We were up and away at dawn, with all the dogs in Asia at our heels.  They smelled our stale bread and yearned for it.  It was more than an hour before the last one gave up hope and fell behind.  They are hard times, sahib, when the street dogs are as hungry as those were.

Hunger!  We met hunger day after day for eight days—­hunger and nothing else, although it was good enough land—­better than any I have seen in the Punjab.  There was water everywhere.  The air, too, was good to breathe, tempting us to fill our lungs and march like new men, yet causing appetite we could not assuage.  We avoided towns, and all large villages, Ranjoor Singh consulting his map whenever we halted and marching by the little compass the Germans had given him.  We should have seen sheep or goats or cattle had there been any; but there was none.  Utterly not one!  And we Sikhs are farmers, not easily deceived on such matters; we knew that to be grazing land we crossed.  It was a land of fruit, too, in the proper season.  There had been cattle by the thousand, but they were all gone—­plundered by the Turks to feed their armies.

Ranjoor Singh did his best to make us husband our stale loaves, but we ate the last of them and became like famished wolves.  Some of us grew footsore, for we had German boots, to which our feet were not yet thoroughly accustomed, but he gave us no more rest than he needed for his own refreshment—­and that was wonderfully little.  We had to nurse and bandage our feet as best we could, and march—­ march—­march!  He had a definite plan, for he led unhesitatingly, but he would not tell us the plan.  He was stern when we begged for longer rests, merciless toward the ammunition bearers, silent at all times unless compelled to give orders or correct us.  Most of the time he kept Tugendheim marching beside him, and Tugendheim, I think, began to regard him with quite peculiar respect; for he admired resolution.

Most of us felt that our last day of marching was upon us, for we were ready to drop when we skirted a village at about noon on the eighth day and saw in the distance a citadel perched on a rocky hill above the sky-line.  We were on flat land, but there was a knoll near, and to that Ranjoor Singh led us, and there he let us lie.  He, weary as we but better able to overcome, drew out his map and spread it, weighting the four corners with stones; and he studied it chin on hand for about five minutes, we watching him in silence.

“That,” said he, standing at last and pointing toward the distant citadel, “is Angora.  Yonder” (he made a sweeping motion) “runs the railway whose terminus is at Angora.  There are many long roads hereabouts, so that the place has become a depot for food and stores that the Turks plunder and the Germans despatch over the railway to the coast.  The railway has been taken over by the Germans.”

“Are we to storm the town?” asked a trooper, and fifty men mocked him.  But Ranjoor Singh looked down kindly at him and gave him a word of praise.