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