The houses which constitute the town of Picotee—in the Gambia region a commendable liberality of spirit prevails as to the requisite elements of a town—were glistening beneath the intolerable rays of the afternoon sun. To the eyes of all aboard the mail steamer Penguin, which had just run up a blue-peter in the anchorage, the town seemed of dazzling whiteness. It was only the inhabitants of Picotee who knew that the walls of the houses were not white, but of a sickly yellow tinge; consequently, it was only the inhabitants who knew how inappropriate it was to allude to their town as the “whited sepulchre”—a term of reproach which was frequently levelled against it rather on account of the appalling percentage of mortality among its inhabitants than by reason of the spotlessness of the walls, though they did appear spotless when viewed from the sea. In the saloon of the Penguin the thermometer registered 95°, and when the passengers complained to the captain of the steamer respecting the temperature, holding him personally responsible for every degree that it rose above 70°, he pointed across the dazzling blue waters of the anchorage to where the town was painfully glistening, and asked his complainants how they would like to be there.

It was universally believed that when the captain had put this inquiry, the last word had been said regarding the temperature: he, at any rate, seemed to fancy that he had relieved himself from all responsibility in the matter.

At Picotee things were going on pretty much as usual. But what is progress at Picotee would be regarded as stagnation elsewhere.

There was a fine suggestion of repose about the Kroomen who were dozing in unpicturesque attitudes in the shade of the palms on the ridge nearest to the beach; and even Mr Caractacus Brown, who, being one of the merchants of the place,—he sold parrots to the sailors, and would accept a contract for green monkeys from the more ambitious collectors of the fauna of the West Coast,—was not supposed to give way to such weaknesses as were exhibited by the Kroomen—even Mr Caractacus Brown wiped his woolly head and admitted to his neighbour, Mr Coriolanus White, that the day was warm. Having seen Coriolanus selling liquid lard by the spoonful, he could scarcely do otherwise than admit that the temperature was high. Devonshire cream was solid in comparison with the lard sold at Picotee. But, in spite of the heat, a pepper-bird was warbling among the bananas, and its song broke the monotony of the roar of the great rollers that broke upon the beach—a roar that varies but that never ends in the ears of the people of Picotee.

Dr Claude Koomadhi, who occupied a villa built on the lovely green slope above the town, opened the shutters of the room in which he sat, and listened to the song of the pepper-bird. Upon his features, which seemed as if they were carved out of black oak and delicately polished, a sentimental expression appeared. His eyes showed a large proportion of white as he sighed and remarked to his servant, who brought him a glass of iced cocoanut milk, that the song of the pepper-bird reminded him of home.

“Of ‘ome, sah?” said the old woman. “Lor’ bress yah, sah! dere ain’t no peppah-buds at Ashantee.”

Dr Koomadhi’s eyes no longer wore a sentimental expression. They flashed when the old woman had spoken, but she did not notice this circumstance. She only laid down the tumbler on the table, hitched up her crimson shawl, and roared with negress’ laughter.

“You don’t understand, Sally. I said home—England,” remarked the doctor.

“Oh, beg pardung, sah; thought yah ‘looded to Ashantee,” said the old woman as she rolled out of the room, still uttering that senseless laugh.

Dr Koomadhi did not seem to be greatly put out by that reminder of the fact that Ashantee was his birthplace. He threw himself back in his cane chair and took a sip from the tumbler. He then resumed his perusal of the ‘Saturday Review’ brought by the Penguin in the morning.

He did not get through many pages. He shook his head gravely. He could not approve of the tone of the political article. It suggested compromise. It was not Conservative enough for Dr Koomadhi. He began to fear that he must give up the ‘Saturday.’ It was clearly temporising with the enemy. This would not do for Dr Koomadhi.

He took another sip of cocoanut milk, and then began pacing the room. He was clearly restless in his mind; but, perhaps, it would be going too far to suggest that he was perturbed owing to the spirit of compromise displayed in the political article which he had just read. No; though a staunch Conservative, he was still susceptible of a passion beyond the patriotic desire to assist in maintaining the integrity of the Empire. This was the origin of his uneasiness. He had been awake all the previous night thinking over his past life, and trying to think out his future. The conclusion to which he had come was that as he had successfully overthrown all the obstacles which had been in his path, to success in the past, there was no reason why he might not overthrow all that might threaten to bar his progress in the future. But, in spite of having come to this conclusion, he was very uneasy.

He did not become more settled when he had gone to a drawer in his writing-desk and had taken out a cabinet portrait—the portrait of a lady—and had gazed at it for several minutes. He laid it back with something like a sigh, and then brought out of the same receptacle a quantity of manuscript, every page of which consisted of a number of lines, irregular as to their length, but each one beginning with a capital letter. This is the least compromising way of referring to such manuscripts. To say that they were poetry would, perhaps, be to place a fictitious value upon them; but they certainly had one feature in common with the noblest poems ever written in English: every line began with a capital letter.

Dr Koomadhi’s lips—they constituted not the least prominent of his features—moved as he read to himself the lines which he had written during the past three months,—since his return to Picotee with authority to spend some thousands of pounds in carrying out certain experiments, the result of which would, it was generally hoped, transform the region of the Gambia into one of the healthiest of her Majesty’s possessions. Then he sighed again and laid the manuscripts over the photograph, closing and locking the drawer of the desk.

He walked fitfully up and down the room for another hour. Then he opened his shutters, and the first breath of the evening breeze from the sea came upon his face.

“I’ll do it,” he said resolutely. “Why should I not do it? Surely that old ridiculous prejudice is worn out. Surely she, at least, will be superior to such prejudice. Yes, she must—she must. I have succeeded hitherto in everything that I have attempted, and shall I fail in this?”

The roar of the rollers along the beach filled the room, at the open window of which Dr Koomadhi remained standing for several minutes.

II.

Dr Koomadhi belonged to a race who are intolerant of any middle course so far as dress is concerned. They are either very much dressed or very much undressed. But he had lived long enough in England to have chastened whatever yearning he may have had for running into either extreme. Only now and again—usually when in football costume—he had felt a strange longing to forswear the more cumbersome tweeds of daily life. This longing, combined with the circumstance of his being extremely fond of football, might be accepted as evidence that the traditions of the savages from whom he had sprung survived in his nature, just as they do in the youth of Great Britain, only he had not to go so far back as have the most of the youth of Great Britain, to reach the fountain-head.

The evening attire which he now resumed was wholly white,—from his pith helmet down to his canvas shoes, he was in white, with the exception of his tie, which was black. He looked at himself in a glass when at the point of leaving his house, and he felt satisfied with his appearance; only he should have dearly liked to exchange his black tie for one of scarlet. He could not understand how it was that he had never passed a draper’s window in London without staring with envious eyes at the crimson scarves displayed for sale. No one could know what heroic sacrifices he made in rejecting all such allurements. No one could know what he suffered while crushing down that uncivilised longing for a brilliant colour.

Just before leaving the house he went to his desk and brought out of one of the drawers a small ivory box. He unlocked it and stood for some time with his face down to the thing that the box contained—a curiously-speckled stone, somewhat resembling a human ear. While keeping his head down to this thing his lips were moving. He was clearly murmuring some phrases in a strange language into that curiously shaped stone.

Relocking the ivory box, he returned it to the drawer, which he also locked. Then he left his house, and took a path leading to a well-built villa standing in front of a banana-jungle, with a tall flag-pole before its hall door—a flag-pole from which the union-jack fluttered, indicating to all casual visitors that this was the official residence of her Majesty’s Commissioner to the Gambia, Commander Hope, R.N.

“Hallo, Koomadhi!” came a voice from the open window to the right of the door. “Pardon me for five minutes. I’m engaged at my correspondence to go to England by the Penguin this evening. But don’t mind me. Go through to the drawing-room and my daughter will give you a cup of tea.”

“All right, sir,” said Dr Koomadhi. “Don’t hurry on my account. I was merely calling to mention that I had forwarded my report early in the day; but I’ll wait inside.”

“All right,” came the voice from the window. “I’m at the last folios.”

Dr Koomadhi was in the act of entering the porch when his pith helmet was snatched off by some unseen hand, and a curious shriek sounded on the balcony above the porch.

“The ruffian!” said Koomadhi, with a laugh. “The ruffian! He’s at his tricks again.”

He took a few steps back and looked up to the balcony. There sat an immense tame baboon, wearing the helmet and screeching with merriment.

“I’ll have to give you another lesson, my gentleman,” said the doctor, shaking his finger at the creature. “Hand me down that helmet at once.”

The baboon made a grimace and then raised his right hand to the salute—his favourite trick.

Suddenly the doctor produced a sound with his lips, and in an instant the monkey had dropped the helmet and had fled in alarm from the balcony to the roof of the house, whence he gazed in every direction, while the doctor went into the house with his helmet in his hand. He had merely given the simian word of alarm, which the creature, understanding its mother tongue, had promptly acted upon.

“‘You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, but the scent’—you know the rest, sir,” remarked Mr Letts, the Commissioner’s Secretary, who had observed from his window the whole transaction.

