We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row ofsheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages.
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.
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.
Eight o'clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air, floated from the distant barracks.
He was an army doctor, with a grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. ‘