[adapted]

by
Rudyard Kipling

Alive or dead — there is no other way.
— Local saying.

There is, as the magicians say, no trick in this story. Jukes, by accident, found a village that is well known to be real, though he is the only Englishman who has been there. A somewhat similar place used to be active on the edge of Calcutta, and there is a story that if you go into the center of Bikanir, which is in the center of the Great Indian Desert, you will find not a village but a town where the Dead who did not die but may not live have set up their main place.

And, since it is completely true that in the same Desert there is a wonderful city where all the rich money lenders go after they have made their great wealth (money so great that the owners cannot even trust the strong power of the Government to protect them, but take shelter in the dry sands), and drive very fine C-spring carriages, and buy beautiful girls and decorate their palaces with gold and ivory and Minton tiles and mother-of-pearl, I do not see why Jukes’s tale should not be true.

He is a civil engineer, good at plans and distances and things like that, and he surely would not try to make up pretend traps. He could earn more by doing his proper work. He never changes the story when he tells it, and gets very angry and upset when he thinks of the rude treatment he got. He wrote this quite simply at first, but later he changed some parts of it and added moral thoughts, like this:

In the beginning, it all came from a mild fever. My work made me stay in camp for some months between Pakpattan and Muharakpur — an empty, sandy area, as everyone who has had the bad luck to go there knows. My workers were no more and no less annoying than other groups, and my work needed enough attention to stop me from feeling sad and bored, if I had been likely to have such an unmanly weakness.

On the 23rd December, 1884, I felt a little sick with a fever. There was a full moon at the time, and, so, every dog near my tent was howling at it. The dogs gathered in twos and threes and made me very upset. A few days earlier I had shot one noisy howler and hung up his body as a warning about fifty yards from my tent-door. But his friends rushed at, fought over, and finally ate the body; and, as it seemed to me, sang their songs of thanks afterward with even more energy.

The happy feeling that comes with fever is different for different men. My anger soon changed, after a short time, to a strong wish to kill one very big black and white animal who had been loudest in singing and first to run away all evening. Because of a shaking hand and a dizzy head I had already missed him twice with both barrels of my shotgun, when I thought that my best plan would be to ride after him in the open and kill him with a hog-spear. This, of course, was only the half-crazy idea of a man with fever; but I remember that I thought at the time that it was very practical and possible.

So I told my stable boy to put the saddle on Pornic and bring him quietly to the back of my tent. When the pony was ready, I stood by his head, ready to get on and rush out as soon as the dog barked again. Pornic, by the way, had not been out of his ropes for two days; the night air was cold; and I had a very long and sharp pair of spurs with which I had been waking up a slow horse that afternoon. You will easily believe, then, that when he was let go he went fast. In one moment, for the animal ran off in a straight line, the tent was left far behind, and we were running over the smooth sandy ground at racing speed.

Soon we had passed the poor dog, and I had almost forgotten why I had taken the horse and hog spear.

The confusion from fever and the excitement of fast movement through the air must have taken away the little bit of sense I had left. I have a weak memory of standing straight up in my stirrups, and of waving my hog spear at the big white Moon that looked down so calmly on my wild gallop; and of shouting challenges to the camelthorn bushes as they rushed past. Once or twice, I think, I leaned forward on Pornic’s neck, and really hung on by my spurs — as the marks next morning showed.

The poor animal went forward as if it was crazy, over what looked like an endless stretch of sand lit by the moon. Next, I remember, the ground went up suddenly in front of us, and as we reached the top of the hill I saw the waters of the Sutlej shining like a silver bar below. Then Pornic fell hard on his nose, and we rolled together down a slope we could not see.

I must have fainted, for when I woke up I was lying on my stomach in a pile of soft white sand, and the dawn was starting to show a little over the edge of the slope that I had fallen down. As the light grew stronger I saw that I was at the bottom of a U-shaped hole in the sand, opening on one side straight to the shallow parts of the Sutlej. My fever was completely gone, and, except for feeling a little dizzy in my head, I had no problems from the fall last night.