“What was that, Letts?” asked the Commissioner.

“Koomadhi spoke to the baboon in its own tongue, sir, and it took the hint of a man and a brother and cleared off.”

“Yes, but where does the shattering of the vase come in?” asked the Commissioner.

“I mean to suggest that a nigger remains a nigger, and remains on speaking terms with a baboon, even though he has a college degree and wears tweeds,” said Mr Letts.

“Oh,” said the Commissioner.

He had heard the same opinion expressed by various members of his staff ever since he had anything to do with the administration of affairs on the West Coast. He had long ago ceased to take even the smallest amount of interest in the question of the exact depth of a negro’s veneer of civilisation.

III.

But while Mr Letts was quoting Thomas Moore’s line—in a corrupt form—to the Commissioner, Dr Koomadhi was accepting, with a certain amount of dignity, the greeting which was extended to him by Miss Hope, the Commissioner’s daughter, in the drawing-room. She had been trying over some songs which had just arrived from England. Two of them were of a high colour of sentimentalism, another belonged to that form of poetic composition known as a coon song. It had a banjo obbligato; but the pianoforte accompaniment of itself gave more than a suggestion of the twanging of strings and the banging of a tambourine. Had Dr Koomadhi arrived a few minutes sooner it would have been his privilege to hear Gertrude Hope chant the chorus—

“Don’t you belieb un, Massa John,

Jes’ winkie mid y o’ eye,

Kick up yo’ heels to de gasalier—

Say, how am dat for high?”

But Gertrude had, after singing the melody, pushed the copy under a pile of music, and had risen from the piano to receive her visitor, at the same time ringing for tea.

He apologised for interrupting her at the piano.

“If I had only known that you were singing, I should certainly have—well, not exactly, stayed away; no, I should have come sooner, and remained a worshipper in the outer court.”

“Oh, I wasn’t singing—not regularly singing,” said she, with a laugh. “Trying over stupid songs about lovers’ partings is not singing, Dr Koomadhi.”

“Lovers’ partings?” said he. “They seem particularly well adapted to lyrical treatment.”

“The songs at any rate are heart-breaking,” said she.

“They represent the most acute stage of the lovers’ feelings, then?” said he.

“I daresay. I suppose there are degrees of feelings even of lovers.”

“I’m sure of it, Miss Hope.”

He was seated in a wicker chair; she had thrown herself into another—a seat that gave her the appearance of lying in a hammock. He scanned her from her white forehead down to the dainty feet that crossed one another on the sloping support of cane-work. She would have been looked on as a very pretty girl in a London drawing-room; and even a girl who would be regarded as commonplace there would pass as a marvel of loveliness on the West Coast of Africa.

“Yes,” continued Dr Koomadhi, “I’m sure there are degrees of feeling even among lovers.”

“You are a doctor, and so doubtless have had many opportunities of diagnosing the disease in all its stages,” said she.

“Yes, I am a doctor,” said he. “I am also a man. I have felt. I feel.”

She gave another laugh.

“A complete conjugation of the verb,” said she. “Past and present tenses. How about the future?”

There was only a little pause before he said—

“The future is in your hands, Miss Hope. I have come here to-day to tell you that I have never loved any one in all my life but you, and to ask you if you will marry me.”

There was now a long pause—so long that he became hopeful of her answer. Then he saw the blank look that was upon her face change—he saw the flush that came over her white face when she had had time to realise the import of his words.

She started up, and at the same instant the baboon came in front of the window and raised his right hand to the salute.

“You are mad—mad!” she said, in a whisper that had something fierce about it. Then she lay back in her chair with a laugh. “I marry you—you. I should as soon marry——”

She had pointed to the baboon before she had checked herself.

“You would as soon marry the baboon as me?” said he in a low and laboured voice.

“I did not say that, although—Dr Koomadhi, what you have told me has given me a shock—such a shock as I have never had before. I am not myself—if I said anything hurtful to you I know that you will attribute it to the shock—I ask your pardon—sincerely—humbly. I never thought it possible that you—you—oh, you must have been mad! You——”

“Give me a cup of tea, my dearest, if you don’t want to see me perish before your eyes.” The words came from outside a window behind Dr Koomadhi, and in another second a man had entered from the verandah, and had given a low whistle on perceiving that Miss Hope had a visitor.

“Come along,” said Miss Hope, when she had drawn a deep breath—“Come along and be introduced to Dr Koomadhi. You have often heard of Dr Koomadhi, I’m sure, Dick. Dr Koomadhi, this is Major Minton.”

“How do you do?” said the stranger, giving his hand to the doctor. “I’m glad to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you, and how clever you are.”

“You flatter me,” said Dr Koomadhi, shaking hands with the new-comer. “I must now rush away, Miss Hope,” he added. “I only called to tell your father that I had forwarded some reports by the Penguin.”

“Jolly old tub, the Penguin—glad I’ve seen the last of her,” said Major Minton.

“Major Minton arrived by the Penguin this morning,” said Gertrude. “Must you really go away, Dr Koomadhi?”

“Not even the prospect of a cup of your tea would make me swerve from the path of duty, Miss Hope,” said the doctor, with a smile so chastened as to be deprived of all its Ethiopian character.

He shook hands gracefully with her and Major Minton, and passed out by the verandah, the baboon standing to one side and solemnly saluting. The Major was the only one who laughed, and his laugh was a roar.

IV.

Dr Koomadhi found waiting for him at his house his old friend Mr Ross, the surgeon of the Penguin. He had been unable to leave the steamer earlier in the day, and he had only an hour to spend ashore. No, he did not think that anything was the matter with a bottle of champagne, provided that it was large enough and dry enough, and that it had been plunged into ice, not ice plunged into it.

These essentials being guaranteed by Dr Koomadhi, Mr Ross’s hour passed—as he thought—pleasantly enough. The two men sat together on cane chairs on the balcony facing the sea. It is at such a time, and under such conditions, that existence on the Gambia becomes not merely endurable, but absolutely delightful. Mr Ross made a remark to this effect, and expressed the opinion that his friend was in luck.

“In luck? Oh yes. I’m the luckiest fellow in the world,” responded Koomadhi grimly. “I’ve everything that heart can wish for.”

“Yes, you’re well paid, you don’t mind the climate, and you’re honoured and respected by the whole community,” said Ross.

“Of course—honoured and respected—that’s the strong point of the situation,” said Koomadhi.

“The only drawback seems to me to be the rather narrow limits of the society. Still, the Commissioner is a decent enough sort of old boy, and Letts has a good deal to recommend him. By the way, you’ll not be so badly off in this matter during the next six months as you have been. We brought out a chap named Minton—a chap that any one could get on with. He’s just chucked the service and is going to marry Miss Hope.”

“I have just met him at the Residency,” said Koomadhi, filling up with a steady hand the glass of his guest. “And so he’s going to marry Miss Hope, is he?”

“Yes; he confided a lot in me—mostly on the bridge toward the hour of midnight. The young woman has been engaged to him for a year past. They met just before the Commissioner got his berth, but the daughter being a good daughter, and with a larger sense of duty than is possessed by most girls, swore—in her own way, of course—that nothing should tempt her to desert her father for at least a year. Much to Minton’s disgust, as you can understand, she came out here, telling him that if he still was anxious to marry her, he might follow her at the end of a year. Well, as he retained his fancy, he came out with us, and I believe you’ll be in a position to add an official wedding to your other experiences, Koomadhi.”

“That’s something to look forward to,” said Koomadhi. “But how will that incident improve society in this neighbourhood? I suppose Minton and his wife will get off to England as soon as possible?”

“Not they. Although they are to get married at once, they are to remain here for six or seven months—until, in fact, the Commissioner gets his leave, and then they all mean to go home together. Minton has a trifle of six thousand a-year and a free house in Yorkshire, so Miss Hope is in luck—so, for that matter, is Minton; she’s a fine young woman, I believe. I only met her once.”

“I’m not so certain about her constitution,” said Koomadhi. “Her lungs are, I believe, all right, but her circulation is defective, and she suffers from headaches just when she should be at her best.”

“Oh, hang it all! a girl’s a girl for a’ that!” cried Ross. “Your circulation’s defective, Koomadhi, if you’re capable only of judging a girl by the stethoscope. You’re too much absorbed in your profession, that’s what’s the matter with you.”

“I daresay you are right,” Koomadhi admitted after a pause of a few seconds.

In the course of the next half-hour, several other topics in addition to the matrimonial prospects of Major Minton and the constitutional shortcomings of Miss Hope were discussed on the verandah, until, at length, the sound of the steam-whistle of the Penguin was borne shore-wards by the breeze.

“That’s a message to me,” said Ross, starting up. “Come down to the shore and see the last of me for three months at any rate.”

Dr Koomadhi put on his helmet, and saw his friend safely through the surf on his way to where the steamer was swinging at her anchor. The sun had set before he returned to his house to dinner; and before he had risen from the table a message came to him that one of the officers of the Houssas was anxious to see him, being threatened with an attack of fever. The great stars were burning overhead before he returned from the barrack of the Houssas, and was able to throw off his coat and lie back in his chair in his own sitting-room.

