No More Learning

"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 had 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.