"And you, Mula Sing, what think you of this war?"

The Woordie-Major replied: "Sahib, never was there a war like this war,
since the world began. No, not even the Mahabharata when Kouro fought
Pandu."

Then spoke up a subadar of the Pioneers, a tall Sikh with his beard
curled like the ancient Assyrians. He had shown me the five symbols of
the Sikh freemasonry--nay, he had taken the _kangha_ out of his hair and
shown me the two little knives, also the hair-ring and the bracelet, and
had unwound the spirals of his unshaven locks. Therefore we were
friends. "All wars are but _shikkar_ to this war, sahib." "Shikkar?"
"Yea, even as a tiger-hunt. But this, this is an exceeding great war."

"Nay, this is a fine war--a hell of a fine war." The speaker was an
Afridi from Tirah, whose strongly marked aquiline features reminded me
of nothing so much as a Jewish pawnbroker in Whitechapel. He lacks every
virtue except courage, and his one regret is that he has missed the
family blood-feud. There have been great doings in his family on the
frontier in his absence--two abductions and one homicide. "If I had not
come home," his brother has written reproachfully to him from Tirah,
"things had gone ill with us. But never mind about all this now. Do your
duty well." And even so has he done.

"And how like you this war?"

"Sahib, it is a fine war, a hell of a fine war, but for the great guns."

"And wherefore?"