Pornic, who was standing a few yards away, was, of course, very tired, but had not hurt himself at all. His saddle, a favorite polo one, was badly damaged, and had been twisted under his belly. It took me some time to fix him, and meanwhile I had many chances to look at the place into which I had so foolishly dropped.

At the risk of being thought boring, I must describe it in detail: because a clear picture in the mind of its odd parts will help the reader to understand what comes next.

Imagine then, as I have said before, a crater of sand shaped like a horseshoe with steep sand walls about thirty-five feet high. (The slope, I think, must have been about 65 degrees.) This crater held a flat piece of ground about fifty yards long by thirty at its widest part, with a simple well in the centre. Around the bottom of the crater, about three feet from the level of the main ground, there was a row of eighty-three half-circle, egg-shaped, square, and many-sided holes, all about three feet wide at the opening.

Each hole, when I looked closely, showed that it was carefully supported inside with floating wood and bamboo, and over the opening a wooden board to catch drips stuck out, like the peak of a horse-rider’s cap, for two feet. No sign of life could be seen in these tunnels, but a very sickening stink filled the whole arena — a stink worse than any that my walks in Indian villages have shown me.

After getting back on Pornic, who was as eager as I was to get back to camp, I rode around the bottom of the horseshoe to find some place from which a way out would be possible. The people who lived there, whoever they were, had not come out, so I had to manage by myself. My first attempt to “rush” Pornic up the steep sand banks showed me that I had fallen into a trap just like the one that the ant-lion makes for its food. At each step the moving sand poured down from above in tons, and rattled on the boards of the holes like small stones. A couple of useless tries sent us both rolling down to the bottom, half choked by the floods of sand; and I was forced 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 sandbanks and shallow places over which I could ride Pornic fast, and find my way back to dry land by turning sharply to the right or left. As I led Pornic over the sands I was surprised by the soft pop of a gun across the river; and at the same moment a bullet dropped with a sharp “whit” close to Pornic’s head.

There was no doubt about the kind of bullet — a standard Martini-Henry “picket.” About five hundred yards away a country-boat was tied up in the middle of the river; and a thin line of smoke drifting away from its front in the still morning air showed me where the shot had come from. Was ever a respectable gentleman in such a hard spot? The slippery sand slope allowed no escape from a spot which I had come to without wanting to, and a walk on the river side was the signal for a burst of shots from some mad local man in a boat. I’m afraid that I lost my temper very much indeed.

Another bullet reminded me that I had better keep my breath and keep quiet; and I quickly went back up the sands and back to the horseshoe, where I saw that the sound of the rifle had drawn sixty-five people from the badger-holes which I had until then thought were empty. I found myself in the middle of a crowd of watchers — about forty men, twenty women, and one child who could not have been more than five years old. They were all poorly dressed in that salmon-colored cloth which people link with Hindu beggars, and, at first sight, made me think of a group of disgusting holy beggars. The dirt and ugliness of the group were too great to describe, and I shook to think what their life in the badger-holes must be.

Even in these days, when local self-government has taken away much of the native people’s respect for a Sahib, I have been used to some politeness from people under me, and when I came near the crowd I naturally expected that they would notice me. In fact, there was; but it was not at all what I had expected.

The ragged group actually laughed at me — such laughter I hope I may never hear again. They laughed, yelled, whistled, and howled as I walked into their middle; some of them actually throwing themselves down on the ground in fits of wild laughter. In a moment I had let go Pornic’s head, and, angry beyond words at the morning’s adventure, started hitting those nearest to me as hard as I could. The miserable people fell under my hits like nine-pins, and the laughter changed to cries for mercy; while those not yet hit held me around the knees, begging me in all sorts of strange languages to spare them.

In the noise and confusion, and just when I was feeling very ashamed of myself for losing my temper so easily, a thin, high voice whispered in English from behind my shoulder: “Sahib! Sahib! Don’t you know me? Sahib, it is Gunga Dass, the telegraph master.”

I turned around quickly and looked at the person speaking.

