Books: Hira Singh
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Talbot Mundy >> Hira Singh
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Once we were well into Persia we bought food right and left, paying
fabulous prices for it with gold from our looted chests. Here and
there we traded a plundered rifle for a new horse, sometimes two new
horses. Here and there a wounded man would die and we would burn his
body (for now there was fuel in plenty). Day after day, night after
night, Ranjoor Singh kept in the saddle, hunting tirelessly for news
of the party of Germans on ahead of us. Their track was clear as
daylight, and on the fifth day (or was it the sixth) after we
entered Persia he learned at last that we were only a day or two
behind them. Like us, they were in a hurry; but unlike us, they had
no Ranjoor Singh to force the pace and do the scouting, so that for
all their long lead we were overtaking them.
Like us, they seemed wary of the public eye, for they followed
lonely routes among the wooded foothills; but their Kurdish horsemen
left a track no blind man could have missed, and although they
plundered a little as they went, they spent gold, too, like water,
so that the villagers were in a strange mood. Most of the plundering
was done by their Kurdish escort who, it seemed, kept returning to
steal the money paid by the Germans for provisions. Sometimes when
we offered gold we would be mocked. But on the whole, we began to
have an easy time of it--all but the wounded, who suffered tortures
from the pace we held. We secured some carts at one village and put
our wounded in them, but the carts were springless, and there were
no roads at all, so that it was better in those days to be a dead
man than a sick or wounded one! There was no malingering!
After a few days (I forget how many, for who can remember all the
days and distances of that long march?) Abraham got word of a great
Christian mission station where thousands of Christians had sought
safety under the American flag. He and his Syrians elected to try
their fortune there, and we let them go, all of us saluting Abraham,
for he was a good brave man, fearful, but able to overcome his fear,
and intelligent far beyond the ordinary. We let the Syrians take
their rifles and some ammunition with them, because Abraham said
they might be called on perhaps to help defend the mission.
Not long after that, we let our Kurds go, giving up our Turkish
officer prisoners and Tugendheim as well. We all knew by that time
what our final goal was, and Tugendheim begged to be allowed to go
with us all the way. But Ranjoor Singh refused him.
"I promised you to the Kurd, and the Kurd will trade you to Wassmuss
against his brother," he said. "Tell Wassmuss whatever lies you
like, and make your peace with your own folk however you can. Here
is your paper back."
Tugendheim took the paper. (You remember, sahib, he had signed a
receipt in conjunction with the Turkish mate and captain of that
ship in which we escaped from Stamboul.) Well, he took the paper
back, and burned it in the little fire by which I was sitting facing
Ranjoor Singh.
"Let me go with you!" he urged. "It will be rope or bullet for me if
ever I get back to Germany!"
"Nevertheless," said Ranjoor Singh, "I promised to deliver you to
Wassmuss when we made you prisoner in the first place. I must keep
my word to you!"
"I release you from your word to me!" said Tugendheim.
"And I promised you to the Kurdish chief."
"The Kurdish chief?" said Tugendheim. "What of him? What of it? Why,
why, why--he is a savage--scarcely human--not to be weighed in the
scales against a civilized man! What does such a promise as that
amount to?" And he stood tugging at his mustaches as if he would
tear them out.
"I have some gold left," said Ranjoor Singh, when he was sure
Tugendheim had no more to say, "and I had seriously thought of
buying you for gold from these Kurds. There may be one of them who
would take on himself the responsibility of speaking for his chief.
But since you hold my given word so light as that I must look more
nearly to my honor. Nay, go with the Kurds, Sergeant Tugendheim!"
Tugendheim made a great wail. He begged for this, and he begged for
that. He begged us to give him a letter to Wassmuss explaining that
we had compelled him by threats of torture. He begged for gold. And
Ranjoor Singh gave him a little gold. Some of us put in a word for
him, for on that long journey he had told many a tale to make us
laugh. He had suffered with us. He had helped us more than a little
by drilling the Syrians, and often his presence with us had saved
our skins by convincing Turkish scouts of our bona fides. We thought
of Gooja Singh, and had no wish that Tugendheim should meet a like
fate. So, perhaps because we all begged for him, or perhaps because
he so intended in the first place, Ranjoor Singh relented.
"The Persians hereabouts," he said, "all tell me that a great
Russian army will come down presently from the north. Have I heard
correctly that you meditated escape into Russia?"
Tugendheim answered, "How should I reach Russia?"
"That is thy affair!" said Ranjoor Singh. "But here is more gold,"
and he counted out to him ten more golden German coins. "You must
ride back with these Kurds, but I have no authority over them. They
are not my men. They seem to like gold more than most things."
