“Let me go with you!” he urged.  “It will be rope or bullet for me if ever I get back to Germany!”

“Nevertheless,” said Ranjoor Singh, “I promised to deliver you to Wassmuss when we made you prisoner in the first place.  I must keep my word to you!”

“I release you from your word to me!” said Tugendheim.

“And I promised you to the Kurdish chief.”

“The Kurdish chief?” said Tugendheim.  “What of him?  What of it?  Why, why, why—­he is a savage—­scarcely human—­not to be weighed in the scales against a civilized man!  What does such a promise as that amount to?” And he stood tugging at his mustaches as if he would tear them out.

“I have some gold left,” said Ranjoor Singh, when he was sure Tugendheim had no more to say, “and I had seriously thought of buying you for gold from these Kurds.  There may be one of them who would take on himself the responsibility of speaking for his chief.  But since you hold my given word so light as that I must look more nearly to my honor.  Nay, go with the Kurds, Sergeant Tugendheim!”

Tugendheim made a great wail.  He begged for this, and he begged for that.  He begged us to give him a letter to Wassmuss explaining that we had compelled him by threats of torture.  He begged for gold.  And Ranjoor Singh gave him a little gold.  Some of us put in a word for him, for on that long journey he had told many a tale to make us laugh.  He had suffered with us.  He had helped us more than a little by drilling the Syrians, and often his presence with us had saved our skins by convincing Turkish scouts of our bona fides.  We thought of Gooja Singh, and had no wish that Tugendheim should meet a like fate.  So, perhaps because we all begged for him, or perhaps because he so intended in the first place, Ranjoor Singh relented.

“The Persians hereabouts,” he said, “all tell me that a great Russian army will come down presently from the north.  Have I heard correctly that you meditated escape into Russia?”

Tugendheim answered, “How should I reach Russia?”

“That is thy affair!” said Ranjoor Singh.  “But here is more gold,” and he counted out to him ten more golden German coins.  “You must ride back with these Kurds, but I have no authority over them.  They are not my men.  They seem to like gold more than most things.”

So Tugendheim ceased begging for himself and rode away rather despondently in the midst of the Kurds; and we followed about a day and a half behind the German party with their strange box-full of machinery.  There were many of us who could talk Persian, and as we stopped in the villages to beg or buy curdled milk, and as we rounded up the cattle-herdsmen and the women by the wells, we heard many strange and wonderful stories about what the engine in that box could do.  I observed that Ranjoor Singh looked merry-eyed when the wildest stories reached him; but we all began to reflect on the disastrous consequences of letting such crafty people reach Afghanistan.  For, as doubtless the sahib knows, the amir of Afghanistan has a very great army; and if he were to decide that the German side is after all the winning one he might make very much trouble for the government of India.