(^t^fc^<<£W^<^<^<^<^<^^

AMANULLAH

valley and before the dawn voice of the Iman had cried
from the Mosque. Kabul was busy already, though,
with shivering, cloaked figures, moving hurriedly about
their business, driving cattle and horses out through the
great stone gates.

We were quick through the Customs barrier at the
bridge. They were too sleepy and bored to bother this
morning. We climbed up the hill in the full light of
dawn, and I turned back once to see the old city.

The morning mist lay heavy over the roof-tops.
Smoke rose lazily from a thousand open fires in the
serais. The day-long clatter and hum of the bazaar was
beginning. From the parade ground there came the
long note of a bugle, and already the rifle ranges were
cracking with the chatter of machine-guns. It was still
bitterly cold, as we turned the next loop in the climbing
road. I had seen the last of Kabul, so soon to be
enveloped, not with the smoke of dung fires, but with a
cloud of more pungent and menacing nature.

That driver could certainly handle a car. He pressed
the old vehicle valiantly on, rattled it over the worst bits
of the road, swung round hairpin bends, forced it crazily
down the slopes, A hundred times we edged the loose
stones off the road and down the precipice. We shaved
the inside corners on a hundred turns, skidded and slid,
swerved on a mad career to old tumble-down bridges, and
ran into warmth.

The Frontier gate at Landi Khana, mouth of the
Khyber Pass, shut at sundown. It was just possible,
however, to do the trip in a day providing that we had no
accidents, and no arguments with the Customs gentry.
With the employment of a little bakshish and not a little
tact, I reckoned that we could get to Peshawar that
night. Already, before we had run a couple of hours, I
was visualising the comfort of the hotel in Peshawar,

190