"I took a liberal view of the time we might spend there, sir, and asked at Sampur for five hundred spare rounds a man."
"Cartridges!" exclaimed the Commissioner.
"Yes, sir. Colonel Davis thought they might come in useful, and let me have what they had. Then there was a Maxim they were doubtful about——-"
"My good man!" broke in the other; "do you take this for an expeditionary force?"
"No, sir," replied the soldier. "I knew we were an escort, so I packed the Maxim on a mule. There's a corner in the old fort at Sar, I remembered, that it would look well in: and I thought, if we had to spend the winter there, we might make the place as cosy as we could. I meant to tell you, sir, as I had to requisition some extra transport, and I scheduled the lot as 'gifts for the Khan.'"
"Well, I must say you're a cool hand!" gasped his chief.
"I thought we'd be sure to let him have them if he came for them," explained Terrington simply; "so it read all right. I wasn't quite clear if a Maxim could be included under necessary equipment!"
"Oh, you weren't, weren't you," exclaimed the other. "And how do you think I'm to explain it?"
"Wouldn't it come under my knowledge of the country of which you were to make the fullest use, sir?" was the innocent reply.
Sir Colvin laughed, and the talk turned on what he held to be the peaceable possibilities of Sar. On that subject Terrington could hold nothing but his tongue. He was an adept at minding his own business, but he tried on the way up country to illuminate his chief's views of the men with whom he had to deal, by tales of Sari humour, which were mostly pointed by the decapitation or disembowelment of the humorist's best friend.