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Hira Singh : when India came to fight in Flanders

by Talbot Mundy · English · Gutenberg #4400 · 477,769 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Hira Singh : when India came to fight in Flanders

Author: Talbot Mundy


        
Release date: August 1, 2003 [eBook #4400]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIRA SINGH : WHEN INDIA CAME TO FIGHT IN FLANDERS ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.










HIRA SINGH

WHEN INDIA CAME TO FIGHT IN FLANDERS


BY TALBOT MUNDY


Author of

King--of the Khyber Rifles, The Winds of the World, etc.



ILLUSTRATED BY

J. CLEMENT COLL






PREFACE

I take leave to dedicate this book to Mr. Elmer Davis, through whose
friendly offices I was led to track down the hero of these
adventures and to find the true account of them even better than the
daily paper promised.

Had Ranjoor Singh and his men been Muhammadans their accomplishment
would have been sufficiently wonderful. For Sikhs to attempt what
they carried through, even under such splendid leadership as Ranjoor
Singh's, was to defy the very nth degree of odds. To have tried to
tell the tale otherwise than in Hira Singh's own words would have
been to varnish gold. Amid the echoes of the roar of the guns in
Flanders, the world is inclined to overlook India's share in it all
and the stout proud loyalty of Indian hearts. May this tribute to
the gallant Indian gentlemen who came to fight our battles serve to
remind its readers that they who give their best, and they who take,
are one.

T. M.



     One hundred Indian troops of the
     British Army have arrived at Kabul,
     Afghanistan, after a four months'
     march from Constantinople. The men
     were captured in Flanders by the
     Germans and were sent to Turkey in the
     hope that, being Mohammedans, they
     might join the Turks. But they
     remained loyal to Great Britain and
     finally escaped, heading for Afghanistan.
     They now intend to join their
     regimental depot in India, so it
     is reported.

     New York Times, July, 1915






Hira Singh


CHAPTER I


Let a man, an arrow, and an answer each go straight. Each is his own
witness. God is judge.--EASTERN PROVERB.


A Sikh who must have stood about six feet without his turban--and
only imagination knows how stately he was with it--loomed out of the
violet mist of an Indian morning and scrutinized me with calm brown
eyes. His khaki uniform, like two of the medal ribbons on his
breast, was new, but nothing else about him suggested rawness.
Attitude, grayness, dignity, the unstudied strength of his
politeness, all sang aloud of battles won. Battles with himself they
may have been--but they were won.

I began remembering ice-polished rocks that the glaciers once
dropped along Maine valleys, when his quiet voice summoned me back
to India and the convalescent camp beyond whose outer gate I stood.
Two flags on lances formed the gate and the boundary line was mostly
imaginary; but one did not trespass, because at about the point
where vision no longer pierced the mist there stood a sentry, and
the grounding of a butt on gravel and now and then a cough announced
others beyond him again.

"I have permission," I said, "to find a certain Risaldar-major
Ranjoor Singh, and to ask him questions."

He smiled. His eyes, betraying nothing but politeness, read the very
depths of mine.

"Has the sahib credentials?" he asked. So I showed him the permit
covered with signatures that was the one scrap of writing left in my
possession after several searchings.

"Thank you," he said gravely. "There were others who had no permits.
Will you walk with me through the camp?"

That was new annoyance, for with such a search as I had in mind what
interest could there be in a camp for convalescent Sikhs? Tents
pitched at intervals--a hospital marquee--a row of trees under which
some of the wounded might sit and dream the day through-these were
all things one could imagine without journeying to India. But there
was nothing to do but accept, and I walked beside him, wishing I
could stride with half his grace.

"There are no well men here," he told me. "Even the heavy work about
the camp is done by convalescents."

"Then why are you here?" I asked, not trying to conceal admiration
for his strength and stature.

"I, too, am not yet quite recovered."

"From what?" I asked, impudent because I felt desperate. But I drew
no fire.

"I do not know the English name for my complaint," he said. (But he
spoke English better than I, he having mastered it, whereas I was
only born to its careless use.)

"How long do you expect to remain on the sick list?" I asked,
because a woman once told me that the way to make a man talk is to
seem to be interested in himself.

"Who knows?" said he.

He showed me about the camp, and we came to a stand at last under
the branches of an enormous mango tree. Early though it was, a Sikh
non-commissioned officer was already sitting propped against the
trunk with his bandaged feet stretched out in front of him--a
peculiar attitude for a Sikh.

"That one knows English," my guide said, nodding. And making me a
most profound salaam, he added: "Why not talk with him? I have
duties. I must go."

The officer turned away, and I paid him the courtesy due from one
man to another. It shall always be a satisfying memory that I raised
my hat to him and that he saluted me.

"What is that officer's name?" I asked, and the man on the ground
seemed astonished that I did not know.

"Risaldar-major Ranjoor Singh bahadur!" he said.

For a second I was possessed by the notion of running after him,
until I recalled that he had known my purpose from the first and
that therefore his purpose must have been deliberate. Obviously, I
would better pursue the opportunity that in his own way He had given
me.

"What is your name?" I asked the man on the ground.

"Hira Singh," he answered, and at that I sat down beside him. For I
had also heard of Hira Singh.

He made quite a fuss at first because, he said, the dusty earth
beneath a tree was no place for a sahib. But suddenly he jumped to
the conclusion I must be American, and ceased at once to be troubled
about my dignity. On the other hand, he grew perceptibly less
distant. Not more friendly, perhaps, but less guarded.

"You have talked with Sikhs in California?" he asked, and I nodded.

"Then you have heard lies, sahib. I know the burden of their song. A
bad Sikh and a bad Englishman alike resemble rock torn loose. The
greater the height from which they fall, the deeper they dive into
the mud. Which is the true Sikh, he who marched with us or he who
abuses us? Yet I am told that in America men believe what hired
Sikhs write for the German papers.

"No man hired me, sahib, although one or two have tried. When I came
of age I sought acceptance in the army, and was chosen among many.
When my feet are healed I shall return to duty. I am a true Sikh. If
the sahib cares to listen, I will tell him truth that has not been
written in the papers."

So, having diagnosed my nationality and need, he proceeded to tell
me patiently things that many English are in the dark about, both
because of the censorship and because of the prevailing superstition
that the English resent being told--he stabbing and sweeping at the
dust with a broken twig and making little heaps and dents by way of
illustration,--I sitting silent, brushing away the flies.

Day after day I sought him soon after dawn when they were rolling up
the tent-flaps. I shared the curry and chapatties that a trooper
brought to him at noon, and I fetched water for him to drink from
time to time. It was dusk each day before I left him, so that, what
with his patience and my diligence, I have been able to set down the
story as he told it, nearly in his own words.

But of Risaldar-major Ranjoor Singh bahadur in the flesh, I have not
had another glimpse. I went in search of him the very first evening,
only to learn that he had "passed his medical" that afternoon and
had returned at once to active service.

       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

We Sikhs have a proverb, sahib, that the ruler and the ruled are
one. That has many sides to it of which one is this: India having
many moods and minds, the British are versatile. Not altogether
wise, for who is? When, for instance, did India make an end of
wooing foolishness? Since the British rule India, they may wear her
flowers, but they drink her dregs. They may bear her honors, but her
blame as well. As the head is to the body, the ruler and the ruled
are one.

Yet, as I understand it, when this great war came there was
disappointment in some quarters and surprise in others because we,
who were known not to be contented, did not rise at once in
rebellion. To that the answer is faith finds faith. It is the great
gift of the British that they set faith in the hearts of other men.

There were dark hours, sahib, before it was made known that there
was war. The censorship shut down on us, and there were a thousand
rumors for every one known fact. There had come a sudden swarm of
Sikhs from abroad, and of other men--all hirelings--who talked much
about Germany and a change of masters. There were dark sayings, and
arrests by night. Men with whom we talked at dusk had disappeared at
dawn. Ranjoor Singh, not yet bahadur but risaldar-major, commanding
Squadron D of my regiment, Outram's Own, became very busy in the
bazaars; and many a night I followed him, not always with his
knowledge. I intended to protect him, but I also wished to know what
the doings were.

There was a woman. Did the sahib ever hear of a plot that had not a
woman in it? He went to the woman's house. In hiding, I heard her
sneer at him. I heard her mock him. I would have doubted him forever
if I had heard her praise him, but she did not, and I knew him to be
a true man.

Ours is more like the French than the British system; there is more
intercourse between officer and non-commissioned officer and man.
But Ranjoor Singh is a silent man, and we of his squadron, though we
respected him, knew little of what was in his mind. When there began
to be talk about his knowing German, and about his secrecy, and
about his nights spent at HER place, who could answer? We all knew
he knew German.

There were printed pamphlets from God-knows-where, and letters from
America, that made pretense at explanations; and there were spies
who whispered. My voice, saying I had listened and seen and that I
trusted, was as a quail's note when the monsoon bursts. None heard.
So that in the end I held my tongue. I even began to doubt.

Then a trooper of ours was murdered in the bazaar, and Ranjoor
Singh's servant disappeared. Within an hour Ranjoor Singh was gone,
too.

Then came news of war. Then our officers came among us to ask
whether we are willing or not to take a hand in this great quarrel.
Perhaps in that hour if they had not asked us we might have judged
that we and they were not one after all.

But they did ask, and let a man, an arrow, and an answer each go
straight, say we. Our Guru tells us Sikhs should fight ever on the
side of the oppressed; the weaker the oppressed, the more the reason
for our taking part with them. Our officers made no secret about the
strength of the enemy, and we made none with them of our feeling in
the matter. They were proud men that day. Colonel Kirby was a very
proud man. We were prouder than he, except when we thought of
Ranjoor Singh.

Then, as it were out of the night itself, there came a message by
word of mouth from Ranjoor Singh saying he will be with us before
the blood shall run. We were overjoyed at that, and talked about it
far into the night; yet when dawn had come doubt again had hold of
us, and I think I was the only Sikh in the regiment ready to swear
to his integrity. Once, at least a squadron of us had loved him to
the death because we thought him an example of Sikh honor. Now only
I and our British officers believed in him.

We are light cavalry. We were first of all the Indian regiments to
ride out of Delhi and entrain at a station down the line. That was
an honor, and the other squadrons rode gaily, but D Squadron hung
its head. I heard men muttering in the ranks and some I rebuked to
silence, but my rebukes lightened no man's heart. In place of
Ranjoor Singh rode Captain Fellowes, promoted from another squadron,
and noticing our lack of spirit, he did his best to inspire us with
fine words and manly bearing; but we felt ashamed that our own Sikh
major was not leading us, and did not respond to encouragement.

Yet when we rode out of Delhi Gate it was as if a miracle took
place. A stiffening passed along the squadron. A trooper caught
sight of Ranjoor Singh standing beside some bullock carts, and
passed the word. I, too, saw him. He was with a Muhammadan bunnia,
and was dressed to resemble one himself.

The trooper who was first to see him--a sharp-eyed man--he died at
Ypres--Singh means lion, sahib--now recognized the man who stood
with him. "That bunnia," said he, "is surely none other than the
European who gave us the newspaper clippings about Sikhs not allowed
to land in Canada. See--he is disguised like a fool. Are the police
asleep," said he, "that such thieves dare sun themselves?"

It was true enough, sahib. The man in disguise was German, and we
remembered again that Ranjoor Singh knew German. From that moment we
rode like new men--I, too, although I because I trusted Ranjoor
Singh now more than ever; they, because they trusted no longer at
all, and he can shoulder what seem certainties whom doubt unmans. No
word, but a thought that a man could feel passed all down the line,
that whatever our officer might descend to being, the rank and file
would prove themselves faithful to the salt. Thenceforward there was
nothing in our bearing to cause our officers anxiety.

You might wonder, sahib, why none broke ranks to expose both men on
the spot. I did not because I trusted Ranjoor Singh. I reasoned he
would never have dared be seen by us if he truly were a traitor. It
seemed to me I knew how his heart must burn to be riding with us.
They did not because they would not willingly have borne the shame.
I tell no secret when I say there has been treason in the Punjab;
the whole world knows that. Yet few understand that the cloak under
which it all made headway was the pride of us true ones, who would
not own to treason in our midst. Pride and the shadow of shame are
one, sahib, but who believes it until the shame bears fruit?

Before the last squadron had ridden by, Captain Warrington, our
adjutant, also caught sight of Ranjoor Singh. He spurred after
Colonel Kirby, and Colonel Kirby came galloping back; but before he
could reach Delhi Gate Ranjoor Singh had disappeared and D Squadron
was glad to the last man.

"Let us hope he may die like a rat in a hole and bring no more shame
on us!" said Gooja Singh, and many assented.

"He said he will be with us before the blood shall run!" said I.

"Then we know whose blood shall run first!" said the trooper nearest
me, and those who heard him laughed. So I held my tongue. There is
no need of argument while a man yet lives to prove himself. I had
charge of the party that burned that trooper's body. He was one of
the first to fall after we reached France.

Colonel Kirby, looking none too pleased, came trotting back to us,
and we rode on. And we entrained. Later on we boarded a great ship
in Bombay harbor and put to sea, most of us thinking by that time of
families and children, and some no doubt of money-lenders who might
foreclose on property in our absence, none yet suspecting that the
government will take steps to prevent that. It is not only the
British officer, sahib, who borrows money at high interest lest his
shabbiness shame the regiment.

We were at sea almost before the horses were stalled properly, and
presently there were officers and men and horses all sick together
in the belly of the ship, with chests and bales and barrels broken
loose among us. The this-and-that-way motion of the ship caused
horses to fall down, and men were too sick to help them up again. I
myself lay amid dung like a dead man--yet vomiting as no dead man
ever did--and saw British officers as sick as I laboring like
troopers. There are more reasons than one why we Sikhs respect our
British officers.

The coverings of the ship were shut tight, lest the waves descend
among us. The stench became worse than any I had ever known,
although I learned to know a worse one later; but I will speak of
that at the proper time. It seemed to us like a poor beginning and
that thought put little heart in us.

But the sickness began to lessen after certain days, and as the
movements grew easier the horses were able to stand. Then we became
hungry, who had thought we would never wish to eat again, and double
rations were served out to compensate for days when we had eaten
nothing. Then a few men sought the air, and others--I among them--went
out of curiosity to see why the first did not return. So, first
by dozens and then by hundreds, we went and stood full of wonder,
holding to the bulwark for the sake of steadiness.

It may be, sahib, that if I had the tongue of a woman and of a
priest and of an advocate--three tongues in one--I might then tell
the half of what there was to wonder at on that long journey. Surely
not otherwise. Being a soldier, well trained in all subjects
becoming to a horseman but slow of speech, I can not tell the
hundredth part.

We--who had thought ourselves alone in all the sea--were but one
ship among a number. The ships proceeded after this manner--see, I
draw a pattern--with foam boiling about each. Ahead of us were many
ships bearing British troops--cavalry, infantry and guns. To our
right and left and behind us were Sikh, Gurkha, Dogra, Pathan,
Punjabi, Rajput--many, many men, on many ships. Two and thirty ships
I counted at one time, and there was the smoke of others over the
sky-line!

Above the bulwark of each ship, all the way along it, thus, was a
line of khaki. Ahead of us that was helmets. To our right and left
and behind us it was turbans. The men of each ship wondered at all
the others. And most of all, I think, we wondered at the great gray
war-ships plunging in the distance; for none knew whence they had
come; we saw none in Bombay when we started. It was not a sight for
the tongue to explain, sahib, but for a man to carry in his heart. A
sight never to be forgotten. I heard no more talk about a poor
beginning.

We came to Aden, and stopped to take on coal and water. There was no
sign of excitement there, yet no good news. It was put in Orders of
the Day that the Allies are doing as well as can be expected pending
arrival of re-enforcements; and that is not the way winners speak.
Later, when we had left Aden behind, our officers came down among us
and confessed that all did not go well. We said brave things to
encourage them, for it is not good that one's officers should doubt.
If a rider doubts his horse, what faith shall the horse have in his
rider? And so it is with a regiment and its officers.

After some days we reached a narrow sea--the Red Sea, men call it,
although God knows why--a place full of heat and sand-storms, shut
in on either hand by barren hills. There was no green thing anywhere.
There we passed islands where men ran down to the beach to
shout and wave helmets--unshaven Englishmen, who trim the lights. It
must have been their first intimation of any war. How else can they
have known of it? We roared back to them, all of the men on all of
the ships together, until the Red Sea was the home of thunder, and
our ships' whistles screamed them official greeting through the din.
I spent many hours wondering what those men's thoughts might be.

Never was such a sight, sahib! Behind our ships was darkness, for
the wind was from the north and the funnels belched forth smoke that
trailed and spread. I watched it with fascination until one day
Gooja Singh came and watched beside me near the stern. His rank was
the same as mine, although I was more than a year his senior. There
was never too much love between us. Step by step I earned promotion
first, and he was jealous. But on the face of thing's we were
friends. Said he to me after a long time of gazing at the smoke, "I
think there is a curtain drawn. We shall never return by that road!"

I laughed at him. "Look ahead!" said I. "Let us leave our rear to
the sweepers and the crows!"

Nevertheless, what he had said remained in my mind, as the way of
dark sayings is. Yet why should the word of a fool have the weight
of truth? There are things none can explain. He proved right in the
end, but gained nothing. Behold me; and where is Gooja Singh? I made
no prophecy, and he did. Can the sahib explain?

Day after day we kept overtaking other ships, most of them hurrying
the same way as ourselves. Not all were British, but the crews all
cheered us, and we answered, the air above our heads alive with
waving arms and our trumpets going as if we rode to the king of
England's wedding. If their hearts burned as ours did, the crews of
those ships were given something worth remembering.

We passed one British ship quite close, whose captain was an elderly
man with a gray beard. He so waved his helmet that it slipped from
his grasp and went spinning into the sea. When we lost him in our
smoke his crew of Chinese were lowering a boat to recover the
helmet. We heard the ships behind us roaring to him. Strange that I
should wonder to this day whether those Chinese recovered the
helmet! It looked like a good new one. I have wondered about it on
the eve of action, and in the trenches, and in the snow on outpost
duty. I wonder about it now. Can the sahib tell me why an old man's
helmet should be a memory, when so much that was matter of life and
death has gone from mind? I see that old man and his helmet now, yet
I forget the feel of Flanders mud.

We reached Suez, and anchored there. At Suez lay many ships in front
of us, and a great gray battle-ship saluted us with guns, we all
standing to attention while our ensigns dipped. I thought it strange
that the battle-ship should salute us first, until I recalled how
when I was a little fellow I once saw a viceroy salute my
grandfather. My grandfather was one of those Sikhs who marched to
help the British on the Ridge at Delhi when the British cause seemed
lost. The British have long memories for such things.

Later there came an officer from the battle-ship and there was hot
argument on our upper bridge. The captain of our ship grew very
angry, but the officer from the battle-ship remained polite, and
presently he took away with him certain of our stokers. The captain
of our ship shouted after him that there were only weaklings and
devil's leavings left, but later we discovered that was not true.

We fretted at delay at Suez. Ships may only enter the canal one by
one, and while we waited some Arabs found their way on board from a
small boat, pretending to sell fruit and trinkets. They assured us
that the French and British were already badly beaten, and that
Belgium had ceased to be. To test them, we asked where Belgium was,
and they did not know; but they swore it had ceased to be. They
advised us to mutiny and refuse to go on to our destruction.

They ought to have been arrested, but we were enraged and drove them
from the ship with blows. We upset their little boat by hauling at
the rope with which they had made it fast, and they were forced to
swim for shore. One of them was taken by a shark, which we
considered an excellent omen, and the others were captured as they
swam and taken ashore in custody.

I think others must have visited the other ships with similar tales
to tell, because after that, sahib, there was something such as I
think the world never saw before that day. In that great fleet of
ships we were men of many creeds and tongues--Sikh, Muhammadan,
Dorga, Gurkha (the Dogra and Gurkha be both Hindu, though of
different kinds), Jat, Punjabi, Rajput, Guzerati, Pathan, Mahratta--who
can recall how many! No one language could have sufficed to
explain one thought to all of us--no, nor yet ten languages! No word
passed that my ear caught. Yet, ship after ship became aware of
closer unity.

All on our knees on all the ships together we prayed thereafter
thrice a day, our British officers standing bareheaded beneath the
upper awnings, the chin-strap marks showing very plainly on their
cheeks as the way of the British is when they feel emotion. We
prayed, sahib, lest the war be over before we could come and do our
share. I think there was no fear in all that fleet except the fear
lest we come too late. A man might say with truth that we prayed to
more gods than one, but our prayer was one. And we received one
answer.

