"Well, and what of it?" said the Port authorities.
Nevertheless the night before the boat sailed he slipped overboard and swam ashore, to be caught when the smoke of that steamer was no more than a stain on the horizon. He was held in custody and would have been returned by the next steamer to India. But there was already in the harbour a cargo boat of the Clan Line bound for Quebec round the Cape; and the boat was short of its complement in the stokehold.
Ahmed Ali, accordingly, signed on, and sailed in her and acquired more English to help him on in the comfortable life he now proposed to make for himself in Canada.
"But again they would not let me go away into the country," he continued. "I told them I was British citizen, but it did not help me; no, not any more than in Australia. They put me on a ship for England, and I came to Liverpool steerage like a genelman. And at Liverpool I landed boldly. For I was a British citizen."
"Ah!" interjected Mr. Endicott proudly. "Here, in England, you see the value of being a British citizen."
"But, no, my genelman. For here there's no work for British citizen. I land and I walk about and I ask for work. But everyone says, 'Why don't you stay in your own country?' So I come away across the fields, and no man give me one piece opium."
Mr. Endicott nodded his head when the story was ended.
"Well, after all, why don't you stay in your own country?" he asked.
Mr. Endicott had already had his answer from the Australian, but he was now thirsty for details, and his ears in consequence were afflicted with a brief description of British rule from the Pathan's point of view.
"The all-wise one will pardon me. You keep the peace. Therefore we cannot stay in our own country. For we grow crowded and there is no food. In old times, when we were crowded and hungry, we went down into the plains and took the land and the wives of the people of the plains and killed the men. But the raj does not allow it. It holds a sword between us and the plains, a sword with the edge towards us. Neither, on the other hand, does it feed us."