“One comes to us,” said I. I was watching a German sergeant, who had dragged his belongings from that train and was crossing toward us.

“Aye!” said Ranjoor Singh, so that I knew now there had been purpose in his visit.  “Beware of him.”  Then he unlocked the carriage door and waited for the German.  The German came, and cursed the man who bore his baggage, and halted before Ranjoor Singh, staring into his face with a manner of impudence new to me.  Ranjoor Singh spoke about ten words to him in German and the sergeant there and then saluted very respectfully.  I noticed that the German staff officer was watching all this from a little distance, and I think the sergeant caught his eye.

At any rate, the sergeant made his man throw the baggage through our compartment door.  The man returned to the other train.  The sergeant climbed in next to me.  Ranjoor Singh locked the door again, and both trains proceeded.  When our train was beginning to gain speed the newcomer shoved me in the ribs abruptly with his elbow—­thus.

“So much for knowing languages!” said he to me in fairly good Punjabi.  “Curse the day I ever saw India, and triple-curse this system of ours that enabled them to lay finger on me in a moving train and transfer me to this funeral procession!  Curse you, and curse this train, and curse all Asia!” Then he thrust me in the ribs again, as if that were a method of setting aside formality.

“You know Cawnpore?” said he, and I nodded.

“You know the Kaiser-i-hind Saddle Factory?”

I nodded again, being minded to waste no words because of Ranjoor Singh’s warning.

“I took a job as foreman there twenty years ago because the pay was good.  I lived there fifteen years until I was full to the throat of India—­Indian food, Indian women, Indian drinks, Indian heat, Indian smells, Indian everything.  I hated it, and threw up the job in the end.  Said I to myself, ‘Thank God,’ said I, ’to see the last of India.’  And I took passage on a German steamer and drank enough German beer on the way to have floated two ships her size!  Aecht Deutches bier, you understand,” said he, nudging me in the ribs with each word.  Aecht means real, as distinguished from the export stuff in bottles.  “I drank it by the barrel, straight off ice, and it went to my head!

“That must be why I boasted about knowing Indian languages before I had been two hours in port.  I was drunk, and glad to be home, and on the lookout for another job to keep from starving; so I boasted I could speak and write Urdu and Punjabi.  That brought me employment in an export house.  But who would have guessed it would end in my being dragged away from my regiment to march with a lot of Sikhs?  Eh?  Who would have guessed it?  There goes my regiment one way, and here go I another!  What’s our destination?  God knows!  Who are you, and what are you?  God neither knows nor cares!  What’s to be the end of this?  The end of me, I expect—­and all because I got drunk on the way home!  It I get alive out of this,” said he, “I’ll get drunk once for the glory of God and then never touch beer again!”