I became at this time quite interested in the Corps of Lancers which were quite the thing in India. I knew of them of course from reading in my father's library, but to see them on parade on the Maidan was quite a different thing. Since I had all the time that I wanted and more while I waited for my orders to be issued, I looked up some officers in a lancers unit and was in turn invited to their mess. They were a jolly group of chaps, and very free with their money. I could not buy a drink in their mess, but they seemed very interested in the Engineers, So I paid my way, as it were, by showing them a little about map-work and land navigation which they were very keen on, while they regaled me with stories about their regiment's prowess in the field, and the intricacies of lance-work on horseback. Finally I was determined to try my hand at "working with the lance" as my friends called it. This was to be a new adventure for me, but I did not wish to show myself the tyro in front of my new friends. My plan was to hire an instructor, and if all went well, I should show off before the lancer officers at a time of my choosing. Also, I had a feeling that I should be furthering my military training in some way. I had made some sketches of the more important military structures in the area, but I really craved some active work and learning the lance appealed to me. As it turned out this work had an immediate result on my career as you shall see, and saved my life more than once in later years. I had done fairly well in sword drill and horsemanship in school and had won some small praise in the mastery of those skills, but the lance is something quite different to use with skill. Any minimally trained trooper can couch the lance and ride straight, but if he is to be any use at all, he must learn to handle all nine feet of it so that he can pick a playing card off the ground with the point, or to pink a running rabbit. As I became more aquatinted with the lance, and watched the native lancers practicing, I became determined to shine among the Company men, Engineer or no.

I hired a native Rissaldar (native officer commanding a cavalry troop) of the Bengal Lancers to teach me. I had no idea, at this time of anything beyond tilting at dummies or wild pig sticking, but it settled the question of my immediate future in an odd way, so it was effort and money well spent. I was out on the Maidan (plain; exercise ground) one morning with my rissaldar, a big, lean, rangy soldier of the Pathan people of the Indian Frontier whose name was Muhammed Iqbal. He was a splendid horseman and managed a lance perfectly, and under his guidance I was learning quickly. That morning we were tilting at pegs, and I speared so many that he said, grinning, that he must charge me more for my lessons.

He were trotting off the Maidan, which was fairly empty that morning, except for a palankeen escorted by d couple of officers, which excited my curiosity a little, when Iqbal suddenly shouted:

"See Huzzoor, (lord, master, in the sense of 'sir'--Pushtu equivalent of 'Sahib') a better target than little pegs!" and pointed toward a pariah dog which was snuffling about, some fifty yards away. Iqbal couched his lance and went for it, but it darted out of the way, so I roared "Tally-Ho" and set off in pursuit, Iqbal still ahead of me, but I was only a couple of lengths behind when he made another thrust at the pi-dog, which was racing ahead of him, screaming and yelping. He missed again, yelled a curse, and the pi-dog suddenly turned almost beneath his hooves and leaped up at his foot. I dropped my point and by great good luck spitted the beast through the body.

With a shout of triumph, I heaved him, twisting and still yelping, high in the air and he fell behind me. Iqbal cried: "Shabashi" (bravo) and I was beginning to crow over him when a voice shouted:

"You there! You sir! Come here if you please, this moment."

It came from the palankeen, towards which our run had taken us. The curtains were drawn, and the caller was revealed as a portly, fierce looking gentleman in a frock coat, with a sun-browned face and a fine bald head. He had taken off his hat and was waving insistently, so I rode across.

"Good morning," says he, very civil, "May I inquire your name?"

It did not take the presence of two mounted dandies by the palankeen to tell me this was a highly senior officer. Wondering, I introduced myself.

"Well, congratulations, Mr. McKay," says he. "Smart a piece of work as I've seen this year; if we had a regiment who could handle a lance as well as you we'd have no trouble with Sikhs and Afghans, eh, Bennet?"

"Indeed not sir," Said one of the exquisite aides, eyeing me, "Mr. Ian McKay; I seem to know the name, Are you not awaiting orders for Company Service?"

"Eh, what's that?" said his Chief, giving me a bright grey eye. "And you're bound for Company Service are you? Well the pay is good, but it's a damned shame. Waste your life teaching Sowars (troopers) how to perform on galloping field days. Damned dusty work! How long have you been here in Calcutta?"

I suppose that I was just enough of a novelty to rouse his interest, so I answered his questions; and in my turn found out that he was General Crawford, on the staff of the Governor General, and as such a commander of influence and importance. I was on the verge of explaining that the lance was not my profession, as he seemed to think, even though his aide, Bennett seemed to know, when he exclaimed: "Well, well, McKay, I wish you every success, Good Day to you sir." And that would have settled that, no doubt, but for a queer chance. I had been sitting with my lance at rest, the point six feet above my head, and some of the pi-dog's blood had dribbled down onto my hand; I gave an exclamation of disgust, and turning to Iqbal, who was sitting silently behind, I said:

"Khabadar, rissaldar! Lance sarf karo, juldi!" Which is to say, "Look out, Sergeant-Major. Take this lance and get it cleaned, quickly.'' And with that I tossed the lance to him. He caught it, and I turned back to take my leave of Crawford. He had stopped in the act of pulling his palankeen curtains.

