"How in the world did you manage to escape detection during your ride north?" he was asked. He explained Chumru's device, and they laughed. Like Havelock, Baird-Smith thought the Mohammedan would make a good soldier. "With all his pluck, sir, he is absolutely afraid of using a pistol," said Frank. "He was offered the highest rank as a native officer, but he refused it." "Then, by gad, we must make him a zemindar. Tell him I said so and that we all agree on that point." When Frank gave the message to Chumru it was received with a demoniac grin. "By the Holy Kaaba," came the gleeful cry, "I told the Moulvie of Fyzabad that I was in the way of earning a jaghir, and behold, it is promised to me!" Next day Malcolm, somewhat lighter in tint after a hot bath, made himself acquainted with the camp. Seldom has war brought together such a motley assemblage of races as gathered on the Ridge during the siege of Delhi. The far-off isles of the sea were represented by men from every shire, and Britain's mixed heritage in the East sent a bewildering variety of types. Small, compactly built Ghoorkahs hobnobbed with stalwart Highlanders; lively Irishmen made friends of gaunt, saturnine Pathans; bearded Sikhs extended grave courtesies to pert-nosed Cockneys; "gallant little Wales" might be seen tending the needs of wounded Mohammedans from the Punjab. The language bar proved no obstacle to the men of the rank and file. A British private would sit and smoke in solemn and friendly silence with a hook-nosed Afghan, and the two would rise cheerfully after an hour passed in that fashion with nothing in common between them save the memory of some deadly thrust averted when they fought one day in the hollow below Hindu Rao's house, or a draught of water tendered when one or other lay gasping and almost done to death in a struggle for the village of Subsee Mundee. The British soldier, who has fought and bled in so many lands, showed his remarkable adaptability to circumstances by the way in which he made himself at home on the reverse slope of the Ridge. A compact town had sprung up there with its orderly lines of huts and tents, its long rows of picketed horses, commissariat bullocks and elephants, its churches, hospitals, playgrounds, race-course and cemetery.