Sahib, that barrack was like a zoo—­like the zoo I saw once at Baroda, with animals of all sorts in it!—­a great yellow building within walls, packed with Kurds and Arabs and Syrians of more different tribes than a man would readily believe existed in the whole world.  Few among them could talk any tongue that we knew, but they were full of curiosity and crowded round us to ask questions; and when Gooja Singh shouted aloud that we were Sikhs from India they produced a man who seemed to think he knew about Sikhs, for he stood on a step and harangued them for ten minutes, they listening with all their ears.

Then came a Turk from the German officers’ mess—­we were all standing in the rain in an open court between four walls—­and he told them truly who we were.  Doubtless he added that we were in revolt against the British, for they began to welcome us, shouting and dancing about us, those who could come near enough taking our hands and saying things we could not understand.

Presently they found a man who knew some English, and, urged by them, he began to fill our ears with information.  During our train journey I had amused myself for many weary hours by asking Tugendheim for details of the fighting he had seen and by listening to the strings of lies he thought fit to narrate.  But what Tugendheim had told were almost truths compared to this man’s stories; in place of Tugendheim’s studied vagueness there was detail in such profusion that I can not recall now the hundredth part of it.

He told us the British fleet had long been rusting at the bottom of the sea, and that all the British generals and half the army were prisoners in Berlin.  Already the British were sending tribute money to their conquerors, and the principal reason why the war continued was that the British could not find enough donkeys to carry all the gold to Berlin, and to prevent trickery of any kind the fighting must continue until the last coin should have been counted.

The British and French, he told us, were all to be compelled, at the point of the sword, to turn Muhammadan, and France was being scoured that minute for women to grace the harems of the kaiser and his sons and generals, all of whom had long ago accepted Islam.  The kaiser, indeed, had become the new chief of Islam.

I asked him about the fighting in Gallipoli, and lie said that was a bagatelle.  “When we shall have driven the remnants of those there into the sea,” said he, “one part of us will march to conquer Egypt and the rest will be sent to garrison England and France.”

When he had done and we were all under cover at last I repeated to the men all that this fool had said, and they were very much encouraged; for they reasoned that if the Turks and Germans needed to fill up their men with such lies as those, then they must have a poor case indeed.  With our coats off, and a meal before us, and the mud and rain for-gotten, we all began to feel almost happy; and while we were in that mood Ranjoor Singh came to us with Tugendheim at his heels.