We had two Kurds to show us the way, and, I suppose because our enemies had had enough of it, we were not fired on once, going or coming.  Our train of mules clattered and stumbled and our Syrians kept losing themselves and yelling to be found again.  Weary men and animals ever make more noise than fresh ones; frightened men more than either, and we were so dead weary by the time we got back that my horse fell under me by Ranjoor Singh’s side.

Of all the nights I ever lived through, except those last we spent in the trench in Flanders before our surrender, that was the worst.  Hunger and cold and fear and weariness all wrought their worst with me; yet I had to set an example to the men.  My horse, as I have told, fell beside Ranjoor Singh; he dragged me to my feet, and I fell again, dizzy with misery and aching bones.  Yet it was beginning to be dawn then, and we had to be up and off again.  Our dead were buried; our wounded were bound up; the Kurds would be likely to begin on us again at any minute; there was nothing to wait there for.  We left little fires burning above the long grave (for our men had brought all our dead along with them, although our Kurdish friends left theirs behind them) and I took one of the captured horses, and Ranjoor Singh although we captured one apiece—­which is all a man can manage besides his own and a rifle.

By that time it was three in the afternoon already and the pass forked about a dozen different ways, so that we lost the Kurds at last, they scattering to right and left and shooting at us at long range from the crags higher up.  We were all dead beat, and the horses, too, so we rested, the Kurds continuing to fire at us, but doing no damage.  They fired until dusk.

Our own three hundred Kurdish friends were not very far behind Ranjoor Singh, and I observed when they came up with us presently that he took up position down the pass behind them.  They were too fond of loot to be trusted between us and that gold!  They were so burdened with plunder that some of them could scarcely ride their horses.  Several had as many as three rifles each, and they had found great bundles of food and blankets where the enemy’s horses had been tethered.  Their plundering had cost them dear, for they had exposed themselves recklessly to get what their eyes lusted for.  They had lost more than fifty men.  But we had lost more than twenty killed, and there was a very long tale of wounded, so that Ranjoor Singh looked serious as he called the roll.  The Greek doctor had to work that night as if his own life depended on it—­as in fact it did!  We made Tugendheim help him, for, like all German soldiers, he knew something of first aid.

Then, because the Kurds could not be trusted on such an errand, Ranjoor Singh sent me back with fifty men to bring on the Syrians and our mules and belongings, and the gold.  He gave me Chatar Singh