'Right you are, sir!' came a feminine voice in decidedly Irish tones. 'Right you are, and shall I come with your honour now?'

'By George! Yes! Come along! but we shall have to pass another sentry. Here! Put on my cloak and cap. There! that'll do famously! Now, Lavie! Devereaux! Let the girl walk between you and I'll go in front.' Saying this Jardine put his cap on what I could see was the head of a fine and buxom young woman, though it was too dark to see her features. She buttoned his cloak around her, and without any more ado we four proceeded. Lavie and I carried on a conversation with Jardine in order to deceive the alert sentry we had yet to pass, and soon we had our lass safe from all danger of immediate discovery.

'Now to my hut!' said Jardine, 'you are my property for tonight and this is the way to my hut!'

'Faith, sir!' said she, laughing, 'I'm thinking of taking ye all! I could do it aisy, one after another, and indeed all ye cud do to me tonight wud hardly make up for three months total abstinence. I've not had a man all that time, and I did not become a married woman for that anyways!' With a laugh we condoled with her, and she continued: 'Oh! it's aisy it wud be for any of us to come up to you gentlemen any and ivery night when there's no moon, but you see there's some so jealous and catankerous! There's women down there,' pointing down towards the 'married quarters', 'who would love to come out on the prowl for officers, but who hate it falling to anyone but themselves! Only for that and the reports suchlike make, there would be half a dozen of us in yer honour's beds ivery night!'

'Well! we are wasting time,' said Jardine impatiently. 'Devereaux, you won't have much chance tonight, so you had better go home and fuck Mrs Soubratie, if you want a woman.'

'Thanks,' said I dryly, 'but I don't think I want any woman. All the same I wish you every pleasure. Good-night,' and off I went.

Was it virtue? What was it?

Lavie told me next day that Jardine kept Mrs O'Toole until two o'clock, and then passed her on to him, and that so ravenous was she that he was completely hors de combat by four, and that but for the distance of my bungalow from the 'married quarters', and the near approach of daybreak, I would have had a visit from the lively woman. I was glad she had not come, for I knew, when put face to face with a nice fresh cunt, I should not have hesitated to fuck it, and Mrs Selwyn would have heard of it, as she did of Jardine and Lavie. This was not the only visit Mrs O'Toole paid the doctors, and they kept it a deep secret from the other officers, but the secret oozed out somehow and Mrs O'Toole was one of the very first women sent down to the plains when Cherat was gradually denuded of all the officers and men of my regiment.

Early in October a telegram came from Peshawar which sent a thrill of joy through the hearts of the Tommies at Cherat, and made the officers feel happy too, but which somewhat displeased Mrs Soubratie. It ran thus, 'Twelve plump fresh, young whores will leave Peshawar for Cherat today.' This was the telegram from the kotwal [police-officer] at Peshawar to our regimental kotwal. The moment Colonel Selwyn heard of it he telegraphed back, 'Keep the women until I have inspected them.' He did not tell Mrs Selwyn of the nature of his duty, but he told her he had been called for by the general at Peshawar to go down and see him on important business, and he lost no time about it. I only heard of his intended visit to Peshawar after the colonel had actually departed and it made me uneasy. The house was very much exposed, being at the head of the Chapin Gaant, and the robbers had been particularly active lately. It is true the Selwyns had a chokidar, which is the way English people in India purchase immunity from the robbers, the chokidars being always selected from those tribes or villages in the vicinity which furnish the greatest number of robbers, but there had been many instances lately of theft and in some cases of violence and bloodshed at night, so that my faith in chokidardom was rather shaken. The nights, too, were brilliantly lit by the moon, of which the splendour can hardly be imagined by those who have never seen that luminary in the East.

I knew that from her delicate state of health, Mrs Selwyn could hardly give the colonel much pleasure of nights, if indeed he could ever fuck her at all, and I also knew, from certain little stories the colonel told me in private, that he was as fond of a good juicy cunt as any man. I guessed, therefore, that the news of the twelve plump, fresh young whores of the telegram had brought upon him a flood of desire and that he had gone to Peshawar not only to inspect them but also to try them, and fuck them, and see whether they came up to the description given of them. My suspicions were well founded, for when I went to Peshawar myself, some two months later, the khansama at the public bungalow told me that Colonel Selwyn sahib was the finest man he had ever seen, and that he always had four women every night; and Jumali, one of the twelve, told her colleagues that the colonel had at Peshawar fucked her every night during his stay, and took three others, turn by turn. Poor colonel! He had the biggest balls of any man I ever saw, and no wonder if at times his bottled-up emotions burst forth! I believe myself that the sentries guarding the 'married quarters' at Cherat were put there by Mrs Selwyn more as a preventative against the colonel than against the other officers; at any rate, this visit to Peshawar had very nearly fatal consequences for some of the colonel's own family.

