flying down with little eager flicks, passionate half-beats of her wings, which sent her leaping down the sky, and all the time she gained and gained.

It seemed only a second or two after I had picked them up beyond the range of unassisted eyesight that they were again above the nearer hill, and now the falcon was very close upon her quarry. There were only a few hundred yards to the water and to safety, but yard by yard the falcon gained. As he came nearer to his goal the tufted duck altered course to a yet steeper slant, the falcon now a bare yard behind.

In cold words it is impossible to give any idea of the speed of that last lap. As they came nearer, the rush of their headlong descent struck a crescendo chord upon the air like the tearing whistle of an approaching shell. The yard between them had shortened to a foot as they hurtled close above my head. But the duck was over the water now. Never for an instant did he alter the steep angle of his descent, never for a single wing-beat did he check the whirring vibration of his wings. Not for him a duck's habitual dainty descent upon the water with wings aback and tail and feet outspread to check his way, until at the last moment, with head prettily tucked in, he takes the water with the neat slither of a launched canoe. There was no time for such prettiness now; with neck full stretch and head out-thrust to

safety, his wings still going madly, he plunged headlong beneath the surface, the falcon so close upon him that the instant spout of upflung water shot up behind her and failed to wet her wings.

Anything less tough than the brawn and rubber of a duck would have smashed to a wisp of flesh and feathers by the impact of that appalling dive. But in less than half a minute he had bobbed up serenely to the surface, and though his beak was agape he appeared otherwise none the worse for his adventure.

And the falcon! In the days when the word meant something they called her "falcon gentle." "Saying things" is not her line. The rare and memorable spectacle which I had seen was to her a commonplace and everyday affair. Her easy spirals skyward betrayed no hint of heart-break or bad temper; a jaunty swagger rather as of a fox terrier who, after a hot half-playful scramble, has just succeeded in treeing the domestic cat.

If this were fiction and not a true drama of wild life actually played out before my eyes, I might here pause upon this happy ending. But life has only one end. Whether that end is happy or no, humanity so far has been unable to decide. There is little more to tell. The boat was approaching. Neither J. nor the keeper had seen anything of the gallant little tufted duck's hair breadth escape. He was now

swimming out towards the centre of the loch, I upon one side of him, the boat upon the other, the falcon somewhere high in the air above. Undecided, he lingered just too long. My "Don't shoot" was unheeded, misunderstood. What to me would have been little less than heartless murder was to J. an unexpected and providential opportunity.

That evening, when we

emptied the day's bag from the boot of the car, conspicuous among the duller brindlings and mottlings of grouse and snipe and teal, by which they assimilate so marvellously to all the varied tints of marsh and moor, there stood out all too plainly the bold contrast of black and white which is a tufted drake's peculiar glory. Kismet.

What else is there to say?

ABDUL was well known to a large number of British officers in Mesopotamia during the earlier part of the campaign there. Not only did he serve with me at different times in both the 6th and 12th Divisions, but his age and his personality alike attracted attention. What his age really was no one, least of all himself, knew, but it was probably somewhere between the sixty years which he claimed to be when I engaged him and the aussi ki ooper, or over eighty, which he sometimes felt at the end of a particularly hot day in the desert.

After the war broke out I, in common with most officers in the Indian Army who hoped to get away on service, stipulated when engaging a bearer that he would undertake to go overseas with me. This promise was, however, not always kept, and on that evening at the beginning of 1915, before the day on which I was to leave Peshawur for Bombay en route for Mesopotamia, the bearer of a brother officer with whom I was staying informed me that if I thought my servant intended to accompany me I was mistaken.

"I am certain, your honour," was the reply. "If you ask him, he will tell you that his wife is sick and he cannot leave her. If you insist, he will simply not be there in the morning."

Here was a predicament: I was due to leave by the Bombay mail early the next day.

"But, your honour, I can get you a man," said my friend's bearer. In India when you are engaging a new servant you are indeed fortunate if you can get one who is recommended by a good man of his own class, so I became interested.

"Where is he?" I asked. "Waiting outside," was the reply.

"Bring him in."

