compartment door. The man returned to the other train. The sergeant
climbed in next to me. Ranjoor Singh locked the door again, and both
trains proceeded. When our train was beginning to gain speed the
newcomer shoved me in the ribs abruptly with his elbow--thus.

"So much for knowing languages!" said he to me in fairly good
Punjabi. "Curse the day I ever saw India, and triple-curse this
system of ours that enabled them to lay finger on me in a moving
train and transfer me to this funeral procession! Curse you, and
curse this train, and curse all Asia!" Then he thrust me in the ribs
again, as if that were a method of setting aside formality.

"You know Cawnpore?" said he, and I nodded.

"You know the Kaiser-i-hind Saddle Factory?"

I nodded again, being minded to waste no words because of Ranjoor
Singh's warning.

"I took a job as foreman there twenty years ago because the pay was
good. I lived there fifteen years until I was full to the throat of
India--Indian food, Indian women, Indian drinks, Indian heat, Indian
smells, Indian everything. I hated it, and threw up the job in the
end. Said I to myself, 'Thank God,' said I, 'to see the last of
India.' And I took passage on a German steamer and drank enough
German beer on the way to have floated two ships her size! Aecht
Deutches bier, you understand," said he, nudging me in the ribs with
each word. Aecht means REAL, as distinguished from the export stuff
in bottles. "I drank it by the barrel, straight off ice, and it went
to my head!