The Doctor, summoned hastily, shook his head. Death must have been instantaneous, he said; the neck was broken. After which he went over and looked at Shureef curiously; then stooped down and picked up some of the earth on which the body lay, earth which had come from the bottom of the grave. "Look," he said, pointing out minute white crystals in it to the native assistant; "that's bi-borate of soda. I knew there was some of it here when I chose this patch. It's a useful antiseptic; but he has been in a regular mine of it--a curious case of embalming, isn't it?"
It certainly was; and it was still more curious that a bunch of fresh roses and jasmine should have been found on Shurruf Deen the Overseer's breast, as he lay in Shureef's grave; but, as the Doctor said, the obsequious gardener had most likely given them to him as he passed through the spinach and onion patches. And perhaps it was so.
[A BAD-CHARACTER SUIT]
A flood of blistering, yellow sunshine was pouring down on to the prostrate body of Private George Afford as he lay on his back, drunk, in an odd little corner between two cook-room walls in the barrack square; and a stream of tepid water from a skin bag was falling on his head as Peroo the bhisti stood over him, directing the crystal curve now on his forehead, now scientifically on his ears. The only result, however, was that Private George Afford tried unavailingly to scratch them, then swore unintelligibly.
Peroo twisted the nozzle of the mussuck to dryness, and knelt down beside the slack strength in the dust. So kneeling, his glistening curved brown body got mixed up with the glistening curved brown water-bag he carried, until at first sight he seemed a monstrous spider preying on a victim, for his arms and legs were skinny.
"Sahib!" he said, touching his master on the sleeve. It was a very white sleeve, and the buttons and belts and buckles all glistened white or gold in the searching sunlight, for Peroo saw to them, as he saw to most things about Private Afford's body and soul; why God knows, except that George Afford had once--for his own amusement--whacked a man who, for his, was whacking Peroo. He happened to be one of the best bruisers in the regiment, and George Afford, who was in a sober bout, wanted to beat him; which he did.
There was no one in sight; nothing in fact save the walls, and an offensively cheerful castor-oil bush which grew, greener than any bay-tree, in one angle, sending splay fingers of shadow close to Private Afford's head as if it wished to aid in the cooling process. But despite the solitude, Peroo's touch on the white sleeve was decorous, his voice deference itself.
"Sahib!" he repeated. "If the Huzoor does not get up soon, the Captain will find the master on the ground when he passes to rations. And that is unnecessary."
He might as well have spoken to the dead. George Afford's face, relieved of the douche treatment, settled down to placid, contented sleep. It was not a bad face; and indeed, considering the habits of the man, it was singularly fine and clear cut; but then in youth it had evidently been a superlatively handsome one also.
Peroo waited a minute or two, then undid the nozzle of his skin bag once more, and drenched the slack body and the dust around it.