A Bengali drifted listlessly past, a bored and blase babu in a suit of pink satin, wandering home and interested in nothing save his own bland self and the native cigarette that drooped languidly from his lips. He passed within a foot of Amber, and from somewhere a voice spoke—the Virginian could have taken an oath that the babu's lips did not move—in a clear yet discreet whisper.
"To-morrow," it said; "Darjeeling."
Amber hitched his cloak round him and entered the hotel.
CHAPTER XI
THE TONGA
"Badshah Junction, Mr. Amber … Badshah Junction … We'll be there in 'alf an hour …"
Inexorably the voice droned on, repeating the admonition over and over.
Mutinous, Amber stirred and grumbled in his sleep; stirred and, grumbling, wakened to another day. Doggott stood over him, doggedly insistent.
"Not much time to dress, sir; we're due in less than 'alf an hour."
"Oh, all right." Drowsy, stiff and sore in bone and muscle, Amber sat up on the edge of the leather-padded bunk and stared out of the window, wondering. With thundering flanges the train fled from east to west across a landscape that still slept wrapped in purple shadows. Far in the north the higher peaks of a long, low range of treeless hills were burning with a pale, cold light. A few stars glimmered in the cloudless vault—glimmered wan, doomed to sudden, swift extinction. Beside the railroad a procession of telegraph poles marched with dipping loops of wire between. There was nothing else to see. None the less the young man, now fully alive to the business of the day, said "Thank God!" in all sincerity.