"That," said he, standing at last and pointing toward the distant citadel, "is Angora. Yonder" (he made a sweeping motion) "runs the railway whose terminus is at Angora. There are many long roads hereabouts, so that the place has become a depot for food and stores that the Turks plunder and the Germans despatch over the railway to the coast. The railway has been taken over by the Germans."
"Are we to storm the town?" asked a trooper, and fifty men mocked him. But Ranjoor Singh looked down kindly at him and gave him a word of praise.
"No, my son," he said. "Yet if all had been stout enough to ask that, I would have dared attempt it. No, we are perhaps a little desperate, but not yet so desperate as that."
He began sweeping the horizon with his eyes, quartering the countryside mile by mile, overlooking nothing. I saw him watch the wheeling kites and look below them, and twice I saw him fix his gaze for minutes at a time on one place.
"We will eat to-night!" he said at last. "Sleep," he ordered. "Lie down and sleep until I summon you!" But he called me to his side and kept me wakeful for a while yet.
"Look yonder," said he, and when I had gazed for about two minutes I was aware of a column of men and animals moving toward the city. A little enough column.
"How fast are they moving?" he asked me, and I gazed for several minutes, reaching no decision. I said they were too far away, and coming too much toward us for their speed to be accurately judged. Yet I thought they moved slowly.
Said he, "Do you see that hollow—one, two, three miles this side of them?" And I answered yes. "That is a bend of the river that flows by the city," said he. "There is water there, and fire-wood. They have come far and are heading toward it. They are too far spent to reach Angora before night. They will not try. That is where they will camp."
"Sahib," I said, considering his words as a cook tastes curry, "our men be overweary to have fight in them."
"Who spoke of fighting?" said he. So I went and lay down, and fell asleep wondering. When he came and roused me it was already growing late. By the time I had roused the men and they were all lined up we could no longer see Angora for the darkness; which worked both ways—those in Angora could not see us.