HE landed, together with about a dozen other newly gazetted subalterns
and civil officers, cramped, storm-tossed, snubbed, and then disgorged
from a sailing-ship into a port that made no secret of its absolute
contempt for new arrivals.

There were liners of a kind on the Red Sea route, and the only seniors
who chose the long passage round the Cape were men returning after
sick-leave--none too sweet-tempered individuals, and none too prone
to give the young idea a good conceit of himself. He and the other
youngsters landed with a crushed-in notion that India would treat them
very cavalierly before she took them to herself. And all, save
Cunningham, were right.

The other men, all homesick and lonely and bewildered, were met by
bankers' agents, or, in cases, only by a hotel servant armed with a
letter of instructions. Here and there a bored, tired-eyed European
had found time, for somebody-or-other's sake, to pounce on a new
arrival and bear him away to breakfast and a tawdry imitation of the
real hospitality of northern India; but for the most part the
beardless boys lounged in the red-hot customs shed (where they were to
be mulcted for the privilege of serving their country) and envied young
Cunningham.

He--as pale as they, as unexpectant as they were of anything
approaching welcome--was first amazed, then suspicious, then pleased,
then proud, in turn. The different emotions followed one another
across his clean-lined face as plainly as a dawn vista changes; then,
as the dawn leaves a landscape finally, true and what it is for all to
see, true dignity was left and the look of a man who stands in armor.