Part 29 (2/2)

”I understand you wish to reach Afghanistan?” asked Ranjoor Singh.

”That is our eventual destination,” said the German.

”Very well,” said Ranjoor Singh. ”Pack up your machine. Then I will permit your journey to the Afghan border, unhampered by me, on two conditions.”

”What two conditions?” asked the German.

”That your machine shall remain packed up until you reach Afghanistan, and that your doctor shall divide his services until then equally between your men and mine.”

”And after that, what?” asked the German.

”I have nothing to do with Afghanistan,” said Ranjoor Singh. ”Keep the bargain and you are free as far as I am concerned to do what you like when you get there.”

So we had a doctor again at last, for the German agreed to the terms. Not one of us but needed medical aid, and the men were too glad to have their hurts attended, to ask very many questions; but they were certainly surprised, and suspicious of the new arrangement, and I did not dare tell them what I had overheard for fear lest suspicion of Ranjoor Singh be reawakened. I refused even to tell the other daffadars, which caused some slight estrangement between them and me. However, Ranjoor Singh was as conscious of that risk as I, and during all the rest of the long march he kept their camp and ours, their column and ours half an hour's ride apart-sometimes even farther-sometimes half a day apart, to the disgust of the doctor, who had that much more trouble, but with the result of preventing greater friction.

To tell of all that journey across Persia would be but to remember weariness-weariness of horse and men. Sometimes we were attacked; more often we were run away from. We grew sick, our wounds festered and our hearts ached. Horses died and the vultures ate them. Men died, and we buried or burned their bodies according or not as we had fuel. We dried, as it were, like the bone-dry trail we followed, and only Ranjoor Singh's heart was stout; only he was brave; only he had a song on his lips. He coaxed us, and cheered us, and rallied us. The strength of the regiment was but his strength, and as for the other party, who hung on our flank, or lagged behind us or preceded us by half a day, their Kurds deserted by fives and tens until there was scarcely a corporal's guard remaining.

They must have been as weary as we, and as glad as we when at last at the end of a long drawn afternoon, we saw an Afghan sentry.

Has the sahib ever seen an Afghan sentry?

This one was gray and old and sat on his gray pony like a huddled ape with a tattered umbrella over his shoulder and his rifle across his knees. He looked less like a sentry than like a dead man dug up and set there to scare the birds away. But he was efficient, no doubt of that. He had seen us and pa.s.sed on word of us the minute we showed on the sky-line, and the hills all about him were full of armed men waiting to give us a hot reception if necessary and to bar farther progress in any case.

So there we had to camp, just over the Afghan border, but farther apart from the Germans than ever-two, three miles apart, for now it became Ranjoor Singh's policy to know nothing whatever about them. The Afghans provided us with rations and sent us one of their own doctors dressed in the uniform of a tram-car conductor, and their highest official in those parts, whose rank I could not guess because he was arrayed in the costume of a city of London policeman, asked innumerable questions, first of Ranjoor Singh and then of each of us individually. But we conferred together, and stuck to one point, that we knew nothing. Ranjoor Singh did not know better than we. The more he asked the more dumb we became until, perhaps with a view to loosing our tongues, the Afghans who mingled among us in the camp began telling what the Germans were saying and doing on the rise two miles away.

They had their machine set up, said they. They were receiving messages, said they, with this wonderful wireless telegraph of theirs. They kept receiving hourly news of disasters to the Allied arms by land and sea. And we were fearfully disturbed about all this, because we knew how important it must be for India's safety that Afghanistan continue neutral. And why should such savages continue neutral if they were once persuaded that the winning side was that of the Central Powers? Nevertheless, Ranjoor Singh continued to grow more and more contented, and I wondered. Some of the men began to murmur.

In that camp we remained, if I rightly remember, six days. And then came word from Habibullah Kahn, the Afghan amir, that we might draw nearer Khabul. So, keeping our distance from the Germans, we helped one another into the saddle (so weak most of us were by that time) and went forward three days' march. Then we camped again, much closer to the Germans this time, in fact, almost within shouting distance; and they again set up their machine, causing sparks to crackle from the wires of a telescopic tower they raised, to the very great concern of the Afghans who were in and out of both camps all day long. One message that an Afghan told me the Germans had received, was that the British fleet was all sunk and Paris taken. But that sort of message seemed to me familiar, so that I was not so depressed by it as my Afghan informant had hoped. He went off to procure yet more appalling news to bring me, and no doubt was accommodated. I should have had burning ears, but that about that time, their amir came, Habibullah Kahn, looking like a European in his neatly fitting clothes, but surrounded by a staff of officers dressed in greater variety of uniforms than one would have believed to exist. He had brought with him his engineers to view this wonderful machine, but before approaching either camp-perhaps to show impartiality-he sent for the German chief and one, and for Ranjoor Singh and one. So, since the German took his doctor, Ranjoor Singh took me, he and I both riding, and the amir graciously excusing me from dismounting when I had made him my salaam and he had learned the nature of the wound.

After some talk, the amir asked us bluntly whence we came and what our business might be, and Ranjoor Singh answered him we were escaped prisoners of war. Then he turned on the German, and the German told him that because the British had seen fit to cut off Afghanistan from all true news of what was happening in the world outside, therefore the German government, knowing well the open mind and bravery and wisdom of the amir and his subjects, had sent himself at very great trouble and expense to receive true messages from Europe and so acquaint with the true state of affairs a ruler and people with whom Germany desired before all things to be on friendly terms.

After that we all went down in a body-perhaps a hundred men, with the amir at our head, to the German camp; and there the German and his officers displayed the machine to the amir, who, with a dozen of his staff around him, appeared more amused than astonished.

So the Germans set their machine in motion. The sparks made much crackling from the wires, at which the amir laughed aloud. Presently the German chief read off a message from Berlin, conveying the kaiser's compliments to his highness, the amir.

”Is that message from Berlin?” the amir asked, and I thought I heard one of his officers chuckle.

”Yes, Your Highness,” said the German officer.

”Is it not relayed from anywhere?” the amir asked, and the German stared at him swiftly-thus, as if for the first time his own suspicion were aroused.

”From Stamboul, Your Highness-relayed from Stamboul,” he said, as one who makes concessions.

The amir chuckled softly to himself and smiled.

”These are my engineers,” said he, ”all college trained. They tell me our wireless installation at Khabul, which connects us through Simla with Calcutta and the world beyond, is a very good one, yet it will only reach to Simla, although I should say it is a hundred times as large as yours, and although we have an enormous dynamo to give the energy as against your box of batteries.”

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