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.
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