Other more gruesome anecdotes recurred to his memory in wearisome procession, and murdered sleep as effectually as Macbeth had ever done.
Hour passed after hour in this manner, but yet surely it could not be daylight already? The sun was given to springing rapidly up in these regions, but not with so sudden a glow as this, nor with so brilliantly red a colour. What was it?
Conviction flashed upon him at once, there was fire somewhere.
"Kirke! Kirke!" he cried. "Up, man, the dacoits are firing the village!"
Up sprang Kirke, and the two rushed out of their hut, to see half a dozen of the pretty slight houses around them blazing like torches, while demon figures leapt and howled around, flinging burning brands upon the inflammable roofs of palmy thekkee leaves, and in at the open doorways of the slender bamboo and matted walls.
The wretched villagers, caught like rats in so many traps, must either be burnt with their houses, or be chopped down by the dahs carried by the merciless robbers. Man, woman, and child,—all alike murdered in cold blood by their unsparing hands.
The assassins were but a gang of four, therefore, probably, was the same band as that which the villagers had beaten off in the evening, with the loss of one; for the dacoit generally works in parties of five.
It might well be supposed that a whole village, consisting perhaps of fifty men, with women and young people, could easily have repelled an attack from so small a party as that; but it must be understood that, to preserve the people from the floods in the wet season, and the fear of wild animals at all times, the houses were raised upon high piles; each, therefore, being isolated completely from its neighbour.
When the floods were out, one lady would take her boat even to borrow a cheroot from her nearest friend; the population lived in boats almost wholly; their houses were little more than shelters in which to eat and sleep. They contained no effects to induce a love for "home," in the Englishman's understanding of the word,—few appliances for occupation or pleasure. A chest or box for containing the best clothes and ornaments; a sufficiency of mats and rugs for beds; a "byat," or wooden dish, lacquered, from which they eat their rice; a few little bowls to hold small quantities of more tasty articles for flavouring the tasteless staple of their food; and half a dozen earthen pots or jars,—these form the sum total of a Burman's Lares and Penates; and there is nothing among them to create "house-pride" among the ladies, or a love for home-keeping in the gentlemen. All their amusements and pleasures are taken out of doors, in public.
But the family retires, at "sky shutting-in time," for sleep; and the dacoit who means mischief can take them practically one by one, burning the edifice, and destroying, or watching, the means of descent from the little platform upon which it is erected.