One morning our ship got up anchor unexpectedly and began to enter
the canal ahead of all the ships bearing Indian troops. The men on
the other ships bayed to us like packs of wolves, in part to give
encouragement but principally jealous. We began to expect to see
France now at any minute--I, who can draw a map of the world and set
the chief cities in the proper place, being as foolish as the rest.
There lay work as well as distance between us and France.

We began to pass men laboring to make the canal banks ready against
attack, but mostly they had no news to give us. Yet at one place,
where we tied to the bank because of delay ahead, a man shouted from
a sand-dune that the kaiser of Germany has turned Muhammadan and now
summons all Islam to destroy the French and British. Doubtless he
mistook us for Muhammadans, being neither the first nor the last to
make that mistake.

So we answered him we were on our way to Berlin to teach the kaiser
his new creed. One man threw a lump of coal at him and he
disappeared, but presently we heard him shouting to the men on the
ship behind. They truly were Muhammadans, but they jeered at him as
loud as we.

After that our officers set us to leading horses up and down the
deck in relays, partly, no doubt, to keep us from talking with other
men on shore, but also for the horses' sake. I remember how flies
came on board and troubled the horses very much. At sea we had
forgotten there were such things as flies, and they left us again
when we left the canal.

At Port Said, which looks like a mean place, we stopped again for
coal. Naked Egyptians--big black men, as tall as I and as
straight--carried it up an inclined plank from a float and cast it by
basketfuls through openings in the ship's side. We made up a purse
of money for them, both officers and men contributing, and I was
told there was a coaling record broken.

After that we steamed at great speed along another sea, one ship at
a time, just as we left the canal, our ship leading all those that
bore Indian troops. And now there were other war-ships--little ones,
each of many funnels--low in the water, yet high at the nose--most
swift, that guarded us on every hand, coming and going as the sharks
do when they search the seas for food.

A wonder of a sight, sahib! Blue water--blue water--bluest ever I
saw, who have seen lake water in the Hills! And all the ships
belching black smoke, and throwing up pure white foam--and the last
ship so far behind that only masts and smoke were visible above the
sky-line--but more, we knew, behind that again, and yet more coming!
I watched for hours at a stretch without weariness, and thought
again of Ranjoor Singh. Surely, thought I, his three campaigns
entitled him to this. Surely he was a better man than I. Yet here
was I, and no man knew where he was. But when I spoke of Ranjoor
Singh men spat, so I said nothing.

After a time I begged leave to descend an iron ladder to the bowels
of the ship, and I sat on the lowest rung watching the British
firemen at the furnaces. They cursed me in the name of God, their
teeth and the whites of their eyes gleaming, but their skin black as
night with coal dust. The sweat ran down in rivers between ridges of
grime on the skin of their naked bellies. When a bell rang and the
fire doors opened they glowed like pictures I have seen of devils.
They were shadows when the doors clanged shut again. Considering
them, I judged that they and we were one.

I climbed on deck again and spoke to a risaldar. He spoke to Colonel
Kirby. Watching from below, I saw Colonel Kirby nod--thus, like a
bird that takes an insect; and he went and spoke to the captain of
the ship. Presently there was consultation, and a call for
volunteers. The whole regiment responded. None, however, gave me
credit for the thought. I think that risaldar accepted praise for
it, but I have had no opportunity to ask him. He died in Flanders.

We went down and carried coal as ants that build a hill, piling it
on the iron floor faster than the stokers could use it, toiling
nearly naked like them lest we spoil our uniforms. We grew grimy,
but the ship shook, and the water boiled behind us. None of the
other ships was able to overtake us, although we doubted not they
all tried.

There grew great good will between us and the stokers. We were
clumsy from inexperience, and they full of laughter at us, but each
judged the spirit with which the other labored. Once, where I stood
directing near the bunker door, two men fell on me and covered me
with coal. The stokers laughed and I was angry. I had hot words
ready on my tongue, but a risaldar prevented me.

"This is their trade, not ours," said he. "Look to it lest any laugh
at us when the time for our own trade comes!" I judged that well
spoken, and remembered it.

There came at last a morning when the sun shone through jeweled
mist--a morning with scent in it that set the horses in the hold to
snorting--a dawn that smiled, as if the whole universe in truth were
God's. A dawn, sahib, such as a man remembers to judge other dawns
by. That day we came in sight of France.

Doubtless you suppose we cheered when we saw Marseilles at last. Yet
I swear to you we were silent. We were disappointed because we could
see no enemy and hear no firing of great guns! We made no more
commotion than the dead while our ship steamed down the long harbor
entrance, and was pushed and pulled by little tugs round a corner to
a wharf. A French war-ship and some guns in a fort saluted us, and
our ship answered; but on shore there seemed no excitement and our
hearts sank. We thought that for all our praying we had come too
late.

But the instant they raised the gangway a French officer and several
British officers came running up it, and they all talked earnestly
with Colonel Kirby on the upper bridge--we watching as if we had but
an eye and an ear between us. Presently all our officers were
summoned and told the news, and without one word being said to any
of us we knew there was neither peace as yet, nor any surpassing
victory fallen to our side. So then instantly we all began to speak
at once, even as apes do when sudden fear has passed.

There were whole trains of trucks drawn up in the street beside the
dock and we imagined we were to be hurried at once toward the
fighting. But not so, for the horses needed rest and exercise and
proper food before they could be fit to carry us. Moreover, there
were stores to be offloaded from the ships, we having brought with
us many things that it would not be so easy to replace in a land at
war. Whatever our desire, we were forced to wait, and when we had
left the ship we were marched through the streets to a camp some
little distance out along the Estagus Road. Later in the day, and
the next day, and the next, infantry from the other ships followed
us, for they, too, had to wait for their stores to be offloaded.

The French seemed surprised to see us. They were women and children
for the most part, for the grown men had been called up. In our
country we greet friends with flowers, but we had been led to
believe that Europe thinks little of such manners. Yet the French
threw flowers to us, the little children bringing arms full and
baskets full.

Thenceforward, day after day, we rode at exercise, keeping ears and
eyes open, and marveling at France. No man complained, although our
very bones ached to be on active service. And no man spoke of
Ranjoor Singh, who should have led D Squadron. Yet I believe there
was not one man in all D Squadron but thought of Ranjoor Singh all
the time. He who has honor most at heart speaks least about it. In
one way shame on Ranjoor Singh's account was a good thing, for it
made the whole regiment watchful against treachery.

Treachery, sahib--we had yet to learn what treachery could be!
Marseilles is a half-breed of a place, part Italian, part French.
The work was being chiefly done by the Italians, now that all
able-bodied Frenchmen were under arms. And Italy not yet in the war!

Sahib, I swear to you that all the spies in all the world seemed at
that moment to be Italian, and all in Marseilles at once! There were
spies among the men who brought our stores. Spies who brought the
hay. Spies among the women who walked now and then through our lines
to admire, accompanied by officers who were none too wide-awake if
they were honest. You would not believe how many pamphlets reached
us, printed in our tongue and some of them worded very cunningly.

There were men who could talk Hindustanee who whispered to us to
surrender to the Germans at the first opportunity, promising in that
case that we shall be well treated. The German kaiser, these men
assured us, had truly turned Muhammadan; as if that were anything to
Sikhs, unless perhaps an additional notch against him! I was told
they mistook the Muhammadans in another camp for Sikhs, and were
spat on for their pains!

Nor were all the spies Italians, after all. Our hearts went out to
the French. We were glad to be on their side--glad to help them
defend their country. I shall be glad to my dying day that I have
struck a blow for France. Yet the only really dangerous man of all
who tried to corrupt us in Marseilles was a French officer of the
rank of major, who could speak our tongue as well as I. He said with
sorrow that the French were already as good as vanquished, and that
he pitied us as lambs sent to the slaughter. The part, said he, of
every wise man was to go over to the enemy before the day should
come for paying penalties.

I told what he had said to me to a risaldar, and the risaldar spoke
with Colonel Kirby. We heard--although I do not know whether it is
true or not--that the major was shot that evening with his face to a
wall. I do know that I, in company with several troopers, was
cross-examined by interpreters that day in presence of Colonel Kirby and a
French general and some of the general's staff.

There began to be talk at last about Ranjoor Singh. I heard men say
it was no great wonder, after all, that he should have turned
traitor, for it was plain he must have been tempted cunningly. Yet
there was no forgiveness for him. They grew proud that where he had
failed they could stand firm; and there is no mercy in proud men's
minds--nor much wisdom either.

At last a day came--too soon for the horses, but none too soon for
us--when we marched through the streets to entrain for the front. As
we had marched first out of Delhi, so we marched first from
Marseilles now. Only the British regiments from India were on ahead
of us; we led the Indian-born contingent.

French wives and children, and some cripples, lined the streets to
cheer and wave their handkerchiefs. We were on our way to help their
husbands defend France, and they honored us. It was our due. But can
the sahib accept his due with a dry eye and a word in his throat?
Nay! It is only ingratitude that a man can swallow unconcerned. No
man spoke. We rode like graven images, and I think the French women
wondered at our silence. I know that I, for one, felt extremely
willing to die for France; and I thought of Ranjoor Singh and of how
his heart, too, would have burned if he had been with us. With such
thoughts as swelled in my own breast, it was not in me to believe
him false, whatever the rest might think.

D Squadron proved in good fortune that day, for they gave us a train
of passenger coaches with seats, and our officers had a first-class
coach in front. The other squadrons, and most of the other
regiments, had to travel in open trucks, although I do not think any
grumbled on that score. There was a French staff officer to each
train, and he who rode in our train had an orderly who knew English;
the orderly climbed in beside me and we rode miles together, talking
all the time, he surprising me vastly more than I him. We exchanged
information as two boys that play a game--I a move, then he a move,
then I again, then he.

The game was at an end when neither could think of another question
to ask; but he learned more than I. At the end I did not yet know
what his religion was, but he knew a great deal about mine. On the
other hand, he told me all about their army and its close
association between officers and men, and all the news he had about
the fighting (which was not so very much), and what he thought of
the British. He seemed to think very highly of the British, rather
to his own surprise.

He told me he was a pastry cook by trade, and said he could cook
chapatties such as we eat; and he understood my explanation why
Sikhs were riding in the front trains and Muhammadans behind--because
Muhammadans must pray at fixed intervals and the trains must
stop to let them do it. He understood wherein our Sikh prayer
differs from that of Islam. Yet he refused to believe I am no
polygamist. But that is nothing. Since then I have fought in a
trench beside Englishmen who spoke of me as a savage; and I have
seen wounded Germans writhe and scream because their officers had
told them we Sikhs would eat them alive. Yes, sahib; not once, but
many times.

The journey was slow, for the line ahead of us was choked with
supply trains, some of which were needed at the front as badly as
ourselves. Now and then trains waited on sidings to let us by, and
by that means we became separated from the other troop trains, our
regiment leading all the others in the end by almost half a day. The
din of engine whistles became so constant that we no longer noticed
it.

But there was another din that did not grow familiar. Along the line
next ours there came hurrying in the opposite direction train after
train of wounded, traveling at great speed, each leaving a smell in
its wake that set us all to spitting. And once in so often there
came a train filled full of the sound of screaming. The first time,
and the second time we believed it was ungreased axles, but after
the third time we understood.

Then our officers came walking along the footboards, speaking to us
through the windows and pretending to point out characteristics of
the scenery; and we took great interest in the scenery, asking them
the names of places and the purposes of things, for it is not good
that one's officers should be other than arrogantly confident.

We were a night and a day, and a night and a part of a day on the
journey, and men told us later we had done well to cross the length
of France in that time, considering conditions. On the morning of
the last day we began almost before it was light to hear the firing
of great guns and the bursting of shells--like the thunder of the
surf on Bombay Island in the great monsoon--one roar without
intermission, yet full of pulsation.

I think it was midday when we drew up at last on a siding, where a
French general waited with some French and British officers. Colonel
Kirby left the train and spoke with the general, and then gave the
order for us to detrain at once; and we did so very swiftly, men,
and horses, and baggage. Many of us were men of more than one
campaign, able to judge by this and by that how sorely we were
needed. We knew what it means when the reenforcements look fit for
the work in hand. The French general came and shook hands again with
Colonel Kirby, and saluted us all most impressively.

We were spared all the business of caring for our own baggage and
sent away at once. With a French staff officer to guide us, we rode
away at once toward the sound of firing--at a walk, because within
reasonable limits the farther our horses might be allowed to walk
now the better they would be able to gallop with us later.

We rode along a road between straight trees, most of them scarred by
shell-fire. There were shell-holes in the road, some of which had
been filled with the first material handy, but some had to be
avoided. We saw no dead bodies, nor even dead horses, although
smashed gun-carriages and limbers and broken wagons were everywhere.

To our right and left was flat country, divided by low hedges and
the same tall straight trees; but far away in front was a forest,
whose top just rose above the sky-line. As we rode toward that we
could see the shells bursting near it.

Between us and the forest there were British guns, dug in; and away
to our right were French guns--batteries and batteries of them. And
between us and the guns were great receiving stations for the
wounded, with endless lines of stretcher-bearers like ants passing
to and fro. By the din we knew that the battle stretched far away
beyond sight to right and left of us.

Many things we saw that were unexpected. The speed of the artillery
fire was unbelievable. But what surprised all of us most was the
absence of reserves. Behind the guns and before the guns we passed
many a place where reserves might have sheltered, but there were
none.

There came two officers, one British and one French, galloping
toward us. They spoke excitedly with Colonel Kirby and our French
staff officer, but we continued at a walk and Colonel Kirby lit a
fresh cheroot. After some time there came an aeroplane with a great
square cross painted on its under side, and we were ordered to halt
and keep quite still until it went away. When it was too far away
for its man to distinguish us we began to trot at last, but it was
growing dusk when we halted finally behind the forest--dusky and
cloudy, the air full of smoke from the explosions, ill-smelling and
difficult to breathe. During the last three-quarters of a mile the
shells had been bursting all about us, but we had only lost one man
and a horse--and the man not killed.

As it grew darker the enemy sent up star-shells, and by their light
we could sometimes see as plainly as by daylight. British infantry
were holding the forest in front of us and a road that ran to right
of it. Their rifle-fire was steady as the roll of drums. These were
not the regiments that preceded us from India; they had been sent to
another section of the battle. These were men who had been in the
fighting from the first, and their wounded and the stretcher-bearers
were surprised to see us. No word of our arrival seemed to reach the
firing line as yet. Men were too busy to pass news.

Over our heads from a mile away, the British and French artillery
were sending a storm, of shells, and the enemy guns were answering
two for one. And besides that, into the forest, and into the trench
to the right of it that was being held by the British infantry there
was falling such a cataract of fire that it was not possible to
believe a man could live. Yet the answering rifle-fire never paused
for a second.

I learned afterward the name of the regiment in the end of the
trench nearest us. With these two eyes in the Hills I once saw that
same regiment run like a thousand hares into the night, because it
had no supper and a dozen Afridi marksmen had the range. Can the
sahib explain? I think I can. A man's spirit is no more in his belly
than in the cart that carries his belongings; yet, while he thinks
it is, his enemies all flourish.

We dismounted to rest the horses, and waited behind the forest until
it grew so dark that between the bursting of the star-shells a man
could not see his hand held out in front of him. Now and then a
stray shell chanced among us, but our casualties were very few. I
wondered greatly at the waste of ammunition. My ears ached with the
din, but there seemed more noise wrought than destruction. We had
begun to grow restless when an officer came galloping at last to
Colonel Kirby's side and gave him directions with much pointing and
waving of the arm.

Then Colonel Kirby summoned all our officers, and they rode back to
tell us what the plan was. The din was so great by this time that
they were obliged to explain anew to each four men in turn. This was
the plan:

The Germans, ignorant of our arrival, undoubtedly believed the
British infantry to be without support and were beginning to press
forward in the hope of winning through to the railway line. The
infantry on our right front, already overwhelmed by weight of
artillery fire, would be obliged to evacuate their trench and fall
back, thus imperiling the whole line, unless we could save the day.

Observe this, sahib: so--I make a drawing in the dust. Between the
trench here, and the forest there, was a space of level ground some
fifty or sixty yards wide. There was scarcely more than a furrow
across it to protect the riflemen--nothing at all that could stop a
horse. At a given signal the infantry were to draw aside from that
piece of level land, like a curtain drawn back along a rod, and we
were to charge through the gap thus made between them and the
forest. The shock of our charge and its unexpectedness were to serve
instead of numbers.

Fine old-fashioned tactics, sahib, that suited our mind well! There
had been plenty on the voyage, including Gooja Singh, who argued we
should all be turned into infantry as soon as we arrived, and we had
dreaded that. Each to his own. A horseman prefers to fight on
horseback with the weapons that he knows.

Perhaps the sahib has watched Sikh cavalry at night and wondered how
so many men and horses could keep so still. We had made but little
noise hitherto, but now our silence was that of night itself. We had
but one eye, one ear, one intellect among us. We were one! One with
the night and with the work ahead!

One red light swinging near the corner of the forest was to mean BE
READY! We were ready as the fuse is for the match! Two red lights
would mean that the sidewise movement by the infantry was under way.
Three lights swinging together were to be our signal to begin.
Sahib, I saw three red lights three thousand times between each
minute and the next!

The shell-fire increased from both sides. Where the British infantry
lay was such a lake of flame and din that the very earth seemed to
burst apart; yet the answering rifle-fire was steady--steady as the
roll of drums. Then we truly saw one red light, and "EK!" said we
all at once. EK means ONE, sahib, but it sounded like the opening of
a breech-block. "Mount!" ordered Colonel Kirby, and we mounted.

While I held my breath and watched for the second light I heard a
new noise behind me, different from the rest, and therefore audible--a
galloping horse and a challenge close at hand. I saw in the light
of a bursting shell a Sikh officer, close followed by a trooper on a
blown horse. I saw the officer ride to Colonel Kirby's side, rein in
his charger, and salute. At that instant there swung two red lights,
and "DO!" said the regiment. DO means TWO, sahib, but it sounded
like the thump of ordnance. "Draw sabers!" commanded Colonel Kirby,
and the rear ranks drew. The front-rank men had lances.

By the light of a star-shell I could plainly see the Sikh officer
and trooper. I recognized the charger--a beast with the devil in him
and the speed of wind. I recognized both men. I thought a shell must
have struck me. I must be dead and in a new world. I let my horse
edge nearer, not believing--until ears confirmed eyes. I heard
Colonel Kirby speak, very loud, indeed, as a man to whom good news
comes.

"Ranjoor Singh!" said he; and he took him by the hand and wrung it.
"Thank God!" he said, speaking from the heart as the British do at
times when they forget that others listen. "Thank God, old man!
You've come in the nick of time!"

So I was right, and my heart leapt in me. He was with us before the
blood ran! Every man in the squadron recognized him now, and I knew
every eye had watched to see Colonel Kirby draw saber and cut him
down, for habit of thought is harder to bend than a steel bar. But I
could feel the squadron coming round to my way of thinking as
Colonel Kirby continued talking to him, obviously making him an
explanation of our plan.

"Join your squadron, man--hurry!" I heard Colonel Kirby say at last,
for taking advantage of the darkness I had let my horse draw very
near to them. Now I had to rein back and make pretense that my horse
had been unruly, for Ranjoor Singh came riding toward us, showing
his teeth in a great grin, and Captain Fellowes with a word of
reproof thrown back to me spurred on to meet him.

"Hurrah, Major Ranjoor Singh!" said Captain Fellowes. "I'm damned
glad to see you!" That was a generous speech, sahib, from a man who
must now yield command of the squadron, but Captain Fellowes had a
heart like a bridegroom's always. He must always glory in the
squadron's luck, and he loved us better than himself. That was why
we loved him. They shook hands, and looked in each other's eyes.
Ranjoor Singh wheeled his charger. And in that same second we all
together saw three red lights swinging by the corner.

"TIN!" said we, with one voice. Tin means three, sahib, but it
sounded rather like the scream of a shell that leaves on its
journey.

My horse laid his ears back and dug his toes into the ground. A
trumpet sounded, and Colonel Kirby rose in his stirrups:

"Outram's Own!" he yelled, "by squadrons on number One--"

But the sahib would not be interested in the sequence of commands
that have small meaning to those not familiar with them. And who
shall describe what followed? Who shall tell the story of a charge
into the night, at an angle, into massed regiments of infantry
advancing one behind another at the double and taken by surprise?