"Here McKay," says he. "How long have you been in India? What three weeks you say? But you speak the lingo dammit!"

"Only a word or two, sir."

"Don't tell me, sir: I heard several words. Damned sight more than I learned in thirty years. Eh Bennett? Too many 'ees' and 'ums' for me. But that's damned extraordinary, young man. How'd you pick it up?" I did some more explaining about my curiosity about languages, and he shook his bald head and said he had never heard the like. "A born lancer and a born linguist too, Bigod. Rare combination--too damned good for the Company Cavalry--all ride like pigs anyway. Look here, young McKay, I can't think at this time of the morning. You call on me tonight, d'ye hear? We'll go into this further, eh, Bennett?"

And with that away he went, leaving me in somewhat of a quandary, since I had not had the opportunity to explain that I was an engineer not a lancer. I did not quite to know what to make of it all, but I did know that my father had often told me that it was not wise to keep a senior officer waiting. So, at the earliest calling hour of the British social period, I presented myself, that evening, resplendent in my Royal Engineer's full dress uniform. As I was ushered in to the waiting room, the General caught a glimpse of me, and walked through the library door. He took a long look at me standing by the windows and said: "Well, an engineer as well, you've some explaining to do young McKay," as he fumbled for his pipe and took an expectant seat on the lounge just in front of me.

Since I had done nothing wrong, part of me felt that a simple explanation of the misunderstanding should suffice, but another, deeper part of me, made cautious by my father's constant warnings and advice about dealing with senior officer's and their usually strange ideas about right and wrong, brought me up short. Should I concoct a story that would fit my host's obvious anticipations, or should 1, as my brother in the Navy would have said, 'Go at them directly and leave off all that maneuvering.' Being basically a lazy person, my second inclination won the day, together with the puzzle that I really did not have the slightest idea what the General's anticipations were. There was the additional advantage, that if I made the story short and to the point, I would not have to memorize any lengthy stories of doubtful truthfulness.

"As you see sir, I am an engineer and not a lancer as you suggested on the Maidan this morning. I am genuinely sorry for any misunderstanding which may have arisen." I stated this all firmly hoping that General Crawford would not see the doubt lurking behind my eyes. He never even looked up.

"An engineer outdoing a rissaldar in lance work, and one who can speak this nigger lingo as well! By God, Emily Eden must not miss this. She'd never forgive me!"

To my surprise this was his way of indicating that I should go with him to the Governor General's Palace, where he was due for dinner, so of course I went. and had the privilege of drinking lemonade with their excellencies on their great marble verandah, while a splendid company stood about like a small court, and I saw more quality in three seconds than in my previous three weeks in Calcutta.

Crawford regaled their excellencies about my prowess on the Maidan with lance and crowned the story with the part about me calling out to the rissaldar to clean my lance. He finished the story by indicating that as their excellencies could clearly see, I was an engineer and not a cavalry officer at all. Lord Auckland had known my father in some staff position where he was posted previous to his tour in India and Lady Emily became downright civil and pressed me to translate some words that she had heard in the bazaar, that day. As it turned out they were pretty tough words directed I suppose, at the undisguised wealth and arrogance of the Governor General's Staff and entourage. Lord Auckland, I believe, fully understood the words and his face stiffened as his sister repeated them to me. When I passed them off as a harmless Hindi saying and provided a much lighter translation to the passage than it warranted Lord Auckland's face relaxed and Lady Emily clapped her hands with delight.

Lady E. was definitely on my side now, and bending forward she asked me where I was to be stationed. I told her about my expected posting and then explained the incident on the Maidan. I explained that I had been drawn to India by the extensive discussion of the new canal system that was being considered in Bengal, but that my exercises with the rissaldar, in the last three weeks, first begun as a way to counteract the boredom of awaiting the issuance of my orders, had, in fact quickened my blood for action on the frontier.

"Don't blame him either," said Crawford. "Man's a positive Pole on horseback, an engineer and, as you heard, speaks Hindustani too. Shouldn't be wasted eh, McKay?"

"That shows remarkable zeal in study, Mr. McKay," says Auckland. "Perhaps that reflects upon your most excellent father's direction?"

"Why must you take Mr. McKay's credit away from him?" says Lady E. "I think it is quite unusual. I think he should be found a post where his talents can be properly employed. Do you not agree General?"

"Own views exactly match," says Crawford.

