our ships' whistles screamed them official greeting through the din.
I spent many hours wondering what those men's thoughts might be.

Never was such a sight, sahib! Behind our ships was darkness, for
the wind was from the north and the funnels belched forth smoke that
trailed and spread. I watched it with fascination until one day
Gooja Singh came and watched beside me near the stern. His rank was
the same as mine, although I was more than a year his senior. There
was never too much love between us. Step by step I earned promotion
first, and he was jealous. But on the face of thing's we were
friends. Said he to me after a long time of gazing at the smoke, "I
think there is a curtain drawn. We shall never return by that road!"

I laughed at him. "Look ahead!" said I. "Let us leave our rear to
the sweepers and the crows!"

Nevertheless, what he had said remained in my mind, as the way of
dark sayings is. Yet why should the word of a fool have the weight
of truth? There are things none can explain. He proved right in the
end, but gained nothing. Behold me; and where is Gooja Singh? I made
no prophecy, and he did. Can the sahib explain?

Day after day we kept overtaking other ships, most of them hurrying
the same way as ourselves. Not all were British, but the crews all
cheered us, and we answered, the air above our heads alive with
waving arms and our trumpets going as if we rode to the king of
England's wedding. If their hearts burned as ours did, the crews of
those ships were given something worth remembering.

We passed one British ship quite close, whose captain was an elderly