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seemed to part, intimidated as much by his size as by the steel-rimmed wooden club, or lathi , he clutched in his right hand.
    On reaching George he rattled off instructions to a waiting gaggle of porters: two were to carry their bags while a third collected their horses from the livestock carriage and met them at the ghat, or landing place. 'This way, huzoor ,' he said to George. 'We'll take a gharry to the river. It's not far.'
    From the back of the pony-drawn carriage George got his first view of the famed Indus, the two-thousand-mile river that flowed from the Tibetan plateau to the Arabian Gulf, whose Greek name had been given to the entire sub-continent. Its span at Kotri was more than half a mile, yet it was close to bursting its banks, thanks to the recent onset of the monsoon and the melting of the summer snows. The ghat below teemed with native craft, some with thatched roofs, and all crammed with merchandise bound for or just arrived from the booming port of Karachi. The exception was a small steamer with a rear paddle-wheel, and a barge attached to either side, that was tied to a rough wooden jetty.
    'Is that it ?' asked George, having imagined something much grander.
    'Yes, huzoor . A fine vessel, no?'
    George was about to answer in the negative when his attention was drawn to a tall man boarding the steamer by a rickety gangplank. He was wearing a light-coloured suit and George could have sworn he was the man from the hotel. 'Ilderim, have you seen that man before?' he asked, pointing at the steamer.
    'Which man, huzoor ?'
    'The European who just boarded.'
    'There are many Europeans on deck. Which one?'
    'The one in the cream suit. I'm sure he was watching me at the hotel.'
    'I have no memory of him, huzoor .'
    'Well, perhaps you weren't on duty - or he didn't leave you a tip. But, believe me, he was there.'
    'And you'd like me to keep an eye on him, huzoor ?'
    'Yes, please, if it's not too much trouble.'
    Ilderim frowned at his employer's attempt at a joke. 'Consider it done.'
    But Ilderim had little opportunity to make good his promise because, for the first week of the voyage up the Indus, the mysterious European spent most of his time in his cabin, even taking his meals there rather than in the communal saloon. Only occasionally did he venture on deck, and only at night when the stifling heat made even the first-class cabins all but unbearable. Ilderim had spotted him once or twice from the shore where he and George, after one torturous night on board, had taken to sleeping rough, wrapped in thin mosquito nets to discourage the swarms of insects. It was as well for them that the steamer only travelled by day to minimize the chances of grounding on the many sandbanks that lay just below the river's fast-flowing surface, and at night was usually anchored alongside a wood station so that fuel for the hungry boilers could be replenished. One by one the other passengers had followed their lead until only the stranger remained on board at night, which made George more suspicious still. When he quizzed the skipper, a light-skinned Anglo-Indian called Skinner, he received a curt reply: 'Where he sleeps at night is his business.'
    As the days passed George began to think less of the stranger and more about his mission. His grasp of Pashto was increasing by the day and even Ilderim - who took little pleasure from his duties as language tutor, or munshi , which he seemed to regard as beneath him - was forced to concede that he was a fast learner. George knew that he would have to be fluent if he was to have any chance of getting his hands on the cloak, and redoubled his efforts, spending many hours studying in his cabin.
    When he was not working he would sit in a deckchair as the steamer crawled up-river, at speeds rarely exceeding four miles an hour, through immense forests, sandy plains and the occasional tract of cultivated land. They passed so many villages of rudely constructed flat-roofed huts, whose inhabitants