"So long as we don't understand them," he went on, "and they don't understand us, we jog along the same path amicably, like--well! like the pilgrims to the 'Cradle of the Gods,' and the telegraph-posts to the Adjutant General's office up the road yonder--and I'll trouble you to cram more space than that between two earthly poles! No! It is when we begin to have glimmerings that the deuce and all comes in--" He paused in the molten gold of sunlight, which made the yellow sand, the corn-coloured tussocks of tiger-grass still yellower and still more corn-coloured, to glance round, as if measuring the distance between the long, low line of mud enclosure they had left but a few hundred yards behind--yet which, already, was losing itself in an illimitable sand stretch beyond--and a bigger tuft in the sand stretch ahead; a tuft of spear-points and horses, bayonets and men, waiting beside the first faint semblance of a reed-paved road. Then he took out his watch. Apparently he found leisure at his disposal, for he walked on. "There's a nursery rhyme they taught me," he continued, "when my moral nature was at the mercy of any fool who chose to take an interest in it--'_But if poor Pussy understood, she'd be, indeed, a naughty creature!_' It didn't run so consecutively, of course; in fact 'creature' rhymed to 'teach her'--but I learnt it that way. Children do that sort of thing a sight deal oftener than their elders think." The younger of the two men in uniform with whom he was walking laughed--the honest, elated, conscious laugh of one who has not many good stories about himself, and happens on an opportunity for telling one of them. "_I_ used to say, '_Six days shalt thy neighbour do all that thou hast to do, and the seventh day shalt thou do no manner_--'" "Shut up, Lance!" interrupted his elder companion with a laugh. "It is a ripping excuse for your intolerable laziness, but I don't believe--" "Fact, I assure you," protested Lance Carlyon aggrievedly, "and considering I really thought that was the proper version for ten years of my life, I--" Dr. George Dillon took off his mushroom hat suddenly, and wiped his forehead as if to smooth away the wrinkles which his smiles had brought to it. "Lordy! It's a queer world," he put in. "There is really no good in understanding most things. As for this place--! Great Scott! What would happen if my fifteen hundred scoundrels, whom you saw digging like babes in the open just now, were to understand that I--one Englishman in charge--had virtually no _force majeure_--" "Don't insult us, Dillon!" remonstrated Captain Vincent Dering, a certain swagger underlying his jest. "Eshwara is a garrison town, remember, now; I'm commandant, and Carlyon's staff--"