The guns of both sides suddenly ceased firing. Even as I used my
spurs they ceased. How? Who am I that I should know? The British
guns, I suppose, from fear of slaying us, and the German guns from
fear of slaying Germans; but as to how, I know not. But the German
star-shells continued bursting overhead, and by that weird light
their oncoming infantry saw charging into them men they had never
seen before out of a picture-book!

God knows what tales they had been told about us Sikhs. I read their
faces as I rode. Fear is an ugly weapon, sahib, whose hilt is more
dangerous than its blade. If our officers had told us such tales
about Germans as their officers had told them about us, I think
perhaps we might have feared to charge.

Numbers were as nothing that night. Speed, and shock, and
unexpectedness were ours, and lies had prepared us our reception. D
Squadron rode behind Ranjoor Singh like a storm in the night--swung
into line beside the other squadrons--and spurred forward as in a
dream. There was no shouting; no war-cry. We rode into the Germans
as I have seen wind cut into a forest in the hills--downward into
them, for once we had leapt the trench the ground sloped their way.
And they went down before us as we never had the chance of mowing
them again.

So, sahib, we proved our hearts--whether they were stout, and true,
as the British had believed, or false, as the Germans planned and
hoped. That was a night of nights--one of very few such, for the
mounted actions in this war have not been many. Hah! I have been
envied! I have been called opprobrious names by a sergeant of
British lancers, out of great jealousy! But that is the way of the
British. It happened later, when the trench fighting had settled
down in earnest and my regiment and his were waiting our turn behind
the lines. He and I sat together on a bench in a great tent, where
some French artists gave us good entertainment.

He offered me tobacco, which I do not use, and rum, which I do not
drink. He accepted sweetmeats from me. And he called me a name that
would make the sahib gulp, a word that I suppose he had picked up
from a barrack-sweeper on the Bengal side of India. Then he slapped
me on the back, and after that sat with his arm around me while the
entertainment lasted. When we left the tent he swore roundly at a
newcomer to the front for not saluting me, who am not entitled to
salute. That is the way of the British. But I was speaking of
Ranjoor Singh. Forgive me, sahib.

The horse his trooper-servant rode was blown and nearly useless, so
that the trooper died that night for lack of a pair of heels,
leaving us none to question as to Ranjoor Singh's late doings. But
Bagh, Ranjoor Singh's charger, being a marvel of a beast whom few
could ride but he, was fresh enough and Ranjoor Singh led us like a
whirlwind beckoning a storm. I judged his heart was on fire. He led
us slantwise into a tight-packed regiment. We rolled it over, and he
took us beyond that into another one. In the dark he re-formed us
(and few but he could have done that then)--lined us up again with
the other squadrons--and brought us back by the way we had come.
Then he took us the same road a second time against remnants of the
men who had withstood us and into yet another regiment that checked
and balked beyond. The Germans probably believed us ten times as
many as we truly were, for that one setback checked their advance
along the whole line.

Colonel Kirby led us, but I speak of Ranjoor Singh. I never once saw
Colonel Kirby until the fight was over and we were back again
resting our horses behind the trees while the roll was called.
Throughout the fight--and I have no idea whatever how long it
lasted--I kept an eye on Ranjoor Singh and spurred in his wake,
obeying the least motion of his saber. No, sahib, I myself did not
slay many men. It is the business of a non-commissioned man like me
to help his officers keep control, and I did what I might. I was
nearly killed by a wounded German officer who seized my bridle-rein;
but a trooper's lance took him in the throat and I rode on
untouched. For all I know that was the only danger I was in that
night.

A battle is a strange thing, sahib--like a dream. A man only knows
such part of it as crosses his own vision, and remembers but little
of that. What he does remember seldom tallies with what the others
saw. Talk with twenty of our regiment, and you may get twenty
different versions of what took place--yet not one man would have
lied to you, except perhaps here and there a little in the matter of
his own accomplishment. Doubtless the Germans have a thousand
different accounts of it.

I know this, and the world knows it: that night the Germans melted.
They were. Then they broke into parties and were not. We pursued
them as they ran. Suddenly the star-shells ceased from bursting
overhead, and out of black darkness I heard Colonel Kirby's voice
thundering an order. Then a trumpet blared. Then I heard Ranjoor
Singh's voice, high-pitched. Almost the next I knew we were halted
in the shadow of the trees again, calling low to one another,
friend's voice seeking friend's. We could scarcely hear the voices
for the thunder of artillery that had begun again; and whereas
formerly the German gun-fire had been greatest, now we thought the
British and French fire had the better of it. They had been re-enforced,
but I have no notion whence.

The infantry, that had drawn aside like a curtain to let us through,
had closed in again to the edge of the forest, and through the noise
of rifle-firing and artillery we caught presently the thunder of new
regiments advancing at the double. Thousands of our Indian infantry--those
who had been in the trains behind us--were coming forward at
a run! God knows that was a night--to make a man glad he has lived!

It was not only the Germans who had not expected us. Now, sahib, for
the first time the British infantry began to understand who it was
who had come to their aid, and they began to sing--one song, all
together. The wounded sang it, too, and the stretcher-bearers. There
came a day when we had our own version of that song, but that night
it was new to us. We only caught a few words--the first words. The
sahib knows the words--the first few words? It was true we had come
a long, long way; but it choked us into silence to hear that
battered infantry acknowledge it.

Color and creed, sahib. What are color and creed? The world has
mistaken us Sikhs too long for a breed it can not understand. We
Sikhs be men, with the hearts of men; and that night we knew that
our hearts and theirs were one. Nor have I met since then the fire
that could destroy the knowledge, although efforts have been made,
and reasons shown me.

But my story is of Ranjoor Singh and of what he did. I but tell my
own part to throw more light on his. What I did is as nothing. Of
what he did, you shall be the judge--remembering this, that he who
does, and he who glories in the deed are one. Be attentive, sahib;
this is a tale of tales!




CHAPTER II


Can the die fall which side up it will? Nay, not if it be
honest.--EASTERN PROVERB.


Many a league our infantry advanced that night, the guns following,
getting the new range by a miracle each time they took new ground.
We went forward, too, at the cost of many casualties--too many in
proportion to the work we did. We were fired on in the darkness more
than once by our own infantry. We, who had lost but seventy-two men
killed and wounded in the charge, were short another hundred when
the day broke and nothing to the good by it.

Getting lost in the dark--falling into shell-holes--swooping down on
rear-guards that generally proved to have machine guns with them--weary
men on hungrier, wearier horses--the wonder is that a man rode
back to tell of it at dawn.

One-hundred-and-two-and-seventy were our casualties, and some two
hundred horses--some of the men so lightly wounded that they were
back in the ranks within the week. At dawn they sent us to the rear
to rest, we being too good a target for the enemy by daylight. Some
of us rode two to a horse. On our way to the camp the French had
pitched for us we passed through reenforcements coming from another
section of the front, who gave us the right of way, and we took the
salute of two divisions of French infantry who, I suppose, had been
told of the service we had rendered. Said I to Gooja Singh, who sat
on my horse's rump, his own beast being disemboweled, "Who speaks
now of a poor beginning?" said I.

"I would rather see the end!" said he. But he never saw the end.
Gooja Singh was ever too impatient of beginnings, and too sure what
the end ought to be, to make certain of the middle part. I have
known men on outpost duty so far-seeing that an enemy had them at
his mercy if only he could creep close enough. And such men are
always grumblers.

Gooja Singh led the grumbling now--he who had been first to prophesy
how we should be turned into infantry. They kept us at the rear, and
took away our horses--took even our spurs, making us drill with
unaccustomed weapons. And I think that the beginning of the new
distrust of Ranjoor Singh was in resentment at his patience with the
bayonet drill. We soldiers are like women, sahib, ever resentful of
the new--aye, like women in more ways than one; for whom we have
loved best we hate most when the change comes.

Once, at least a squadron of us had loved Ranjoor Singh to the
death. He was a Sikh of Sikhs. It had been our boast that fire could
not burn his courage nor love corrupt him, and I was still of that
mind; but not so the others. They began to remember how he had
stayed behind when we left India. We had all seen him in disguise,
in conversation with that German by the Delhi Gate. We knew how busy
he had been in the bazaars while the rumors flew. And the trooper
who had stayed behind with him, who had joined us with him at the
very instant of the charge that night, died in the charge; so that
there was none to give explanation of his conduct. Ranjoor Singh
himself was a very rock for silence. Our British officers said
nothing, doubtless not suspecting the distrust; for it was a byword
that Ranjoor Singh held the honor of the squadron in his hand. Yet
of all the squadron only the officers and I now trusted him--the
Sikh officers because they imitated the British; the British because
faith is a habit with them, once pledged, and I--God knows. There
were hours when I did distrust him--black hours, best forgotten.

The war settled down into a siege of trenches, and soon we were
given a section of a trench to hold. Little by little we grew wise
at the business of tossing explosives over blind banks--we, who
would rather have been at it with the lance and saber. Yet, can a
die fall which side up it will? Nay, not if it be honest! We were
there to help. We who had carried coal could shovel mud, and as time
went on we grumbled less.

But time hung heavy, and curiosity regarding Ranjoor Singh led from
one conjecture to another. At last Gooja Singh asked Captain
Fellowes, and he said that Ranjoor Singh had stayed behind to expose
a German plot--that having done so, he had hurried after us. That
explanation ought to have satisfied every one, and I think it did
for a time. But who could hide from such a man as Ranjoor Singh that
the squadron's faith in him was gone? That knowledge made him
savage. How should we know that he had been forbidden to tell us
what had kept him? When he set aside his pride and made us
overtures, there was no response; so his heart hardened in him.
Secrecy is good. Secrecy is better than all the lame explanations in
the world. But in this war there has been too much secrecy in the
wrong place. They should have let him line us up and tell us his
whole story. But later, when perhaps he might have done it, either
his pride was too great or his sense of obedience too tightly spun.
To this day he has never told us. Not that it matters.

The subtlest fool is the worst, and Gooja Singh's tongue did not
lack subtlety on occasion. He made it his business to remind the
squadron daily of its doubts, and I, who should have known better,
laughed at some of the things he said and agreed with others. One is
the fool who speaks with him who listens. I have never been rebuked
for it by Ranjoor Singh, and more than once since that day he has
seen fit to praise me; but in that hour when most he needed friends
I became his half-friend, which is worse than enemy. I never raised
my voice once in defense of him in those days.

Meanwhile Ranjoor Singh grew very wise at this trench warfare,
Colonel Kirby and the other British officers taking great comfort in
his cunning. It was he who led us to tie strings to the German wire
entanglements, which we then jerked from our trench, causing them to
lie awake and waste much ammunition. It was he who thought of
dressing turbans on the end of poles and thrusting them forward at
the hour before dawn when fear and chill and darkness have done
their worst work. That started a panic that cost the Germans eighty
men.

I think his leadership would have won the squadron back to love him.
I know it saved his life. We had all heard tales of how the British
soldiers in South Africa made short work of the officers they did
not love, and it would have been easy to make an end of Ranjoor
Singh on any dark night. But he led too well; men were afraid to
take the responsibility lest the others turn on them. One night I
overheard two troopers considering the thought, and they suspected I
had overheard. I said nothing, but they were afraid, as I knew they
would be. Has the sahib ever heard of "left-hand casualties"? I will
explain.

We Sikhs have a saying that in fear there is no wisdom. None can be
wise and afraid. None can be afraid and wise. The men at the front,
both Indian and British-French, too, for aught I know--who feared to
fight longer in the trenches were seized in those early days with
the foolish thought of inflicting some injury on themselves--not
very severe, but enough to cause a spell of absence at the base and
a rest in hospital. Folly being the substance of that idea, and most
men being right-handed, such self-inflicted wounds were practically
always in the hand or foot and always on the left side. The
ambulance men knew them, on the instant.

Those two fools of my squadron wounded themselves with bullets in
the left hand, forgetting that their palms would be burned by the
discharge. I was sent to the rear to give evidence against them (for
I saw them commit the foolishness). The cross-examination we all
three underwent was clever--at the hands of a young British captain,
who, I dare swear, was suckled by a Sikh nurse in the Punjab. In
less than thirty minutes he had the whole story out of us; and the
two troopers were shot that evening for an example.

That young captain was greatly impressed with the story we had told
about Ranjoor Singh, and he called me back afterward and asked me a
hundred questions more--until he must have known the very color of
my entrails and I knew not which way I faced. To all of this a
senior officer of the Intelligence Department listened with both
ears, and presently he and the captain talked together.

The long and short of that was that Ranjoor Singh was sent for; and
when he returned to the trench after two days' absence it was to
work independently of us--from our trench, but irrespective of our
doings. Even Colonel Kirby now had no orders to give him, although
they two talked long and at frequent intervals in the place Colonel
Kirby called his funk-hole. It was now that the squadron's
reawakening love for Ranjoor Singh received the worst check of any.
We had almost forgotten he knew German. Henceforward he conversed in
German each day with the enemy.

It is a strange thing, sahib,--not easy to explain--but I, who have
achieved some fluency in English and might therefore have admired
his gift of tongues, now began to doubt him in earnest--hating
myself the while, but doubting him. And Gooja Singh, who had talked
the most and dropped the blackest hints against him, now began to
take his side.

And Ranjoor Singh said nothing. Night after night he went to lie at
the point where our trench and the enemy's lay closest. There he
would talk with some one whom we never saw, while we sat shivering
in the mud. Cold we can endure, sahib, as readily as any; it is
colder in winter where I come from than anything I felt in Flanders;
but the rain and the mud depressed our spirits, until with these two
eyes I have seen grown men weeping.

They kept us at work to encourage us. Our spells in the trench were
shortened and our rests at the rear increased to the utmost
possible. Only Ranjoor Singh took no vacation, remaining ever on the
watch, passing from one trench to another, conversing ever with the
enemy.

We dug and they dug, each side laboring everlastingly to find the
other's listening places and to blow them up by means of mining, so
that the earth became a very rat-run. Above-ground, where were only
ruin and barbed wire, there was no sign of activity, but only a
great stench that came from bodies none dared bury. We were thankful
that the wind blew oftenest from us to them; but whichever way the
wind blew Ranjoor Singh knew no rest. He was ever to be found where
the lines lay closest at the moment, either listening or talking. We
understood very well that he was carrying out orders given him at
the rear, but that did not make the squadron or the regiment like
him any better, and as far as that went I was one with them; I hated
to see a squadron leader stoop to such intrigues.

It was plain enough that some sort of intrigue was making headway,
for the Germans soon began to toss over into our trench bundles of
printed pamphlets, explaining in our tongue why they were our best
friends and why therefore we should refuse to wage war on them. They
threw printed bulletins that said, in good Punjabi, there was
revolution from end to end of India, rioting in England, utter
disaster to the British fleet, and that our way home again to India
had been cut by the German war-ships. They must have been ignorant
of the fact that we received our mail from India regularly. I have
noticed this about the Germans: they are unable to convince
themselves that any other people can appreciate the same things they
appreciate, think as swiftly as they, or despise the terrors they
despise. That is one reason why they must lose this war. But there
are others also.

One afternoon, when I was pretending to doze in a niche near the
entrance to Colonel Kirby's funk-hole, I became possessed of the key
to it all; for Colonel Kirby's voice was raised more than once in
anger. I understood at last how Ranjoor Singh had orders to deceive
the Germans as to our state of mind. He was to make them believe we
were growing mutinous and that the leaven only needed time in which
to work; this of course for the purpose of throwing them off their
guard.

My heart stopped beating while I listened, for what man hears his
honor smirched without wincing? Even so I think I would have held my
tongue, only that Gooja Singh, who dozed in a niche on the other
side of the funk-hole entrance, heard the same as I.

Said Gooja Singh that evening to the troopers round about: "They
chose well," said he. "They picked a brave man--a clever man, for a
desperate venture!" And when the troopers asked what that might
mean, he asked how many of them in the Punjab had seen a goat tied
to a stake to lure a panther. The suggestion made them think. Then,
pretending to praise him, letting fall no word that could be thrown
back in his teeth, he condemned Ranjoor Singh for a worse traitor
than any had yet believed him. Gooja Singh was a man with a certain
subtlety. A man with two tongues, very dangerous.

"Ranjoor Singh is brave," said he, "for he is not afraid to
sacrifice us all. Many officers are afraid to lose too many men in
the gaining of an end, but not so he. He is clever, for who else
would have thought of making us seem despicable to the Germans in
order to tempt them to attack in force at this point? Have ye not
noticed how to our rear all is being made ready for the defense and
for a counter-attack to follow? We are the bait. The battle is to be
waged over our dead bodies."

I corrected him. I said I had heard as well as he, and that Colonel
Kirby was utterly angry at the defamation of those whom he was ever
pleased to call "his Sikhs." But that convinced nobody, although it
did the colonel sahib no harm in the regiment's opinion--not that he
needed advocates. We were all ready to die around Colonel Kirby at
any minute. Even Gooja Singh was ready to do that.

"Does the colonel sahib accept the situation?" one of the troopers
asked.

"Aye, for he must," said Gooja Singh; and I could not deny it.
"Ranjoor Singh went over his head and orders have come from the
rear." I could not deny that either, although I did not believe it.
How should I, or any one, know what passed after Ranjoor Singh had
been sent for by the Intelligence officers? I was his half-friend in
those days, sahib. Worse than his enemy--unwilling to take part
against him, yet unready to speak up in his defense. Doubtless my
silence went for consent among the troopers.

The end of the discussion found men unafraid. "If the colonel sahib
is willing to be bait," said they, "then so be we, but let us see to
it that none hang back." And so the whole regiment made up its mind
to die desperately, yet with many a sidewise glance at Ranjoor
Singh, who was watched more carefully than I think he guessed in
those days. If he had tried to slip back to the rear it would have
been the end of him. But he continued with us.

And all this while a great force gathered at our rear--gathered and
grew--Indian and British infantry. Guns by the fifty were brought
forward under cover of the night and placed in line behind us.
Ranjoor Singh continued talking with the enemy, lying belly downward
in the mud, and they kept throwing printed stuff to us that we
turned in to our officers. But the Germans did not attack. And the
force behind us grew.

Then one evening, just after dusk, we were all amazed by the news
that the assault was to come from our side. And almost before that
news had reached us the guns at our rear began their overture,
making preparation beyond the compass of a man's mind to grasp or
convey. They hurled such a torrent of shells that the Germans could
neither move away the troops in front of us nor bring up others to
their aid. It did not seem possible that one German could be left
alive, and I even felt jealous because, thought I, no work would be
left for us to do! Yet men did live--as we discovered. For a night
and a day our ordnance kept up that preparation, and then word went
around.

Who shall tell of a night attack, from a trench against trenches?
Suddenly the guns ceased pounding the earth in front of us and
lifted to make a screen of fire almost a mile beyond. There was
instant pitch darkness on every hand, and out of that a hundred
trumpets sounded. Instantly, each squadron leader leaped the
earthwork, shouting to his men. Ranjoor Singh leaped up in front of
us, and we followed him, all forgetting their distrust of him in the
fierce excitement--remembering only how he had led us in the charge
on that first night. The air was thick with din, and fumes, and
flying metal--for the Germans were not forgetting to use artillery.
I ceased to think of anything but going forward. Who shall describe
it?

Once in Bombay I heard a Christian preacher tell of the Judgment Day
to come, when graves shall give up their dead. That is not our Sikh
idea of judgment, but his words brought before my mind a picture
riot so much unlike a night attack in Flanders. He spoke of the
whole earth trembling and consumed by fire--of thunder and lightning
and a great long trumpet call--of the dead leaping alive again from
the graves where they lay buried. Not a poor picture, sahib, of a
night attack in Flanders!

The first line of German trenches, and the second had been pounded
out of being by our guns. The barbed wire had been cut into
fragments by our shrapnel. Here and there an arm or a leg protruded
from the ground--here and there a head. For two hundred yards and
perhaps more there was nothing to oppose us, except the enemy shells
bursting so constantly that we seemed to breathe splintered metal.
Yet very few were hit. The din was so great that it seemed to be
silence. We were phantom men, going forward without sound of
footfall. I could neither feel nor think for the first two hundred
yards, but ran with my bayonet out in front of me. And then I did
feel. A German bayonet barked my knuckles. After that there was
fighting such as I hope never to know again.

