offered to sell to Ranjoor Singh. I did not overhear what price he
asked, but I heard the men scoffing at such avarice as would rob the
vultures. He went away saying nothing, like a man in stupor, leaving
the horse to die. Nay, sahib, he had not understood the words.

We slept that first night in a village whose one street was a
quagmire and a cesspool. There was no difficulty in finding shelter
because so many of the houses were deserted; but the few inhabitants
of the other houses could not be persuaded to produce food. Ranjoor
Singh took their money away from, the four men whom I had overlooked
when we all gave up our money on the steamer, and with that, and
Tugendheim for extra argument, he went from house to house.
Tugendheim used no tenderness, such being not his manner of
approach, but nothing came of it. They may have had food hidden, but
we ate stale bread and gave them some of it, although Ranjoor Singh
forbade us when he saw what we were doing. He thought I had not been
looking when he gave some of his own to a little one.

We were up and away at dawn, with all the dogs in Asia at our heels.
They smelled our stale bread and yearned for it. It was more than an
hour before the last one gave up hope and fell behind. They are hard
times, sahib, when the street dogs are as hungry as those were.

Hunger! We met hunger day after day for eight days--hunger and
nothing else, although it was good enough land--better than any I
have seen in the Punjab. There was water everywhere. The air, too,
was good to breathe, tempting us to fill our lungs and march like
new men, yet causing appetite we could not assuage. We avoided
towns, and all large villages, Ranjoor Singh consulting his map
whenever we halted and marching by the little compass the Germans
had given him. We should have seen sheep or goats or cattle had
there been any; but there was none. Utterly not one! And we Sikhs
are farmers, not easily deceived on such matters; we knew that to be
grazing land we crossed. It was a land of fruit, too, in the proper
season. There had been cattle by the thousand, but they were all
gone--plundered by the Turks to feed their armies.

Ranjoor Singh did his best to make us husband our stale loaves, but
we ate the last of them and became like famished wolves. Some of us
grew footsore, for we had German boots, to which our feet were not
yet thoroughly accustomed, but he gave us no more rest than he
needed for his own refreshment-