Srikanta
down before a collision could take place. An exclamation of startled terror from him made me look down: the next instant, he from the bank below and I from the dinghy above, were both looking down on the same object.
Never since have I been face to face with untimely death wearing so piteous an aspect. It would be impossible for anyone to realize the full pathos of it, unless he saw it, as we saw it on that night. There in the depth of tie midnight silence that was broken only by the howls of hungry jackals, wandering invisible behind the thick gloom of the shrubs and clumps of trees, by the flappings of the wings of vultures and other obscene birds on the branches aloft, and by the roar and moan of the ceaseless waters eddying past us, we stood without a word, looking on the most pitiful of objects. We saw a healthy-looking boy of fair complexion, aged six or seven years, his head lying on the bank and the rest of his body floating in the waters. Probably jackals had just been busy pulling him out of the water, and our sudden approach had made them retreat until we should depart. The boy could not have been dead more than three or four hours. The poor thing looked as if, worn out by the intolerable sufferings of cholera, he had at last fallen asleep on the lap of the mother Ganges; and the mother was just laying her boy gently, very gently, on her bed.
When I looked at Indra I saw big tears running down his cheeks. 'Just stand aside a bit, Srikanta!' he said. 'I'll take the poor little fellow in our dinghy over to those casuarinas on the reef and put him into the water there.'
It is true that, at the sight of his tears, tears were starting out of my eyes too; but his proposal to handle the thing was too much for me. It is no easy matter
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