get down to the real stuff. Finished your drinks?”

He marshalled us into the dining-room, and once again the conversation slid west and north in the old grooves of war, till we finally adjourned to his room, and stretched ourselves on long chairs in the verandah. When his servant had deposited sodas, glasses, and whiskey and departed, Wrexham went to a metal despatch-case, and produced from it a small wooden box carefully tied up, which he placed mysteriously on the table.

Then, filling his ancient pipe, he spread himself in a long chair and commenced.

“First of all, I’m going to tell you about my trip beyond Yarkand last year. When you’ve swallowed that, I’ll show you a thing or two.

“After my company left Palestine in January, ’19, and came back to India, I got myself demobbed and pondered what I should do. Home lacked attraction, I’d been away so long. There was I with a certain amount of dibs, no calls, my own master, up in Pindi at the end of the Kashmir road with the hot weather coming on, and all the earth in front of me.

“I’ve always wanted to travel up that way, and this seemed the absolute chance. If I went home or back to my old job in Bengal, I might not get another opportunity for[11] years; my old firm in Bengal were good, but sticky in the matter of leave. So I packed my kit, dumped what I didn’t want, motored to Srinagar, and took the road for Yarkand.

[11]

“I stuck to the main road practically all the way, steady, easy marches. And as I went I read everything I could find on the country. Most of my kit was books, I think, but by the time I hit Yarkand I had a working knowledge of Kashgaria at other people’s expense.

“I moved fairly light, but I lugged the books along and also a few survey instruments. You remember that in Palestine I used to play about with survey toys.

“I stopped a bit at Yarkand to study local conditions, and work up the smattering of Turki that I’d been assimilating on the road up with the aid of a prehistoric textbook.

“From there I pushed on to Aksu, and hence towards Hami, always keeping to the main road. There’s nothing to talk about during that part of the show. But when I got Hami-way, I put aside the printed books and restudied my great-great-uncle’s diary.”

He stopped and pulled 

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