Gunga Dass, (I have, of course, no problem in saying the man’s real name) I had known four years before as a Deccanee Brahmin sent by the Punjab Government to one of the Khalsia States. He was the head of a small telegraph office there, and when I last met him was a cheerful, big-bellied, fat Government worker with a wonderful ability to make bad puns in English — a strange habit which made me remember him long after I had forgotten what he did for me in his job. It is not often that a Hindu makes English puns.

Now, however, the man was changed so much that I could not recognize him. Caste mark, stomach, gray trousers, and smooth way of talking were all gone. I looked at a thin skeleton, without a turban and almost naked, with long tangled hair and sunken eyes like a codfish. But for a half-moon scar on the left cheek — from an accident that was my fault — I should never have known him. But it was surely Gunga Dass, and — for this I was thankful — a native who spoke English who might at least tell me the reason for all that I had gone through that day.

The crowd moved back to some distance as I turned toward the sad-looking man, and told him to show me a way of getting out of the crater. He held a crow he had just plucked in his hand, and to answer my question climbed slowly onto a sand platform that ran in front of the holes, and started to light a fire there without speaking. Dry grass, sand poppies, and wood from the beach burn quickly; and I felt very glad because he lit them with an ordinary match. When they were burning brightly, and the crow was almost stuck on a stick in front of it, Gunga Dass began without any words first:

“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 caught his attention for a moment as it turned round before the fire in danger of being burned to ash.) “If you die at home and do not die when you come to the burning place to be burned you come here.”

The truth about the stinking village was clear now, and everything I had known or read of the strange and the terrible seemed small beside the fact just told to me by the former Brahmin. Sixteen years ago, when I first landed in Bombay, I had been told by a traveling Armenian that, somewhere in India, there was a place where such Hindus as had the bad luck to wake from trance or a death-like sleep were taken and kept, and I remember laughing a lot at what I then chose to think was a traveler’s story.

Sitting at the bottom of the sand pit, the memory of Watson’s Hotel, with its swinging fans, helpers in white clothes, and the Armenian with a pale face, came into my mind as clearly as a photograph, and I suddenly started to laugh loudly. The difference was too silly!

Gunga Dass, as he leaned over the dirty bird, watched me with interest. Hindus seldom laugh, and the place around him was not the kind to make Gunga Dass laugh a lot. He took the crow seriously from the wooden stick and as seriously ate it. Then he continued his story, which I give in his own words:

“In times of cholera you are taken to be burned almost before you are dead. When you come to the riverside the cold air, maybe, makes you alive, and then, if you are only a little alive, mud is put on your nose and mouth and you die completely. If you are a bit 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 I complained with anger against the bad treatment that they tried to force on me. In those days I was a Brahmin and a proud man. Now I am dead man and eat” — here he looked at the well-chewed 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 lived. Then they sent me by train from my home to Okara Station, with a man to take care of me; and at Okara Station we met two other men, and they took the three of us on camels, in the night, from Okara Station to this place, and they pushed me from the top to the bottom, and the other two followed, and I have been here ever since for two and a half years. Once I was a Brahmin and a proud man, and now I eat crows.”

“There is no way of getting out?”

“None of any kind at all. When I first came I did experiments often and all the others also, but we have always been beaten by the sand which falls on our heads.”

“But surely,” I cut in at this point, “the riverside is open, and it is worth it to dodge the bullets; while at night” — I had already made a rough plan to escape which a natural selfish feeling stopped me from sharing with Gunga Dass. He, however, guessed my silent thought almost as soon as it was made; and, to my great surprise, let out a long low mocking laugh — the laughter, please understand, of someone above me or at least of an equal.

“You will not” — he had stopped saying Sir after his first sentence — “get away that way. But you can try. I have tried. Only once.”

The feeling of a terror I could not name and deep fear which I had tried in vain to fight overcame me completely. My long fast — it was now almost ten o’clock, and I had eaten nothing since lunch on the previous day — together with the violent and strange shaking of the ride had tired me out, and I truly believe that, for a few minutes, I acted as if I were mad. I threw myself against the cruel sand-slope I ran round the base of the crater, cursing and praying by turns.