He had a good deal to think about before going to his bedroom, and he seemed to find the darkness congenial with his thoughts. In fact, the negro acknowledged a sort of brotherhood in the night, and he remained for some hours in that fraternal darkness. It was just midnight when he went, with only a small amount of groping, to his desk, and took out of its drawer the ivory box containing the earshaped stone, into whose orifice he had spoken some words before leaving for the Commissioner’s house in the afternoon. He unlocked the box and removed the stone. He left his villa, taking the stone with him, and strolled once more to the house which he had visited a few hours before.

Lights were in the windows of the Residency, and certain musical sounds were coming from the room where he had been. With the twanging of the banjo there came the sound of a light bass voice of no particular timbre, chanting the words of the latest plantation melody—

“Don’t you belieb un, Massa John,

Jes’ winkie mid yo’ eye,

Kick up yo’ heels to de gasalier—

Say, how am dat for high?”

Dr Koomadhi listened while three stanzas of the doggerel were being sung by Major Minton; then he raised the ear-shaped stone that was in the hollow of his hand, and whispered some words into it as he had done in the afternoon. In a second the song stopped, although the singer was in the middle of a stanza.

“Confound it all!” cried Major Minton—Koomadhi heard his voice distinctly. “One of my strings is broken. I suppose it was the sudden change of atmosphere that made it give way. It’s a good bit drier here than aboard the Penguin.”

“The concert is over for to-night,” came the voice of the Commissioner. “It’s about time for all of us to be in our beds.”

“That’s my notion too,” said Letts. “Those who object can have their money returned at the doors.”

“It was strange—that breaking of the string without warning,” Dr Koomadhi heard Gertrude say.

He smiled.

It was only at midnight in the open air, and when he was alone, that he allowed himself the luxury of an unbridled smile. He knew the weaknesses of his race.

He put the stone into the pocket of his coat and returned to his house.

V.

The marriage of Major Minton to Miss Hope took place in another week. Of course the ceremony was performed by the Lord Bishop of Bonny, who was also Metropolitan of the Gambia and Senegal. The gunboat that was at the anchorage displayed every available rag of bunting, and the lieutenant who commanded her said he would gladly have fired a salute in honour of the event, only for the fact that the Admiralty made him accountable for every ounce of powder that he burned, and, in addition, for the wear and tear on every gun. The guns didn’t bear much tampering with, and there was nothing so bad for them as firing them: it wore them out, the Admiralty stated, and the practice must be put a stop to.

But if there was no official burning of powder to mark the happy event, there was a great deal of it that was unofficial and wholly irregular. Dr Koomadhi spent several hours of the afternoon amputating fingers of Krooboys that had been mutilated through an imperfect acquaintance, on the part of the native populace, with the properties of gunpowder when ignited. An eye or two were reported to be missing, and in the cool of the evening the Doctor had brought to him, by a conscientious townsman, a human ear for which no owner could be found.

The happy pair went to the Canary Islands for their honeymoon, and returned radiant at the end of six weeks; and the Commissioner’s mÉnage, which had suffered materially through the absence of the Commissioner’s daughter, was restored in all its former perfection. Every night varied strains of melody floated to the ears of such persons as were in the neighbourhood of the Residency; and it was a fact that Major Minton’s banjo never twanged without attracting an audience of from ten to five hundred of the negro population of Picotee. The pathway was every night paved with negroes, who listened, shoulder to shoulder, and kneecap to kneecap—they sat upon their haunches—to the fascinating songs. They felt that if the Commissioner had only introduced a tom-tom obbligato to the tom-tom melodies, the artistic charm of the performance would be complete.

The native evangelist, who occasionally contrived to fill a schoolhouse with young Christians by the aid of a harmonium,—a wheezy asthmatic instrument, which, in spite of a long lifetime spent on the West Coast, had never become fully acclimatised,—felt that his success was seriously jeopardised by the Major’s secular melodies. When the flock were privileged to hear such fascinating music unconditionally, he knew that it was unreasonable to expect them to be regular in their attendance at the schoolhouse, where the harmonium wheezed only after certain religious services had been forced on them.

He wondered if the Bishop might be approached on the subject of introducing the banjo into the schoolhouse services. He believed that with such auxiliaries as the banjo, and perhaps—but this was optional—the bones, a large evangelistic work might be done in the outlying districts of Picotee.

Dr Koomadhi had always been a frequent visitor at the Residence, but for some time after the marriage of the Commissioner’s daughter he was not quite so often to be found in the drawing-room of an evening. Gradually, however, he increased the number of his weekly visits. He was the only person in the neighbourhood who could (occasionally) beat Major Minton at billiards, and this fact helped, in a large measure, to overcome the prejudice which Major Minton frankly admitted (to his wife) he entertained against the native races of West Africa. Major Minton was becoming a first-class billiard-player, as any active person who understands the game is likely to become after a few months’ residence at a West Coast settlement.

“Dr Koomadhi is a gentleman and a Christian,” Mrs Minton remarked one day when Mr Letts, the Secretary, had challenged discussion upon his favourite topic—namely, the thinness of the veneer of civilisation upon the most civilised savage.

“He’s a negro-gentleman, I admit,” said Letts.

“A man who plays so straight a game of billiards can’t be far wrong,” remarked Major Minton.

“I have reasons—the best of reasons—for knowing that Dr Koomadhi is a forgiving Christian gentleman,” said Gertrude. “Yes, he shall always be my friend.”

She had not forgiven herself for that terrible half-spoken sentence, “I would as soon marry——”

She had not forgiven herself for having glanced at the baboon as she checked the words that sprang from her almost involuntarily.

But Dr Koomadhi was showing day by day that he had forgiven them.

And thus it was she felt that he was worthy to be regarded by all men as a gentleman and a Christian.

VI.

A few days later Dr Koomadhi was visited by Major Minton. The Major was anxious to have some shooting at big game, and he was greatly disappointed at being unable to find in the neighbourhood of Picotee any one who could put him on the right track to gratify his longing for slaughter. The ivory-hunters did not find an outlet for their business at Picotee, and the majority of the inhabitants were as unenterprising, Major Minton said, as the chaw-bacons of an English village; nay, more so, for the chawbacons were beginning to know the joy of a metropolitan music hall, and that meant enterprise. He wondered if Koomadhi would allow him to accompany him on his next excursion inland.

Koomadhi said that no proposal could give him greater pleasure. He would be going up again in a week or two, and he could promise Major Minton some first-class sport. He could show him some queer things.

Talking of queer things, had Major Minton ever seen a piece of the famous African sound-stone?

It was supposed that the famous statue of Memnon had been carved out of that stone.

Major Minton had considered all that had been written on the subject of the talking statue utter rot, and he believed so still. Could any sane man credit a story like that, he was anxious to know?

“I suppose not,” said Koomadhi.

“But anyhow, I have now and again come upon pieces of the sound-stone. I’ll show you a couple of bits.”

He produced the roughly cut stone ear, and then an equally rough stone chipped into the form of a mouth—a negro’s mouth.

“They are rum things, to be sure,” said Minton. “I don’t think that I ever saw stones just the same. Is the material marble?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” said Koomadhi. “But just put that stone to your ear for a few moments.”

Minton had the mouth-stone in his hand. Koomadhi retained the ear-stone and put it to his lips the moment that the Major raised his hand.

“No,” said the Major. “I hear nothing. That sound-stone myth isn’t good enough for me. I’m not exactly a lunatic yet, and that’s why I’m going to climb up to your roof to enjoy the sea-breeze. Take your marvellous sound-stone, and I’ll show you what it is to be a gymnast.”

He opened the shutters, got out upon the verandah, and began climbing one of the supports of the verandah roof. He was a pretty fair athlete, but when the thermometer registers 97° is not, perhaps, the most favourable time for violent exercise. Still, he reached the roof with his hands and threw one leg up; in another moment he was sitting on the highest part of the roof, and was inviting Koomadhi to join him, declaring that only a fool would remain indoors on such a day.

Koomadhi smiled and shook his head.

“You must have some refreshment after your exertions,” said he. “What would you like—a brandy-and-soda, with a lump of ice clinking the sides of the tumbler?”

“That sounds inviting,” said Major Minton, scratching his chest with a forefinger—it had apparently been chafed in his ascent of the roof. “Yes; but if you chance to have a banana and a few nuts—by Jingo I should like a nut or two. Has no dietist written a paper on the dietetic value of the common or garden nut, Koomadhi?”

“Come down and I’ll give you as many nuts as you can eat,” said Koomadhi.

“Yes, I’ll come down this way,” said the Major. He swung himself by one arm from the side of the roof to the bough of a tree. There he hung suspended by the other arm, and swinging slowly backward and forward. Even then he scraped the breast of his shirt, uttering a number of sounds that might have meant laughter. Then he caught a lower branch with his loose arm and dropped to the ground. Again he scraped at his chest and laughed.

“How about those nuts?” he said. “I think I’ve earned them. How the mischief is it that I neglected my gymnastics all these months? What a fool I was! Walking along in the open day by day, when I might have been enjoying the free life of the jungle!”

