"Shall I open the little bag, sahib?" he asked.
King shook his head.
Ismail shook the bag.
"The sound is as of things of much importance all disordered," he said sagely. "It might be well to rearrange."
"Put it over there!" King ordered. "Set it down!"
Ismail obeyed and King laid his book down to light another of his black cheroots. The theme of antiseptics ceased to exercise its charm over him. He peeled off his tunic, changed his shirt and lay back in sweet contentment. Headed for the "Hills," who would not be contented, who had been born in their very shadow?—in their shadow, of a line of Britons who have all been buried there!
"The day after to-morrow I'll see snow!" he promised himself. And Ismail, grinning with yellow teeth through a gap in his wayward beard, understood and sympathized.
Forward in the third-class carriages the prisoners hugged themselves and crooned as they met old landmarks and recognized the changing scenery. There was a new cleaner tang in the hot wind that spoke of the "Hills" and home!
Delhi had drawn them as Monte Carlo attracts the gamblers of all Europe. But Delhi had spewed them out again, and oh! how exquisite the promise of the "Hills" was, and the thunder of the train that hurried—the bumping wheels that sang Himahlayas—Himahlyas!—the air that blew in on them unscented—the reawakened memory—the heart's desire for the cold and the snow and the cruelty—the dark nights and the shrieking storms and the savagery of the Land of the Knife ahead!
The journey to Peshawur, that ought to have been wearisome because they were everlastingly shunted into sidings to make way for roaring south-bound troop trains and kept waiting at every wayside station because the trains ahead of them were blocked three deep, was no less than a jubilee progress!
Not a packed-in regiment went by that was not howled at by King's prisoners as if they were blood-brothers of every man in it. Many an officer whom King knew waved to him from a passing train.
"Meet you in Berlin!" was a favorite greeting. And after that they would shout to him for news and be gone before King could answer.
Many a man, at stations where the sidings were all full and nothing less than miracles seemed able to release the wedged-in trains, came and paced up and down a platform side by side with King. From them he received opinions, but no sympathy to speak of.
"Got to stay in India? Hard lines!" Then the conversation would be bluntly changed, for in the height of one's enthusiasm it is not decent to hurt another fellow's feelings. Simple, simple as a little child is the clean-clipped British officer. "Look at that babu, now. Don't you think he's a marvel? Don't you think the Indian babu's a marvel? Sixty a month is more than the beggar gets, and there he goes, doing two jobs and straightening out tangled trains into the bargain! Isn't he a wonder, King?"
"India's a wonderful country," King would answer, that being one of his stock remarks. And to his credit be it written that he never laughed at one of them. He let them think they were more fortunate than he, with manlier, bloodier work to do.
Peshawur, when they reached it at last, looked dusty and bleak in the comfortless light of Northern dawn. But the prisoners crowed and crooned it a greeting, and there was not much grumbling when King refused to unlock their compartment doors. Having waited thus long, they could endure a few more hours in patience, now that they could see and smell their "Hills" at last.
And there was the general again, not in a dog-cart this time, but furiously driven in a motor-car, roaring and clattering into the station less than two minutes after the train arrived. He was out of the car, for all his age and weight, before it had come to a stand. He took one steady look at King and then at the prisoners before he returned King's salute.
"Good!" he said. And then, as if that were not enough: "Excellent! Don't let 'em out, though, to chew the rag with people on the platform. Keep 'em in!"
"They're locked in, sir."
"Excellent! Come and walk up and down with me."
