EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

a cool bath and clean clothes, a long drink under the
punkahs in the Club.

We stopped once on the way for a cool green melon
and a drink, then on again, bumping over the tracks, on
towards the Khyber. In my mind was already formed
every word of the message I would send predicting the
fall of a King and the wreckage of an ideal. The more
I thought of it, the more I realised how inevitable it was.
Amanullah was doomed.

Jallalabad. We stopped for no more than a refill of
petrol and water. We ran through the Customs post,
distributing rupees to all and sundry. The Customs
gentry were that day in amiable mood. We were well
up to time, and the sun still high in the sky* I worked
out our speed roughly. We would just do it.

A few miles from Dacca, the engine gasped and
spluttered to silence. The feed to the autovac was
blocked, and with a full tank, it was nevertheless hope-
less to try and find the trouble and remedy it. There
were only twenty miles to go, and an hour and a half to
do it in, on a road that improved now as we slipped down
the hill into the great Dacca Plain. Taking charge from
the dispirited driver, who now blamed Allah for his
troubles, I filled the autovac from the spare can of
petrol, and urged him to save petrol as well as he could,
while I would fill up from the can whenever necessary.
We ran five miles and filled up again.

After a little persuasion, the driver co-operated
admirably in our joint second-splitting efforts at re-
filling the autovac. Eventually he got the hang of a
system by which we did not get in each other's way
every quarter of an hour when the engine starved. We
would leap down, he would undo the top cap, and I
would pour the petrol. Then the can was empty, the
rear tank tap impossible to budge, and the precious

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