The Germans did not seem to have been taken by surprise at all. They
had made ample preparation. And as for holding us in contempt, they
gave no evidence of that. Their wounded were unwilling to surrender
because their officers had given out we would torture prisoners. We
had to pounce on them, and cut their buttons off and slit their
boots, so that they must use both hands to hold their trousers up
and could not run. And that took time so that we lagged behind a
little, for we took more prisoners than the regiments to right and
left of us. The Dogra regiment to our left and the Gurkha regiment
to our right gained on us fast, and we became, as it were, the
center of a new moon.

But then in the light of bursting shells we saw Colonel Kirby and
Ranjoor Singh and Captain Fellowes and some other officers far out
in front of us beckoning--calling on us for our greatest effort. We
answered. We swept forward after them into the teeth of all the
inventions in the world. Mine after mine exploded under our very
feet. Shrapnel burst among us. There began to be uncut wire, and men
rushed out at us from trenches that we thought obliterated, but that
proved only to have been hidden under debris by our gun-fire.
Shadows resolved into trenches defended by machine guns.

But we went forward--cavalry, without a spur among us--cavalry with
rifles--cavalry on foot--infantry with the fire and the drill and
the thoughts of cavalry--still cavalry at heart, for all the weapons
they had given us and the trench life we had lived. We remembered,
sahib, that the Germans had been educated lately to despise us, and
we were out that night to convert them to a different opinion! It
seemed good to D Squadron that Ranjoor Singh, who had done the
defamation, should lead us to the clearing of our name. Nothing
could stop us that night.

Whereas we had been last in the advance, we charged into the lead
and held it. We swept on I know not how far, but very far beyond the
wings. No means had been devised that I know of for checking the
distance covered, and I suppose Headquarters timed the attack and
tried to judge how far the advance had carried, with the aid of
messengers sent running back. No easy task!

At all events we lost touch with the regiments to right and left,
but kept touch with the enemy, pressing forward until suddenly our
own shell-fire ceased to fall in front of us but resumed pounding
toward our rear. They call such a fire a barrage, sahib. Its purpose
is to prevent the enemy from making a counter-attack until the
infantry can dig themselves in and secure the new ground won. That
meant we were isolated. It needed no staff officer to tell, us that,
or to bring us to our senses. We were like men who wake from a
nightmare, to find the truth more dreadful than the dream.

Colonel Kirby was wounded a little, and sat while a risaldar bound
his arm. Ranjoor Singh found a short trench half full of water, and
ordered us into it. Although we had not realized it until then, it
was raining torrents, and the Germans we drove out of that trench
(there were but a few of them) were wetter than water rats; but we
had to scramble down into it, and the cold bath finished what the
sense of isolation had begun. We were sober men when Kirby sahib
scrambled in last and ordered us to begin on the trench at once with
picks and shovels that the Germans had left behind. We altered the
trench so that it faced both ways, and waited shivering for the
dawn.

Let it not be supposed, however, sahib, that we waited unmolested.
The Germans are not that kind of warrior. I hold no brief for them,
but I tell no lies about them, either. They fight with persistence,
bravery, and what they consider to be cunning. We were under rifle-fire
at once from before and behind and the flanks, and our own
artillery began pounding the ground so close to us that fragments of
shell and shrapnel flew over our heads incessantly, and great clods
of earth came thumping and splashing into our trench, compelling us
to keep busy with the shovels. Nor did the German artillery omit to
make a target of us, though with poor success. More than the half of
us lived; and to prove that there had been thought as well as
bravery that night we had plenty of ammunition with us. We were
troubled to stow the ammunition out of the wet, yet where it would
be safe from the German fire.

We made no reply to the shell-fire, for that would have been
foolishness; so, doubtless thinking they had the range not quite
right, or perhaps supposing that we had been annihilated, the enemy
discontinued shelling us and devoted their attention to our friends
beyond. But at the same time a battalion of infantry began to feel
its way toward us and we grew very busy with our rifles, the wounded
crawling through the wet to pass the cartridges. Once there was a
bayonet charge, which we repelled.

Those who had not thrown away their knapsacks to lighten themselves
had their emergency rations, but about half of us had nothing to eat
whatever. It was perfectly evident to all of us from the very first
that unless we should receive prompt aid at dawn our case was as
hopeless as death itself. So much the more reason for stout hearts,
said we, and our bearing put new heart into our officers.

When dawn came the sight was not inspiriting. Dawn amid a waste of
Flanders mud, seen through a rain-storm, is not a joyous spectacle
in any case. Consider, sahib, what a sunny land we came from, and
pass no hasty judgment on us if our spirits sank. It was the
weather, not the danger that depressed us. I, who was near the
center of the trench, could see to right and left over the ends, and
I made a hasty count of heads, discovering that we, who had been a
regiment, were now about three hundred men, forty of whom were
wounded.

I saw that we were many a hundred yards away from the nearest
British trench. The Germans had crept under cover of the darkness
and dug themselves in anew between us and our friends. Before us was
a trench full of infantry, and there were others to right and left.
We were completely surrounded; and it was not an hour after dawn
when the enemy began to shout to us to show our hands and surrender.
Colonel Kirby forbade us to answer them, and we lay still as dead
men until they threw bombs--which we answered with bullets.

After that we were left alone for an hour or two, and Colonel Kirby,
whose wound was not serious, began passing along the trench, knee-deep
in the muddy water, to inspect us and count us and give each
man encouragement. It was just as he passed close to me that a
hand-grenade struck him in the thigh and exploded. He fell forward on me,
and I took him across my knee lest he fall into the water and be
smothered. That is how it happened that only I overheard what he
said to Ranjoor Singh before he died. Several others tried to hear,
for we loved Colonel Kirby as sons love their father; but, since he
lay with his head on my shoulder, my ear was as close to his lips as
Ranjoor Singh's, to whom he spoke, so that Ranjoor Singh and I heard
and the rest did not. Later I told the others, but they chose to
disbelieve me.

Ranjoor Singh came wading along the trench, stumbling over men's
feet in his hurry and nearly falling just as he reached us, so that
for the moment I thought he too had been shot. Besides Colonel
Kirby, who was dying in my arms, he, and Captain Fellowes, and one
other risaldar were our only remaining officers. Colonel Kirby was
in great pain, so that his words were not in his usual voice but
forced through clenched teeth, and Ranjoor Singh had to stoop to
listen.

"Shepherd 'em!" said Colonel Kirby. "Shepherd 'em, Ranjoor Singh!"
My ear was close and I heard each word. "A bad business. They did
not know enough to listen to you at Headquarters. Don't waste time
blaming anybody. Pray for wisdom, and fear nothing! You're in
command now. Take over. Shepherd 'em! Good-by, old friend!"

"Good-by, Colonel sahib," said Ranjoor Singh, and Kirby sahib died
in that moment, having shed the half of his blood over me. Ranjoor
Singh and I laid him along a ledge above the water and it was not
very long before a chance shell dropped near and buried him under a
ton of earth. Yes, sahib, a British shell.

Presently Ranjoor Singh waded along the trench to have word with
Captain Fellowes, who was wounded rather badly. I made busy with the
men about me, making them stand where they could see best with least
risk of exposure and ordering spade work here and there. It is a
strange thing, sahib, but I have never seen it otherwise, that spade
work--which is surely the most important thing--is the last thing
troopers will attend to unless compelled. They will comb their
beards, and decorate the trench with colored stones and draw names
in the mud, but the all-important digging waits. Sikh and Gurkha and
British and French are all alike in that respect.

When Ranjoor Singh came back from his talk with Captain Fellowes he
sent me to the right wing under our other risaldar, and after he was
killed by a grenade I was in command of the right wing of our
trench.

The three days that followed have mostly gone from memory, that
being the way of evil. If men could remember pain and misery they
would refuse to live because of the risk of more of it; but hope
springs ever anew out of wretchedness like sprouts on the burned
land, and the ashes are forgotten. I do not remember much of those
three days.

There was nothing to eat. There began to be a smell. There was worse
than nothing to drink, for thirst took hold of us, yet the water in
the trench was all pollution. The smell made us wish to vomit, yet
what could the empty do but desire? Corpses lay all around us. No,
sahib, not the dead of the night before's fighting. Have I not said
that the weather was cold? The bombardment by our own guns preceding
our attack had torn up graves that were I know not how old. When we
essayed to re-bury some bodies the Germans drove us back under
cover.

That night, and the next, several attempts were made to rush us, but
under Ranjoor Singh's command we beat them off. He was wakeful as
the stars and as unexcited. Obedience to him was so comforting that
men forgot for the time their suspicion and distrust. When dawn came
there were more dead bodies round about, and some wounded who called
piteously for help. The Germans crawled out to help their wounded,
but Ranjoor Singh bade us drive them back and we obeyed.

Then the Germans began shouting to us, and Ranjoor Singh answered
them. If he had answered in English, so that most of us could have
understood, all would surely have been well; I am certain that in
that case the affection, returning because of his fine leadership,
would have destroyed the memory of suspicion. But I suppose it had
become habit with him to talk to the enemy in German by that time,
and as the words we could not understand passed back and forth even
I began to hate him. Yet he drove a good bargain for us.

Instead of hand-grenades the Germans began to throw bread to us--great,
flat, army loaves, Ranjoor Singh not showing himself, but
counting aloud as each loaf came over, we catching with great
anxiety lest they fall into the water and be polluted. It took a
long time, but when there was a good dry loaf for each man, Ranjoor
Singh gave the Germans leave to come and carry in their wounded, and
bade us hold our fire. Gooja Singh was for playing a trick but the
troopers near him murmured and Ranjoor Singh threatened him with
death if he dared. He never forgot that.

The Germans who came to fetch the wounded laughed at us, but Ranjoor
Singh forbade us to answer, and Captain Fellowes backed him up.

"There will be another attack from our side presently," said Captain
Fellowes, "and our friends will answer for us."

I shuddered at that. I remembered the bombardment that preceded our
first advance. Better die at the hands of the enemy, thought I. But
I said nothing. Presently, however, a new thought came to me, and I
called to Ranjoor Singh along the trench.

"You should have made a better bargain," said I. "You should have
compelled them to care for our wounded before they were allowed to
take their own!"

"I demanded, but they refused," he answered, and then I wished I had
bitten out my tongue rather than speak, for although I believed his
answer, the rest of the men did not. There began to be new murmuring
against him, led by Gooja Singh; but Gooja Singh was too subtle to
be convicted of the responsibility.

Captain Fellowes grew aware of the murmuring and made much show
thenceforward of his faith in Ranjoor Singh. He was weak from his
wound and was attended constantly by two men, so that although he
kept command of the left wing and did ably he could not shout loud
enough to be heard very far, and he had to send messages to Ranjoor
Singh from mouth to mouth. His evident approval had somewhat the
effect of subduing the men's resentment, although not much, and when
he died that night there was none left, save I, to lend our leader
countenance. And I was only his half-friend, without enough merit in
my heart truly to be the right-hand man I was by right of seniority.
I was willing enough to die at his back, but not to share contempt
with him.

The day passed and there came another day, when the bread was done,
and there were no more German wounded straddled in the mud over whom
to strike new bargains. It had ceased raining, so we could catch no
rain to drink. We were growing weak from weariness and want of
sleep, and we demanded of Ranjoor Singh that he lead us back toward
the British lines.

"We should perish on the way," said he.

"What of it?" we answered, I with the rest. "Better that than this
vulture's death in a graveyard!"

But he shook his head and ordered us to try to think like men. "The
life of a Sikh," said he, "and the oath of a Sikh are one. We swore
to serve our friends. To try to cut our way back would be but to die
for our own comfort."

"You should have led us back that first night, when the attack was
spent," said Gooja Singh.

"I was not in command that first night," Ranjoor Singh answered him,
and who could gainsay that?

At irregular intervals British shells began bursting near us, and we
all knew what they were. The batteries were feeling for the range.
They would begin a new bombardment. Now, therefore, is the end, said
we. But Ranjoor Singh stood up with his head above the trench and
began shouting to the Germans. They answered him. Then, to our utter
astonishment, he tore the shirt from a dead man, tied it to a rifle,
and held it up.

The Germans cheered and laughed, but we made never a sound. We were
bewildered--sick from the stink and weariness and thirst and lack of
food. Yet I swear to you, sahib, on my honor that it had not entered
into the heart of one of us to surrender. That we who had been first
of the Indian contingent to board a ship, first to land in France,
first to engage the enemy, should now be first to surrender in a
body seemed to us very much worse than death. Yet Ranjoor Singh bade
us leave our rifles and climb out of the trench, and we obeyed him.
God knows why we obeyed him. I, who had been half-hearted hitherto,
hated him in that minute as a trapped wolf hates the hunter; yet I,
too, obeyed.

We left our dead for the Germans to bury, but we dragged the wounded
out and some of them died as we lifted them. When we reached the
German trench and they counted us, including Ranjoor Singh and
three-and-forty wounded there were two-hundred-and-three-and-fifty
of us left alive.

They led Ranjoor Singh apart. He had neither rifle nor saber in his
hand, and he walked to their trench alone because we avoided him. He
was more muddy than we, and as ragged and tired. He had stood in the
same foul water, and smelt the same stench. He was hungry as we. He
had been willing to surrender, and we had not. Yet he walked like an
officer, and looked like one, and we looked like animals. And we
knew it, and he knew it. And the Germans recognized the facts.

He acted like a crowned king when he reached the trench. A German
officer spoke with him earnestly, but he shook his head and then
they led him away. When he was gone the same officer came and spoke
to us in English, and I understanding him at once, he bade me tell
the others that the British must have witnessed our surrender.
"See," said he, "what a bombardment they have begun again. That is
in the hope of slaying you. That is out of revenge because you dared
surrender instead of dying like rats in a ditch to feed their
pride!" It was true that a bombardment had begun again. It had begun
that minute. Those truly had been ranging shells. If we had stayed
five minutes longer before surrendering we should have been blown to
pieces; but we were in no mood to care on that account.

The Germans are a simple folk, sahib, although they themselves think
otherwise. When they think they are the subtlest they are easiest to
understand. Understanding was reborn in my heart on account of that
German's words. Thought I, if Ranjoor Singh were in truth a traitor
then he would have leaped at a chance to justify himself to us. He
would have repeated what that German had urged him to tell us. Yet I
saw him refuse.

As they hurried him away alone, pity for him came over me like warm
rain on the parched earth, and when a man can pity he can reason, I
spoke in Punjabi to the others and the German officer thought I was
translating what he told me to say, yet in truth I reminded them
that man can find no place where God is not, and where God is is
courage. I was senior now, and my business was to encourage them.
They took new heart from my words, all except Gooja Singh, who wept
noisily, and the German officer was pleased with what he mistook for
the effect of his speech.

"Tell them they shall be excellently treated," said he, seizing my
elbow. "When we shall have won this war the British will no longer
be able to force natives of India to fight their battles for them."

I judged it well to repeat that word for word. There are over ten
applicants for every vacancy in such a regiment as ours, and until
Ranjoor Singh ordered our surrender, we were all free men--free
givers of our best; whereas the Germans about us were all
conscripts. The comparison did no harm.

We saw no more of our wounded until some of them were returned to us
healed, weeks later; but from them we learned that their treatment
had been good. With us, however, it was not so, in spite of the
promise the German officer had made. We were hustled along a wide
trench, and taken over by another guard, not very numerous but
brutal, who kicked us without excuse. As we went the trenches were
under fire all the time from the British artillery. The guards swore
it was our surrender that had drawn the fire, and belabored us the
more on that account.

At the rear of the German lines we were herded in a quarry lest we
observe too much, and it was not until after dark that we were given
half a loaf of bread apiece. Then, without time to eat that which
had been given to us, we were driven off into the darkness. First,
however, they took our goatskin overcoats away, saying they were too
good to be worn by savages. A non-commissioned officer, who could
speak good English, was sent for to explain that point to us.

After an hour's march through the dark we were herded into some
cattle trucks that stood on a siding behind some trees. The trucks
did not smell of cattle, but of foul garments and unwashed men. Two
armed German infantrymen were locked into each truck with us, and
the pair in the truck in which I was drove us in a crowd to the
farther end, claiming an entire half for themselves. It was true
that we stank, for we had been many days and nights without
opportunity to get clean; yet they offered us no means of washing--only
abuse. I have seen German prisoners allowed to wash before they
had been ten minutes behind the British lines.

We were five days in that train, sahib--five days and nights. Our
guards were fed at regular intervals, but not we. Once or twice a
day they brought us a bucket of water from which we were bidden
drink in a great hurry while the train waited; yet often the train
waited hours on sidings and no water at all was brought us. For food
we were chiefly dependent on the charity of people at the wayside
stations who came with gifts intended for German wounded; some of
those took pity on us.

At last, sahib, when we were cold and stiff and miserable to the
very verge of death, we came to a little place called Oeschersleben,
and there the cruelty came to an unexpected end. We were ordered out
of the trucks and met on the platform by a German, not in uniform,
who showed distress at our predicament and who hastened to assure us
in our own tongue that henceforward there would be amends made.

If that man had taken charge of us in the beginning we might not
have been suspicious of him, for he seemed gentle and his words were
fair; but now his kindness came too late to have effect. Animals can
sometimes be rendered tame by starvation and brutality followed by
plenty and kindness, but not men, and particularly not Sikhs--it
being no part of our Guru's teaching that either full belly or
tutored intellect can compensate for lack of goodness. Neither is it
his teaching, on the other hand, that a man must wear thoughts on
his face; so we did not reject this man's advances.

"There have been mistakes made," said he, "by ignorant common
soldiers who knew no better. You shall recuperate on good food, and
then we shall see what we shall see."

I asked him where Ranjoor Singh was, but he did not answer me.

We were not compelled to walk. Few of us could have walked. We were
stiff from confinement and sick from neglect. Carts drawn by oxen
stood near the station, and into those we were crowded and driven to
a camp on the outskirts of the town. There comfortable wooden huts
were ready, well warmed and clean--and a hot meal--and much hot
water in which we were allowed to bathe.

Then, when we had eaten, doctors came and examined us. New clothes
were given us--German uniforms of khaki, and khaki cotton cloth from
which to bind new turbans. Nothing was left undone to make us feel
well received, except that a barbed-wire fence was all about the
camp and armed guards marched up and down outside.

Being senior surviving non-commissioned officer, I was put in charge
of the camp in a certain manner, with many restrictions to my
authority, and for about a week we did nothing but rest and eat and
keep the camp tidy. All day long Germans, mostly women and children
but some men, came to stare at us through the barbed-wire fence as
if we were caged animals, but no insults were offered us. Rather,
the women showed us kindness and passed us sweetmeats and strange
food through the fence until an officer came and stopped them with
overbearing words. Then, presently, there was a new change.

A week had gone and we were feeling better, standing about and
looking at the freshly fallen snow, marking the straight tracks made
by the sentries outside the fence, and thinking of home maybe, when
new developments commenced.

Telegrams translated into Punjabi were nailed to the door of a hut,
telling of India in rebellion and of men, women and children
butchered by the British in cold blood. Other telegrams stated that
the Sikhs of India in particular had risen, and that Pertab Singh,
our prince, had been hanged in public. Many other lies they posted
up. It would be waste of time to tell them all. They were
foolishness--such foolishness as might deceive the German public,
but not us who had lived in India all our lives and who had received
our mail from home within a day or two of our surrender.

There came plausible men who knew our tongue and the argument was
bluntly put to us that we ought to let expediency be our guide in
all things. Yet we were expected to trust the men who gave us such
advice!

Our sense of justice was not courted once. They made appeal to our
bellies--to our purses--to our lust--to our fear--but to our
righteousness not at all. They made for us great pictures of what
German rule of the world would be, and at last I asked whether it
was true that the kaiser had turned Muhammadan. I was given no
answer until I had asked repeatedly, and then it was explained how
that had been a rumor sent abroad to stir Islam; to us, on the other
hand, nothing but truth was told. So I asked, was it true that our
Prince Pertab Singh had been hanged, and they told me yes. I asked
them where, and they said in Delhi. Yet I knew that Pertab Singh was
all the while in London. I asked them where was Ranjoor Singh all
this while, and for a time they made no answer, so I asked again and
again. Then one day they began to talk of Ranjoor Singh.

They told us he was being very useful to them, in Berlin, in daily
conference with the German General Staff, explaining matters that
pertained to the intended invasion of India. Doubtless they thought
that news would please us greatly. But, having heard so many lies
already, I set that down for another one, and the others became all
the more determined in their loyalty from sheer disgust at Ranjoor
Singh's unfaithfulness. They believed and I disbelieved, yet the
result was one.