The first night I could hardly sleep from ill-defined dread of what might be going on at the far end of the camp, a mile away from me, where the Selwyn house was, and towards morning I rose, whilst the lovely landscape was lighted by the moon only, and walked rapidly until I reached the colonel's house. Everything seemed all right. The chokidar was at his post, giving from time to time that horrid cough which they all give, a kind of sentry's 'all's well'. The next two nights succeeding I took the same walk with the same result. But the next night (at the very time the colonel must have been between the dusky thighs of the last but one of the twelve fresh young whores whom he had gone to inspect), I was just turning the corner where the path joined that from which I had first seen pretty Fanny Selwyn, when I heard a sound which made me shiver with apprehension! I thought I could distinguish my name being called upon. I set feet to ground with all my force, and ran as I had never run before! A few minutes brought me to the house, and during those few minutes the fearful shrieks never ceased. It was for me that someone, some girl was calling and – Oh! God! – the shrieks were suddenly stifled just as I got to the verandah! There, on the ground, with his throat cut from ear to ear, his head thrown back and a horrible yawning gap, from which a stream or river of blood was still gushing, separating his chin from his chest, lay the luckless chokidar, whose cough had given me such comfort when I heard it on the preceding nights. I trod in his slippery gore before I perceived it but I had no time to lose. The window of what I knew to be Fanny's bedroom was wide open. It was a high lattice window, opening like a door, and the sill of it was no more than two and a half or three feet from the ground. I sprang through it at a bound, and there before me I saw a tawny Afghan struggling between a pair of quivering thighs, completely naked and uncovered, and those thighs and feet and legs I knew to be Fanny's.

For a moment I stood paralysed with horror. The position of the accursed Afghan was exactly that of a man who in fucking a woman has completed the exquisite short digs and is pressing his prick way home while pouring out his burning spunk! His struggles were exactly those of a man under such circumstances, and his whole weight seemed to be resting on the quivering form of the prostrate girl. I could not see her face, but her poor left hand lying motionless and palm upwards told me that she was insensible, if not dead. It was only a moment I stood thus. Then, with a stifled cry of rage and despair, I rushed at the sacrilegious brute who was thus defiling the temple reared for beings altogether superior to such as him; he had not heard me jump in at the window for the floor was chaman [extremely hard lime and mortar] and my shoes had India rubber soles, being, in fact, my lawn-tennis shoes. I seized him by the collar of his coat, and gave one wrench, pulling up so suddenly that he had no time to let go his hold of poor Fanny, but dropped her as soon as he recovered from his surprise. The lifeless manner in which the unfortunate girl fell back with a thud on the bed, her head almost disappearing on the other side of it, gave me a further terrible shock. I was convinced she was dead. But the rotten material of which the burly brute's coat was made, gave with a shrill-sounding tear, and a cloud of stinking dust rushed forth from it as though from the explosion of a musket. Without attempting to attack me in return, and with a stifled cry of alarm, the fiend made for the window. Before he reached it, however, I had hold of his coat again, but could not manage to get close to him, he was so quick, and I could only make a grab at his shoulder as he fled. Again the rotten cloth gave way, this time, however, not quite so quickly, but too quickly to enable me to grasp the man himself. As the garment almost fell off, his blade or long glittering knife fell to the floor; wrenching himself away, the filthy brigand bounded out of the window, dashed across the path and appeared to hurl himself head-foremost down the steep side of the valley. I could hear him crashing and tearing through the bushes, for all was silent as death. Satisfied that not only was the brute gone, but that there were no others hiding near at hand, I turned with a heart full of sickening fear and dread to the bed across which the lifeless form of the unfortunate Fanny was stretched. The verandah outside somewhat darkened the room even in the daytime, but the powerful light of the moon reflected from the ground and the rocky slopes still managed to illuminate the bedchamber, and the small oil lamp, which generally burns all night in every person's room in India, added its feeble rays to show me what looked like the desolation of death!