Читать книгу Round the Bend онлайн

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That evening I told him he could give his notice in to the bank and start as soon as he liked.

I had his licence to negotiate then. I had been given a provisional "B" licence for myself which had to be renewed each month, and was only given on the understanding that I went to England very soon to take it properly. I started in to battle then for another provisional licence for Gujar Singh so that he could carry on in the Fox-Moth while I was in England. Officialdom came back at once and asked who was going to maintain the Fox-Moth and sign it out while I was in England, and I threw back the ball that Flight Sergeant Harrison had "A" and "C" ground engineer's licences and would do it in the evenings. Officialdom replied that Flight Sergeant Harrison was licensed for Dakotas, it was true, but not for a Fox-Moth, and I replied that surely to God if he could sign for a Dakota he could sign for a pipsqueak thing like a Fox-Moth. So it went on.

Presently it came out that Gujar Singh was an Indian subject, and we found that he could get a "B" licence with the greatest of ease in Karachi. There was a York of R.A.F. Transport Command going through to Mauripur the week that he joined me, and the C.O. very kindly gave him a passage in that. He was back three days later in a Dakota of Orient Airways that was going through to Baghdad, and he had a brand new "B" licence, valid for six months. I wished I was an Indian.