der, but farther
apart from the Germans than ever--two, three miles apart, for now it
became Ranjoor Singh's policy to know nothing whatever about them.
The Afghans provided us with rations and sent us one of their own
doctors dressed in the uniform of a tram-car conductor, and their
highest official in those parts, whose rank I could not guess
because he was arrayed in the costume of a city of London policeman,
asked innumerable questions, first of Ranjoor Singh and then of each
of us individually. But we conferred together, and stuck to one
point, that we knew nothing. Ranjoor Singh did not know better than
we. The more he asked the more dumb we became until, perhaps with a
view to loosing our tongues, the Afghans who mingled among us in the
camp began telling what the Germans were saying and doing on the
rise two miles away.

They had their machine set up, said they. They were receiving
messages, said they, with this wonderful wireless telegraph of
theirs. They kept receiving hourly news of disasters to the Allied
arms by land and sea. And we were fearfully disturbed about all
this, because we knew how important it must be for India's safety
that Afghanistan continue neutral. And why should such savages
continue neutral if they were once persuaded that the winning side
was that of the Central Powers? Nevertheless, Ranjoor Singh
continued to grow more and more contented, and I wondered. Some of
the men began to murmur.

In that camp we remained, if I rightly remember, six days. And then
came word from Habibullah Kahn, the Afghan amir, that we might draw
nearer Khabul. So, keeping our distance from the Germans, we helped
one another into the saddle (so weak most of us were by that time)
and went forward three days' march. Then we camped again, much
closer to the Germans this time, in fact, almost within shouting
distance; and they again set up their machine, causing sparks to
crackle from the wires of a telescopic tower they raised, to the
very great concern of the Afghans who were in and out of both camps
all day long. One message that an Afghan told me the Germans had
received, was that the British fleet was all sunk and Paris taken.
But that sort of message seemed to me familiar, so that I was not so
depressed by it as my Afghan informant had hoped. He went off to
procure yet more appalling news to bring me, and no doubt was
accommodated. I should have had burning ears, but that about that
time, their amir came,