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Though they were four to one he was so formidable that they surged back in fright. The boy who
was hurt had fallen on his knees with his arms across his face, and was screaming ‘I am blinded! I am
blinded!’ Suddenly the other four turned and darted for a pile of laterite, used for road-mending,
which was twenty yards away. One of Ellis’s clerks had appeared on the veranda of the office and
was leaping up and down in agitation.
‘Come up, sir, come up at once! They will murder you!’
Ellis disdained to run, but he moved for the veranda steps. A lump of laterite came sailing through
the air and shattered itself against a pillar, whereat the clerk scooted indoors. But Ellis turned on the
veranda to face the boys, who were below, each carrying an armful of laterite. He was cackling with
delight.
‘You damned, dirty little niggers!’ he shouted down at them. ‘You got a surprise that time, didn’t
you? Come up on this veranda and fight me, all four of you! You daren’t. Four to one and you daren’t
face me! Do you call yourselves men? You sneaking, mangy little rats!’
He broke into Burmese, calling them the incestuous children of pigs. All the while they were
pelting him with lumps of laterite, but their arms were feeble and they threw ineptly. He dodged the
stones, and as each one missed him he cackled in triumph. Presently there was a sound of shouts up
the road, for the noise had been heard at the police station, and some constables were emerging to see
what was the matter. The boys took fright and bolted, leaving Ellis a complete victor.
Ellis had heartily enjoyed the affray, but he was furiously angry as soon as it was over. He wrote a
violent note to Mr Macgregor, telling him that he had been wantonly assaulted and demanding
vengeance. Two clerks who had witnessed the scene, and a chaprassi, were sent along to Mr
Macgregor’s office to corroborate the story. They lied in perfect unison. ‘The boys had attacked Mr
Ellis without any provocation whatever, he had defended himself,’ etc. etc. Ellis, to do him justice,
probably believed this to be a truthful version of the story. Mr Macgregor was some-what disturbed,
and ordered the police to find the four schoolboys and interrogate them. The boys, however, had been
expecting something of the kind, and were lying very low; the police searched the bazaar all day
without finding them. In the evening the wounded boy was taken to a Burmese doctor, who, by
applying some poisonous concoction of crushed leaves to his left eye, succeeded in blinding him.
The Europeans met at the Club as usual that evening, except for Westfield and Verrall, who had not
yet returned. Everyone was in a bad mood. Coming on top of the murder, the unprovoked attack on
Ellis (for that was the accepted description of it) had scared them as well as angered them. Mrs
Lackersteen was twittering to the tune of ‘We shall all be murdered in our beds’. Mr Macgregor, to
reassure her, told her that in cases of riot the European ladies were always locked inside the jail until
everything was over; but she did not seem much comforted. Ellis was offensive to Flory, and
Elizabeth cut him almost dead. He had come down to the Club in the insane hope of making up their
quarrel, and her demeanour made him so miserable that for the greater part of the evening he skulked
in the library. It was not till eight o’clock, when everyone had swallowed a number of drinks, that the
atmosphere grew a little more friendly, and Ellis said:
‘What about sending a couple of chokras up to our houses and getting our dinners sent down here?
We might as well have a few rubbers of bridge. Better than mooning about at home.’