At night Gooja Singh held forth in the hut where he slept with
twenty-five others. He explained--although he did not say how he
knew--that the Germans have kept for many years in Berlin an office
for the purpose of intrigue in India--an office manned by Sikh
traitors. "That is where Ranjoor Singh will be," said he. "He will
be managing that bureau." In those days Gooja Singh was Ranjoor
Singh's bitterest enemy, although later he changed sides again.

The night-time was the worst. By day there was the camp to keep
clean and the German officers to talk to; but at night we lay awake
thinking of India, and of our dead officer sahibs, and of all that
had been told us that we knew was lies. Ever the conversation turned
to Ranjoor Singh at last, and night after night the anger grew
against him. I myself admitted very often that his duty had been to
lead us to our death. I was ashamed as the rest of our surrender.

After a time, as our wounded began to be drafted back to us from
hospital, we were made to listen to accounts of alleged great German
victories. They told us the German army was outside Paris and that
the whole of the British North Sea Fleet was either sunk or
captured. They also said that the Turks in Gallipoli had won great
victories against the Allies. We began to wonder why such conquerors
should seek so earnestly the friendship of a handful of us Sikhs.
Our wounded began to be drafted back to us well primed, and their
stories made us think, but not as the Germans would have had us
think.

Week after week until the spring came we listened to their tales by
day and talked them over among ourselves at night; and the more they
assured us Ranjoor Singh was working with them in Berlin, the more
we prayed for opportunity to prove our hearts. Spring dragged along
into summer and there began to be prayers for vengeance on him. I
said less than any. Understanding had not come to me fully yet, but
it seemed to me that if Ranjoor Singh was really playing traitor,
then he was going a tedious way about it. Yet it was equally clear
that if I should dare to say one word in his behalf that would be to
pass sentence on myself. I kept silence when I could, and was
evasive when they pressed me, cowardice struggling with new
conviction in my heart.

There came one night at last, when men's hearts burned in them too
terribly for sleep, that some one proposed a resolution and sent the
word whispering from hut to hut, that we should ask for Ranjoor
Singh to be brought to us. Let the excuse be that he was our
rightful leader, and that therefore he ought to advise us what we
should do. Let us promise to do faithfully whatever Ranjoor Singh
should order. Then, when he should have been brought to us, should
he talk treason we would tear him in pieces with our hands. That
resolution was agreed to. I also agreed. It was I who asked the next
day that Ranjoor Singh be brought. The German officer laughed; yet I
asked again, and he went away smiling.

We talked of our plan at night. We repeated it at dawn. We whispered
it above the bread at breakfast. After breakfast we stood in groups,
confirming our decision with great oaths and binding one another to
fulfillment--I no less than all the others. Like the others I was
blinded now by the sense of our high purpose and I forgot to
consider what might happen should Ranjoor Singh take any other line
than that expected of him.

I think it was eleven in the morning of the fourth day after our
decision, when we had all grown weary of threats of vengeance and of
argument as to what each individual man should do to our major's
body, that there was some small commotion at the entrance gate and a
man walked through alone. The gate slammed shut again behind him.

He strode forward to the middle of our compound, stood still, and
confronted us. We stared at him. We gathered round him. We said
nothing.

"Fall in, two deep!" commanded he. And we fell in, two deep, just as
he ordered.

"'Ten-shun!" commanded he. And we stood to attention.

Sahib, he was Ranjoor Singh!

He stood within easy reach of the nearest man, clothed in a new
khaki German uniform. He wore a German saber at his side. Yet I
swear to you the saber was not the reason why no man struck at him.
Nor were there Germans near enough to have rescued him. We, whose
oath to murder him still trembled on our lips, stood and faced him
with trembling knees now that he had come at last.

We stood before him like two rows of dumb men, gazing at his face. I
have heard the English say that our eastern faces are impossible to
read, but that can only be because western eyes are blind. We can
read them readily enough. Yet we could not read Ranjoor Singh's that
day. It dawned on us as we stared that we did not understand, but
that he did; and there is no murder in that mood.

Before we could gather our wits he began to speak to us, and we
listened as in the old days when at least a squadron of us had loved
him to the very death. A very unexpected word was the first he used.

"Simpletons!" said he.

Sahib, our jaws dropped. Simpletons was the last thing we had
thought ourselves. On the contrary, we thought ourselves astute to
have judged his character and to have kept our minds uncorrupted by
the German efforts. Yet we were no longer so sure of ourselves that
any man was ready with an answer.

He glanced over his shoulder to left and right. There were no
Germans inside the fence; none near enough to overhear him, even if
he raised his voice. So he did raise it, and we all heard.

"I come from Berlin!"

"Ah!" said we--as one man. For another minute he stood eying us,
waiting to see whether any man would speak.

"We be honest men!" said a trooper who stood not far from me, and
several others murmured, so I spoke up.

"He has not come for nothing," said I. "Let us listen first and pass
judgment afterward."

"We have heard enough treachery!" said the trooper who had spoken
first, but the others growled him down and presently there was
silence.

"You have eyes," said Ranjoor Singh, "and ears, and nose, and lips
for nothing at all but treachery!" He spoke very slowly, sahib. "You
have listened, and smelled for it, and have spoken of nothing else,
and what you have sought you think you have found! To argue with men
in the dark is like gathering wind into baskets. My business is to
lead, and I will lead. Your business is to follow, and you shall
follow." Then, "Simpletons!" said he again; and having said that he
was silent, as if to judge what effect his words were having.

No man answered him. I can not speak for the others, although there
was a wondrous maze of lies put forth that night by way of
explanation that I might repeat. All I know is that through my mind
kept running against my will self-accusation, self-condemnation,
self-contempt! I had permitted my love for Ranjoor Singh to be
corrupted by most meager evidence. If I had not been his enemy, I
had not been true to him, and who is not true is false. I fought
with a sense of shame as I have since then fought with thirst and
hunger. All the teachings of our Holy One accused me. Above all,
Ranjoor Singh's face accused me. I remembered that for more than
twenty years he had stood to all of us for an example of what Sikh
honor truly is, and that he had been aware of it.

"I know the thoughts ye think!" said he, beginning again when he had
given us time to answer and none had dared. "I will give you a real
thought to put in the place of all that foolishness. This is a
regiment. I am its last surviving officer. Any regiment can kill its
officers. If ye are weary of being a regiment, behold--I am as near
you as a man's throat to his hand! Have no fear"--(that was a bitter
thrust, sahib!)--"this is a German saber; I will use no German steel
on any of you. I will not strike back if any seek to kill me."

There was no movement and no answer, sahib. We did not think; we
waited. If he had coaxed us with specious arguments, as surely a
liar would have done, that would probably have been his last speech
in the world. But there was not one word he said that did not ring
true.

"I have been made a certain offer in Berlin," said he, after another
long pause. "First it was made to me alone, and I would not accept
it. I and my regiment, said I, are one. So the offer was repeated to
me as the leader of this regiment. Thus they admitted I am the
rightful leader of it, and the outcome of that shall be on their
heads. As major of this regiment, I accepted the offer, and as its
major I now command your obedience."

"Obedience to whom?" asked I, speaking again as it were against my
will, and frightened by my own voice.

"To me," said he.

"Not to the Germans?" I asked. He wore a German uniform, and so for
that matter did we all.

"To me," he said again, and he took one step aside that he might see
my face better. "You, Hira Singh, you heard Colonel Kirby make over
the command!"

Every man in the regiment knew that Colonel Kirby had died across my
knees. They looked from Ranjoor Singh to me, and from me to Ranjoor
Singh, and I felt my heart grow first faint from dread of their
suspicion, and then bold, then proud that I should be judged fit to
stand beside him. Then came shame again, for I knew I was not fit.
My loyalty to him had not stood the test. All this time I thought I
felt his eyes on me like coals that burned; yet when I dared look up
he was not regarding me at all, but scanning the two lines of faces,
perhaps to see if any other had anything to say.

"If I told you my plan," said he presently, when he had cleared his
throat, "you would tear it in little pieces. The Germans have
another plan, and they will tell you as much of it as they think it
good for you to know. Mark what my orders are! Listen to this plan
of theirs. Pretend to agree. Then you shall be given weapons. Then
you shall leave this camp within a week."

That, sahib, was like a shell bursting in the midst of men asleep.
What did it mean? Eyes glanced to left and right, looking for
understanding and finding none, and no man spoke because none could
think of anything to say. It was on my tongue to ask him to explain
when he gave us his final word on the matter--and little enough it
was, yet sufficient if we obeyed.

"Remember the oath of a Sikh!" said he. "Remember that he who is
true in his heart to his oath has Truth to fight for him! Treachery
begets treason, treason begets confusion; and who are ye to stay the
course of things? Faith begets faith; courage gives birth to
opportunity!"

He paused, but we knew he had not finished yet, and he kept us
waiting full three minutes wondering what would come. Then:

"As for your doubts," said he. "If the head aches, shall the body
cut it off that it may think more clearly? Consider that!" said he.
"Dismiss!"

We fell out and he marched away like a king with thoughts of state
in mind. I thought his beard was grayer than it had been, but oh,
sahib, he strode as an arrow goes, swift and straight, and splendid.
Lonely as an arrow that has left the sheaf!

I had to run to catch up with him, and I was out of breath when I
touched his sleeve. He turned and waited while I thought of things
to say, and then struggled to find words with which to say them.

"Sahib!" said I. "Oh, Major sahib!" And then my throat became full
of words each struggling to be first, and I was silent.

"Well?" said he, standing with both arms folded, looking very grave,
but not angry nor contemptuous.

"Sahib," I said, "I am a true man. As I stand here, I am a true man.
I have been a fool--I have been half-hearted--I was like a man in
the dark; I listened and heard voices that deceived me!"

"And am I to listen and hear voices, too?" he asked.

"Nay, sahib!" I said. "Not such voices, but true words!"

"Words?" he said. "Words! Words! There have already been too many
words. Truth needs no words to prove it true, Hira Singh. Words are
the voice of nothingness!"

"Then, sahib--" said I, stammering.

"Hira Singh," said he, "each man's heart is his own. Let each man
keep his own. When the time comes we shall see no true men eating
shame," said he.

And with that he acknowledged my salute, turned on his heel, and
marched away. And the great gate slammed behind him. And German
officers pressing close on either side talked with him earnestly,
asking, as plainly as if I heard the words, what he had said, and
what we had said, and what the outcome was to be. I could see his
lips move as he answered, but no man living could have guessed what
he told them. I never did know what he told them. But I have lived
to see the fruit of what he did, and of what he made us do; and from
that minute I have never faltered for a second in my faithfulness to
Ranjoor Singh.

Be attentive, sahib, and learn what a man of men is Risaldar-major
Ranjoor Singh bahadur.




CHAPTER III


Shall he who knows not false from true judge treason?--EASTERN PROVERB.


You may well imagine, sahib, in the huts that night there was noise
as of bees about to swarm. No man slept. Men flitted like ghosts
from hut to hut--not too openly, nor without sufficient evidence of
stealth to keep the guards in good conceit of themselves, but freely
for all that. What the men of one hut said the men of the next hut
knew within five minutes, and so on, back and forth.

I was careful to say nothing. When men questioned me, "Nay," said I.
"I am one and ye are many. Choose ye! Could I lead you against your
wills?" They murmured at that, but silence is easier to keep than
some men think.

Why did I say nothing? In the first place, sahib, because my mind
was made at last. With all my heart now, with the oath of a Sikh and
the truth of a Sikh I was Ranjoor Singh's man. I believed him true,
and I was ready to stand or fall by that belief, in the dark, in the
teeth of death, against all odds, anywhere. Therefore there was
nothing I could say with wisdom. For if they were to suspect my true
thoughts, they would lose all confidence in me, and then I should be
of little use to the one man who could help all of us. I judged that
what Ranjoor Singh most needed was a silent servant who would watch
and obey the first hint. Just as I had watched him in battle and had
herded the men for him to lead, so would I do now. There should be
deeds, not words, for the foundation of a new beginning.

In the second place, sahib, I knew full well that if Gooja Singh or
any of the others could have persuaded me to advance an opinion it
would have been pounced on, and changed out of all recognition, yet
named my opinion nevertheless. This altered opinion they would
presently adopt, yet calling it mine, and when the outcome of it
should fail at last to please them they would blame me. For such is
the way of the world. So I had two good reasons, and the words I
spoke that night could have been counted without aid of pen and
paper.

The long and short of it was that morning found them undecided.
There was one opinion all held--even Gooja Singh, who otherwise took
both sides as to everything--that above all and before all we were
all true men, loyal to our friends, the British, and foes of every
living German or Austrian or Turk so long as the war should last.
The Germans had bragged to us about the Turks being in the war on
their side, and we had thought deeply on the subject of their choice
of friends. Like and like mingle, sahib. As for us, my grandfather
fought for the British in '57, and my father died at Kandahar under
Bobs bahadur. On that main issue we were all one, and all ashamed to
be prisoners while our friends were facing death. But dawn found
almost no two men agreed as to Ranjoor Singh, or in fact on any
other point.

Not long after dawn, came the Germans again, with new arguments. And
this time they began to let us feel the iron underlying their
persuasion. Once, to make talk and gain time before answering a
question, I had told them of our labor in the bunkers on the ship
that carried us from India. I had boasted of the coal we piled on
the fire-room floor. Lo, it is always foolish to give information to
the enemy--always, sahib--always! There is no exception.

Said they to us now: "We Germans are devoting all our energy to
prosecution of this war. Nearly all our able-bodied men are with the
regiments. Every man must do his part, for we are a nation in arms.
Even prisoners must do their part. Those who do not fight for us
must work to help the men who do fight."

"Work without pay?" said I.

"Aye," said they, "work without pay. There is coal, for instance. We
understand that you Sikhs have proved yourselves adept at work with
coal. He who can labor in the bunkers of a ship can handle pick and
shovel in the mines, and most of our miners have been called up. Yet
we need more coal than ever."

So, sahib. So they turned my boast against me. And the men around
me, who had heard me tell the tale about our willing labor on the
ship, now eyed me furiously; although at the time they had enjoyed
the boast and had added details of their own. The Germans went away
and left us to talk over this new suggestion among ourselves, and
until afternoon I was kept busy speaking in my own defense.

"Who could have foreseen how they would use my words against us?" I
demanded. But they answered that any fool could have foreseen it,
and that my business was to foresee in any case and to give them
good advice. I kept that saying in my heart, and turned it against
THEM when the day came.

That afternoon the Germans returned, with knowing smiles that were
meant to seem courteous, and with an air of confidence that was
meant to appear considerate. Doubtless a cat at meal-time believes
men think him generous and unobtrusive. They went to great trouble
to prove themselves our wise counselors and disinterested friends.

"We have explained to you," said they, "what hypocrites the British
are,--what dust they have thrown in your eyes for more than a
century--how they have grown rich at your expense, deliberately
keeping India in ignorance and subjection, in poverty and vice, and
divided against itself. We have told you what German aims are on the
other hand, and how successful our armies are on every front as the
result of the consistence of those aims. We have proved to you how
half the world already takes our side--how the Turks fight for us,
how Persia begins to join the Turks, how Afghanistan already moves,
and how India is in rebellion. Now--wouldn't you like to join our
side--to throw the weight of Sikh honor and Sikh bravery into the
scale with us? That would be better fun than working in the mines,"
said they.

"Are we offered that alternative?" I asked, but they did not answer
that question. They went away again and left us to our thoughts.

And we talked all the rest of that day and most of the next night,
arriving at no decision. When they asked me for an opinion, I said,
"Ranjoor Singh told us this would be, and he gave us orders what to
do." When they asked me ought they to obey him, I answered, "Nay,
choose ye! Who can make you obey against your wills?" And when they
asked me would I abide by their decision, "Can the foot walk one
way," I answered, "while the body walks another? Are we not one?"
said I.

"Then," said they, "you bid us consider this proposal to take part
against our friends?"

"Nay," said I, "I am a true man. No man can make me fight against
the British."

They thought on that for a while, and then surrounded me again,
Gooja Singh being spokesman for them all. "Then you counsel us,"
said he, "to choose the hard labor in the coal mines?"

"Nay," said I. "I counsel nothing."

"But what other course is there?" said he.

"There is Ranjoor Singh," said I.

"But he desired to lead us against the British," said he.

"Nay," said I. "Who said so?"

Gooja Singh answered: "He, Ranjoor Singh himself, said so."

"Nay," said I. "I heard what he said. He said he will lead us, but
he said nothing of his plan. He did not say he will lead us against
the British."

"Then it was the Germans. They said so," said Gooja Singh. "They
said he will lead us against the British."

"The Germans said," said I, "that their armies are outside Paris--that
India is in rebellion--that Pertab Singh was hanged in Delhi--that
the British rule in India has been altogether selfish--that our
wives and children have been butchered by the British in cold blood.
The Germans," said I, "have told us very many things."

"Then," said he, "you counsel us to follow Ranjoor Singh?"

"Nay," said I. "I counsel nothing."

"You are a coward!" said he. "You are afraid to give opinion!"

"I am one among many!" I answered him.

They left me alone again and talked in groups, Gooja Singh passing
from one group to another like a man collecting tickets. Then, when
it was growing dusk, they gathered once more about me and Gooja
Singh went through the play of letting them persuade him to be
spokesman.

"If we decide to follow Ranjoor Singh," said he, "will you be one
with us?"

"If that is the decision of you all," I answered, "then yes. But if
it is Gooja Singh's decision with the rest consenting, then no. Is
that the decision of you all?" I asked, and they murmured a sort of
answer.

"Nay!" said I. "That will not do! Either yes or no. Either ye are
willing or ye are unwilling. Let him who is unwilling say so, and I
for one will hold no judgment against him."

None answered, though I urged again and again. "Then ye are all
willing to give Ranjoor Singh a trial?" said I; and this time they
all answered in the affirmative.

"I think your decision well arrived at!" I made bold to tell them.
"To me it seems you have all seen wisdom, and although I had
thoughts in mind," said I, "of accepting work in the collieries and
blowing up a mine perhaps, yet I admit your plan is better and I
defer to it."

They were much more pleased with that speech than if I had admitted
the truth, that I would never have agreed to any other plan. So that
now they were much more ready than they might have been to listen to
my next suggestion.

"But," said I, with an air of caution, "shall we not keep any watch
on Ranjoor Singh?"

"Let us watch!" said they. "Let us be forehanded!"

"But how?" said I. "He is an officer. He is not bound to lay bare
his thoughts to us."

They thought a long time about that. It grew dark, and we were
ordered to our huts, and lights were put out, and still they lay
awake and talked of it. At last Gooja Singh flitted through the dark
and came to me and asked me my opinion on the matter.

"One of you go and offer to be his servant," said I. "Let that
servant serve him well. A good servant should know more about his
master than the master himself."

"Who shall that one be?" he asked; and he went back to tell the men
what I had said.

After midnight he returned. "They say you are the one to keep watch
on him," said he.

"Nay, nay!" said I, with my heart leaping against my ribs, but my
voice belying it. "If I agree to that, then later you will swear I
am his friend and condemn me in one judgment with him!"

"Nay," said he. "Nay truly! On the honor of a Sikh!"

"Mine is also the honor of a Sikh," said I, "and I will cover it
with care. Go back to them," I directed, "and let them all come and
speak with me at dawn."

"Is my word not enough?" said he.

"Was Ranjoor Singh's enough?" said I, and he went, muttering to
himself.

I slept until dawn--the first night I had slept in three--and before
breakfast they all clustered about me, urging me to be the one to
keep close watch on Ranjoor Singh.

"God forbid that I should be stool pigeon!" said I. "Nay, God
forbid! Ranjoor Singh need but give an order that ye have no liking
for and ye will shoot me in the back for it!"

They were very earnest in their protestations, urging me more and
more; but the more they urged the more I hung back, and we ate
before I gave them any answer. "This is a plot," said I, "to get me
in trouble. What did I ever do that ye should combine against me?"

"Nay!" said they. "By our Sikh oath, we be true men and your
friends. Why do you doubt us?"

Then said I at last, as it were reluctantly, "If ye demand it--if ye
insist--I will be the go-between. Yet I do it because ye compel me
by weight of unanimity!" said I.

"It is your place!" said they, but I shook my head, and to this day
I have never admitted to them that I undertook the work willingly.

