guardian
boat drifted downstream some hours before, and we were utterly alone by
the crow-clump. Gunga Dass, while c