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