So Tugendheim ceased begging for himself and rode away rather
despondently in the midst of the Kurds; and we followed about a day
and a half behind the German party with their strange box-full of
machinery. There were many of us who could talk Persian, and as we
stopped in the villages to beg or buy curdled milk, and as we
rounded up the cattle-herdsmen and the women by the wells, we heard
many strange and wonderful stories about what the engine in that box
could do. I observed that Ranjoor Singh looked merry-eyed when the
wildest stories reached him; but we all began to reflect on the
disastrous consequences of letting such crafty people reach
Afghanistan. For, as doubtless the sahib knows, the amir of
Afghanistan has a very great army; and if he were to decide that the
German side is after all the winning one he might make very much
trouble for the government of India.
And now there was no longer any doubt that the machine slung in the
box between two mules was a wireless telegraph, and that most of the
other mules were loaded with accessories. The tales we heard could
not be made to tally with any other explanation. And what, said we,
was to prevent the Germans in Stamboul from signaling whatever lies
they could invent to this party in Afghanistan, supposing they
should ever reach the country? Yet when we argued thus with Ranjoor
Singh, he laughed.
And then, after about a week of marching, came Tugendheim back to
us, ragged and thirsty and nearly dead, on a horse more dead than
he. He had bought himself free from the Kurds with the gold Ranjoor
Singh gave him; but because he had no more gold the Persians had
refused to feed him. "How should he find his way alone to meet the
Russians," he said, "whose scouts would probably shoot him on sight
in any case?" So we laughed, and let him rest among our wounded and
be one of us,--aye, one of us; for who were we to turn him away to
starve? He had served us well, and he served us well again.
Has the sahib heard of Bakhtiari Khans? They are people as fierce as
Kurds, who live like the Kurds by plundering. The Germans ahead of
us, doubtless because Persia is neutral in this war and therefore
they had no conceivable right to be crossing the country, chose a
route that avoided all towns and cities of considerable size. And
Persia seems to have no army any more, so that there was no official
opposition. But the Bakhtiari Khans received word of what was doing,
and after that there were new problems. But for the fact that
Tugendheim was with us in his ragged German uniform we should have
had more trouble than we did.
At first the Khans were content with blackmail, holding up the
Germans at intervals and demanding money. But I suppose that finally
their money all gave out, and then the Kahns put threats into
practise. But before actual skirmishing began the Khans would come
to us, after getting money from the Germans, and it was only the
fact that we had Tugendheim to show that convinced them we belonged
to the party ahead. Ranjoor Singh claimed that our transit fee had
been paid for us already, and the Khans did not deny it.
But they caught up the Germans again and demanded money from them
because of us who were following, and I have laughed many a time to
think of the predicament that put them in. For could they deny all
knowledge of us? In that case they might he denying useful allies in
their hour of need. If the Bakhtiari Khans should annihilate us
their own fate would not be likely to tremble in the balance very
long. Yet if they admitted knowledge of us, what might that not lead
to? And how was it possible for them to know really who we were in
any case?
Finally, they sent one of their Kurdish servants back to find us and
ask questions. And to him we showed Tugendheim, and spoke to him at
great length in Persian, of which he understood very little; so that
when he overtook his own party again (if he ever did, for the Khans
were on the prowl and very cruel and savage), they may have been
more in the dark about us than ever.
At last the Bakhtiari Khans began guerrilla warfare, and the Kurds
who were escorting the Germans retaliated by burning and plundering
the villages by which they passed--which incensed the Khans yet
more, because they did not belong to that part of Persia and had
counted on the plunder for themselves. From time to time we caught a
Bakhtiari Khan, and though they spoke poor Persian, some of us could
understand them. They explained that the Persian government, being
very weak, made use of them to terrorize whatever section of the
country seemed rebellious--surely a sad way to govern a land!
There were not very many of the Khans. They are used to raiding in
parties of thirty to fifty, or perhaps a hundred. I think there were
not many more of them than of the German party and us combined; and
at that the Bakhtiari Khans were all divided into independent
troops. So that the danger was not so serious as it seemed. But
guerrilla warfare is very trying to the nerves, and if we had not
had Ranjoor Singh to lead us we should have failed in the end; for
we were fighting in a strange land, with no base to fall back on and
nothing to do but press forward.
The Kurds, too, who escorted the Germans, began to grow sick of it.
Little parties of them began to pass us on their way home, giving us
a wide berth, but passing close enough, nevertheless, to get some
sort of protection from our proximity, and the numbers of those
parties grew and grew until we laughed at the thought of what
anxiety the Germans must be suffering. Yet Ranjoor Singh grew
anxious, too, for the Khans grew bolder. It began to look as if
neither Germans nor we would ever reach half-way to the Afghan
border. Ranjoor Singh was the finest leader men could have, but we
were being sniped eternally, men falling wounded here and there
until scarcely one of us but had a hurt of some kind--to say nothing
of our sick. Men grew sick from bad food, and unaccustomed food, and
hard riding and exposure. Our little Greek doctor took sick and
died, and we had nothing but ignorance left with which to treat our
ailments. We began to be a sorry-looking regiment indeed.
