He looked less like a sentry than like a dead man dug up and set there to scare the birds away.

But he was efficient, no doubt of that.

He had seen us and passed on word of us the minute we showed on the sky-line, and the hills all about him were full of armed men waiting to give us a hot reception if necessary and to bar farther progress in any case.
So there we had to camp, just over the Afghan border, but farther apart from the Germans than ever--two, three miles apart, for now it became Ranjoor Singh's policy to know nothing whatever about them.
The Afghans provided us with rations and sent us one of their own doctors dressed in the uniform of a tram-car conductor, and their highest official in those parts, whose rank I could not guess because he was arrayed in the costume of a city of London policeman, asked innumerable questions, first of Ranjoor Singh and then of each of us individually.

But we conferred together, and stuck to one point, that we knew nothing.

Ranjoor Singh did not know better than we.