“Then you are not a soldier?”
“Not in recent years. I am chief of police for Bankipore.”
Marten cast a half-startled glance at the profile of the man he had taken for a simple sergeant, and assumed a more dignified posture.
“The police, then, live in tents here?” I went on.
“If we didn’t, few of us would be living at all,” replied the chief. “Early in March, with the famine, the plague broke out, and the inhabitants have been dying in hundreds ever since. Ten of the force were carried from their huts to the funeral pyres in the first week. Then we set up the tents.”
“Doesn’t the government try to check the epidemic?”
“Try! We have been fighting it tooth and nail since the day it began. But what can we do among ignorant, superstitious Hindus? Our people are poor. They live in filthy huts with dirt floors, into which rats can dig easily. If we attempt to fumigate a house, the family abandons it and sleeps on the ground outside, the surest way of taking the plague. If we try to purify their water and food we have a riot on our hands. The huts, too, are so packed together and burdened with filth that the only way to clean them would be to burn up the town. We have a force of government doctors. Medicine, also, is free to all. But you know my people. They would far rather die of plague than run the risk of losing caste through the doctor’s touch. If a man dies, his family prefers to scoop a hole in the floor and squat on his grave, rather than to turn his body over to Christians or Mohammedans. We have strict laws against concealing sickness and death, but it is difficult to enforce them. To make things worse, the rumor is always going the rounds that the sahib government has ordered the doctors to poison their patients or cast a spell upon them; and among the masses such tales are readily believed. What can you expect of ignorant, fanatical people who barely realize that reading and writing exist, and who never learn anything except on hearsay? Police and doctors and government medicine will never wipe out the plague. The only thing that can stop it is rain, and until that comes Bankipore will keep on dying.”
Marvelous was the manner in which this son of the Orient ran on in an alien tongue, never at a loss for the word to express his meaning precisely.
“Do all those attacked by the plague die?” I asked.
“I have been keeping tab on the cases,” returned the chief, “and I find that a fraction of less than ninety-six per cent result fatally. I know of men who have recovered. Our former district commissioner was one. If the victim is a European or a well-to-do native he has about one chance for life to three for death. But among the sudras, the coolies, the peasants, the poor shopkeepers, there is small hope. They have always half starved on a rice diet, the drought has left us famine-stricken for a year; obviously, having no constitutions to fall back upon, they merely lie down and die, never making an effort unless their religious superstitions are in danger of violation. No, it is only rain that will save us,” he concluded, pushing aside the flap of the tent and gazing hopelessly at the cloudless sky.