Then I looked up and saw a head peering down into the
amphitheatre--the head of Dunnoo, my dog-boy, who attended to
my collies. As soon as he had attracted my attention, he held up his
hand and showed a rope. I motioned, staggering to and fro for the
while, that he should throw it down. It was a couple of leather
punkah-ropes knotted together, with a loop at one end. I slipped
the loop over my head and under my arms; heard Dunnoo urge
something forward; was conscious that I was being dragged, face
downward, up the steep sand slope, and the next instant found
myself choked and half fainting on the sand hills overlooking the
crater. Dunnoo, with his face ashy grey in the moonlight, implored
me not to stay but to get back to my tent at once.

It seems that he had tracked Pornic's footprints fourteen miles
across the sands to the crater; had returned and told my servants,
who flatly refused to meddle with any one, white or black, once
fallen into the hideous Village of the Dead; whereupon Dunnoo
had taken one of my ponies and a couple of punkah-ropes, returned
to the crater, and hauled me out as I have described.

To cut a long story short, Dunnoo is now my personal servant on a
gold mohur a month--a sum which I still think far too little for the
services he has rendered. Nothing on earth will induce me to go
near that devilish spot again, or to reveal its whereabouts more
clearly than I have done. Of Gunga Dass I have never found a
trace, nor do I wish to do. My sole motive in giving this to be
published is the hope that some one may possibly identify, from
the details and the inventory which I have given above, the corpse
of the man in the olive-green hunting-suit.