Page:Angels of Mons second edition.pdf/115

 and Aft," and he observed that the man listened with decent politeness and attention, as indeed he would have listened to Ezekiel's Vision of the Chariot. But the holy man noted that the true gleam of interest was lacking in the invalid's eye, till the Gurkhas were mentioned. He beamed then, and spoke with enthusiasm of the wiles and crafts and deadly works of the little hillmen—"have they got a touch of the Jap in them, do you think, sir? They look a bit like it; not like the other Indian troops. A different style of thing altogether."

So the soldier told of the devices of the men with the cookeries (or kukris as pedants spell the word); how it was impossible to hear them or to see them as they lurked in shadows or slid like snakes upon the ground, how they could throw those curving knives of theirs with sure, deadly aim.