Hira Singh | Page 8

Talbot Mundy
all, I think, we wondered at the great gray war-ships plunging
in the distance; for none knew whence they had come; we saw none in
Bombay when we started. It was not a sight for the tongue to explain,
sahib, but for a man to carry in his heart. A sight never to be forgotten.
I heard no more talk about a poor beginning.
We came to Aden, and stopped to take on coal and water. There was no
sign of excitement there, yet no good news. It was put in Orders of the

Day that the Allies are doing as well as can be expected pending arrival
of re-enforcements; and that is not the way winners speak. Later, when
we had left Aden behind, our officers came down among us and
confessed that all did not go well. We said brave things to encourage
them, for it is not good that one's officers should doubt. If a rider
doubts his horse, what faith shall the horse have in his rider? And so it
is with a regiment and its officers.
After some days we reached a narrow sea--the Red Sea, men call it,
although God knows why--a place full of heat and sand-storms, shut in
on either hand by barren hills. There was no green thing any- where.
There we passed islands where men ran down to the beach to shout and
wave helmets--unshaven Englishmen, who trim the lights. It must have
been their first intimation of any war. How else can they have known of
it? We roared back to them, all of the men on all of the ships together,
until the Red Sea was the home of thunder, and 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
man with a gray beard. He so waved his helmet that it slipped from his
grasp and went spinning into the sea. When we lost him in our smoke
his crew of Chinese were lowering a boat to recover the helmet. We
heard the ships behind us roaring to him. Strange that I should wonder
to this day whether those Chinese recovered the helmet! It looked like a
good new one. I have wondered about it on the eve of action, and in the
trenches, and in the snow on outpost duty. I wonder about it now. Can
the sahib tell me why an old man's helmet should be a memory, when
so much that was matter of life and death has gone from mind? I see
that old man and his helmet now, yet I forget the feel of Flanders mud.
We reached Suez, and anchored there. At Suez lay many ships in front
of us, and a great gray battle-ship saluted us with guns, we all standing
to attention while our ensigns dipped. I thought it strange that the
battle-ship should salute us first, until I recalled how when I was a little
fellow I once saw a viceroy salute my grandfather. My grandfather was
one of those Sikhs who marched to help the British on
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