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A guard of honour of thirty soldiers accompanied, while a rabble of two or three hundred foot people surrounded the party, for the sight of a white face is rare in Beïla. It was a strange scene: the picturesque city, brilliant barbaric costume of the young chief and his followers, and crowd of wild, half-naked Baluchis were fitly set off by surroundings of desert landscape and dazzling sunshine.
The Hindu recognized the King's head on the coins, and eagerly assured the Baluchis that they were good English money; but the smith, true to the oriental habit of haggling, rejected them scornfully as insufficient, and was backed up by a chorus of indignant cries from the crowd.
We were glad to leave a country where the plague had taken up its abode and to hasten away to the desert tracts of Baluchistan, which still separated us from India. My old servants had taken their departure, and a new retinue, all Baluchis, accompanied me. We rode jambas, or swift-footed dromedaries, which for generations have been trained for speed.
He was as clean-shaved and well-groomed as though he had been expecting us for days and the tiffin to which we sat down was as dainty and well served as it could have been in the midst of civilization. The great Lord Clive of India was an ancestor of our young officer who had been temporarily detached from his regiment, the 129th Baluchis, and sent on border duty.
Owing to the nomadic nature of the Baluchis, the barrenness of their country, and consequent absence of manufactures and commerce, permanent settlements are very rare. With the exception of Quetta, Kelát, Beïla, and Kej, there are no towns in Baluchistán worthy of the name.
In the evening his son brought me a delicious dish of preserved apricots and cream, for which I presented him with three rupees, one of which he instantly returned. It is considered, by Baluchis, extremely unlucky to give or accept an odd number of coins. At Jebri, for the first time, we suffered severely from cold at night, the thermometer dropping to 42° Fahr. just before sunrise.
In hospital they are always professing to a recovery from fever that their pallid faces and enlarged spleens belie, and they take not kindly to any suggestion of invaliding. These battalions of Kashmir Rifles, the Baluchis and the King's African Rifles have done more dirty bush fighting than any troops in this campaign.
Why?" "Some Baluchis are gun-running fifty miles up the coast, that's all. Thought you'd like to know." "Are they, begad! Thanks for the tip. Can you describe the spot?" "A tiny village lying behind a point. A river runs through it, and there's a short jetty. Sorry I can't give you latitude and longitude. You'll catch 'em if you hurry up. Hope you will, and run 'em in. Good-bye."
I can still remember as if it had only occurred ten seconds ago how, after witnessing those English sappers calmly strip that drunken French marauder of his gains, I came back into the broken Legation Street to find that a whole company of savage-looking Indian troops Baluchis they were had found their way in the dark into a compound filled with women-converts who had gone through the siege with us, and that these black soldiery were engaged, amidst cries and protests, in plucking from their victims' very heads any small silver hair-pins and ornaments which the women possessed.
They told me of the glad relief with which they welcomed the coming of our troops, and how with tears of gratitude they threw swift death into the bushes, much indeed as they hated the humiliating spectacle of the gallant Rhodesians and Baluchis making their formal entry into the fair streets of Morogoro.
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