“Come inside and try a bit of cocoanut,” said Koomadhi.

“I’m your man,” said the Major.

“My man—man?” laughed the Doctor. “Oh yes, you’ve earned the cocoanut.”

The soft flesh of a green cocoanut lay on the table of the sitting-room, and Major Minton caught it up and swallowed it without ceremony. The Doctor watched him with a curious expression on his face.

“That’s the most refreshing tiffin I’ve had for a long time,” said the Major. “Now, I’ll have to get back to the Residency. Will you drop in for a game of billiards?”

“Perhaps I may,” said the Doctor. “Take that sound-stone again, and try if you really cannot hear anything when you put it to your ear.”

“My dear fellow, I’m not the sort of a chap to become the victim of a delusion,” said the Major, picking up the stone and holding it to his ear. “Not a sound do I hear. Hang it all, man, I’d get more sound out of a common shell. Au revoir.”

He had his eyes fixed upon the ink-bottle that stood on the desk beside a blotter and a sheet of writing-paper. Dr Koomadhi noticed the expression in his eyes, and turned to open the door. The very instant that his back was turned, Major Minton ran to the ink-bottle, upset it upon the blotter, and then rushed off by the open window, laughing heartily.

And yet there was no human being who so detested the playing of practical jokes as Major Minton.

Dr Koomadhi put away the stones, and called his servant to wipe up the ink, which was dripping down to the floor.

“Lorramussy!” cried the old woman. “How eber did yo’ make dat muss?”

“I didn’t know that it was on the blotter until too late,” said he. And yet Dr Koomadhi was a most truthful man—for a doctor.

Hullo!” said Letts, “what have you been doing to yourself?”

Major Minton had thrown himself into the Secretary’s cosiest chair on his return from visiting Dr Koomadhi, and was wiping his forehead.

“I’ve been doing more to myself than I should have done,” replied Minton. “For heaven’s sake, ring for a brandy-and-soda!”

“A brandy-and-soda? That’s an extreme measure,” said Letts. “But you look as if you needed one.” He went to his own cupboard and produced the brandy, and then rang the bell for the soda-water, which was of course kept in the refrigerator. Then he looked curiously at the man in the chair. “By the Lord Harry! you’ve been in a fight,” he cried, when his examination had concluded. “You’re an ass to come between any belligerents in this neighbourhood: you forget that Picotee Street is not Regent Street. You got your collar torn off your coat for your pains; and, O Lord, your trousers!”

“I did not notice how much out of line I had fallen until now,” said Minton, with a laugh. “By George, Letts, that tear in my knee does suggest a free-and-easy tussle.”

“But how on earth did it come about?” asked Letts. “Surely you should know better than to go for a nigger as you would for a Christian! Why the mischief didn’t you kick him on the shins, and then put your knee into his face?”

“Give me the tumbler.”

The Secretary handed him the tumbler, containing a stiff “peg,” and he drained it without giving any evidence of dissatisfaction.

“Now, how did it come about?” inquired Letts. “I hope you haven’t dragged us into the business. If you have, there’ll be a question asked about it in the House of Commons by one of those busybodies who have no other way of proving to their constituents that they’re in attendance. ‘Mr Jones asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he had any information to give to the House regarding an alleged outrage by a white man, closely associated with the family of her Majesty’s Commissioner at Picotee, upon a native or natives of that colony.’ That’s how it will read. Then there’ll be puppy leaders in those papers that deal with ‘justices’ justice’: the boy who gets a month’s imprisonment for stealing a turnip—you know that sort of thing.”

“Keep your hair on,” said Minton; “there’ll be no show in the House about this. There has been no row. I went round to Koomadhi’s, and when we were talking together I suddenly fancied that the day was just one for a gymnastic display. I don’t know whether it was that polite manner of Koomadhi’s or something else set me off, but I felt an irresistible impulse to bounce. Without waiting to take off my coat I went out on the verandah and hauled myself up to the roof: I don’t know how I did it. I might have managed it ten years ago, when I was in condition; but, considering how far off colour I am just now, by George! I don’t know how I managed it. Anyhow, I did manage it.”

“At some trifling cost,” said Letts. “And what did you do on the roof when you got there?”

“Well, I swung myself down again. But I seemed to have a notion in the meantime that that nice, well-groomed nigger would try to climb up beside me, and I know that I had an impulse to catch him by the tail—the tail of his coat, of course—and swing him through the shutters.”

“But he didn’t make such an ass of himself as to go through some gymnastics, and the thermometer standing a degree or two under a hundred. Well, you’ve got off well this time, Minton; but don’t do it again, that’s all.”

“I tell you it was an impulse—a curious——”

“Oh, impulses like that don’t come to chaps who have their wits about them.”

“I suppose it was a bit of bounding, after all. But, somehow—well, you wouldn’t just call me a bounder, would you, Letts?”

“Why shouldn’t I call you a bounder, I’d like to know? A bounder is one who bounds, isn’t he?”

“Well, I suppose—but I give you my word, I felt at that moment that it was the most natural thing I could have done—climbing up to the roof of the verandah, and then——”

“And then?”

“Swinging down again, I suppose.”

He was afraid to tell Letts of that practical joke which he had played off on Koomadhi, when he found that the Doctor did not lend himself to that subtle piece of jocularity which Minton said he had conceived when sitting on the roof of the verandah. Letts had been pretty hard on him for having gone so far as to climb up to the roof; but what would he have said if he had been told about that ink-bottle incident?

Minton thought it would, on the whole, be doing himself more ample justice if he were to withhold from Letts all information regarding that ink-bottle business. He said nothing about it, and when Letts mumbled something when in the act of lighting a cigar—something about fellows, who behave like idiots, going home and giving the whole West Coast a bad name, whereas, properly treated, the climate was one of the most salubrious, he remarked confidentially—

“I say, old chap, you needn’t mind jawing to the missus or the Governor about this business; it’s not worth talking about, you know; but they’re both given to exaggerate the importance of such things—Gertrude especially. I’m a bit afraid of her still, I admit: we’ve only been married about three months, you’ll remember.”

“Great Duke! here’s a chap who fancies that as time goes on he’ll get less afraid of his wife,” cried Letts. “Well, well, some chaps do get hallucinations early in life.”

“Don’t say a word about it, Letts. Where’s the good of making a poor girl uneasy?”

“Where, indeed? But why ‘poor girl’?”

“Because she’s liable to be made uneasy at trifles. You’re not—only riled. But I don’t blame you: you’ve been on this infernal coast for three years.”

“There’s nothing the matter with the coast: it’s only the idiots——”

“Quite so: I seem somehow to feel that I’ve heard all that sort of thing before. I’m one of the idiots.”

“Far be it from me to contradict so able a diagnosis of——”

He caught the cushion which Minton hurled at him, and laughed. Then he became curiously thoughtful.

“By the way,” he said, “wasn’t it a bit rum that Koomadhi didn’t try to prevent your swinging out to that roof? He’s a medico, and so should know how such unnatural exertion is apt to play the mischief with a chap in such a temperature as this. Didn’t he abuse you in his polite way?”

“Not he,” said Minton; “on the contrary, I believe I had an idea that I heard him suggest... no, no; that’s a mistake, of course.”

“What’s a mistake?”

“That idea of mine—I don’t know how I came to have it.”

“You were under the impression, somehow, that he suggested your climbing to the roof? That was a rummy notion, wasn’t it?”

“A bit too rummy for general use. Oh no: he only said—now, what the mischief did he say? Oh, no matter.”

“If he said ‘no matter’ when he saw that you were bent on gymnastics in the middle of a day with the temperature hovering about a hundred, he should be ashamed of himself.”

“He didn’t say ‘no matter.’ I’ve just said it. Let me say it again. You should be a cross-examiner at the Bailey and Middlesex Session, Letts. Now, mind, not a word to the missus. Don’t let her cross-examine you: evade her as I’m evading you. I’ll see you after dinner: maybe we’ll have a billiard together—I’m too tired now.”

He went off, leaving Letts trying to find out the place where he had left off in a novel of George Eliot’s. George Eliot is still read on the West Coast of Africa.

But when Minton had left the room Letts did not trouble himself further with the novel. He tossed it away and lay back in his Madeira chair with a frown, suggesting perplexity, on his face.

Some five minutes had passed, and yet the frown, so far from departing, had but increased in intensity.

“I should like very much to know what his game is,” he muttered. “It wouldn’t at all be a bad idea to induce sunstroke by over-exertion on a day like this. But why can’t he remember if the nigger tried on that game with him? P’chut! what’s the good of bothering about it when the game didn’t come off, whatever it was?”

But in spite of his attempted dismissal of the whole matter from his mind, he utterly failed to give to the confession of the youth in ‘Middlemarch’ (it was to the effect that his father had been a pawnbroker, and it was very properly made to the young woman to the accompaniment of the peals of a terrific thunderstorm) the attention which so striking an incident demanded.

VIII.

