As for me, I kept open mind and watched.  It is the non-commissioned officer’s affair to herd the men for his officer to lead.  To have argued with them or have suggested alternative possibilities would have been only to enrage them and make them deaf to wise counsels when the proper time should come.  And, besides, I knew no more what Ranjoor Singh had in mind than a dead man knows of the weather.  We marched through the streets, and marched, stared at silently, neither cheered nor mocked by the inhabitants; and Ranjoor Singh arrived at his own conclusions.  Five several times during that one day he halted us in the mud at a certain place along the water-front, although there was a better place near by; and while we rested he asked peculiar questions, and the Turk boasted to him, explaining many things.

We were exhausted when it fell dark and we climbed up the hill again to barracks.  Yet as we entered the barrack gate I heard Ranjoor Singh tell a German officer in English that we had all greatly enjoyed our view of the city and the exercise.  I repeated what I had heard while the men were at supper, and they began to wonder greatly.

“Such a lie!” said they.

“That surely was a lie?” I asked, and they answered that the man who truly had enjoyed such tramping to and fro was no soldier but a mud-fish.

“Then, if he lies to them,” I said, “perhaps he tells us the truth after all.”

They howled at me, calling me a man without understanding.  Yet when I went away I left them thinking, each man for himself, and that was good.  I went to change the guard, for some of our men were put on sentry-go that night outside the officers’ quarters, in spite of our utter weariness.  We were smarter than the Kurds, and German officers like smartness.

Weary though Ranjoor Singh must have been, he sat late with the German officers, for the most part keeping silence while they talked.  I made excuse to go and speak with him half a dozen times, and the last time I could hardly find him among the wreaths of cigarette smoke.

“Sahib, must we really stay a week in this hole?” I asked.  “So say the Germans,” said he.

“Are we to be paraded through the streets each day?” I asked.

“I understand that to be the plan,” he answered.

“Then the men will mutiny!” said I.

“Nay!” said he, “let them seek better cause than that!”

“Shall I tell them so?” said I, and he looked into my eyes through the smoke as if he would read down into my very heart.

“Aye!” said he at last.  “You may tell them so!”

So I went and shook some of the men awake and told them, and when they had done being angry they laughed at me.  Then those awoke the others, and soon they all had the message.  On the whole, it bewildered them, even as it did me, so that few dared offer an opinion and each began thinking for himself again.  By morning they were in a mood to await developments.  They were even willing to tramp the streets; but Ranjoor Singh procured us a day’s rest.  He himself spent most of the day with the German officers, poring over maps and talking.  I went to speak with him as often as I could invent excuse, and I became familiar with the word Wassmuss that they used very frequently.  I heard the word so many times that I could not forget it if I tried.