"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.