Nevertheless, the ignorance helped, for at least we did not know how
serious our wounds were. I myself received one bullet that passed
through both ankles, and it is not likely I shall ever walk again
without a limp. Yet if I can ride what does that matter so long as
the government has horses? And if a man limps in both feet wherein
is he the loser? Mine was a slight wound compared to some of them.
We had come to a poor pass, but Ranjoor Singh's good sense saved the
day again.
There came a day when the Bakhtiari Khans gave us a terrible last
attention and then left us--as it turned out for good (although we
did not know then it was for good). We watched their dust as their
different troops gathered together and rode away southward. I
suppose they had received word of better opportunity for plunder
somewhere else; they took little but hard knocks from us, and
doubtless any change was welcome. When we had seen the last of them,
and had watched the vultures swoop down on a horse they had left
behind, we took new heart and rode on; and it so happened that the
Germans chose that occasion for a rest. Their dwindling Kurdish
escort was growing mutinous and they took advantage of a village
with high mud walls to get behind cover and try to reestablish
confidence. Perhaps they, too, saw the Bakhtiari Khans retiring in
the distance, for we were close behind them at that time--so close
that even with tired horses we came on them before they could man
the village wall. We knocked a hole in the wall and had a good wide
breach established in no time, to save ourselves trouble in case the
gates should prove too strongly held; and leaving Anim Singh posted
in the breach with his troop, Ranjoor Singh sent a trooper with a
white flag to the main gate.
After ten or fifteen minutes the German commanding officer rode out,
also with a white flag, and not knowing that Ranjoor Singh knew
German, he spoke English. (Tugendheim had taken his tunic off and--
all sweaty and trembling had hidden behind the ranks disguised with
a cloth tied about his head.) I sat my horse beside Ranjoor Singh,
so I heard all.
"Persia is neutral territory!" said the German.
"Are you, then, neutral?" asked Ranjoor Singh.
"Are you?" asked the German. He was a handsome bullet-headed man
with a bold eye, and I knew that to browbeat or trick him would be
no easy matter. Nevertheless he still had so many Kurds at his back
that I doubted our ability to get the better of him in a fight,
considering our condition.
"I could be neutral if I saw fit," answered Ranjoor Singh, and the
German's eyes glittered.
"If you are neutral, ride on then!" he laughed. I saw his eye teeth.
It was a mean laugh.
"What are you doing here?" asked Ranjoor Singh.
"Minding my business," said the German pointedly.
"Then I will mind mine and investigate," said Ranjoor Singh, and he
turned to me as if to give an order, at which the German changed his
tactics in a hurry.
"My business is simple," said the German. "Perfectly simple and
perfectly neutral. We have a wireless installation with us. It is
all ready to set up in this village. In a few moments we shall be
receiving messages from Europe, and then we shall inform the
inhabitants of these parts how matters stand. As neutrals they are
entitled to that information." Their eyes met, each seeking to read
the other's mind, and the German misunderstood, as most Germans I
have met do misunderstand.
"Before we can receive a message we shall send one," said the
German. "Before I came out to meet you, I gave the order to get in
touch with Constantinople and signal this: That we are being
interfered with and our lives are endangered on neutral territory by
troops belonging to British India, and therefore that all British
Indian prisoners-of-war in Germany should be made hostages for our
safety. That means," he went on, "that unless we signal every day
that all is well, a number of your countrymen in Germany
corresponding to the number of my party will be lined up against a
wall and shot."
"So that message has been sent?" asked Ranjoor Singh.
"Yes," said the German.
"Then send this message also," said Ranjoor Singh: "That the end has
certainly come. Then close up your machine because unless you wish
to fight for your existence there will be no more messages sent or
received by you between here and Afghanistan."
I thought that a strange message for Ranjoor Singh to bid him send.
I did not believe that one of us, however weary, was willing to
accept relief at the price of our friends' lives. Nevertheless, I
said nothing, having learned it is not wise to draw too swift
conclusions when Ranjoor Singh directs the strategy.
But the German evidently thought so, too, for his eyes looked
startled, and I took comfort from that.
"I understand you wish to reach Afghanistan?" asked Ranjoor Singh.
"That is our eventual destination," said the German.
"Very well," said Ranjoor Singh. "Pack up your machine. Then I will
permit your journey to the Afghan border, unhampered by me, on two
conditions."
"What two conditions?" asked the German.
"That your machine shall remain packed up until you reach
Afghanistan, and that your doctor shall divide his services until
then equally between your men and mine."
"And after that, what?" asked the German.
"I have nothing to do with Afghanistan," said Ranjoor Singh. "Keep
the bargain and you are free as far as I am concerned to do what you
like when you get there."