If it’s a command, sir, I’ll obey; if not, well——”

“Oh, nonsense, Letts!” said the Commissioner. “There’s no command to a dinner with my daughter, her husband, and another man.”

“Ah, that other man,” said Letts.

“Now, I hope I’ll hear nothing more about your absurd objection to that other man,” said the Commissioner. “I tell you that it’s not only ridiculous, that old-fashioned prejudice of yours, it’s prejudicial to the Service—it is, upon my soul, Letts. You know as well as I do that the great thing is to get in touch with the natives, to show them that, as common subjects of the Sovereign, enjoying equal rights wherever that flag waves, we are, we are—well, we must show them that we’ve no prejudices. You’ll admit that we must do that, Letts.”

(As Letts had not written out this particular speech for him, the Commissioner was a trifle shaky, and found it to his advantage to abandon the oratorical in favour of the colloquial style.)

“I don’t feel called on to show that I’m not prejudiced against the whole race, sir—the whole race as a race, and Dr Koomadhi as an individual,” said Letts. “Therefore I hope that you and Mrs Minton will excuse me from your dinner.”

“Upon my soul, I’m surprised at you, Letts,” said Commander Hope. “I didn’t expect to find in these days of enlightenment such old-fashioned prejudices as regards race. Great heavens! sir, is the accident of a man’s being a negro to be looked on as debarring him from—from—well, from all that you would make out—the friendship of the superior race, the——”

“Ah, there you are, sir; the superior race. In matters of equality there’s no superior.”

“Oh, of course I don’t mean to suggest that there isn’t some difference between the two races. Don’t they say it was the effects of the curse, Letts—the curse of Ham? If a race was subject to the disabilities of an early curse duly recorded, you can’t quite expect them to recover themselves all in a moment: it wouldn’t be reasonable—it wouldn’t be Scriptural either. But I think that common charity should make us—well, should make us do our best to mitigate their unfortunate position. That appeal of yours to Scripture, Letts, was used as an argument in favour of slavery. It’s unworthy of you.”

“I agree with you, sir; and I do so the more readily as I don’t recollect ever having made use of such an authority as Scripture to bear out my contention that the polish of a nigger is no deeper than the polish on a mahogany table,—a thin and transparent film of lacquer. You see I’ve had the advantage of living in Ashantee for six months, and when there I got pretty well grounded on the negro as a man and a brother. A man—well, perhaps; a brother, yes, own brother to the devil himself.”

“Nonsense, Letts! Can’t you keep Scripture out of the argument?”

“I tell you, sir, I saw things in the Ashantee country that made me feel certain that the archfiend made that region his headquarters many years ago, and that he has devoted himself ever since to the training of the inhabitants. They are his chosen people. If you had seen the unspeakable things that I saw during my six months in Ashantee, you would hold to my belief that the people have been taught by Satan himself, and that they have gone one better than their instructor. No, sir, I’ll not dine with Koomadhi.”

Commander Hope shook his head.

“You’re very pig-headed, Letts,” he remarked; “but we won’t quarrel. I’ll see if I can make Gertrude understand how it is you refuse her invitation.”

“I hope to heaven that she’ll never get a glimpse of the real negro, sir—the negro with his lacquer scratched off.”

The Commissioner laughed.

“I’ll not tell her that, Letts,” he said.

Letts did not laugh.

It was really Gertrude who had suggested inviting Dr Koomadhi to dinner at the Residency. He had frequently partaken of the refreshment of tea in her drawing-room, but she knew that tea counts for nothing in the social scale even at Picotee: it conferred no more distinction upon one than a presentation at the White House does upon a citizen of the United States, or a citizen’s wife or sister. He had never been asked to dine at the Commissioner’s table, and that she knew to be a distinction, and one which he would be certain to value.

But when she suggested to her father that there would be a certain gracefulness in the act of inviting Dr Koomadhi to dinner, she found her suggestion treated with that form of contumely known as the snub. Her father had looked at her sternly and walked away, saying—

“Impossible! What! a nig———Oh, my dear, you don’t understand these things. Impossible—impossible!”

Gertrude Minton, being a woman, may not have understood some things, but she thoroughly understood how her father (and all other men) should be treated upon occasions. She took her snubbing meekly, as every clever woman takes a snubbing, when administered by a father, or a husband, or a brother; and of course, later on, she carried her point—as any clever woman will; for a properly sustained scheme of meekness, if persisted in, will accomplish anything, by making the man who snubs thoroughly ashamed of himself, and the man who is thoroughly ashamed of himself will be glad to come to terms, no matter how disadvantageous to himself, in order to avert a continuance of that reproachful meekness.

It was the Commissioner himself who, a few days later, went to his daughter and told her that if she had her heart set upon inviting Dr Koomadhi to dinner he would not interfere. It had at first seemed to him a monstrous proposal, he admitted; but on thinking over it calmly, and with the recollection of the circumstances (1) that the present day was one of innovations; (2) that the negroes were treated on terms of the most perfect equality by the people of the United States of America,—he had come to the conclusion that it was necessary even for a British naval officer to march with the times; consequently he was prepared to do anything that his daughter suggested. He added, however, that up to the date at which he was speaking he had got on very well without once asking a nig——that is, a negro gentleman, to dine at his table.

“I knew you would consent, papa,” said Gertrude, throwing off her mask of meekness in a moment, much to the satisfaction of her father. “I knew you would consent: it would be quite unlike you not to consent. You are so broad-minded—so generous—so reasonable in your views on all native questions. I feel that I—that we—owe some amends—that is, we should do our best to give him to understand that we do not regard a mere accident of colour as disqualifying him from—from——”

“Quite so,” said her father. “We’ll ask Letts: he won’t come, though.”

“Why should he not come?” she asked.

“Letts is full of prejudice, my dear. He has more than once made disparaging remarks regarding Koomadhi. You see, he lived for some months in the Ashantee country, and saw the human sacrifices and other barbarities.”

“If you speak to him with due authority, he will be compelled to come,” said Gertrude warmly. “You are the head here, are you not?”

He looked at her and assented, though he knew perfectly well that it was not he who was the head of the Residency. Would he ask a nigger to dine at his table if he was at the head of it? he asked himself.

“Well, then, just tell Letts that you expect him to dine here on Wednesday next, and he is bound to come. He is only secretary here.”

“My dear Gertrude, you know as well as I do what it is to be secretary here,” said the Commissioner. “Letts can do what he pleases. I shall certainly not coerce him in any way: I know it would be no use trying.”

“But you must try,” cried Gertrude. She had, undoubtedly, quite got rid of her meekness. “You must try; and you must succeed too.”

Well, the Commissioner had tried, and the result of his attempt has just been recorded.

He told his daughter of the firm attitude that Letts had assumed—it was just the attitude which he himself would like to assume if he had the courage; but of course he did not suggest so much to Gertrude.

“The foolish fellow! I shall have to go to him myself,” said she.

And she went to him.

IX.

She had at one time fancied that Letts was fond of her, and she had thought that her liking for him was no mere fancy. A young woman with good looks and a pleasant manner and a young man with a career before him are very apt to have fancies in respect to each other on the West Coast of Africa, where good looks and pleasant manners are not to be met with daily. Of course when Gertrude had gone home for some months, and had met Major Minton, she became aware of the fact that her liking for Letts was the merest fancy; and perhaps when she returned with the story of her having promised (under certain conditions) to marry Major Minton, Letts had also come to the conclusion that his feeling towards Miss Hope was also a fancy. This is, however, not quite so certain. At any rate, Letts and she had always been very good friends.

For half-an-hour she talked to him quite pleasantly at first, then quite earnestly—didactically and sarcastically—on the subject of his foolish prejudice. She called it foolish when she was pleasant, and she called it contemptible when she ceased to be pleasant, on a matter which she, for her part, thought had been long ago passed out of the region of controversy. Surely a man of Mr Letts’ intelligence and observation could not be serious in objecting to dine with Dr Koomadhi simply because he chanced to be a negro.

But Mr Letts assured her that he was quite serious in the matter. He didn’t pretend, he said, to be superior in point of intelligence or power of observation to men who made no objection to meet on terms of perfect equality the whole Ethiopian race; but he had had certain experiences, he said, and so long as he retained a recollection of these experiences he would decline to sit at the same table with Dr Koomadhi or any of his race. Then it was that Mrs Minton ceased to be altogether pleasant as to the phrases which she employed in order to induce Mr Letts to change his mind.

“You are not the only one with experiences,” she said. “I have had experience not merely of negroes generally, but of Dr Koomadhi in particular, and, as I told you some time ago, I have reason to believe him to be a generous, Christian gentleman. That is why I wish to do all that is in my power to make him understand that I regard his possession of the characteristics of a gentleman and a Christian as more than placing him on a level with us. I feel that I am inferior to Dr Koomadhi in those qualities which our religion teaches us to regard as noblest.”

“And I hope with all my soul that you will never have a different experience of him,” said Letts.

“I know that I shall have no different experience of him,” said she, with confidence in her pose and in her tone.