I crawled out among the reeds of the river bank, only to be driven back each time in great fear by the rifle bullets that cut the sand around me — for I did not dare to face the death of a mad dog among that terrible crowd — and finally I fell, tired out and wild, at the edge of the well. No one had paid any attention to a show that makes me blush red even when I think of it now.

Two or three men stepped on my breathing hard body as they took water, but they were clearly used to this kind of thing, and had no time to waste on me. The situation was very embarrassing. Gunga Dass, indeed, when he had covered the coals of his fire with sand, took some trouble to throw half a cupful of stinking water over my head, a kind act for which I could have fallen on my knees and thanked him, but he was laughing all the while in the same wheezy tone without joy that greeted me on my first try to push through the shallow water.

And so, in a half-asleep condition, I lay till noon. Then, being only a man after all, I felt hungry, and told this to Gunga Dass, who I had begun to think of as my natural protector. Following the habit of the outside world when dealing with local people, I put my hand into my pocket and took out four annas. I saw at once how silly the gift was, and I was about to put the money back.

But Gunga Dass had a different idea. “Give me the money,” he said; “all you have, or I will get help, and we will kill you!” All this as if it was the most normal thing in the world!

A British man’s first reaction, I believe, is to protect the things in his pockets; but a moment of thought made me see it was useless to argue with the one man who had the power to make me comfortable; and with whose help it was possible that I might later escape from the crater. I gave him all the money I had, Rs. 9-8-5 — nine rupees eight annas and five pie — for I always keep small change as a tip when I am in camp. Gunga Dass grabbed the coins, and hid them at once in his torn loin cloth, his face changing to something evil as he looked around to make sure that no one had seen us.

“Now I will give you some food,” he said.

I do not know what pleasure having my money gave him; but since it clearly made him happy I was not sorry that I gave it up so quickly, for I was sure that he would have me killed if I said no. You do not complain about the strange ways of a den of wild animals; and my companions were worse than any animals. While I ate what Gunga Dass had given, a rough chapati and a cup of the dirty well water, the people showed not the smallest sign of curiosity — that curiosity which is so common, usually, in an Indian village.

I could even think that they hated me. In any case they treated me very coldly, and Gunga Dass was almost as bad. I asked him many questions about the terrible village, and got very poor answers. As far as I could tell, it had been there for a very, very long time — so I thought that it was at least a hundred years old — and in all that time no one had ever escaped from it. [I had to control myself here with both hands, so that the wild fear did not seize me again and make me run madly round the crater.] Gunga Dass took a cruel pleasure in saying this again and again and in watching me make a face. Nothing that I could do would make him tell me who the strange “They” were.

“Those are the orders,” he would reply, “and I do not yet know anyone who has not followed the orders.”

“Just wait until my servants see that I am gone,” I replied, “and I promise you that this place will be destroyed and removed from the earth, and I’ll teach you some manners, too, my friend.”

“Your servants would be ripped to pieces before they came near here; and also, you are dead, my dear friend. It is not your fault, of course, but still you are dead and buried.”

From time to time, I was told, food was dropped down from the land side into the big open place, and the people there fought for it like wild animals. When a man felt he was going to die he went back to his hole and died there. Sometimes the body was pulled out of the hole and thrown onto the sand, or left to rot where it lay.

The words “thrown on to the sand” got my attention, and I asked Gunga Dass if this sort of thing was not likely to cause a sickness.

“That,” he said with another of his wheezy laughs, “you can see for yourself later. You will have much time to look around.”

At this, to his great joy, I made a face again and quickly went on talking: “And how do you live here from day to day? What do you do?” The question got exactly the same answer as before — together with the fact that “this place is like your European heaven; there is no marrying or giving in marriage.”

Gunga Dass had studied at a Mission School, and, as he himself said, if he had only changed his religion “like a wise man,” he could have avoided the living grave which was now his fate. But as long as I was with him I think he was happy.

Here was a Sahib, a man from the ruling race, helpless as a child and completely in the power of his local neighbors. In a slow, lazy way he began to hurt me as a schoolboy would spend a happy half-hour watching the pain of a pinned beetle, or as a ferret in a dark burrow might hold on comfortably to the neck of a rabbit. The main point of his talk 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.”