"A Hanging" by George Orwell

It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains.

In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them.

He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes.

He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes.

The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind.

A dreadful thing had happened–a dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard.

It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah.

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

Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and moved off once more, with the dog still straining and whimpering.

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man.

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 eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned–reasoned even about puddles.

He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered.

It was a high, reiterated cry of "Ram!

Ram!", not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell.

But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again: "Ram!

Ram!" never faltering for an instant.

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!

The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare body; it oscillated, slightly.

I have known cases where the doctor wass obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull the prisoner's legs to ensure decease.

"Ach, sir, it iss worse when they become refractory!

Even the superintendent grinned in a tolerant way.

At that moment Francis's anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny.

We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably.

"Pulling at his legs!" exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst into a loud chuckling.