I came also? Assuredly. I went to my
Colonel, and sitting in the chair (I am--I was--of that rank for which a
chair is placed when we speak with the Colonel) I said, "My child goes
sick. Give me leave, for I am old and sick also."
And the Colonel, making the word double between English and our tongue,
said, "Yes, thou art truly _Sikh_"; and he called me an old devil--
jestingly, as one soldier may jest with another; and he said my Kurban
Sahib was a liar as to his health (that was true, too), and at long last
he stood up and shook my hand, and bade me go and bring my Sahib safe
again. My Sahib back again--aie me!
So I went to Bombay with Kurban Sahib, but there, at sight of the Black
Water, Wajib Ali, his bearer checked, and said that his mother was dead.
Then I said to Kurban Sahib, "What is one Mussulman pig more or less? Give
me the keys of the trunks, and I will lay out the white shirts for
dinner." Then I beat Wajib Ali at the back of Watson's Hotel, and that
night I prepared Kurban Sahib's razors. I say, Sahib, that I, a Sikh of
the Khalsa, an unshorn man, prepared the razors. But I did not put on my
uniform while I did it. On the other hand, Kurban Sahib took for me, upon
the steamer, a room in all respects like to his own, and would have given
me a servant. We spoke of many things on the way to this country; and
Kurban Sahib told me what he perceived would be the conduct of the war.
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