Presently came the Germans to us again, this time accompanied by
officers in uniform who stood apart and watched with an air of
passing judgment. They asked us now point-blank whether or not we
were willing to work in the coal mines and thus make some return for
the cost of keeping us; and we answered with one voice that we were
not coal-miners and therefore not willing.

"The alternative," said they, "is that you apply to fight on the
side of the Central Empires. Men must all either fight or work in
these days; there is no room for idlers."

"Is there no other work we could do?" asked Gooja Singh.

"None that we offer you!" said they. "If you apply to be allowed to
fight on the side of the Central Empires, then your application will
be considered. However, you would be expected to forswear allegiance
to Great Britain, and to take the military oath as provided by our
law; so that in the event of any lapse of discipline or loyalty to
our cause you could be legally dealt with."

"And the alternative is the mines?" said I.

"No, no!" said the chief of them. "You must not misunderstand. Your
present destination is the coal mines, where you are to earn your
keep. But the suggestion is made to you that you might care to apply
for leave to fight on our side. In that case we would not send you
to the coal mines until at least your application had been
considered. It is practically certain it would be considered
favorably."

The conversation was in English as usual and many of the men had not
quite understood. Those on the outside had not heard properly. So I
bade four men lift me, and I shouted to them in our own tongue all
that the German had said. There fell a great silence, and the four
men let me drop to the earth between them.

"So is this the trap Ranjoor Singh would lead us into?" said the
trooper nearest me, and though he spoke low, so still were we all
that fifty men heard him and murmured. So I spoke up.

Said I, "We will answer when we shall have spoken again with Ranjoor
Singh. He shall give our answer. It is right that a regiment should
answer through its officer, and any other course is lacking
discipline!"

Sahib, I have been surprised a thousand times in this war, but not
once more surprised than by the instant effect my answer had. It was
a random answer, made while I searched for some argument to use; but
the German spokesman turned at once and translated to the officers
in uniform. Watching them very closely, I saw them laugh, and it
seemed to me they approved my answer and disapproved some other
matter. I think they disapproved the civilian method of mingling
with us in a mob, for a moment later the order was given us in
English to fall in, and we fell in two deep. Then the civilian
Germans drew aside and one of the officers in uniform strode toward
the entrance gate. We waited in utter silence, wondering what next,
but the officer had not been gone ten minutes when we caught sight
of him returning with Ranjoor Singh striding along beside him.

Ranjoor Singh and he advanced toward us and I saw Ranjoor Singh
speak with him more emphatically than his usual custom. Evidently
Ranjoor Singh had his way, for the officer spoke in German to the
others and they all walked out of the compound in a group, leaving
Ranjoor Singh facing us. He waited until the gate clanged shut
behind them before he spoke.

"Well?" said he. "I was told the regiment asked for word with me.
What is the word?"

"Sahib," said I, standing out alone before the men, not facing him,
but near one end of the line, so that I could raise my voice with
propriety and all the men might hear. He backed away, to give more
effect to that arrangement. "Sahib," I said, "we are in a trap.
Either we go to the mines, or we fight for the Germans against the
British. What is your word on the matter?"

"Ho!" said he. "Is it as bad as that? As bad as that?" said he. "If
ye go to the mines to dig coal, they will use that coal to make
ammunition for their guns! That seems a poor alternative! They fight
as much with ammunition as with men!"

"Sahib," said I, "it is worse than that! They seek to compel us to
sign a paper, forswearing our allegiance to Great Britain and
claiming allegiance to them! Should we sign it, that makes us out
traitors in the first place, and makes us amenable to their law in
the second place. They could shoot us if we disobeyed or demurred."

"They could do that in the mines," said he, "if you failed to dig
enough coal to please them. They would call it punishment for
malingering--or some such name. If they take it into their heads to
have you all shot, doubt not they will shoot!"

"Yet in that case," said I, "we should not be traitors."

"I will tell you a story," said he, and we held our breath to
listen, for this was his old manner. This had ever been his way of
putting recruits at ease and of making a squadron understand. In
that minute, for more than a minute, men forgot they had ever
suspected him.

"When I was a little one," said he, "my mother's aunt, who was an
old hag, told me this tale. There was a pack of wolves that hunted
in a forest near a village. In the village lived a man who wished to
be headman. Abdul was his name, and he had six sons. He wished to be
headman that he might levy toll among the villagers for the up-keep
of his sons, who were hungry and very proud. Now Abdul was a cunning
hunter, and his sons were strong. So he took thought, and chose a
season carefully, and set his sons to dig a great trap. And so well
had Abdul chosen--so craftily the six sons digged--that one night
they caught all that wolf-pack in the trap. And they kept them in
the trap two days and a night, that they might hunger and thirst and
grow amenable.

"Then Abdul leaned above the pit, and peered down at the wolves and
began to bargain with them. 'Wolves,' said he, 'your fangs be long
and your jaws be strong, and I wish to be headman of this village.'
And they answered, 'Speak, Abdul, for these walls be high, and our
throats be dry, and we wish to hunt again!' So he bade them promise
that if he let them go they would seek and slay the present headman
and his sons, so that he might be headman in his place. And the
wolves promised. Then when he had made them swear by a hundred oaths
in a hundred different ways, and had bound them to keep faith by God
and by earth and sky and sea and by all the holy things he could
remember, he stood aside and bade his six sons free the wolves.

"The sons obeyed, and helped the wolves out of the trap. And
instantly the wolves fell on all six sons, and slew and devoured
them. Then they came and stood round Abdul with their jaws dripping
with blood.

"'Oh, wolves,' said he, trembling with fear and anger, 'ye are
traitors! Ye are forsworn! Ye are faithless ones!'

"But they answered him, 'Oh, Abdul, shall he who knows not false
from true judge treason?' and forthwith they slew him and devoured
him, and went about their business.

"Now, which had the right of that--Abdul or the wolves?"

"We are no wolves!" said Gooja Singh in a whining voice. "We be true
men!"

"Then I will tell you another story," Ranjoor Singh answered him.
And we listened again, as men listen to the ticking of a clock.
"This is a story the same old woman, my mother's aunt, told me when
I was very little.

"There was a man--and this man's name also was Abdul--who owned a
garden, and in it a fish-pond. But in the fish-pond were no fish.
Abdul craved fish to swim hither and thither in his pond, but though
he tried times out of number he could catch none. Yet at fowling he
had better fortune, and when he was weary one day of fishing and
laid his net on land he caught a dozen birds.

"'So-ho!' said Abdul, being a man much given to thought, and he went
about to strike a bargain. 'Oh, birds,' said he, 'are ye willing to
be fish? For I have no fishes swimming in my pond, yet my heart
desires them greatly. So if ye are willing to be fish and will stay
in my good pond and swim there, gladdening my eyes, I will abstain
from killing you but instead will set you in the pond and let you
live.'

"So the birds, who were very terrified, declared themselves willing
to be fish, and the birds swore even more oaths than he insisted on,
so that he was greatly pleased and very confident. Therefore he used
not very much precaution when he came to plunge the birds into the
water, and the instant he let go of them the birds with feathers
scarcely wet flew away and perched on the trees about him.

"Then Abdul grew very furious. 'Oh, birds,' said he, 'ye are
traitors. Ye are forsworn! Ye are liars--breakers of oaths--deceitful
ones!' And he shook his fist at them and spat, being greatly enraged
and grieved at their deception.

"But the birds answered him, 'Oh, Abdul, a captive's gyves and a
captive's oath are one, and he who rivets on the one must keep the
other!' And the birds flew away, but Abdul went to seek his advocate
to have the law of them! Now, what think ye was the advocate's
opinion in the matter, and what remedy had Abdul?"

Has the sahib ever seen three hundred men all at the same time
becoming conscious of the same idea? That is quite a spectacle.
There was no whispering, nor any movement except a little shifting
of the feet. There was nothing on which a watchful man could lay a
finger. Yet between one second and the next they were not the same
men, and I, who watched Ranjoor Singh's eyes as if he were my
opponent in a duel, saw that he was aware of what had happened,
although not surprised. But he made no sign except the shadow of one
that I detected, and he did not change his voice--as yet.

"As for me," he said, telling a tale again, "I wrote once on the
seashore sand and signed my name beneath. A day later I came back to
look, but neither name nor words remained. I was what I had been,
and stood where the sea had been, but what I had written in sand
affected me not, neither the sea nor any man. Thought I, if one had
lent me money on such a perishable note the courts would now hold
him at fault, not me; they would demand evidence, and all he could
show them would be what he had himself bargained for. Now it occurs
to me that seashore sand, and the tricks of rogues, and blackmail,
and tyranny perhaps are one!"

Eye met eye, all up and down both lines of men. There was swift
searching of hearts, and some of the men at my end of the line began
talking in low tones. So I spoke up and voiced aloud what troubled
them.

"If we sign this paper, sahib," said I, "how do we know they will
not find means of bringing it to the notice of the British?"

"We do not know," he answered. "Let us hope. Hope is a great good
thing. If they chained us, and we broke the chains, they might send
the broken links to London in proof of what thieves we be. Who would
gain by that?"

I saw a very little frown now and knew that he judged it time to
strike on the heated metal. But Gooja Singh turned his back on
Ranjoor Singh.

"Let him sign this thing," said he, "and let us sign our names
beneath his name. Then he will be in the same trap with us all, and
must lead us out of it or perish with us!"

So Gooja Singh offered himself, all unintentionally, to be the
scapegoat for us all and I have seldom seen a man so shocked by what
befell him. Only a dozen words spoke Ranjoor Singh--yet it was as if
he lashed him and left him naked. Whips and a good man's wrath are
one.

"Who gave thee leave to yelp?" said he, and Gooja Singh faced about
like a man struck. By order of the Germans he and I stood in the
place of captains on parade, he on the left and I on the right.

"To your place!" said Ranjoor Singh.

Gooja Singh stepped back into line with me, but Ranjoor Singh was
not satisfied.

"To your place in the rear!" he ordered. And so I have seen a man
who lost a lawsuit slink round a corner of the court.

Then I spoke up, being stricken with self-esteem at the sight of
Gooja Singh's shame (for I always knew him to be my enemy).

"Sahib," said I, "shall I pass down the line and ask each man
whether he will sign what the Germans ask?"

"Aye!" said he, "like the carrion crows at judgment! Halt!" he
ordered, for already I had taken the first step. "When I need to
send a havildar," said he, "to ask my men's permission, I will call
for a havildar! To the rear where you belong!" he ordered. And I
went round to the rear, knowing something of Gooja Singh's
sensations, but loving him no better for the fellow-feeling. When my
footfall had altogether ceased and there was silence in which one
could have heard an insect falling to the ground, Ranjoor Singh
spoke again. "There has been enough talk," said he. "In pursuance of
a plan, I intend to sign whatever the Germans ask. Those who prefer
not to sign what I sign--fall out! Fall out, I say!"

Not a man fell out, sahib. But that was not enough for Ranjoor
Singh.

"Those who intend to sign the paper,--two paces forward,--march!"
said he. And as one man we took two paces forward.

"So!" said he. "Right turn!" And we turned to the right. "Forward!
Quick march!" he ordered. And he made us march twice in a square
about him before he halted us again and turned us to the front to
face him. Then he was fussy about our alignment, making us take up
our dressing half a dozen times; and when he had us to his
satisfaction finally he stood eying us for several minutes before
turning his back and striding with great dignity toward the gate.

He talked through the gate and very soon a dozen Germans entered,
led by two officers in uniform and followed by three soldiers
carrying a table and a chair. The table was set down in their midst,
facing us, and the senior German officer--in a uniform with a very
high collar--handed a document to Ranjoor Singh. When he had
finished reading it to himself he stepped forward and read it aloud
to us. It was in Punjabi, excellently rendered, and the gist of it
was like this:

We, being weary of British misrule, British hypocrisy, and British
arrogance, thereby renounced allegiance to Great Britain, its king
and government, and begged earnestly to be permitted to fight on the
side of the Central Empires in the cause of freedom. It was
expressly mentioned, I remember, that we made this petition of our
own initiative and of our own free will, no pressure having been
brought to bear on us, and nothing but kindness having been offered
us since we were taken prisoners.

"That is what we are all required to sign," said Ranjoor Singh, when
he had finished reading, and he licked his lips in a manner I had
never seen before.

Without any further speech to us, he sat down at the table and wrote
his name with a great flourish on the paper, setting down his rank
beside his name. Then he called to me, and I sat and wrote my name
below his, adding my rank also. And Gooja Singh followed me. After
him, in single file, came every surviving man of Outram's Own. Some
men scowled, and some men laughed harshly, and if one of our race
had been watching on the German behalf he would have been able to
tell them something. But the Germans mistook the scowls for signs of
anger at the British, and the laughter they mistook for rising
spirits, so that the whole affair passed off without arousing their
suspicion.

Nevertheless, my heart warned me that the Germans would not trust a
regiment seduced as we were supposed to have been. And, although
Ranjoor Singh had had his way with us, the very having had destroyed
the reawakening trust in him. The troopers felt that he had led them
through the gates of treason. I could feel their thoughts as a man
feels the breath of coming winter on his cheek.

When the last man had signed we stood at attention and a wagonload
of rifles was brought in, drawn by oxen. They gave a rifle to each
of us, and we were made to present arms while the German military
oath was read aloud. After that the Germans walked away as if they
had no further interest. Only Ranjoor Singh remained, and he gave us
no time just then for comment or discontent.

The mauser rifles were not so very much unlike our own, and he set
us to drilling with them, giving us patient instruction but very
little rest until evening. During the longest pause in the drill he
sent for knapsacks and served us one each, filled down to the
smallest detail with everything a soldier could need, even to a
little cup that hung from a hook beneath one corner. We were utterly
worn out when he left us at nightfall, but there was a lot of
talking nevertheless before men fell asleep.

"This is the second time he has trapped us in deadly earnest!" was
the sum of the general complaint they hurled at me. And I had no
answer to give them, knowing well that if I took his part I should
share his condemnation--which would not help him; neither would it
help them nor me.

"My thought, of going to the mines and being troublesome, was best!"
said I. "Ye overruled me. Now ye would condemn me for not preventing
you! Ye are wind blowing this way and that!"

They were so busy defending themselves to themselves against that
charge that they said no more until sleep fell on them; and at dawn
Ranjoor Singh took hold of us again and made us drill until our feet
burned on the gravel and our ears were full of the tramp--tramp--tramp,
and the ek--do--tin of manual exercise.

"Listen!" said he to me, when he had dismissed us for dinner, and I
lingered on parade. "Caution the men that any breach of discipline
would be treated under German military law by drum-head court
martial and sentence of death by shooting. Advise them to avoid
indiscretions of any kind," said he.

So I passed among them, pretending the suggestion was my own, and
they resented it, as I knew they would. But I observed from about
that time they began to look on Ranjoor Singh as their only possible
protector against the Germans, so that their animosity against him
was offset by self-interest.

The next day came a staff officer who marched us to the station,
where a train was waiting. Impossible though it may seem, sahib, to
you who listen, I felt sad when I looked back at the huts that had
been our prison, and I think we all did. We had loathed them with
all our hearts all summer long, but now they represented what we
knew and we were marching away from them to what we knew not, with
autumn and winter brooding on our prospects.

Not all our wounded had been returned to us; some had died in the
German hospitals.. Two hundred-and-three-and-thirty of us all told,
including Ranjoor Singh, lined up on the station platform--fit and
well and perhaps a little fatter than was seemly.

Having no belongings other than the rifles and knapsacks and what we
stood in it took us but a few moments to entrain. Almost at once the
engine whistled and we were gone, wondering whither. Some of the
troopers shouted to Ranjoor Singh to ask our destination, but he
affected not to hear. The German staff officer rode in the front
compartment alone, and Ranjoor Singh rode alone in the next behind
him; but they conversed often through the window, and at stations
where the two of them got out to stretch their legs along the
platform they might have been brothers-in-blood relating love-affairs.
Our troopers wondered.

"Our fox grows gray," said they, "and his impudence increases."

"Would it help us out of this predicament," said I, "if he smote
that German in the teeth and spat on him?"

They laughed at that and passed the remark along from window to
window, until I roared at them to keep their heads in. There were
seven of us non-commissioned officers, and we rode in one
compartment behind the officers' carriage, Gooja Singh making much
unpleasantness because there was not enough room for us all to lie
full length at once. We were locked into our compartment, and the
only chance we had of speaking with Ranjoor Singh was when they
brought us food at stations and he strode down the train to see that
each man had his share.

"What is our destination?" we asked him then, repeatedly.

"If ye be true men," he answered, "why are ye troubled about
destination? Can the truth lead you into error? Do I seem afraid?"
said he.

That was answer enough if we had been the true men we claimed to be,
and he gave us no other. So we watched the sun and tried to guess
roughly, I recalling all the geography I ever knew, yet failing to
reach conclusions that satisfied myself or any one. We knew that
Turkey was in the war, and we knew that Bulgaria was not. Yet we
traveled eastward, and southeastward.

I know now that we traveled over the edge of Germany into Austria,
through Austria into Hungary, and through a great part of Hungary to
the River Danube, growing so weary of the train that I for one
looked back to the Flanders trenches as to long-lost happiness!
Every section of line over which we traveled was crowded with
traffic, and dozens of German regiments kept passing and re-passing
us. Some cheered us and some were insulting, but all of them
regarded us with more or less astonishment.

The Austrians were more openly curious about us than the Germans had
been, and some of them tried to get into conversation, but this was
not encouraged; when they climbed on the footboards to peer through
the windows and ask us questions officers ordered them away.

Of all the things we wondered at on that long ride, the German
regiments impressed us most. Those that passed and repassed us were
mostly artillery and infantry, and surely in all the world before
there never were such regiments as those--with the paint worn off
their cannon, and their clothes soiled, yet with an air about them
of successful plunderers, confident to the last degree of arrogance
in their own efficiency--not at all like British regiments, nor like
any others that I ever saw. It was Ranjoor Singh who drew my
attention to the fact that regiments passing us in one direction
would often pass us again on their way back, sometimes within the
day.

"As shuttles in a loom!" said he. "As long as they can do that they
can fight on a dozen fronts." His words set me wondering so that I
did not answer him. He was speaking through our carriage window and
I stared out beyond him at a train-load of troops on the far side of
the station.

"One comes to us," said I. I was watching a German sergeant, who had
dragged his belongings from that train and was crossing toward us.

"Aye!" said Ranjoor Singh, so that I knew now there had been purpose
in his visit. "Beware of him." Then he unlocked the carriage door
and waited for the German. The German came, and cursed the man who
bore his baggage, and halted before Ranjoor Singh, staring into his
face with a manner of impudence new to me. Ranjoor Singh spoke about
ten words to him in German and the sergeant there and then saluted
very respectfully. I noticed that the German staff officer was
watching all this from a little distance, and I think the sergeant
caught his eye.

At any rate, the sergeant made his man throw the baggage through our
compartment door. The man returned to the other train. The sergeant
climbed in next to me. Ranjoor Singh locked the door again, and both
trains proceeded. When our train was beginning to gain speed the
newcomer shoved me in the ribs abruptly with his elbow--thus.

"So much for knowing languages!" said he to me in fairly good
Punjabi. "Curse the day I ever saw India, and triple-curse this
system of ours that enabled them to lay finger on me in a moving
train and transfer me to this funeral procession! Curse you, and
curse this train, and curse all Asia!" Then he thrust me in the ribs
again, as if that were a method of setting aside formality.

"You know Cawnpore?" said he, and I nodded.

"You know the Kaiser-i-hind Saddle Factory?"

I nodded again, being minded to waste no words because of Ranjoor
Singh's warning.

"I took a job as foreman there twenty years ago because the pay was
good. I lived there fifteen years until I was full to the throat of
India--Indian food, Indian women, Indian drinks, Indian heat, Indian
smells, Indian everything. I hated it, and threw up the job in the
end. Said I to myself, 'Thank God,' said I, 'to see the last of
India.' And I took passage on a German steamer and drank enough
German beer on the way to have floated two ships her size! Aecht
Deutches bier, you understand," said he, nudging me in the ribs with
each word. Aecht means REAL, as distinguished from the export stuff
in bottles. "I drank it by the barrel, straight off ice, and it went
to my head!

