It was a fatal act of mercy. The mere sight of the water instantly overthrew the reason of half the unhappy wretches behind us. A wild howl went up, and a frantic struggle commenced to get to the windows. Those who a few minutes before had been rational Christian beings were now to be seen fighting and striking each other as they leaped and plunged to climb over those in front. Marian, terror-stricken by the outburst, put her hands before her eyes, and would have been swept away from her place like a leaf if I had not set my back to hers and fought furiously against the lunatics behind. I can see now the dark, flushed face of one man, his parched tongue dropping out of his mouth, and his eyes rolling horribly, quite mad, as he flung himself upon me and tried to tear me down. To add to the horror, the Indian soldiers brought their torches to the windows in order to gloat on this scene. I heard them laugh like devils as the red light flashed on the naked heap of infuriated Englishmen writhing and fighting in that narrow hell.
After ten minutes the struggles began to die down through sheer exhaustion, and then those of us who stood next the windows were allowed to drink from the skins; after which we filled hats with the water and passed them into the back of the apartment. In this way every one obtained some, but no good effect was wrought thereby. So far as I was concerned, the heat and drought were so fearful that no sooner had I swallowed my share of the fluid than my throat became as dry as it had been before—the momentary relief served only to aggravate my torments.
Then as the fever gained upon me, my thoughts broke bounds, and there danced confusedly through my brain odd scraps of memories and pictures of other scenes. For whole moments together I lost the knowledge of where I was; those dark walls and haggard faces passed, and in their stead came visions of the pleasant places I used to know, the ruffling of the wind upon the Breydon Water and the dykes, the stir among the reeds and rushes, and the cattle browsing in the Norfolk fields. Instead of the swarthy Indian soldiers with their torches I saw the friendly, homely figures of the carters as they rode their horses to the pool at sundown after the day’s work was over, and the familiar groups of villagers, and the face of little Patience Thurstan as she looked up at me, ready to weep, that time I said goodbye to her on my last day at home; and there rose before me the likeness of the dear old homestead, the gables and the crooked chimney, and the porch with jasmine growing over one side and boys’ love on the other; and I saw my father and my mother where they sat and faced each other across the hearthplace, and thought, maybe, of their son, so that there came over me a great and miserable longing to return to them; and, like the prodigal son when he ate husks among the swine, I repented of my rebellion and running away, and in that hour I took a resolution that if I ever outlived the night I would leave the wicked land of India for ever, and go back to my own country, and ask my father to forgive me, as I knew my mother had forgiven me long ago.
Such were the thoughts that, by fits and starts, passed through me during the first hours of the death struggle; but the worst horror of that awful night came presently. In the recesses of the chamber, furthest from the windows, a harder evil than the heat was the intolerable foulness of the air. Even where I was standing it had become an excruciating pain to breathe, and my breast felt as though laced about with iron bands. In the interior many had by this time dropped down, not so much suffocated as poisoned by the fetid gas they were compelled to inhale. And now at length I detected a new, indescribably nauseous odour, added to the acrid smell of the place. At first I tried to conceal even from my own mind what this was. But not for long. In a very few minutes the secret was known to all there. The unhappy man I had seen trodden down had been dead for about half an hour, and his body was already corrupt.
Then that whole den of madmen broke loose, raving and cursing; some imploring God to strike them dead, others casting the most foul and savage insults at the guards without, if by that means they might tempt them to fire in through the windows and put an end to what they endured. They struck at one another, they clutched each other’s hair, surging and trampling one another down to gain an inch nearer the miserable air-holes which afforded the only chance of life. The floor was choked with corpses, among which the survivors were entangled in one seething mass. As for me, I became light-headed, and had only one blind instinct left, to strike down any man who attempted to thrust Marian from her breathing ground. I was aware that she had lost her senses and sunk down between me and the wall; yet I went on battling, as in some dreadful nightmare, with the furious forms that rose up and loomed out of the darkness. When I could no longer make out their faces I still struck out blindly, and heard them go down heavily upon the pile of bodies behind which I stood entrenched. Hour after hour that ghastly combat raged, till the corpses were thrice and four times more numerous than those who still breathed; and at last an awful lethargy settled down over the scene, broken only when one of the survivors roused himself for an expiring effort that sent a quiver through the dead and dying heap.
After that I know no more, for when the morning broke, and the officers came to release the handful left alive, the energy that had held me up so long forsook me, and I sank down unconscious.