He made no reply to this. And then she went on to ask him some interesting questions regarding the general design of the Maker of the Universe, and His intention in respect of the negro; and though Letts answered all to the best of his ability, he was not persuaded to accept Mrs Minton’s invitation to dinner.

She was naturally very angry, and even went so far as to assure Mr Letts that his refusal to accept the invitation which she offered him might be prejudicial to his being offered any future invitations to dine at her table—an assurance which he received without emotion.

She told her father of her failure, and though he shook his head with due seriousness, yet he refrained from saying “I told you so.” But when her husband heard that Letts would not be persuaded, he treated the incident with a really remarkable degree of levity, declaring that if he himself were independent, he would see Koomadhi and all the nigger race sent to a region of congenial blackness before he would sit down to dinner with the best of them. He thought Letts, however, something of an ass for not swallowing his prejudices in a neighbourhood where there were so few decent billiard-players. For himself, he said he would have no objection to dine with bandits and cut-throats if they consented to join in a good pool afterwards.

When Dr Koomadhi received his invitation to dine at the Residency—it was in the handwriting of Mrs Minton—he smiled. His smiles worked at low pressure in the daytime; he felt that he could not be too careful in this respect; he might, if taken suddenly, be led on to smile naturally in the presence of a man with a kodak, and where would he be then?

He smiled. He went to the drawer where he kept the curious stones, and looked at them for some time, but without touching them. Then he went to the drawer in which he kept the verses that he had written expressive of the effect of Miss Hope’s eyes upon his soul. By a poetic licence he assumed that he had a soul, and he liked to write about it: it gave him an opportunity of making it the last word in a line following one that ended with the word “control.” He read some of the pages, and honestly believed that they were covered with poetry of the highest character. He felt convinced that there was not another man in the whole Ashantee country who could write as good poetry; and perhaps he was not wrong in his estimate of his own powers, and the powers of his Ashantee brethren.

As he closed the door with a bang his face would have seemed to any one who might have chanced to see it one mass of ivory. This effect, startling though it was, was due merely to an incidental change of expression. He had ceased to smile; his teeth were tightly closed, and his lips had receded from them as a tidal wave recedes from the strand of a coral island, disclosing an unsuspected reef. His lips hid in their billowy depths the remainder of his face, and only that fearful double ridge of locked teeth would have been visible to any one, had any one been present.

The words that Dr Koomadhi managed to utter without unlocking his teeth were undoubtedly suggestive of very strong feeling; but no literary interest attaches to their repetition.

He seated himself at his desk—after an interval—and wrote a letter which was rather over than under the demands made by politeness upon a man who has been asked to dinner in a rather formal way. He said it would give him the greatest pleasure to accept the most kind invitation with which he had been honoured by the Commissioner and Mrs Minton; and then he added a word or two, which an ordinary gentleman would possibly have thought superfluous, regarding the pride which he felt at being the recipient of such a distinction.

It could not be said, however, that there was anything in his mode of conducting himself at the dinner-table that suggested any want of familiarity on his part with the habits of good society. He did not eat with his knife, though he might have done so without imperilling in any degree the safety of his mouth, nor did he make any mistake regarding his ice-pudding or his jelly. He also drank his champagne out of the right glass, and he did not take it for granted that the water in his finger-bowl was for any but external use.

As he lay back in his chair, with his serviette across his knees and a cigarette between his fingers, discussing with the Commissioner, with that mild forbearance which one assumes towards one’s host, the political situation of the hour, when Mrs Minton had left the room, he looked the picture of a model English gentleman—a silhouette picture. He hoped that the Conservatives would not go to the country without a programme. What were the leaders thinking of that they hadn’t familiarised the country with the policy they meant to pursue should they be returned to power? Home Rule for Ireland! Was there ever so ridiculous a demand seriously made to the country? Why, the Irish were, he assured his host, very little better than savages: he should know—he had been in Ireland for close upon a fortnight. He had some amusing Irish stories. He imitated the brogue of the peasantry. He didn’t say it was unmusical; but Home Rule!... the idea was too ridiculous to be entertained by any one who knew the people.

His political views were sound beyond a doubt. They were precisely the views of the Commissioner and his son-in-law, and the green chartreuse was velvety as it should be.

For this evening only Major Minton sang to his wife’s accompaniment a sentimental song which dwelt upon the misery of meeting daily with smiles a certain person, while his, the singer’s, heart was breaking. He sang it with well-simulated feeling. One would never have thought that there was a banjo in the house.

Then Mrs Minton sang a lovely Scotch song about a burn; but it turned out that the burn was water and not fire, and the Commissioner dozed in a corner.

At last Major Minton suggested a game of billiards, and the suggestion was acted on without delay.

After playing a game with Dr Koomadhi, while her husband looked on and criticised the strokes from the standpoint of a lenient if discriminating observer, Mrs Minton said “goodnight”; she was tired, she said, and she knew that her husband and Dr Koomadhi meant to play all night, so she thought she might as well go soon as late.

Of course Dr Koomadhi entreated her not to leave them. They would, he assured her, do anything to retain her; they would even play a four game—abhorred of billiard-players—if she would stay. Her husband did not join in the entreaties of their guest. He played tricky cannons until she had left the room.

X.

Shall I break?” Minton asked. “I’ll play with spot for a change.”

Before he had completed his second break of twenty-eight the Commissioner had fallen asleep with his cigar between his fingers. When they had commenced he had been critical. But he broke down under the monotony of the second moderate break.

For about a quarter of an hour the game went on, and all the variations from “Hard lines!” to “Dammitall!” were indulged in by the players. Minton had scored eighty against Koomadhi’s seventy-one, and was about to play a hazard requiring great judgment, when his opponent came behind him, saying—

“I don’t see how it can be done: a cannon is the easier game.”

“Well, I’ll try the hazard anyway, and try to leave the red over the pocket.”

“You’ll need to do it very gently,” said his opponent, almost leaning over him as he took his aim at the red ball.

For quite half a minute Minton hung over his cue, and in that space of time Koomadhi had taken out of his pocket the curious stone shaped like a broad ear, and had put it to his own mouth for a second or two while he stood behind the player, returning it quickly to his pocket before the cue had struck the ball.

“What a stroke!” cried Minton. “It would disgrace our friend Jacco.”

“I said the cannon was the easier game,” remarked Koomadhi, chalking his cue. “Hallo! what are you going to do?”

“Who the mischief could play billiards a night like this in such a suit of armour as this?” laughed Minton. He was in the act of pulling his shirt over his head, and he spoke from within its folds. In another second he was stripped to the waist. “Now, my friend,” he chuckled, “we’ll see who’ll win this game. This is the proper rig for any one who means to play billiards as billiards should be played.”

“I wouldn’t have done that if I were you,” said Koomadhi. “Come; you had much better put on your shirt. The Commissioner may object.”

“Let him object,” laughed the half-naked man; “he’s an old fogey anyway. Like most naval men, he has no heart in anything beyond the shape of a button and the exact spot where it should be worn. How was it we had no nuts for dinner, I should like to know?”

Koomadhi had made a cannon. He walked half-way round the table to get the chalk, and in a second Major Minton had picked up the red ball and slipped it into his pocket.

When Koomadhi turned to play the screw back, which he meant to do carefully, only the white balls were on the table, and Minton denied all knowledge of the whereabouts of the red.

Koomadhi laughed, and put his cue into the stand.

“Oh, I say, a joke’s a joke!” chuckled Minton, producing the ball from, his pocket. “You won’t play any more? Oh, yes; we’ll have another game, only for a change we’ll play it with our feet. Now, why the mischief people don’t play it with their feet I can’t understand. It stands to reason that the stroke must be far surer. I’ll show you what I mean. Oh, confound those things!—I’ll have them off in a moment.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” said the Doctor firmly, as Major Minton kicked off his shoes and hastened to get rid of the only garments that he was wearing. “For God’s sake, don’t make such a fool of yourself!”

He had caught his hands, preventing his carrying out his singular design of illustrating the prehensile character of the muscles of the human foot.

“Now, then, put on your shirt and finish your soda-water. I must be off.”

Major Minton grinned, and, turning suddenly, caught Dr Koomadhi by the tail of his dress-coat—he had just put it on—and with a quick jerk upset him on the floor.

“God bless my soul!” cried the Commissioner, waking up.

Dr Koomadhi was brushing the dust off his waistcoat; Major Minton was swinging halfway up one of the ropes that controlled the ventilator of the roof.

“What in the name of all that’s ridiculous is this?” said the Commissioner. “By the Lord! I seem to be still dreaming—a nightmare, by George, sir!”

“I really must ask your pardon, sir,” said Koomadhi; “I had no idea that the thing would go on so far as it has. Major Minton and I were having a rather funny trial of strength. He was on one rope, I was on the other. I let go my hold. Come down, man—come down—the game is over.”

“And a most peculiar game it seems to have been,” said the Commissioner. “Great heavens! it can’t be possible that he took off his shirt!”

“It was very foolish, sir,” said Koomadhi. “I think I’ll say good-night.”

