Talbot Mundy

“ So at dawn one morning when the Tail-Twisters swooped like a jingling whirlwind out of camp to round up Gopi Lall, in a tent that thrummed already with the morning heat sat Boileau, with a pile of documents in front of him that would keep him busy for a dozen days—him and the baboo. When the Colonel of a regiment does need to tame the rising flood of youthful insolence, there are always plenty of blue indent forms, and payment vouchers that need auditing, and other things even less interesting to the military type of wit. ”

“ A man, whose job, and honor, and promotion all depend on making sons of the sons of soldiers regard him as a demigod is vulnerable where he keeps his pride.
He toiled at the maddening “returns in triplicate” until the flies drove him from the tent. In spite of the netting and the squeaky improvised punkah, even the ink pot was full of flies, and even the baboo gave up regarding them as essential elements like air and earth.
He went to the gloomy, empty Mess tent, where a solitary servitor provided him with curried goat and flies. ”

“ But how about the notion of skating over thin ice?”
“Yasmini and ice, sahib, are as different as Kinchinjunga from the Plains.”
“Which is the nearest way to where she lives? You’ve got me interested, babooji. I’ll call on the lady.”
“Nay, God forbid, sahib! I have warned you. I will not direct you to your undoing! There are women of the countryside in hundreds who–”
“Chup!” commanded Boileau. So the baboo held his tongue.
But fifteen minutes later Boileau’s servant came to him, carrying his Panama to replace the helmet that in that climate in the daytime a man must wear even inside his tent. ”