Essay

It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like

yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We

were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with

double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet

by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of

drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the

inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the

condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.



One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny

wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick,

sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the

moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were

guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by

with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a

chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his

arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their

hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while

feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish

which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite

unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly

noticed what was happening.



Eight o'clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air,

floated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, who

was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with

his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was an army doctor, with a

grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. "For God's sake hurry up,

Francis," he said irritably. "The man ought to have been dead by this

time. Aren't you ready yet?"



Francis, the head jailer, a fat Dravidian in a white drill suit and gold

spectacles, waved his black hand. "Yes sir, yes sir," he bubbled. "All

iss satisfactorily prepared. The hangman iss waiting. We shall proceed."



"Well, quick march, then. The prisoners can't get their breakfast till

this job's over."



We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the

prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close

against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing

and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed

behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped

short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had happened--a

dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came

bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging

its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together.

It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it

pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a

dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. Everyone

stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the dog.



"Who let that bloody brute in here?" said the superintendent angrily.

"Catch it, someone!"



A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after the dog, but

it danced and gambolled just out of his reach, taking everything as part

of the game. A young Eurasian jailer picked up a handful of gravel and

tried to stone the dog away, but it dodged the stones and came after us

again. Its yaps echoed from the jail wails. The prisoner, in the grasp of

the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another

formality of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed

to catch the dog. Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and

moved off once more, with the dog still straining and whimpering.



It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of

the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound

arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never

straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place,

the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed

themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped

him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the

path.



It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to

destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to

avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of

cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he

was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working

--bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues

forming--all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be

growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air

with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the

grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned--reasoned

even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together,

seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two

minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone--one mind less, one

world less.



The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the

prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a brick erection

like three sides of a shed, with planking on top, and above that two

beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey-haired

convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his

machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word

from Francis the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than

ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up

the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope round the

prisoner's neck.



We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough

circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the

prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of

"Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!", not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for

help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog

answered the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the

gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down

over the prisoner's face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still

persisted, over and over again: "Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!"



The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes

seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and

on, "Ram! Ram! Ram!" never faltering for an instant. The superintendent,

his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick;

perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number--

fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The Indians

had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were

wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened

to his cries--each cry another second of life; the same thought was in

all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable

noise!



Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he

made a swift motion with his stick. "Chalo!" he shouted almost fiercely.



There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had

vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of the dog, and

it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when it got there

it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard,

where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. We went

round the gallows to inspect the prisoner's body. He was dangling with

his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a

stone.



The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare body; it

oscillated, slightly. "HE'S all right," said the superintendent. He

backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody

look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his

wrist-watch. "Eight minutes past eight. Well, that's all for this

morning, thank God."



The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. The dog, sobered and

conscious of having misbehaved itself, slipped after them. We walked out

of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting

prisoners, into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts, under

the command of warders armed with lathis, were already receiving their

breakfast. They squatted in long rows, each man holding a tin pannikin,

while two warders with buckets marched round ladling out rice; it seemed

quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had

come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to

break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering

gaily.



The Eurasian boy walking beside me nodded towards the way we had come,

with a knowing smile: "Do you know, sir, our friend (he meant the dead

man), when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor

of his cell. From fright.--Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you

not admire my new silver case, sir? From the boxwallah, two rupees eight

annas. Classy European style."



Several people laughed--at what, nobody seemed certain.



Francis was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously. "Well,

sir, all hass passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It wass all

finished--flick! like that. It iss not always so--oah, no! I have known

cases where the doctor wass obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull

the prisoner's legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable!"



"Wriggling about, eh? That's bad," said the superintendent.



"Ach, sir, it iss worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall,

clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will

scarcely credit, sir, that it took six warders to dislodge him, three

pulling at each leg. We reasoned with him. "My dear fellow," we said,

"think of all the pain and trouble you are causing to us!" But no, he

would not listen! Ach, he wass very troublesome!"



I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the

superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. "You'd better all come out and

have a drink," he said quite genially. "I've got a bottle of whisky in

the car. We could do with it."



We went through the big double gates of the prison, into the road.

"Pulling at his legs!" exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst

into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment

Francis's anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink

together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a

hundred yards away.































