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