A minute later there walked into the room with a light springy step a curious-looking, slim-built, erect, old man. He was of medium height. His face, which was seamed and somewhat wizened, was of a distinctly Mongol type, and was not particularly attractive except when he smiled, and this he did frequently a curious whimsical smile. He wore tight khaki trousers, a khaki shirt which hung loosely outside of them, and a tunic. On his left breast he had many

medal ribbons, from which the medals were suspended. The latter were, however, stuck in the pocket of the tunic, the reason being, as I discovered later, that they were the copper ones which up to that time were issued to followers.

At the first glance I thought him a Gurkha, but his height, and his Mahommedan headdress, contradicted that theory, and all through the conversation that followed I was trying to place him. It was not until it was nearly over that it struck me that he was a Hazara, one of that strange race of Shiah Mahommedans of Mongol origin who come from Ghazni in Afghanistan. He spoke Hindustani in a curious clipped sort of way with a very soft voice, and professed not to know English. Indeed, as I afterwards discovered, he knew very little.

On my inquiry as to where he had worked he handed me a bundle of chits. Some of them were hoary with age, but they were sufficient to show me that he had taken part in Lord Roberts' march from Kabul to Kandahar, and in practically every war in which the Indian Army had been

engaged since then. The latest chit was dated 1908, and referred to the last Zaka Khel campaign.

"Where have you worked since then?" I asked him.

"I have not worked with any Sahib since then, your honour," he said with one of his smiles. "I am now too old and too ugly to be employed in peace time. I only get a chance when there is a war."

"Well, the present war has been going on for some time now. Couldn't you have got a job before this?"

"I have been hoping for trouble over there," he said, waving his hand in the direction of Afghanistan. "But the border has never been so quiet, so I have given up hope and am ready to go over the sea again."

During the long journey by train from Peshawur to Bombay and from there up the Persian Gulf to Basra, I had opportunities of judging that I had not made a mistake when I

VOL. CCXXII.-NO. MCCCXLIII.

engaged Abdul. Although my wellbeing and comfort seemed to be his first consideration, he was not insensible to his own, and his ripe experience of many campaigns had taught

M

him how to adjust himself to any circumstance. Certainly he never came to me and complained as other followers did that he could not get his rations or find a sleeping-place. He had various ways of attaining his ends, some of them perhaps rather questionable, and he was always cool and unruffled. In his single-minded devotion to his master he resembled the best type of Indian servant, but differed from that type in that he had the strong sense of humour and sturdy independence of the Hazara.

Wherever he had been since he was last employed he had not lost touch with the Indian Army, for he was a regular encyclopædia regarding it. He not only knew most of its regiments by name and number, but could also say to which brigade and division many of them belonged. He also had a wonderful memory for the names of officers with whose regiment he had served.

On our arrival at Basra we found a mild form of despondency prevailing, for at the time things were not going too well. The strategical situation was bad, for we had detachments up the Karun River and at Kurna forty miles farther up the Shat-el-Arab, at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates; while the Turks were concentrating for an attack on Basra, which, if successful, would probably mean the end of Indian Expeditionary Force "D"; for every Arab

in the country would then rise against us. I found that my regiment was at Ahwaz, seventy miles up the Karun, ostensibly guarding the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's pipe line from the oil-fields down to Abadan; and I embarked for there in one of the paddle steamers belonging to Lynch & Company, whose vessels, with various captured Turkish paddlers and stern-wheelers commandeered locally, were the sole river transport available in those days.

We ran swiftly down the palm-fringed main river to Mahomerah, where we turned up the Karun, which was in full flood, and I was introduced to one of the drawbacks to river transport in that country. The steamer was deeply loaded, as were the two large iron barges which she was towing, one on each side; and as we faced the full force of the brown muddy current we could only make progress by hugging the concave bank so closely that often the barge would be scraping along it. When we had occasion to sheer across to the other bank the whole outfit would in mid-stream go drifting backwards. We took two and a half days, steaming night and day, to cover the seventy miles to Ahwaz. The first part of our journey lay through the territory of our ally, the Sheik of Mahomerah; afterwards the river ran through desert occupied by potentially hostile tribes, and an armed naval tug convoyed us through.