Once we were well into Persia we bought food right and left, paying fabulous prices for it with gold from our looted chests.  Here and there we traded a plundered rifle for a new horse, sometimes two new horses.  Here and there a wounded man would die and we would burn his body (for now there was fuel in plenty).  Day after day, night after night, Ranjoor Singh kept in the saddle, hunting tirelessly for news of the party of Germans on ahead of us.  Their track was clear as daylight, and on the fifth day (or was it the sixth) after we entered Persia he learned at last that we were only a day or two behind them.  Like us, they were in a hurry; but unlike us, they had no Ranjoor Singh to force the pace and do the scouting, so that for all their long lead we were overtaking them.

Like us, they seemed wary of the public eye, for they followed lonely routes among the wooded foothills; but their Kurdish horsemen left a track no blind man could have missed, and although they plundered a little as they went, they spent gold, too, like water, so that the villagers were in a strange mood.  Most of the plundering was done by their Kurdish escort who, it seemed, kept returning to steal the money paid by the Germans for provisions.  Sometimes when we offered gold we would be mocked.  But on the whole, we began to have an easy time of it—­all but the wounded, who suffered tortures from the pace we held.  We secured some carts at one village and put our wounded in them, but the carts were springless, and there were no roads at all, so that it was better in those days to be a dead man than a sick or wounded one!  There was no malingering!

After a few days (I forget how many, for who can remember all the days and distances of that long march?) Abraham got word of a great Christian mission station where thousands of Christians had sought safety under the American flag.  He and his Syrians elected to try their fortune there, and we let them go, all of us saluting Abraham, for he was a good brave man, fearful, but able to overcome his fear, and intelligent far beyond the ordinary.  We let the Syrians take their rifles and some ammunition with them, because Abraham said they might be called on perhaps to help defend the mission.

Not long after that, we let our Kurds go, giving up our Turkish officer prisoners and Tugendheim as well.  We all knew by that time what our final goal was, and Tugendheim begged to be allowed to go with us all the way.  But Ranjoor Singh refused him.

“I promised you to the Kurd, and the Kurd will trade you to Wassmuss against his brother,” he said.  “Tell Wassmuss whatever lies you like, and make your peace with your own folk however you can.  Here is your paper back.”

Tugendheim took the paper. (You remember, sahib, he had signed a receipt in conjunction with the Turkish mate and captain of that ship in which we escaped from Stamboul.) Well, he took the paper back, and burned it in the little fire by which I was sitting facing Ranjoor Singh.