King smiled. "Perfectly good opportunity for me, sir!" he said
cheerfully.

"So you seem to think. But look out for that woman, King--she's
dangerous. She's got the brains of Asia coupled with Western energy!
I think she's on our side, and I know he believes it; but watch her!"

"Ham dekta hai!" King grinned. But the older man continued to look
as if he pitied him.

"If you get through alive, come and tell me about it afterward.
Now, mind you do! I'm awfully interested, but as for envying you--"

"Envy!" King almost squealed. He made the bed-springs rattle as
he jumped. "I wouldn't swap jobs with General French, sir!"

"Nor with me, I suppose!"

"Nor with you, sir.

"Good-by, then. Good-by, King, my boy. Good-by, Athelstan. Your
brother's up the Khyber, isn't he? Give him my regards. Good-by!"

Long before dawn the thirty prisoners and Ismail squatted in a
little herd on the up-platform of a railway station, shepherded
by King, who smoked a cheroot some twenty paces away, sitting on
an unmarked chest of medicines. He seemed absorbed in a book on
surgery that he had borrowed from a chance-met acquaintance in the
go-down where he drew the medical supplies. Ismail sat on the one