tricks on the patient coolies pulling the punkahs in the sleeping-
rooms where the boys threshed through the hot nights telling tales
till the dawn; and quietly he measured himself against his self-
reliant mates.

They were sons of subordinate officials in the Railway, Telegraph,
and Canal Services; of warrant-officers, sometimes retired and
sometimes acting as commanders-in-chief to a feudatory Rajah's
army; of captains of the Indian Marine Government pensioners,
planters, Presidency shopkeepers, and missionaries. A few were
cadets of the old Eurasian houses that have taken strong root in
Dhurrumtollah - Pereiras, De Souzas, and D'Silvas. Their parents
could well have educated them in England, but they loved the school
that had served their own youth, and generation followed sallow-
hued generation at St Xavier's. Their homes ranged from Howrah of
the railway people to abandoned cantonments like Monghyr and
Chunar; lost tea-gardens Shillong-way; villages where their fathers
were large landholders in Oudh or the Deccan; Mission-stations a
week from the nearest railway line; seaports a thousand miles
south, facing the brazen Indian surf; and cinchona-plantations
south of all. The mere story of their adventures, which to them
were no adventures, on their road to and from school would have
crisped a Western boy's hair. They were used to jogging off alone
through a hundred miles of jungle, where there was always the
delightful chance of being delayed by tigers; but they would no
more have bathed in the English Channel in an English August than
their brothers across the world would have lain still while a
leopard snuffed at their palanquin. There were boys of fifteen who
had spent a day and a half on an islet in the middle of a flooded
river, taking charge, as by right, of a camp of frantic pilgrims