And now there was no longer any doubt that the machine slung in the box between two mules was a wireless telegraph, and that most of the other mules were loaded with accessories.  The tales we heard could not be made to tally with any other explanation.  And what, said we, was to prevent the Germans in Stamboul from signaling whatever lies they could invent to this party in Afghanistan, supposing they should ever reach the country?  Yet when we argued thus with Ranjoor Singh, he laughed.

And then, after about a week of marching, came Tugendheim back to us, ragged and thirsty and nearly dead, on a horse more dead than he.  He had bought himself free from the Kurds with the gold Ranjoor Singh gave him; but because he had no more gold the Persians had refused to feed him.  “How should he find his way alone to meet the Russians,” he said, “whose scouts would probably shoot him on sight in any case?” So we laughed, and let him rest among our wounded and be one of us,—­aye, one of us; for who were we to turn him away to starve?  He had served us well, and he served us well again.

Has the sahib heard of Bakhtiari Khans?  They are people as fierce as Kurds, who live like the Kurds by plundering.  The Germans ahead of us, doubtless because Persia is neutral in this war and therefore they had no conceivable right to be crossing the country, chose a route that avoided all towns and cities of considerable size.  And Persia seems to have no army any more, so that there was no official opposition.  But the Bakhtiari Khans received word of what was doing, and after that there were new problems.  But for the fact that Tugendheim was with us in his ragged German uniform we should have had more trouble than we did.

At first the Khans were content with blackmail, holding up the Germans at intervals and demanding money.  But I suppose that finally their money all gave out, and then the Kahns put threats into practise.  But before actual skirmishing began the Khans would come to us, after getting money from the Germans, and it was only the fact that we had Tugendheim to show that convinced them we belonged to the party ahead.  Ranjoor Singh claimed that our transit fee had been paid for us already, and the Khans did not deny it.

But they caught up the Germans again and demanded money from them because of us who were following, and I have laughed many a time to think of the predicament that put them in.  For could they deny all knowledge of us?  In that case they might he denying useful allies in their hour of need.  If the Bakhtiari Khans should annihilate us their own fate would not be likely to tremble in the balance very long.  Yet if they admitted knowledge of us, what might that not lead to?  And how was it possible for them to know really who we were in any case?

Finally, they sent one of their Kurdish servants back to find us and ask questions.  And to him we showed Tugendheim, and spoke to him at great length in Persian, of which he understood very little; so that when he overtook his own party again (if he ever did, for the Khans were on the prowl and very cruel and savage), they may have been more in the dark about us than ever.