"That must be why I boasted about knowing Indian languages before I
had been two hours in port. I was drunk, and glad to be home, and on
the lookout for another job to keep from starving; so I boasted I
could speak and write Urdu and Punjabi. That brought me employment
in an export house. But who would have guessed it would end in my
being dragged away from my regiment to march with a lot of Sikhs?
Eh? Who would have guessed it? There goes my regiment one way, and
here go I another! What's our destination? God knows! Who are you,
and what are you? God neither knows nor cares! What's to be the end
of this? The end of me, I expect--and all because I got drunk on the
way home! It I get alive out of this," said he, "I'll get drunk once
for the glory of God and then never touch beer again!"

And he struck me on the thigh with his open palm. The noise was like
powder detonating, and the pain was acute. I cursed him in his teeth
and he grinned at me as if he and I were old friends. Little blue
eyes he had, sahib--light blue, set in full red cheeks. There were
many little red veins crisscrossed under the skin of his face, and
his breath smelt of beer and tobacco. I judged he had the physical
strength of a buffalo, although doubtless short of wind.

He had very little hair. Such as he had was yellow, but clipped so
short that it looked white. His yellow mustache was turned up thus
at either corner of his mouth; and the mouth was not unkind, not
without good humor.

"What is your name?" said I.

"Tugendheim," said he. "I am Sergeant Fritz Tugendheim, of the 281
(Pappenheim) Regiment of Infantry, and would God I were with my
regiment! What do they call you?"

"Hira Singh," said I.

"And your rank?"

"Havildar," said I.

"Oh-ho!" said he. "So you're all non-commissioned in here, are you?
Seven of you, eh? Seven is a lucky number! Well---" He looked us
each slowly in the face, narrowing his eyes so that we could
scarcely see them under the yellow lashes. "Well," said he, "they
won't mistake me for any of you, nor any of you for me--not even if
I should grow whiskers!"

He laughed at that joke for about two minutes, slapping me on the
thigh again and laughing all the louder when I showed my teeth. Then
he drew out a flask of some kind of pungent spirits from his pocket,
and offered it to me. When I refused he drank the whole of it
himself and flung the glass flask through the window. Then he
settled himself in the corner from which he had ousted me, put his
feet on the edge of the seat opposite, and prepared to sleep. But
before very long our German staff officer shouted for him and he
went in great haste, a station official opening the door for him and
locking us in again afterward. He rode for hours with the staff
officer and Gooja Singh examined the whole of his kit, making
remarks on each piece, to the great amusement of us all.

He came back before night to sleep in our compartment, but before he
came I had taken opportunity to pass word through the window to the
troopers in the carriage next behind.

"Ranjoor Singh," said I, "warns us all to be on guard against this
German. He is a spy set to overhear our talk."

That word went all down the train from, window to window and it had
some effect, for during all the days that followed Tugendheim was
never once able to get between us and our thoughts, although he
tried a thousand times.

Night followed day, and day night. Our train crawled, and waited,
and crawled, and waited, and we in our compartment grew weary to the
death of Tugendheim. A thousand times I envied Ranjoor Singh alone
with his thoughts in the next compartment; and so far was he from
suffering because of solitude that he seemed to keep more and more
apart from us, only passing swiftly down the train at meal-times to
make sure we all had enough to eat and that there were no sick.

I reached the conclusion myself that we were being sent to fight
against the Russians, and I know not what the troopers thought; they
were beginning to be like caged madmen. But suddenly we reached a
broad river I knew must be the Danube and were allowed at last to
leave the train. We were so glad to move about again that any news
seemed good news, and when Ranjoor Singh, after much talk with our
staff officer and some other Germans, came and told us that Bulgaria
had joined the war on the side of the Central Powers, we laughed and
applauded.

"That means that our road lies open before us," Ranjoor Singh said
darkly.

"Our road whither?" said I.

"To Stamboul!" said he.

"What are we to do at Stamboul?" asked Gooja Singh, and the staff
officer, whose name I never knew, heard him and came toward us.

"At Stamboul," said he, in fairly good Punjabi, "you will strike a
blow beside our friends, the Turks. Not very far from Stamboul you
shall be given opportunity for vengeance on the British. The
next-to-the-last stage of your journey lies through Bulgaria, and the
beginning of it will be on that steamer."

We saw the steamer, lying with its nose toward the bank. It was no
very big one for our number, but they marched us to it, Ranjoor
Singh striding at our head as if all the world were unfolding before
him, and all were his. We were packed on board and the steamer
started at once, Ranjoor Singh and the staff officer sharing the
upper part with the steamer's captain, and Tugendheim elbowing us
for room on the open deck. So we journeyed for a whole day and part
of a night down the Danube, Tugendheim pointing out to me things I
should observe along the route, but grumbling vastly at separation
from his regiment.

"You bloody Sikhs!" said he. "I would rather march with lice--yet
what can I do? I must obey orders. See that castle!" There were many
castles, sahib, at bends and on hilltops overlooking the river.
"They built that," said he, "in the good old days before men ever
heard of Sikhs. Life was worth while in those days, and a man lived
a lifetime with his regiment!"

"Ah!" said I, choosing not to take offense; for one fool can make
trouble that perhaps a thousand wise men can not still. If he had
thought, he must have known that we Sikhs spend a lifetime with our
regiments, and therefore know more about such matters than any
German reservist. But he was little given to thought, although not
ill-humored in intention.

"Behold that building!" said he. "That looks like a brewery!
Consider the sea of beer they brew there once a month, and then
think of your oath of abstinence and what you miss!"

So he talked, ever nudging me in the ribs until I grew sore and my
very gorge revolted at his foolishness. So we sailed, passing along
a river that at another time would have delighted me beyond power of
speech. A day and a night we sailed, our little steamer being one of
a fleet all going one way. Tugs and tugs and tugs there were, all
pulling strings of barges. It was as if all the tugs and barges out
of Austria were hurrying with all the plunder of Europe God knew
whither.

"Whither are they taking all this stuff?" I asked Ranjoor Singh when
he came down among us to inspect our rations. He and I stood
together at the stern, and I waved my arm to designate the fleet of
floating things. We were almost the only troops, although there were
soldiers here and there on the tugs and barges, taking charge and
supervising.

"To Stamboul," said he. "Bulgaria is in. The road to Stamboul is
open."

"Sahib," said I, "I know you are true to the raj. I know the
surrender in Flanders was the only course possible for one to whom
the regiment had been entrusted. I know this business of taking the
German side is all pretense. Are we on the way to Stamboul?"

"Aye," said he.

"What are we to do at Stamboul?" I asked him.

"If you know all you say you know," said he, "why let the future
trouble you?"

"But---" said I.

"Nay," said he, "there can be no 'but.' There is false and true. The
one has no part in the other. What say the men?"

"They are true to the raj," said I.

"All of them?" he asked.

"Nay, sahib," said I. "Not quite all of them, but almost all."

He nodded. "We shall discover before long which are false and which
are true," said he, and then he left me.

So I told the men that we were truly on our way to Stamboul, and
there began new wondering and new conjecturing. The majority decided
at once that we were to be sent to Gallipoli to fight beside the
Turks in the trenches there, and presently they all grew very
determined to put no obstacle in the Germans' way but to go to
Gallipoli with good will. Once there, said they all, it should be
easy to cross to the British trenches under cover of the darkness.

"We will take Ranjoor Singh with us," they said darkly. "Then he can
make explanation of his conduct in the proper time and place!" I saw
one man hold his turban end as if it were a bandage over his eyes,
and several others snapped their fingers to suggest a firing party.
Many of the others laughed. Men in the dark, thought I, are fools to
do anything but watch and listen. Outlines change with the dawn,
thought I, and I determined to reserve my judgment on all points
except one--that I set full faith in Ranjoor Singh. But the men for
the most part had passed judgment and decided on a plan; so it came
about that there was no trouble in the matter of getting them to
Stamboul--or Constantinople, as Europeans call it.

At a place in Bulgaria whose name I have forgotten we disembarked
and became escort to a caravan of miscellaneous stores, proceeding
by forced marches over an abominable road. And after I forget how
many days and nights we reached a railway and were once more packed
into a train. Throughout that march, although we traversed wild
country where any or all of us might easily have deserted among the
mountains, Ranjoor Singh seemed so well to understand our intention
that he scarcely troubled himself to call the roll. He sat alone by
a little fire at night, and slept beside it wrapped in an overcoat
and blanket. And when we boarded a train again he was once more
alone in a compartment to himself. Once more I was compelled to sit
next to Tugendheim.

I grew no fonder of Tugendheim, although he made many efforts to
convince me of his friendship, making many prophetic statements to
encourage me.

"Soon," said he, "you shall have your bayonet in the belly of an
Englishman! You will be revenged im them for '57!" My grandfather
fought for the British in '57, sahib, and my father, who was little
more than old enough to run, carried food to him where he lay on the
Ridge before Delhi, the British having little enough food at that
time to share among their friends. But I said nothing, and
Tugendheim thought I was impressed--as indeed I was. "You will need
to fight like the devil," said he, "for if they catch you they'll
skin you!"

Partly he wished to discover what my thoughts were, and partly, I
think, his intention was to fill me with fighting courage; and,
since it would not have done to keep silence altogether, I began to
project the matter further and to talk of what might be after the
war should have been won. I made him believe that the hope of all us
Sikhs was to seek official employment under the German government;
and he made bold to prophesy a good job for every one of us. We
spent hours discussing what nature of employment would best be
suited to our genius, and he took opportunity at intervals to go to
the staff officer and acquaint him with all that I had said. By the
time we reached Stamboul at last I was more weary of him than an
ill-matched bullock of its yoke.

But we did reach Stamboul in the end, on a rainy morning, and
marched wondering through its crooked streets, scarcely noticed by
the inhabitants. Men seemed afraid to look long at us, but glanced
once swiftly and passed on. German officers were everywhere, many of
them driven in motor-cars at great speed through narrow
thoroughfares, scattering people to right and left; the Turkish
officers appeared to treat them with very great respect--although I
noticed here and there a few who looked indifferent, and
occasionally others who seemed to me indignant.

The mud, though not so bad as that in Flanders, was nearly as
depressing. The rain chilled the air, and shut in the view, and few
of us had very much sense of direction that first day in Stamboul.
Tugendheim, marching behind us, kept up an incessant growl. Ranjoor
Singh, striding in front of us with the staff officer at his side,
shook the rain from his shoulders and said nothing.

We were marched to a ferry and taken across what I know now was the
Golden Horn; and there was so much mist on the water that at times
we could scarcely see the ferry. Many troopers asked me if we were
not already on our way to Gallipoli, and I, knowing no more than
they, bade them wait and see.

On the other side of the Golden Horn we were marched through narrow
streets, uphill, uphill, uphill to a very great barrack and given a
section of it to ourselves. Ranjoor Singh was assigned private
quarters in a part of the building used by many German officers for
their mess. Not knowing our tongue, those officers were obliged to
converse with him in English, and I observed many times with what
distaste they did so, to my great amusement. I think Ranjoor Singh
was also much amused by that, for he grew far better humored and
readier to talk.

Sahib, that barrack was like a zoo--like the zoo I saw once at
Baroda, with animals of all sorts in it!--a great yellow building
within walls, packed with Kurds and Arabs and Syrians of more
different tribes than a man would readily believe existed in the
whole world. Few among them could talk any tongue that we knew, but
they were full of curiosity and crowded round us to ask questions;
and when Gooja Singh shouted aloud that we were Sikhs from India
they produced a man who seemed to think he knew about Sikhs, for he
stood on a step and harangued them for ten minutes, they listening
with all their ears.

Then came a Turk from the German officers' mess--we were all
standing in the rain in an open court between four walls--and he
told them truly who we were. Doubtless he added that we were in
revolt against the British, for they began to welcome us, shouting
and dancing about us, those who could come near enough taking our
hands and saying things we could not understand.

Presently they found a man who knew some English, and, urged by
them, he began to fill our ears with information. During our train
journey I had amused myself for many weary hours by asking
Tugendheim for details of the fighting he had seen and by listening
to the strings of lies he thought fit to narrate. But what
Tugendheim had told were almost truths compared to this man's
stories; in place of Tugendheim's studied vagueness there was detail
in such profusion that I can not recall now the hundredth part of
it.

He told us the British fleet had long been rusting at the bottom of
the sea, and that all the British generals and half the army were
prisoners in Berlin. Already the British were sending tribute money
to their conquerors, and the principal reason why the war continued
was that the British could not find enough donkeys to carry all the
gold to Berlin, and to prevent trickery of any kind the fighting
must continue until the last coin should have been counted.

The British and French, he told us, were all to be compelled, at the
point of the sword, to turn Muhammadan, and France was being scoured
that minute for women to grace the harems of the kaiser and his sons
and generals, all of whom had long ago accepted Islam. The kaiser,
indeed, had become the new chief of Islam.

I asked him about the fighting in Gallipoli, and lie said that was a
bagatelle. "When we shall have driven the remnants of those there
into the sea," said he, "one part of us will march to conquer Egypt
and the rest will be sent to garrison England and France."

When he had done and we were all under cover at last I repeated to
the men all that this fool had said, and they were very much
encouraged; for they reasoned that if the Turks and Germans needed
to fill up their men with such lies as those, then they must have a
poor case indeed. With our coats off, and a meal before us, and the
mud and rain for-gotten, we all began to feel almost happy; and
while we were in that mood Ranjoor Singh came to us with Tugendheim
at his heels.

"The plan now is to keep us here a week," said he. "After that to
send us to Gallipoli by steamer."

Sahib, there was uproar! Men could scarcely eat for the joy of
getting in sight of British lines again--or rather for joy of the
promise of it. They almost forgot to suspect Ranjoor Singh in that
minute, but praised him to his face and even made much of
Tugendheim.

But I, who followed Ranjoor Singh between the tables in case he
should have any orders to give, noticed particularly that he did not
say we were going to Gallipoli. He said, "The plan now is to send us
to Gallipoli." The trade of a leader of squadrons, thought I, is to
confound the laid plans of the enemy and to invent unexpected ones
of his own.

"The day we land in Gallipoli behind the Turkish trenches," said I
to myself, "is unlikely to be yet if Ranjoor Singh lives."

And I was right, sahib. But If I had been given a thousand years in
which to do it, I never could have guessed how Ranjoor Singh would
lead us out of the trap. Can the sahib guess?




CHAPTER IV


Fear comes and goes, but a man's love lives with him.--EASTERN PROVERB.


Stamboul was disillusionment--a city of rain and plagues and stinks!
The food in barracks was maggoty. We breathed foul air and yearned
for the streets; yet, once in the streets, we yearned to be back in
barracks. Aye, sahib, we saw more in one day of the streets than we
thought good for us, none yet understanding the breadth of Ranjoor
Singh's wakefulness. He seemed to us like a man asleep in good
opinion of himself--that being doubtless the opinion he wished the
German officers to have of him.

Part of the German plan became evident at once, for, noticing our
great enthusiasm at the prospect of being sent to Gallipoli,
Tugendheim, in the hope of winning praise, told a German officer we
ought to be paraded through the streets as evidence that Indian
troops really were fighting with the Central Powers. The German
officer agreed instantly, Tugendheim making faces thus and brushing
his mustache more fiercely upward.

So the very first morning after our arrival we were paraded early
and sent out with a negro band, to tramp back and forth through the
streets until nearly too weary to desire life. Ranjoor Singh marched
at our head looking perfectly contented, for which the men all hated
him, and beside him went a Turk who knew English and who told him
the names of streets and places.

It did not escape my observation that Ranjoor Singh was interested
more than a little in the waterfront. But we all tramped like dumb
men, splashed to the waist with street dirt, aware we were being
used to make a mental impression on the Turks, but afraid to refuse
obedience lest we be not sent to Gallipoli after all. One thought
obsessed every single man but me: To get to Gallipoli, and escape to
the British trenches during some dark night, or perish in the
effort.

As for me, I kept open mind and watched. It is the non-commissioned
officer's affair to herd the men for his officer to lead. To have
argued with them or have suggested alternative possibilities would
have been only to enrage them and make them deaf to wise counsels
when the proper time should come. And, besides, I knew no more what
Ranjoor Singh had in mind than a dead man knows of the weather. We
marched through the streets, and marched, stared at silently,
neither cheered nor mocked by the inhabitants; and Ranjoor Singh
arrived at his own conclusions. Five several times during that one
day he halted us in the mud at a certain place along the water-front,
although there was a better place near by; and while we
rested he asked peculiar questions, and the Turk boasted to him,
explaining many things.

We were exhausted when it fell dark and we climbed up the hill again
to barracks. Yet as we entered the barrack gate I heard Ranjoor
Singh tell a German officer in English that we had all greatly
enjoyed our view of the city and the exercise. I repeated what I had
heard while the men were at supper, and they began to wonder
greatly.

"Such a lie!" said they.

"That surely was a lie?" I asked, and they answered that the man who
truly had enjoyed such tramping to and fro was no soldier but a
mud-fish.

"Then, if he lies to them," I said, "perhaps he tells us the truth
after all."

They howled at me, calling me a man without understanding. Yet when
I went away I left them thinking, each man for himself, and that was
good. I went to change the guard, for some of our men were put on
sentry-go that night outside the officers' quarters, in spite of our
utter weariness. We were smarter than the Kurds, and German officers
like smartness.

Weary though Ranjoor Singh must have been, he sat late with the
German officers, for the most part keeping silence while they
talked. I made excuse to go and speak with him half a dozen times,
and the last time I could hardly find him among the wreaths of
cigarette smoke.

"Sahib, must we really stay a week in this hole?" I asked. "So say
the Germans," said he.

"Are we to be paraded through the streets each day?" I asked.

"I understand that to be the plan," he answered.

"Then the men will mutiny!" said I.

"Nay!" said he, "let them seek better cause than that!"

"Shall I tell them so?" said I, and he looked into my eyes through
the smoke as if he would read down into my very heart.

"Aye!" said he at last. "You may tell them so!"

So I went and shook some of the men awake and told them, and when
they had done being angry they laughed at me. Then those awoke the
others, and soon they all had the message. On the whole, it
bewildered them, even as it did me, so that few dared offer an
opinion and each began thinking for himself again. By morning they
were in a mood to await developments. They were even willing to
tramp the streets; but Ranjoor Singh procured us a day's rest. He
himself spent most of the day with the German officers, poring over
maps and talking. I went to speak with him as often as I could
invent excuse, and I became familiar with the word Wassmuss that
they used very frequently. I heard the word so many times that I
could not forget it if I tried.

The next day Ranjoor Singh had a surprise for us. At ten in the
morning we were all lined up in the rain and given a full month's
pay. It was almost midday when the last man had received his money,
and when we were dismissed and the men filed in to dinner Ranjoor
Singh bade me go among them and ask whether they did not wish
opportunity to spend their money.

So I went and asked the question. Only a few said yes. Many
preferred to keep their money against contingencies, and some
thought the question was a trick and refused to answer it at all. I
returned to Ranjoor Singh and told him what they answered.

"Go and ask them again!" said he.

So I went among them again as they lay on the cots after dinner, and
most of them jeered at me for my pains. I went and found Ranjoor
Singh in the officers' mess and told him.

"Ask them once more!" said he.

This third time, being in no mood to endure mockery, I put the
question with an air of mystery. They asked what the hidden meaning
might be, but I shook my head and repeated the question with a
smile, as if I knew indeed but would not tell.

"Says Ranjoor Singh," said I, "would the men like opportunity to
spend their money?"

"No!" said most of them, and Gooja Singh asked how long it well
might be before we should see money again.

"Shall I bear him, a third time, such an answer?" I asked, looking
more mysterious than ever. And just then it happened that Gooja
Singh remembered the advice to seek better cause for mutiny. He
drummed on his teeth with his fingernails.

"Very well!" said he. "Tell him we will either spend our money or
let blood! Let us see what he says to that!"

"Shall I say," said I, "that Gooja Singh says so?"

"Nay, nay!" said he, growing anxious. "Let that be the regiment's
answer. Name no names!"

I thought it a foolish answer, given by a fool, but the men were in
the mood to relish it and began to laugh exceedingly.

"Shall I take that answer?" said I, and they answered "Yes!"
redoubling their emphasis when I objected. "The Germans do Ranjoor
Singh's thinking for him these days," said one man; "take that
answer and let us see what the Germans have to say to it through his
mouth!"

So I went and told Ranjoor Singh, whispering to him in a corner of
the officers' mess. Some Turks had joined the Germans and most of
them were bending over maps that a German officer had spread upon a
table in their midst; he was lecturing while the others listened.
Ranjoor Singh had been listening, too, but he backed into a corner
as I entered, and all the while I was whispering to him I kept
hearing the word Wassmuss--Wassmuss--Wassmuss. The German who was
lecturing explained something about this Wassmuss.