The Commissioner paid no attention to him; all his attention was given to his son-in-law, who was swinging negligently with one hand on the ventilator rope. When he at last dropped to the floor, Minton rubbed his eyes and looked around him in a dazed way.

“My God!” he muttered. “How do I come to be like this—this? Where’s my shirt?”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, sir,” said the Commissioner sternly. “What have you been drinking in your soda-water?”

“Nothing,” said Minton, putting on his shirt. “I drank nothing but soda-water. What possessed me to make such an ass of myself I can’t tell. I beg your pardon, Koomadhi. I assure you I didn’t mean to—why, it all appears like a dream to me.”

“Oh, a dream! Good night, Dr Koomadhi,” said the Commissioner. “I’m sorry that anything should happen——”

“Don’t say another word, sir, I entreat of you,” cried Koomadhi. “I fear that I was, after all, the most to blame. I should have known where this sort of horse-play was likely to land us. Good night, sir; I really feel that an apology should come from me. Good night, Minton. No, no; don’t say a word. I feel that I have disgraced myself for ever.”

Minton, now clothed and in his right mind, saw him off, and then returned to the presence of his father-in-law. He knew that the Commissioner was desirous of having a word or two with him, and he was not the man to run away from such an interview. In fact, he himself was anxious to have the first word; and he had it.

“Look here, sir,” he said; “I want to say that I know I made an infernal fool of myself. Why I did it I can’t tell; I touched nothing but soda-water all night.”

“Then there is the less excuse for your behaviour,” said the Commissioner drily. “I don’t want to say anything more about this unhappy business. Only, I will point out to you that Koomadhi could easily make things very disagreeable for us if he were so minded. You threw him on the floor. Heavens above!”

“I suppose I did throw him; but why?—why?—why?—that’s what I want to know.”

“Perhaps an explanation may come to you in the course of a day or two. You had better go to bed now.”

“Yes; I’ll go to bed. Only—of course there’s no reason why you should let the matter go farther.”

“I certainly, for my own sake and yours, will keep it as secret as possible. I only hope that Koomadhi——”

“Oh, Koomadhi is all right. But I don’t see that Gertrude or Letts should hear anything of it.”

“They don’t hear anything of it from me, I promise you. Will you ring for the lamps to be turned out?”

Dick Minton pulled the bell. His father-inlaw went to his bed without a word.

But an hour had passed before Dick went to his room. He lit a cigar and strolled away from the Residency to the brink of the sea; and there, on the low scrub, looking out to the enormous rollers that broke on the shallow beach two miles from where he stood, spreading their white foam all around, he tried to think how it was he had been led to behave more foolishly than he had ever behaved since the days of his youth.

He was not successful in his attempts in this direction.

And Dr Koomadhi also remained thinking his thoughts for fully half an hour after reaching that pleasant verandah of his, which got every breath that came inland from the sea.

“I can do it easily enough—yes, in his presence; but what good is that to me?” he muttered. “No good whatever—just the opposite. I must have the Khabela—ah, the Khabela! That works miles apart.”

Two days later he paid his visit to the Residency and drank tea with Mrs Minton. He told her that he found it necessary to go up country for ten days or so. He knew of a nice miasma tract, and he hoped to gain in a few days as much information regarding its operations on the human frame as he could obtain in as many years in the comparative salubriousness of the coast.

Her husband did not put in an appearance while Koomadhi was in the drawing-room. His wife reproached him for that.

He took her reproach meekly.

XI.

Moonlight was flooding the forest beyond the native village of Moumbossa on the Upper Gambia, but where Dr Koomadhi was walking no moonbeam penetrated. The branches formed an arch above him as dense with interwoven boughs and thick leaves as though the arch was a railway tunnel. Only in the far distance a gleam of light could be seen.

At times the deep silence of the night was broken by the many sounds of the tropical jungle. Every sound was familiar to Dr Koomadhi, and he laughed joyously as one laughs on recognising the voice of a friend. The wild shriek of a monkey pounced upon by some other creature, the horrible laugh of a hyena, the yell of a lory, and then a deep silence. He felt at home in the midst of that forest, though when he spoke of home within the hearing of civilised people, he meant it to be understood that he referred to England.

When he emerged from the brake he found himself gazing at a solitary beehive hut in the centre of a great cleared space, A quarter of a mile away the moonlight showed him the village of Moumbossa, with its lines of palms and plantains.

He walked up to the hut without removing his rifle from his shoulder, and stood for some moments at the entrance. Then he heard a voice saying to him in the tongue of the Ashantees—

“Enter, my son, and let thy mother see if thy face is changed.”

“I cannot enter, mother,” he replied in the same language. “But I have come far and in peril to talk with you. We must talk together in the moonlight.”

He retained among his other memories a vivid recollection of the interior of a native hut. He could not bring himself to face the ordeal of entering the one before him.

“I will soon be beside you,” came the voice; and in a few moments there crawled out from the entering-place a half-naked old negress, of great stature, and with only the smallest perceptible stoop. She walked round Dr Koomadhi, and then looked into his face with a laugh.

“Yes,” she said, “it is indeed you, my son, and I see that you need my services.”

“You are right, mother,” said he. “I wondered if you still retained your old powers. That is why I stood for some minutes outside the hut. I said, ‘If my mother has still her messengers in the air, and in the earth, they will tell her that her son has come to her once more.

“You should not have doubted,” she said. “Do you fancy that such powers as have come to me by the possession of the Sacred Khabela can decay by reason of age or the weight of days?”

“If that had been my belief, should I have come to you this night?” he asked. “I have need of all your powers. I have need of all the powers of the Khabela.”

“You shall have all that I can command: are you not my son?” said the old woman. “But have you found the Sacred Ear to fail you?”

“Never, mother,” said Dr Koomadhi. “You told me what it could do, and it has never failed me within its limits. But I must have the more powerful charm of the Sacred Mouth. My need is extreme.”

“It must be extreme, and I will not deny it to you,” said his mother. “You know what it can do. No man or woman can withstand it. If any offspring of woman should hold that Sacred Mouth to his ear, or her ear, as the case may be, the words which you whisper into the Sacred Ear will seem the truth, whatever those words may be. You know that. But the magic of the Khabela is far greater. It will work at a distance. But if it is lost you know what the consequences will be. You know the decree of the great Fanshatee, the monkey-god?”

“I know it. The stone Khabela shall not be lost. I accept the responsibility. I must have command over it until the return of the moon.”

“And thou shalt have control of it, whether for good or evil. It told me that thou wert nigh to-night, so that thou must have the Ear charm in thy possession even now.”

“It is here, mother, in this pocket. I have shown it to no mortal whose colour is not as our colour, whose hair is not as our hair.”

“The white men laugh at all magic such as ours, I have heard.”

“Yes, they laugh at it. But some of them practise a form of it themselves. I have seen one practise it in a great room in England. Without the aid of a mystic stone he told sober men that they were drunk, and they acted as drunk men; he told rough fellows that they were priests, and they preached sermons as long and as stupid as any that we have heard missionaries preach.”

“And yet they say that our magic is a thing accursed.”

“Yes; that is the way with the white men. When they have said their word ‘damn’ on any matter, they believe that the last word has been said upon it, and all that other men may say they laugh at.”

“They are fools, my son; and thou art a fool to dwell among them.”

“They are wise men up to a certain point. They are only fools on the subject of names. They say that magic is accursed; but they say that hypnotism is science, and science is the only thing in which they believe.” He had some trouble translating the word hypnotism into the native speech. “Enough about them. Let me have the mystery, and then let me have a cake that has been baked in the earth with the leaves of the betel.”

“Thou shalt have both, ray son, before the morning light. Enter my hut, and I will dream that thou art a child again.”

But that was just where Dr Koomadhi drew the line. He would not crawl into the hut even to make his venerable mother fancy that his youth was renewed like the eagles.

He returned to Picotee the next day, and as he walked through the forest each side of the bush track was lined with monkeys. They came from far and near and put their faces down to the ground, their fore-hands at the back of their heads.

He talked to them in simian.

“Yes,” he said. “Ye know that I am the holder of the Khabela, intrusted to me by my brother Fanshatee; but if I lose it your attitude will not be the same.”

XII.

Two days had passed, after his return to Picotee, before Dr Koomadhi found time to call at the Residency. He found Major Minton lying on the cane settee in a condition of perspiration and exhaustion.

“I’m sure Dr Koomadhi will bear me out in what I say,” said Mrs Minton, as the Doctor entered the room. “I’ve been lecturing my husband upon the danger of taking such violent exercise as he has been indulging in,” she continued. “Just look at the state that he is in, Doctor. The idea of any sane man on a day like this entering into a climbing contest with a monkey!”

“Great heavens! Is that what he has been about—and the thermometer nearer a hundred than ninety?” cried the Doctor.

“I admit that I was an ass,” muttered the Major. “But somehow I felt that I should show Jacco that I could lick him on his own ground,—not exactly his ground—we were never on the ground.”

“And when I went out I found them swinging on the topmost bough of one of the trees,” said Mrs Minton. “Upon my word, my father will feel scandalised. Such a thing never occurred at the Residency before.”

