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passed through several villages and was treated with wary respect, as a holy man might be treated, and got warmer clothes and food, but none of those I spoke to could understand English and I had no familiarity with their dialect. Thus it was nearly a month before I could begin to hope for confirmation of my belief that I had returned to my own time. A few landmarks began to turn up—a clump of trees, an oddly shaped rock, a small river—which I recognized and I knew I was close to the frontier station which Sharan Kang had attacked and thus been the cause of my first visit both to Teku Benga and, ultimately, the future.
    The station came in sight a day or so later—merely a barracks surrounded by a few native brick huts and the whole enclosed by a serviceable wall. This was where our Native Police and their commanding officer had been killed and I admit that I prayed that I would find it as I had left it. There were signs of fighting and few signs of habitation and this cheered me up no end! I stumbled through the broken gateway of the little fort, hoping against hope that I would find the detachment of Punjabi Lancers and Ghoorkas I had left behind on my way to Kumbalari. Sure enough there were soldiers there. I shouted out in relief. I was weak from hunger and exhaustion and my voice must have sounded thinly through the warm spring air, but the soldiers sprang up, weapons at the ready, and it was only then that I realized they were white. Doubtless the Indian soldiers had been relieved by British.
    Yet these men had recently been in a fight, that was clear. Had another band of Sharan Kang’s men attacked the fort while I had been on my expedition into the old hill fox’s territory?
    I called out: “Are you British?”
    I received the stout reply: “I certainly hope we are!”
    And then I fell fainting on the dry dust of the compound.

CHAPTER TWO
The Dream—and the Nightmare— of the Chilean Wizard
    N aturally enough, my first words on regaining consciousness, lying on a truckle bed in what remained of the barracks’ dormitory, were:
    “What’s the year?”
    “The year, sir?” The man who addressed me was a young, bright-looking chap. He had a sergeant’s stripes on his dusty scarlet tunic (it was a Royal Londonderry uniform, a regiment having close connections with my own) and he held a tin cup of tea in one hand while the other was behind my head, trying to help me sit up.
    “Please, sergeant, humour me, would you? What’s the year?”
    “It’s 1904, sir.”
    So I had been ‘lost’ for two years. That would explain a great deal. I was relieved. Sipping the rather weak tea (I was later to discover it was almost their last) I introduced myself, giving my rank and my own regiment, telling the sergeant that I was, as far as I knew, the only survivor of a punitive expedition of a couple of years earlier—that I had been captured, escaped, wandered around for a bit and had only just managed to make it back. The sergeant accepted the story without any of the signs of suspicion which I had come to expect, but his next words alarmed me.
    “So you would know nothing of the war, then, Captain Bastable?”
    “A war? Here, on the Frontier? The Russians...”
    “At the moment, sir, this is one of the few places scarcely touched by the war, though you are right in supposing that the Russians are amongst our enemies. The war is world-wide. Myself and less than a score of men are all that remains of the army which failed to defend Darjiling. The city and the best part of these territories are either under Russian control or the Russians have been, in turn, beaten by the Arabian Alliance. Personally I am hoping that the Russians are still in control. At least they let their prisoners live or, at worst, kill them swiftly. The last news we had was not good, however...”
    “Are there no reinforcements coming from Britain?”
    A look of pain filled the sergeant’s eyes. “There will be little enough coming from