flying in Gungapur when the Great European
Armageddon commenced, and should fly over a centre, and a shelter, for
Mrs. Dearman, and for all who were loyal and true.

That would be a work worthy of the English blood of him and of the
Pathan blood too. God! he would show some of these devious,
subterranean, cowardly swine what war _is_, if they brought war to
Gungapur in the hour of India's danger and need, the hour of England and
the Empire's danger and need.

And Captain John Robin Ross-Ellison (and still more Mir Ilderim Dost
Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan), obsessed with the belief that a
different and more terrible 1857 would dawn with the first big reverse
in England's final war with her systematic, slow, sure, and certain
rival, her deliberate, scientific, implacable rival, gave all his
thoughts, abilities and time to the enthralling, engrossing game of
Getting Ready.

Perfecting his local system of secret information, hearing and seeing
all that he could with his own Pathan ears and eyes, and adding to his
knowledge by means of those of the Somali slave, he also learnt, at
first hand, what certain men were saying in Cabul and on the Border--and
what those men say in those places is worth knowing by the meteorologist
of world-politics. The pulse of the heart of Europe can be felt very far
from that heart, and as is the wrist to the pulse-feeling doctor, is
Afghanistan and the Border to the head of India's Political Department;
as is the doctor's sensitive thumb to the doctor's brain, is the tried,
trusted and approven agent of the Secret Service to the Head of all the
Politicals.... What chiefly troubled Captain John Robin Ross-Ellison of
the Gungapur Fusiliers was the shocking condition of those same
Fusiliers and the blind smug apathy, the fatuous contentment, the short
memories and shorter sight, of the British Pompeians who were perfectly
willing that the condition of the said Fusiliers should remain so.

Clearly the first step towards a decently reliable and efficient corps
in Gungapur was the abolition of the present one, and, with unformulated
intentions towards its abolition, Mr. Ross-Ellison, by the kind
influence of Mrs. Dearman, joined as a Second Lieutenant and speedily
rose to the rank of Captain and the command of a Company. A year's
indefatigable work convinced him that he might as well endeavour to
fashion sword-blades from leaden pipes as to make a fighting unit of his
gang of essentially coward