The colonel here entered the room. He looked the picture of misery and woe. His conscience smote him. He knew that the young man lying prostrate and unable to move before him on his daughter's bed was in that condition owing to his lust. Poor man! He knew that a number of innocent persons had gone to their doom for the same cause, and that his wife and one daughter were still ill from effects springing from the same cause. I took his grieved appearance to be simply that of sympathy, but as he wrung my hand, he said quietly to me, 'Devereaux, I owe all to you and you owe all to me!'

'How, colonel?'

'I owe you the honour and lives of my girls – and – I ought never to have gone to Peshawar!' and he drew his hand across his eyes and groaned heavily.

Presently he added, 'Lavie tells me it will be some little time before you are strong enough to resume your duties, and that he would like to see you in your own quarters which are nearer to him, but he allows that you will be better in a house where you can be nursed and looked after, so you will remain here till you are quite well and strong again.'

'Thanks very much, colonel. I hope, however, I shall soon be all right. How is Amy?' I added, 'I have not seen her.'

'She is still in bed, poor girl!' said the colonel. 'The attack made on her had a very curious and I am sorry to say a serious effect. She has had a recurrence of an ailment which attacked her as a baby.'

'There! Never mind,' said Mrs Selwyn, 'never mind what is the matter with Amy. Captain Devereaux will be contented with knowing she has received a shock – not to be wondered at – and is still very low and depressed. Come, Fanny! get Captain Devereaux his tiffin!' and mother and daughter both left the room.

'It is a most singular thing,' said the colonel, looking carefully out of the door before he spoke, 'but poor Amy as a baby had a relaxed sphincter and – you understand? And it has come on again. Lavie says it is most unusual, but hopes to get her all right again so long as she is not allowed to pass anything but liquid. You understand?'

I felt inclined to burst with laughter, only I was so weak, and I remembered that my amusement arose from poor Amy's having been buggered.

'But, colonel, what could have brought it on now?'

'Lavie says shock, only shock.'

My goodness! I had noticed the peculiarity in the colonel before, viz., a determination not to see, or want of power, perhaps, to see, things as they were. He knew as well as, perhaps better than, I did, how addicted Afghans are to sodomy. Another man would have at once suspected this relaxation of the sphincter in poor Amy to be due to her having been buggered, but, like the ostrich, the colonel buried his head in the sand of obstinacy, and refused to see what was apparent. He did not wish to think a daughter of his could be buggered, therefore she had not been buggered. That is all.

Lavie, too, questioned me very closely as to what I saw the Afghan do when I caught him with Amy.

'Now, Lavie,' said I, 'I don't know what you expect to hear, but let me tell you this, the light in her room was very dim, I could not see very well. The moment I saw him, he seemed to see me, and we were hard at it trying to kill one another immediately!'

'You could tell me more, Devereaux, I am certain. I see I must tell you what I fear happened. Poor Amy has the sphincter of her – her – anus ruptured – at least, I say it is ruptured. Jardine says it is only unnaturally distended. If it is ruptured, an operation will be necessary. If Jardine is right none may be wanted. I should feel myself on safe ground if I knew for a certainty that she was buggered, for then the state of her anus would be explained. The colonel says, however, that as a child Amy always had a weak sphincter; even so, some violence must have brought it on so badly again.'

'Lavie, you are a gentleman, and I can trust you, but don't let it go any further, don't even tell Jardine, for it may be one of the unhappiest things that can happen to poor Amy to have the truth known. She was buggered and completely buggered too! The blasted Afghan's prick was buried in her arse as deep as his balls and he roared at me that he had buggered her and would bugger me too!'

'I thought so,' said Lavie, gravely. 'I knew I was right. I am certain it is rupture and not abnormal distention of the sphincter. But I am afraid, Devereaux, that the mischief has been done. Nobody, of course, knows for certain, but everybody in the whole camp believes that Amy was buggered, and the men are ready to kill every Afghan that comes in. Most unfortunately, the lessons you have been giving to the girls come in so handy for a joke, too. It was young Crean who started it when Jardine said he was not sure but that Amy had been buggered. Says Crean, "Then she is BA, Buggered Amy! Oh! ho! Now we can chaff Devereaux and congratulate him on one of his pupils having taken her degree."'

When I was well enough an official enquiry was held and, briefly, these were the facts which were elicited.

The soldiers were, on arrival at Cherat, warned that if they ever went shooting on the mountainsides, they must always be in parties of five or six. If fewer in number, they might be attacked; if greater, it might alarm the natives. But the whores had deserted, and the only fucking the men could get as such was at the danger of their own lives and those of the obliging women they could from time to time find herding goats and cattle. It appeared that two parties of six men each, making a total of twelve, met accidentally at a lonely place in the glen, in which were two fine young Afghan lassies in charge of some cattle. The offer of a rupee from each man made the maidens joyful and they willingly earned twelve rupees each, for each man had each girl turn about. The girls returned delighted to their village and the Tommies came back to camp much relieved.

The promise had been given of more rupees for more fucking, but alas, the promise never could be fulfilled. Somehow or other the tribesmen found it out. The inevitable consequence for the poor unfortunate girls was that their noses had been cut off and, thus mutilated, they had been paraded before the assembled men, women and children; then they had been slowly burned to death. Moreover – these poor girls having been considered to have been virgins – a desperate vengeance was to be taken on the English at Cherat. It was a pity that Mrs Selwyn should have engaged her ayah at Peshawar, where she had gone to meet her husband on his return from the war. This ayah had Afghan blood in her veins and Mrs Selwyn made a mortal enemy of her by boxing her ears for some impertinence or slackness of duty.

This happened just about the time when the irate tribesmen were looking out for English virgins to rape. Fanny, Amy and Mabel were the only fuckable girls in Cherat, and the ayah, knowing what was happening, plotted with the tribesmen to give these poor innocents into their hands at the first opportunity. When Colonel Selwyn went to inspect the whores, the consequences were what I have endeavoured to narrate. It goes without saying that that the ayah disappeared and was never heard of again. But for the fortunate circumstance of my having that extreme feeling of uneasiness, all three girls would certainly have been raped, buggered and perhaps killed too; as it was, only poor Amy was buggered.

It is curious how events hang one upon another. The flight of the ayah necessitated the hiring of another, and Mrs Selwyn engaged, on the recommendation of a lady of Peshawar, a woman whom I felt certain she never would have entertained had she seen her first, for Sugdaya was the most lovely native woman I ever saw. Mrs Selwyn knew that owing to her own weak health and consequent inability to give the colonel those satisfying nights of really succulent fucking which keep married men chaste and quiet, a man of his passionate temperament must feel desire at times press him immensely. To admit so tempting a piece of flesh as Sugdaya into her house was therefore rash to a degree, but once done it was impossible to undo. Sugdaya was modest in demeanour and assiduously avoided the colonel, devoting herself to her duty to Mrs Selwyn and the Misses baba [term of affectionate respect for the children of the family], and in fact becoming Mrs Selwyn's right hand.