So we had a doctor again at last, for the German agreed to the
terms. Not one of us but needed medical aid, and the men were too
glad to have their hurts attended, to ask very many questions; but
they were certainly surprised, and suspicious of the new
arrangement, and I did not dare tell them what I had overheard for
fear lest suspicion of Ranjoor Singh be reawakened. I refused even
to tell the other daffadars, which caused some slight estrangement
between them and me. However, Ranjoor Singh was as conscious of that
risk as I, and during all the rest of the long march he kept their
camp and ours, their column and ours half an hour's ride apart--
sometimes even farther--sometimes half a day apart, to the disgust
of the doctor, who had that much more trouble, but with the result
of preventing greater friction.
To tell of all that journey across Persia would be but to remember
weariness--weariness of horse and men. Sometimes we were attacked;
more often we were run away from. We grew sick, our wounds festered
and our hearts ached. Horses died and the vultures ate them. Men
died, and we buried or burned their bodies according or not as we
had fuel. We dried, as it were, like the bone-dry trail we followed,
and only Ranjoor Singh's heart was stout; only he was brave; only he
had a song on his lips. He coaxed us, and cheered us, and rallied
us. The strength of the regiment was but his strength, and as for
the other party, who hung on our flank, or lagged behind us or
preceded us by half a day, their Kurds deserted by fives and tens
until there was scarcely a corporal's guard remaining.
They must have been as weary as we, and as glad as we when at last
at the end of a long drawn afternoon, we saw an Afghan sentry.
Has the sahib ever seen an Afghan sentry?
This one was gray and old and sat on his gray pony like a huddled
ape with a tattered umbrella over his shoulder and his rifle across
his knees. He looked less like a sentry than like a dead man dug up
and set there to scare the birds away. But he was efficient, no
doubt of that. He had seen us and passed on word of us the minute we
showed on the sky-line, and the hills all about him were full of
armed men waiting to give us a hot reception if necessary and to bar
farther progress in any case.
So there we had to camp, just over the Afghan border, 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, Habibullah Kahn, looking like a European in
his neatly fitting clothes, but surrounded by a staff of officers
dressed in greater variety of uniforms than one would have believed
to exist. He had brought with him his engineers to view this
wonderful machine, but before approaching either camp--perhaps to
show impartiality--he sent for the German chief and one, and for
Ranjoor Singh and one. So, since the German took his doctor, Ranjoor
Singh took me, he and I both riding, and the amir graciously
excusing me from dismounting when I had made him my salaam and he
had learned the nature of the wound.
After some talk, the amir asked us bluntly whence we came and what
our business might be, and Ranjoor Singh answered him we were
escaped prisoners of war. Then he turned on the German, and the
German told him that because the British had seen fit to cut off
Afghanistan from all true news of what was happening in the world
outside, therefore the German government, knowing well the open mind
and bravery and wisdom of the amir and his subjects, had sent
himself at very great trouble and expense to receive true messages
from Europe and so acquaint with the true state of affairs a ruler
and people with whom Germany desired before all things to be on
friendly terms.
After that we all went down in a body--perhaps a hundred men, with
the amir at our head, to the German camp; and there the German and
his officers displayed the machine to the amir, who, with a dozen of
his staff around him, appeared more amused than astonished.
So the Germans set their machine in motion. The sparks made much
crackling from the wires, at which the amir laughed aloud. Presently
the German chief read off a message from Berlin, conveying the
kaiser's compliments to his highness, the amir.
"Is that message from Berlin?" the amir asked, and I thought I heard
one of his officers chuckle.
"Yes, Your Highness," said the German officer.
"Is it not relayed from anywhere?" the amir asked, and the German
stared at him swiftly--thus, as if for the first time his own
suspicion were aroused.
"From Stamboul, Your Highness--relayed from Stamboul," he said, as
one who makes concessions.
The amir chuckled softly to himself and smiled.
"These are my engineers," said he, "all college trained. They tell
me our wireless installation at Khabul, which connects us through
Simla with Calcutta and the world beyond, is a very good one, yet it
will only reach to Simla, although I should say it is a hundred
times as large as yours, and although we have an enormous dynamo to
give the energy as against your box of batteries."
The Germans, who were clustered all about their chief, kept straight
faces, but their eyes popped round and their mouths grew stiff with
the effort to suppress emotion.
"This, Your Highness, is the last new invention," said the German
chief.
"Then my engineers shall look at it," said the amir, "for we wish to
keep abreast of the inventions. As you remarked just now, we are a
little shut off from the world. We must not let slip such
opportunities for education." And then and there he made his
engineers go forward to inspect everything, he scarce concealing his
merriment; and the Germans stood aside, looking like thieves caught
in the act while the workings were disclosed of such a wireless
apparatus as might serve to teach beginners.
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