"What is Wassmuss?" I asked, when I had given Ranjoor Singh the
men's answer. He smiled into my eyes.

"Wassmuss is the key to the door," said he.

"To which door?" I asked him.

"There is only one," he answered.

"Shall I tell that to the men?" said I.

At that he began scowling at me, stroking his beard with one hand.
Then he stepped back and forth a time or two. And when he saw with
the corner of his eye that he had the senior German officer's
attention he turned on me and glared again. There was sudden silence
in the room, and I stood at attention, striving to look like a man
of wood.

"It is as I said," said he in English. "It was most unwise to pay
them. Now the ruffians demand liberty to go and spend--and that
means license! They have been prisoners of war in close confinement
too long. You should have sent them to Gallipoli before they tasted
money or anything else but work! Who shall control such men now!"

The German officer stroked his chin, eying Ranjoor Singh sternly,
yet I thought irresolutely.

"If they would be safer on board a steamer, that can be managed. A
steamer came in to-day, that would do," said he, speaking in
English, perhaps lest the Turks understand. "And there is
Tugendheim, of course. Tugendheim could keep watch on board."

I think he had more to say, but at that minute Ranjoor Singh chose
to turn on me fiercely and order me out of the room.

"Tell them what you have heard!" he said in Punjabi, as if he were
biting my head off, and I expect the German officer believed he had
cursed me. I saluted and ran, and one of the Turkish officers aimed
a kick at me as I passed. It was by the favor of God that the kick
missed, for had he touched me I would have torn his throat out, and
then doubtless I should not have been here to tell what Ranjoor
Singh did. To this day I do not know whether he had every move
planned out in his mind, or whether part was thinking and part good
fortune. When a good man sets himself to thinking, God puts thoughts
into his heart that others can not overcome, and it may be that he
simply prayed. I know not--although I know he prayed often, as a
true Sikh should.

I told the men exactly what had passed, except that I did not say
Ranjoor Singh had bidden me do so. I gave them to understand that I
was revealing a secret, and that gave them greater confidence in my
loyalty to them. It was important they should not suspect me of
allegiance to Ranjoor Singh.

"It is good!" said they all, after a lot of talking and very little
thought. "To be sent on board a steamer could only mean Gallipoli.
There we will make great show of ferocity and bravery, so that they
will send us to the foremost trenches. It should be easy to steal
across by night to the British trenches, dragging Ranjoor Singh with
us, and when we are among friends again let him give what account of
himself he may! What new shame is this, to tell the Germans we will
make trouble because we have a little money at last! Let the shame
return to roost on him!"

They began to make ready there and then, and while they packed the
knapsacks I urged them to shout and laugh as if growing mutinous.
Soldiers, unless prevented, load themselves like pack animals with a
hundred unnecessary things, but none of us had more than the full
kit for each man that the Germans had served out, so that packing
took no time at all. An hour after we were ready came Ranjoor Singh,
standing in the door of our quarters with that senior German officer
beside him, both of them scowling at us, and the German making more
than a little show of possessing a repeating pistol. So that Gooja
Singh made great to-do about military compliments, rebuking several
troopers in loud tones for not standing quickly to attention, and
shouting to me to be more strict. I let him have his say.

Angrily as a gathering thunder-storm Ranjoor Singh ordered us to
fall in, and we scrambled out through the doorway like a pack of
hunting hounds released. No word was spoken to us by way of
explanation, Ranjoor Singh continuing to scowl with folded arms
while the German officer went back to look the quarters over,
perhaps to see whether we had done damage, or perhaps to make
certain nothing had been left. He came out in a minute or two and
then we were marched out of the barrack in the dimming light, with
Tugendheim in full marching order falling into step behind us and
the senior German officer smoking a cigar beside Ranjoor Singh. A
Kurdish soldier carried Tugendheim's bag of belongings, and
Tugendheim kicked him savagely when he dropped it in a pool of mud.
I thought the Kurd would knife him, but he refrained.

I think I have said, sahib, that the weather was vile. We were glad
of our overcoats. As we marched along the winding road downhill we
kept catching glimpses of the water-front through driving rain,
light after light appearing as the twilight gathered. Nobody noticed
us. There seemed to be no one in the streets, and small wonder!

Before we were half-way down toward the water there began to be a
very great noise of firing, of big and little cannon and rifles.
There began to be shouting, and men ran back and forth below us. I
asked Tugendheim what it all might mean, and he said probably a
British submarine had shown itself. I whispered that to the nearest
men and they passed the word along. Great contentment grew among us,
none caring after that for rain and mud. That was the nearest we had
been to friends in oh how many months--if it truly were a British
submarine!

We reached the water-front presently and were brought to a halt in
exactly the place where Ranjoor Singh had halted us those five times
on the day we tramped the streets. We faced a dock that had been
vacant two days ago, but where now a little steamer lay moored with
ropes, smoke coming from its funnel. There was no other sign of
life, but when the German officer shouted about a dozen times the
Turkish captain came ashore, wrapped in a great shawl, and spoke to
him.

While they two spoke I asked Ranjoor Singh whether that truly had
been a British submarine, and he nodded; but he was not able to tell
me whether or not it had been hit by gun-fire. Some of the men
overheard, and although we all knew that our course to Gallipoli
would be the more hazardous in that event we all prayed that the
artillery might have missed. Fear comes and goes, but a man's love
lives in him.

When the Turkish captain and the German officer finished speaking,
the Turk went back to his steamer without any apparent pleasure, and
we were marched up the gangway after him. It was pitch-dark by that
time and the only light was that of a lantern by which the German
officer stood, eying us one by one as we passed. Tugendheim came
last, and he talked with Tugendheim for several minutes. Then he
went away, but presently returned with, I should say, half a company
of Kurdish soldiers, whom he posted all about the dock. Then he
departed finally, with a wave of his cigar, as much as to say that
sheet of the ledger had been balanced.

It was a miserable steamer, sahib. We stood about on iron decks and
grew hungry. There were no awnings--nothing but the superstructure
of the bridge, and, although there were but two-hundred-and-thirty-four
of us, including Tugendheim, we could not stow ourselves so
that all could be sheltered from the rain and let the mud cake dry
on our legs and feet. There was a little cabin that Tugendheim took
for himself, but Ranjoor Singh remained with us on deck. He stood in
the rain by the gangway, looking first at one thing, then at
another. I watched him.

Presently he went to the door of the engine-room, opened it, and
looked through. I was about to look, too, but he shut it in my face.

"It is enough that they make steam?" said he; and I looked up at the
funnel and saw steam mingled with the smoke. In a little wheel-house
on the bridge the Turkish captain sat on a shelf, wrapped in his
shawl, smoking a great pipe, and his mate, who was also a Turk, sat
beside him staring at the sky. I asked Ranjoor Singh whether we
might expect to have the whole ship to ourselves. Said I, "It would
not be difficult to overpower those two Turks and their small crew
and make them do our bidding!" But he answered that a regiment of
Kurds was expected to keep us company at dawn. Then he went up to
the bridge to have word with the Turkish captain, and I went to the
ship's side to stare about. Over my shoulder I told the men about
the Kurds who were coming, and they were not pleased.

Peering into the dark and wondering that so great a city as Stamboul
should show so few lights, I observed the Kurdish sentinels posted
about the dock.

"Those are to prevent us from going ashore until their friends
come!" said I, and they snarled at me like angry wolves.

"We could easily rush ashore and bayonet every one of them!" said
Gooja Singh.

But not a man would have gone ashore again for a commission in the
German army. Gallipoli was written in their hearts. Yet I could
think of a hundred thousand chances still that might prevent our
joining our friends the British in Gallipoli. Nor was I sure in my
own mind that Ranjoor Singh intended we should try. I was sure only
of his good faith, and content to wait developments.

Though the lights of the city were few and very far between, so many
search-lights played back and forth above the water that there
seemed a hundred of them. I judged it impossible for the smallest
boat to pass unseen and I wondered whether it was difficult or easy
to shoot with great guns by aid of search-lights, remembering what
strange tricks light can play with a gunner's eyes. Mist, too, kept
rising off the water to add confusion.

While I reflected in that manner, thinking that the shadow of every
wave and the side of every boat might be a submarine, Ranjoor Singh
came down from the bridge and stood beside me.

"I have seen what I have seen!" said he. "Listen! Obey! And give me
no back answers!"

"Sahib," said I, "I am thy man!" But he answered nothing to that.

"Pick the four most dependable men," he said, "and bid them enter
that cabin and gag and bind Tugendheim. Bid them make no noise and
see to it that he makes none, but let them do him no injury, for we
shall need him presently! When that is done, come back to me here!"

So I left him at once, he standing as I had done, staring at the
water, although I thought perhaps there was more purpose in his gaze
than there had been in mine.

I chose four men and led them aside, they greatly wondering.

"There is work to be done," said I, "that calls for true ones!"

"Such men be we!" said all four together.

"That is why I picked you from among the rest!" said I, and they
were well pleased at that. Then I gave them their orders.

"Who bids us do this?" they demanded.

"I!" said I. "Bind and gag Tugendheim, and we have Ranjoor Singh
committed. He gave the order, and I bid you obey it! How can he be
false to us and true to the Germans, with a gagged German prisoner
on his hands?"

They saw the point of that. "But what if we are discovered too
soon?" said they.

"What if we are sunk before dawn by a British submarine!" said I.
"We will swim when we find ourselves in water! For the present, bind
and gag Tugendheim!"

So they went and stalked Tugendheim, the German, who had been
drinking from a little pocket flask. He was drowsing in a chair in
the cabin, with his hands deep down in his overcoat pockets and his
helmet over his eyes. Within three minutes I was back at Ranjoor
Singh's side.

"The four stand guard over him!" said I.

"Very good!" said he. "That was well done! Now do a greater thing."

My heart burned, sahib, for I had once dared doubt him, yet all he
had to say to me was, "Well done! Now do a greater thing!" If he had
cursed me a little for my earlier unbelief I might have felt less
ashamed!

"Go to the men," said he, "and bid those who wish the British well
to put all the money they received this morning into a cloth. Bid
those who are no longer true to the British to keep their money.
When the money is all in the cloth, bring it here to me."

"But what if they refuse?" said I.

"Do YOU refuse?" he asked.

"Nay!" said I. "Nay, sahib!"

"Then why judge them?" said he. So I went.

Can the sahib imagine it? Two-hundred-and-three-and-thirty men,
including non-commissioned officers, wet and muddy in the dark,
beginning to be hungry, all asked at once to hand over all their pay
if they be true men, but told to keep it if they be traitors!

No man answered a word, although their eyes burned up the darkness.
I called for a lantern, and a man brought one from the engine-room
door. By its light I spread out a cloth, and laid all my money on it
on the deck. The sergeant nearest me followed my example. Gooja
Singh laid down only half his money.

"Nay!" said I. "All or none! This is a test for true men! Half-true
and false be one and the same to-night!" So Gooja Singh made a wry
face and laid down the rest of his money, and the others all
followed him, not at all understanding, as indeed I myself did not
understand, but coming one at a time to me and laying all their
money on the cloth. When the last man had done I tied the four
corners of the cloth together (it was all wet with the rain and
slush on deck, and heavy with the weight of coin) and carried it to
Ranjoor Singh. (I forgot the four who stood guard over Tugendheim;
they kept their money.)

"We are all true men!" said I, dumping it beside him.

"Good!" said he. "Come!" And he took the bundle of money and
ascended the bridge ladder, bidding me wait at the foot of it for
further orders. I stood there two hours without another sign of him,
although I heard voices in the wheel-house.

Now the men grew restless. Reflection without action made them begin
to doubt the wisdom of surrendering all their money at a word. They
began to want to know the why and wherefore of the business, and I
was unable to tell them.

"Wait and see!" said I, but that only exasperated them, and some
began to raise their voices in anger. So I felt urged to invent a
reason, hoping to explain it away afterward should I be wrong. But
as it turned out I guessed at least a little part of Ranjoor Singh's
great plan and so achieved great credit that was useful later,
although at the time I felt myself losing favor with them.

"Ranjoor Singh will bribe the captain of the ship to steam away
before that regiment of Kurds can come on board," said I. "So we
shall have the ship at our mercy, provided we make no mistakes."

That did not satisfy them, but it gave them something new to think
about, and they settled down to wait in silence, as many as could
crowding their backs against the deck-house and the rest suffering
in the rain. I would rather have heard them whispering, because I
judged the silence to be due to low spirits. I knew of nothing more
to say to encourage them, and after a time their depression began to
affect me also. Rather than watch them, I watched the water, and
more than once I saw something I did not recognize, that
nevertheless caused my skin to tingle and my breath to come in
jerks. Sikh eyes are keen.

It was perhaps two hours before midnight when the long spell of
firing along the water-front began and I knew that my eyes and the
dark had not deceived me. All the search-lights suddenly swept
together to one point and shone on the top-side of a submarine--or
at least on the water thrown up by its top-side. Only two masts and
a thing like a tower were visible, and the plunging shells threw
water over those obscuring them every second. There was a great
explosion, whether before or after the beginning of the gun-fire I
do not remember, and a ship anchored out on the water no great
distance from us heeled over and began to sink. One search-light was
turned on the sinking ship, so that I could see hundreds of men on
her running to and fro and jumping; but all the rest of the water
was now left in darkness.

The guards who had been set to prevent our landing all ran to
another wharf to watch the gun-fire and the sinking ship, and it was
at the moment when their backs were turned that two Turkish seamen
came down from the bridge and loosed the ropes that held us to the
shore. Then our ship began to move out slowly into the darkness
without showing lights or sounding whistle. There was still no sign
of Ranjoor Singh, nor had I time to look for him; I was busy making
the men be still, urging, coaxing, cursing--even striking them.

"Are we off to Gallipoli?" they asked.

"We are off to where a true man may remember the salt!" said I,
knowing no more than they.

I know of nothing more confusing to a landsman, sahib, than a
crowded harbor at night. The many search-lights all quivering and
shifting in the one direction only made confusion worse and we had
not been moving two minutes when I no longer knew north from south
or east from west. I looked up, to try to judge by the stars. I had
actually forgotten it was raining. The rain came down in sheets and
overhead the sky began at little more than arm's length! Judge,
then, my excitement.

We passed very close to several small steamers that may have been
war-ships, but I think they were merchant ships converted into
gunboats to hunt submarines. I think, too, that in the darkness they
mistook us for another of the same sort, for, although we almost
collided with two of them, they neither fired on us nor challenged.
We steamed straight past them, beginning to gain speed as the last
one fell away behind.

Does the sahib remember whether the passage from Stamboul into the
Sea of Marmora runs south or east or west? Neither could I remember,
although at another time I could have drawn a map of it, having
studied such things. But memory plays us strange tricks, and
cavalrymen were never intended to maneuver in a ship! Ranjoor Singh,
up in the wheel-house, had a map--a good map, that he had stolen
from the German officers--but I did not know that until later. I
stood with both hands holding the rails of the bridge ladder
wondering whether gunfire or submarine would sink us and urging the
men to keep their heads below the bulwark lest a search-light find
us and the number of heads cause suspicion.

I have often tried to remember just how many hours we steamed from
Stamboul, yet I have no idea to this day beyond that the voyage was
ended before dawn. It was all unexpected--we were too excited, and
too fearful for our skins to recall the passage of hours. It was
darker than I have ever known night to be, and the short waves that
made our ship pitch unevenly were growing steeper every minute, when
Ranjoor Singh came at last to the head of the ladder and shouted for
me. I went to him up the steps, holding to each rail for dear life.

"Take twenty men," he ordered, "and uncover the forward hatch. Throw
the hatch coverings overboard. The hold is full of cartridges. Bring
up some boxes and break them open. Distribute two hundred rounds to
every man, and throw the empty boxes overboard. Then get up twenty
more boxes and place them close together, in readiness to take with
us when we leave the ship. Let me know when that is all done."

So I took twenty men and we obeyed him. Two hundred rounds of
cartridges a man made a heavy extra load and the troopers grumbled.

"Can we swim with these?" they demanded.

"Who knows until he has tried?" said I.

"How far may we have to march with such an extra weight?" said they.

"Who knows!" said I, counting out two hundred more to another man.
"But the man," I said, "who lacks one cartridge of the full count
when I come to inspect shall be put to the test whether he can swim
at all!"

Some of them had begun to throw half of their two hundred into the
water, but after I said that they discontinued, and I noticed that
those who had so done came back for more cartridges, pretending that
my count had been short. So I served them out more and said nothing.
There were hundreds of thousands of rounds in the hold of the ship,
and I judged we could afford to overlook the waste.

At last we set the extra twenty boxes in one place together,
slipping and falling in the process because the deck was wet and the
ship unsteady; and then I went and reported to Ranjoor Singh.

"Very good," said he. "Make the men fall in along the deck, and bid
them be ready for whatever may befall!"

"Are we near land, sahib?" said I.

"Very near!" said he.

I ran to obey him, peering into the blackness to discover land, but
I could see nothing more than the white tops of waves, and clouds
that seemed to meet the sea within a rope's length of us. Once or
twice I thought I heard surf, but the noise of the rain and of the
engines and of the waves pounding against the ship confused my ears,
so that I could not be certain.

When the men were all fallen in I went and leaned over the bulwark
to try to see better; and as I did that we ran in under a cliff, for
the darkness grew suddenly much darker. Then I surely heard surf.
Then another sound startled me, and a shock nearly threw me off my
feet. I faced about, to find twenty or thirty men sprawling their
length upon the deck, and when I had urged and helped them up the
engines had stopped turning, and steam was roaring savagely through
the funnel. The motion of the ship was different now; the front part
seemed almost still, but the behind part rose and fell jerkily.

I busied myself with the men, bullying them into silence, for I
judged it most important to be able to hear the first order that
Ranjoor Singh might give; but he gave none just yet, although I
heard a lot of talking on the bridge.

"Is this Gallipoli?" the men kept asking me in whispers.

"If it were," said I, "we should have been blown to little pieces by
the guns of both sides before now!" If I had been offered all the
world for a reward I could not have guessed our whereabouts, nor
what we were likely to do next, but I was very sure we had not
reached Gallipoli.

Presently the Turkish seamen began lowering the boats. There were
but four boats, and they made clumsy work of it, but at last all
four boats were in the water; and then Ranjoor Singh began at last
to give his orders, in a voice and with an air that brought
reassurance. No man could command, as he did who had the least
little doubt in his heart of eventual success. There is even more
conviction in a true man's voice than in his eye.

He ordered us overside eight at a time, and me in the first boat
with the first eight.

"Fall them in along the first flat place you find on shore, and wait
there for me!" said he. And I said, "Ha, sahib!" wondering as I
swung myself down a swaying rope whether my feet could ever find the
boat. But the sailors pulled the rope's lower end, and I found
myself in a moment wedged into a space into which not one more man
could have been crowded.

The waves broke over us, and there was a very evil surf, but the
distance to the shore was short and the sailors proved skilful. We
landed safely on a gravelly beach, not so very much wetter than we
had been, except for our legs (for we waded the last few yards), and
I hunted at once for a piece of level ground. Just thereabouts it
was all nearly level, so I fell my eight men in within twenty yards
of the surf, and waited. I felt tempted to throw out pickets yet
afraid not to obey implicitly. Ranjoor Singh given no order about
pickets.

I judge it took more than an hour, and it may have been two hours,
to bring all the men and the twenty boxes of cartridges ashore. At
last in three boats came the captain of the ship, and the mate, and
the engineer, and nearly all the crew. Then I grew suddenly afraid
and hot sweat burst out all over me, for by the one lantern that had
been hung from the ship's bridge rail to guide the rowers I could
see that the ship was moving! The ship's captain had climbed out of
the last boat and was standing close to it. I went up to him and
seized his shoulder.

"What dog's work is this?" said I. "Speak!" I said, shaking him,
although he could not talk any tongue that I knew--but I shook him
none-the-less until his teeth chattered, and, his arms being wrapped
in that great shawl of his, there was little he could do to prevent
me.

As I live, sahib, on the word of a Sikh I swear that not even in
that instant did I doubt Ranjoor Singh. I believed that the Turkish
captain might have stabbed him, or that Tugendheim might have played
some trick. But not so the men. They saw the lantern receding and
receding, dancing with the motion of the ship, and they believed
themselves deserted.

"Quick! Fire on him!" shouted some one. "Let him not escape! Kill
him before he is out of range!"

I never knew which trooper it was who raised that cry, alt

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