Now you can imagine that this was heady stuff for me; this morning I had been any old subaltern, and here I was hearing compliments from a Governor General, and the First Lady of India. I wondered at where this would all lead and my answers came soon enough. "Why not find something for him then?" said Auckland to Crawford. "General was just saying only yesterday that there was some sort of shortage in the engineers, on his staff, due to some illness up-country."

" Bigod," says Crawford, "your excellency's right. What do you say McKay? Care to ride on the staff of an Army Commander, hey? Better than Company work at the back of beyond, what?" I naturally said that I would be deeply honored, and was starting to thank him when he out me off. "You'll be more than thankful yet when you know where the service'll take you," says he grinning. "By God I wish I was your age and had the same chance. It's a Company Army mostly, of course, but it has the makings of a damn good one. They will need some time to shake down, but then so will you, Great chance!''

I must have looked all eagerness, because Lady E. sighed and smiled together. "Poor boy," she said, "you must not tease him."

"Well it will be out tomorrow anyway," says Crawford. "You don't know of course, McKay, but General commands the section or he will until midnight tonight. Then, he will take command of the newly formed Army of the Indus. What about that, eh?" It sounded very good and I made enthusiastic noises. "Aye you're a lucky dog," says Crawford beaming. "How many young blades would give their right leg for the chance for service with him? It's the very place for a dashing lancer or a sharp engineer to win his spurs, Bigod!" Excitement tickled my spine, with just a touch of foreboding, and I asked Crawford where this service might be. "Why Kabul, of course," says he. "Where else but Afghanistan?" A cold shiver ran over me, as Crawford mouthed those words. He was sure that I must be delighted at this news and of course in a way I was. But, I had listened in the bazaars this last three weeks past to the surge and take of the discussions there about little else but the "Afghanistan Question." In a hundred British drawing rooms all over the city as well in every corner of the filthy streets in Calcutta that topic was being aired at every level. The barbarity of the hill tribes, the unpleasantness of the country, the new army that was coming together somewhere up-country and the Kabul Expedition that was to put the hill tribes in their place and a puppet King upon the throne of Afghanistan, all been discussed again and again together with the interminable twisted skeins of ideas relating to the very complicated native political questions that were involved. I was sure that in spite of their lofty positions, that my hosts knew little of what the natives knew or professed to know, simply because they did not have the language. I was sure that any young officer in India would have jumped at the opportunity and I did my best to look gratified and eager, but it was an uphill battle with the sinking feeling inside. I had thought that Lady Luck had me in her grip at last, what with my sudden introduction to the exalted in the land, and what it had won me, on the surface at any rate, was a posting to the hottest, hardest and most dangerous place in the world to judge by all accounts.

Thinking quickly, I kept my eager smile in place, but wondered aloud whether General might not have preferences of his own when it came to choosing a staff; there might be others, I thought, who had a better claim.....

"Nonsense", says Crawford. He would go bail that General would be delighted to have a man who could talk the language, ride well and handle engineering problems. Lady Emily said that she was sure that he would find a place for me. So that was it I would be on the General's Staff. I had tried to angle around Lady Emily and had tasted the point of the hook for my pains. I kept telling myself it was what any young subaltern would want as General Crawford had said, but I could still hear the whispers in the bazaar about the British blood that would be spilled in the mountain lands far to the North.

That night the servants walked wide around me at the cottage, and even my cheerful "Major-Domo" sent in a message that his aunt was very sick and he would have to sit with her that evening. I was not fit company for anyone even the servants that night.

I was not even given a decent period of time in which to prepare myself. Lt. General J. Keane received me the next day and turned out to be on first view a stiff-necked old soldier who had seen much of warfare on the frontier, did not appreciate the interruptions of a mere subaltern and who was totally taken up with preparations for the Army of the Indus. I prepared myself mentally for a rough go of it before I was through. It was beginning to look less and less like a plum posting and more and more like a posting into the nether regions. I stiffened my stance even more and riveted my gaze on the corner of the window wainscoting. An unfinished rasher of bacon with one half eaten biscuit on its greasy plate, was holding down a stack of troop returns, and a large scale map of Northern India and the Indus River was spread out on a small table nearby. Two staff clerks, who very properly ignored my entrance, were busy dashing off orders in their round copperplate handwriting, while the general himself, dressed in a solid black undress uniform of the 4th Hussars, sipped coffee from a purple and green matched cup and saucer, while he reviewed the papers that the Viceroy's office had prepared for me to deliver to him.

He looked me over pretty stiff, I can tell you, and asked me in his gravelly voice, more used to the parade ground than the parlor, if I could write Hindi as well as I could speak it. I replied that I could write some, but that I was much more comfortable in speaking that language than in the writing of it. At this General Keane merely sniffed and bade me to take up a quill and charge it from the ink reservoir on his desk. "Write down as much as you understand of what I dictate to you."

