"I have said before that with the Baboo and many kettles on my back I ran fast, but think you, Comrades, of the weight, and also of the poor rider, for there is nothing an Unt dislikes so much as the knock, knock, against his hump of one having no knowledge of proper pace. How the Sahib sat! Close as a pad that had been tied on; and he coaxed and urged—even swore a little at times, but not after an unreasoning manner as had the Baboo. He called me a Bikaneer, even his Dromedary, which means one of great speed; and begged me, if I wished food for all time, to hasten. How we fled in the long night, down the hot paths, splashing many times through the cool water that crossed our path—Bolan River, it is called, the water that comes from the high-reaching sand lands that are all white on their tops."
"The snow mountains," explained Sa'-zada, for Camel's description was more or less vague.
"As I have said," continued Camel, "the water was cool. Never once did I fall, though the round stones were like evil things that twist at one's feet to bring him down. 'Hurry, hurry, hurry!' the young Sahib called to me, and I laughed, thinking he would tire before I should.
"On we went, passing little fires where those of the Cooly kind rested as they fled from the Black Death. Just as we came out on the flat sand which is the Sibi Desert, there were gathered in one place many Men. For a space we stopped, and my Rider asked if there was a Healer with them. They answered that they were Men of the war-kind going up to keep the workers from running away from the Black Death; even those at the little fires would be turned back, they said.
"Then on again I raced. I could hear my Rider talking back to his friend, the Burra-Sahib, who lay stricken with the evil sickness, though I know not how he could hear him, for we were full half way to Sibi.
"'Keep up your courage, Jack,' he would say, speaking to his Friend. 'Please God, I'll have a Surgeon there in time to save you yet.'
"Then he would fall to abusing some other of the Men-kind, perhaps he was not a friend, whom he blamed for all that was wrong. 'You puffed-up beast,' he would say, speaking to this other, 'to send a lot of Men to such a death hole with a brute of a Bengali-Baboo to doctor them—murder them, and a medicine chest that was emptied in a day. It's a bit of luck that Baboo died, but it doesn't help matters much.'
"That was the Baboo I had run away with; perhaps even the medicine chest had lost much through its fall from my back.
"Then to me, 'Hurry, hurry, hurry! Shabaz!' (push on); then to his Friend, 'Poor old Man, Jack! what will She say if I don't pull you out of this? I'll never go back to England as long as I live if this beastly thing snuffs you out.'
"Then to the other, the one who had done this evil: 'Curse you, with your red tape economy! You're a C. I. E.'—whatever that meant I don't know—'but you've murdered old Jack, who is a Man. You're out of this trouble up at Simla, but you'll roast for this yet.'