readier to talk.

Sahib, that barrack was like a zoo--like the zoo I saw once at
Baroda, with animals of all sorts in it!--a great yellow building
within walls, packed with Kurds and Arabs and Syrians of more
different tribes than a man would readily believe existed in the
whole world. Few among them could talk any tongue that we knew, but
they were full of curiosity and crowded round us to ask questions;
and when Gooja Singh shouted aloud that we were Sikhs from India
they produced a man who seemed to think he knew about Sikhs, for he
stood on a step and harangued them for ten minutes, they listening
with all their ears.

Then came a Turk from the German officers' mess--we were all
standing in the rain in an open court between four walls--and he
told them truly who we were. Doubtless he added that we were in
revolt against the British, for they began to welcome us, shouting
and dancing about us, those who could come near enough taking our
hands and saying things we could not understand.

Presently they found a man who knew some English, and, urged by
them, he began to fill our ears with information. During our train
journey I had amused myself for many weary hours by asking
Tugendheim for details of the fighting he had seen and by listening
to the strings of lies he thought fit to narrate. But what
Tugendheim had told were almost truths compared to this man's
stories; in place of Tugendheim's studied vagueness there was detail
in such profusion that I can not recall now the hundredth part of
it.