With that he dashed away into a letter to a civilian authority of some standing in Calcutta about army supplies in a Hindi dialog that was at once twenty to the dozen in speed, while similar in a strange way, to his native highland dialect. I struggled to keep up with him, and as he progressed the dictation took on more and more of the usual Hindi flowery phrases. After a fractions beginning, I managed to settle down to writing down two out of every three words. The two staff clerks had stopped in the midst of their work and were watching with great interest as we proceeded, in a way that told me that what the General was doing was far above their skill level. That encouraged me to some degree and I continued to struggle. After about a page and a half, the words came easier and I began to get more and more of what the General was saying. After just over three pages, he abruptly stopped his narration and asked to see my work. He studied the scribbled pages intently and at some length, before handing them to one of the clerks. With a gesture from the General, the two clerks again bent over their labors after a glance or two at me. I wondered what those glances portended and I soon found out.

The general looked up from the laboring clerks and said in Hindi, "Did you come by cab or on horseback?"

"By cab your honor", I replied now just a bit surer of myself now that I was speaking the language once again.

I reviewed the map closely. It was a fairly new updated version of an old Indian survey map and had several corrections inked upon it's surface. There were many things to consider in this problem and I was not familiar with the army's makeup. However, I doubted that a newly formed army such as the Army of the Indus would have a pontoon train with it, particularly due to it's location so far up-country and the fact that it was headed to the mountainous terrain around Kabul underlined that fact. Without a pontoon train the bridge would have to be scratch-built from boats available on the river and lumber would be scarce in this country. Lumber would be available, up river from the forested lands, but the river would be far too swift and tumultuous to attempt the crossing there. It had to be lower down, and the timber, floated down to the crossing point, a hundred items passed through my mind, such as rope, anchors, fasteners, wagons, etc. but the important things were boats and timber. I stabbed my finger at a fairly large sized city marked prominently on the map called Roory. The general looked at me strangely for a moment, and then turned to one of the clerks. He gave them some curt instructions about making up a package and then turned back to me. He asked me several questions regarding my decision which covered the very things that I had just weighed in my own mind. Why so far down the river? Where was were the bridge timbers to come from? What about rope and anchors? I was just about convinced that I had mucked up this interview past all saving when the General fixed me with his eye.

"That was a shrewd choice you know," he said laconically, as he seated himself at the desk. "I had just made the same determination just this morning. Good Man!"

Even with the best of luck and good intentions, I spent a week in the British compound at Calcutta, seeing to my kit and making arrangements to move north. Had I not been as knowledgeable, as I was, regarding the political situation, because of my "listening in" the cafes and houses of relaxation around Calcutta, I would have been thrilled with the whole idea of making preparations to begin the long journey up-country to join the "Bengals" as we were known in those years. I was to join the Army of the Indus under the command of Lt. General J. Keane, whose task it would be to occupy Kabul, Afghanistan and restore to the throne of that unhappy country the refugee ruler Shah Sujah. I personally was to join the Engineering Staff of this great army at Ferozepore over a thousand miles from Calcutta to the northwest. In actuality this posting was a unique one in that I was not to go to the Royal Bengal Engineer's Headquarters, but rather report directly to the commander of the army for staff duty. Of course I had already had a meeting with him, but that really did not count. It was the "reporting in" that was important. Usually one had to spend a lot of time and effort in order to get a chance like this. Here it was being given to me, and again had I not known the feelings of the Indian peoples, I would have been much happier.

My kit had been put together by myself, with the assistance of my father, while in England with the needs of the regular Royal Bengal Engineer Cantonments in mind. Now things had changed significantly and a change i n my kit was also required. I carefully packed away my dress uniforms and packed the few items of luxury that I had purchased in Calcutta, and I only kept to hand one undress uniform and of course my personal weapons. On the advice of Muhammed Iqbal we all shed our uniforms for native dress. I doubt that we would have survived other-wise. Our long and weary way wound through desert, scrubby plain, through rocky hills, through forests and we visited a thousand tiny mud vi1lages and caravan camps and small filthy towns. The heat was horrible and ceaseless. Your skin scorched, your eyes burned, and you felt that your body was slowly turning into a dry bag of bones, but in the native clothes and robes one felt cooler, that is, one fried without turning quite black.

Timbu, Iqbal and I rode horses and we had paid off the servants and vacated the little house in Calcutta. He were now on the march with a small camel train managed by a grey bearded old camel driver with one eye, a great lean, ugly Jewish-looking creature, who was heavily armed and two younger helpers that stayed to themselves. Iqbal had talked with the old man and two boys before we left and there seemed to be an understanding between them, probably based on the quickness of Iqbal's sword knife. He vouched for them, however, and after a day or two I accepted their presence with hardly a backward glance. After the first few days of settling into our journey we began to push along faster.