“Apart from the social aspect of the incident, I am bound to say that it was most indiscreet,” said Dr Koomadhi. “Nothing precipitates sunstroke like over-exertion in a high temperature. Major, this must not occur again.”

“All right: don’t make a fuss, or you’ll soon be as hot as I am,” said the Major, rising with difficulty and crossing the room—he was bent almost double—to his wife’s tea-table.

“Hallo,” said the Doctor, “what have you been doing to yourself?”

“It is not what I have been doing but what I’ve left undone that you notice,” laughed the Major. “The fact is that I couldn’t be bothered shaving for the last few mornings. That’s what you notice.”

That was precisely what the Doctor did notice. He noticed the tossed hair of the Major’s head and such bristles of a beard and whiskers as had completely altered the appearance of his face. He also noticed that when Mrs Minton turned away for a moment her husband deftly abstracted two lumps of sugar from the bowl and began eating them surreptitiously.

“No nuts,” he heard him mutter contemptuously some time afterwards.

“Nuts?” said Mrs Minton. “You’ll ruin your digestion if you eat any more nuts, Dick. Dr Koomadhi, will you join your voice with mine in protest against this foolish boy’s fancy for nuts? You speak with the recognised authority of a medical man. I can only speak as a wife, and I am not so foolish as to fancy that that constitutes any claim to attention. If you continue rubbing your chest in that absurd way, Dick, you’ll certainly make a raw.”

Dr Koomadhi did not fail to observe that the Major was rubbing his chest with his bent-up fingers.

“I’m quite surprised at your imprudence,” said he, shaking his head. “You told me some time ago that though you had been for seven years in India, you never had a touch of fever, and you attributed this to the attention you paid to your diet. Now you know as well as I do that if a man requires to be careful in India, there is double reason for him to be careful on the West Coast of Africa. How can you so disregard the most elementary laws of health?”

Major Minton laughed.

“There’s nothing like exercise,” he said, “and the best of all exercise is climbing. Why, my dear Koomadhi, haven’t the greatest intellects of the age taken to climbing? Wasn’t Tyndall a splendid mountaineer? I don’t profess to be superior to Tyndall. Now, as I can’t get mountains to climb in this neighbourhood I take naturally to the trees. I think sometimes I could pass the rest of my life pleasantly enough here. Man wants but little here below. Give me a branch to swing on, a green cocoa-nut, and a friend who won’t resent a practical joke—I want nothing more. By the way, it’s odd that I never saw until lately—in fact, until two days ago—what good fun there is in a practical joke.”

“His perception of what he calls good fun deprived me of my brushes and comb this morning,” said Mrs Minton. “I must confess I fail to see the humour in hiding one’s brushes and comb.”

“It was the most innocent lark in the world, and you had no reason to be so put out about it,” said her husband, leaning over the back of her chair. Dr Koomadhi saw that he was tying the sash of her loose gown to the wickerwork of the table at which she was sitting, so that she could not rise without overturning the tray with the cups.

“My dear Major,” said the Doctor, “a jest is a jest, but your wife’s china——”

“Oh, you have given me away; but I’ll be equal to you, never fear,” said the Major, shambling off as his wife prepared to loose the knot of her sash from the table.

She did not speak a word, but her face was flushed, and it was plain that she was greatly annoyed. The flush upon her face deepened when her husband went out to the verandah and uttered a curious guttural cry.

“How has he learned that?” asked Dr Koomadhi.

“Learned what?” asked Mrs Minton.

“That cry.”

“Oh, it’s some of his foolishness.”

“I daresay; but——”

“Ah, I thought I could bring you here, my friend,” cried the Major, as Jacco the baboon swung off his usual place over the porch into his arms.

Dr Koomadhi watched the creature run its fingers through the Major’s disordered hair. He heard the guttural sound made by the baboon, and he heard it responded to by the Major.

He found that Major Minton was on a level with himself in his acquaintance with the simian language.

He rose and took leave of Mrs Minton, and then, with a word of warning in regard to his imprudent exercises, of the Major, left the Residency.

It was not until he had reached his own house that he discovered that upon the back of his spotless linen coat there had been executed in ink the grinning face of a clown. He recollected that he had seen Major Minton toying with a quill pen behind him as he sat drinking tea.

XIII.

A few days later Dr Koomadhi was visited—unofficially—by Commander Hope. The poor Commissioner was as grave as if an impetuous French naval officer had just been reported to have insulted the British flag on some part of the coast protected (nominally) by that variegated bunting. He was anxious to consult the Doctor regarding the condition of Major Minton.

“Indeed?” said the Doctor. “What do you suppose is the matter with him, sir?”

The Commissioner tapped his forehead significantly.

“A slight touch of sunstroke, I fancy,” he replied. “He has been behaving strangely—giving us a great deal of uneasiness, Koomadhi. Oh yes, it’s clearly a touch of sunstroke.”

“That’s bad—but not sufficiently bad to be very grave about, sir,” said the Doctor. “You know how these attacks pass away, leaving scarcely a trace behind, if properly treated. You have, of course, applied the ice?”

“We’ve applied nothing,” said the Commissioner. “He’s beyond our control, Koomadhi. He left the Residency last evening and has not turned up since.”

“Great heavens!”

“It’s a fact. Oh, he must be stark, staring mad”—the Commissioner was walking up and down the Doctor’s room in a state of most unofficial perturbation. “I found it necessary to speak to him pretty plainly a couple’ of days ago. It was bad enough for him to climb up the mast and nail the flag to the pole so that it could not be hauled down at sunset, but when it conies to dropping the keys of the despatch-boxes into the water-tank, the thing ceases to be a joke. I gave him a good slating, and he sulked. He had an idea, his wife told me, that he understood the simian language, and he was for ever practising his knowledge upon our tame baboon. What on earth does that mean, if not sunstroke—tell me that, Koomadhi?”

“It looks very like sunstroke, indeed,” said the Doctor. “But where can he have disappeared to?”

“That’s the question that makes me feel uneasy,” said the Commissioner. “I don’t like to make a fuss just yet, but—I’ll tell you what it is, Koomadhi,”—he lowered his voice to a whisper,—“the man has a delusion that he is an ape—it’s impossible to keep it a secret any longer. God help us all! God help my poor girl—my poor girl!”

The Commissioner broke down completely, and wept with his face bowed down to his hands. He was very unofficial—tears are not official.

“Come, sir, you must not give way like this,” said the Doctor. “This coast is the very devil for men like Minton, who will not take reasonable precautions. But there’s no reason to be alarmed just yet. The Penguin will be here in a few days, and the instant the steamer drops her anchor we’ll ship him aboard. He’ll be all right, take my word for it, when he sails a few degrees northward.”

“But where is he now?”

“He’s probably loafing around the outskirts of the jungle; but he’ll be safe enough, and he’ll return, most likely, within the next few hours.”

“You are of that opinion?”

“Assuredly. Above all things, there must be no talk about this business,—it might ruin him socially; and your daughter——”

“Poor girl! poor girl! I agree with you, Koomadhi,—it must be kept a secret; no human being must know about this shocking business.”

“If he does not return before to-night, send a message to me, sir.”

“I’ll not fail. Poor girl! Oh, Koomadhi, her heart will be broken—her heart will be broken!”

The Commissioner went away, looking at least ten years older than when he had last been seen by Dr Koomadhi.

The Doctor watched him stumbling down the pathway: then he laughed and opened a bottle of champagne, which he drank at a gulp—it was only when he was alone that he allowed himself the luxury of drinking champagne in gulps.

Shortly before midnight he paid a visit to the barracks of the Houssas, and found that the officer who was on the sick list was very much better. Returning by the side of the jungle, he heard the sound of steps and a laugh behind him. It might have been the laugh of a man, but the steps were not those of a man.

He looked round.

A shambling creature was following him—a creature with a hairy face and matted locks—a creature whose eyes gleamed wildly in the moonlight.

“How the mischief can you walk so fast along a path like this?” came the voice of Major Minton from the hairy jaws of the Thing.

“I’m not walking so fast, after all,” said the Doctor. He had not given the least start on coming face to face with the Thing.

“I don’t care much about walking on roads; but I’ll back myself to cross a forest without leaving the trees,” said the Thing. “That would beat you, Koomadhi. Oh, by the way——” Here he emitted some guttural sounds.

The simian language was recognised by the Doctor, and replied to with a smile, and for some time the two exchanged remarks. The Doctor was the first to break down.

“I don’t understand that expression,” said he, when the other had repeated some sounds.

“Why, you fool, that means, ‘Is there anything to drink handy?’” said the voice of Major Minton. “Why, I know more of the language than you. We’ve been talking nothing else for the past day or two.”

“Where have you been?”

“In the jungle. Where else would you have me be?”

“Where, indeed? You’d better stay with me to-night. I’ll give you something to drink.”

“That will suit me nicely. I’m a bit thirsty, and——” Here he lapsed into the simian jabber.

He curled himself up in a corner of the sofa, and took the tumbler that Dr Koomadhi offered to him, drinking off the contents pretty much after the style of the Doctor when alone. He then began talking about the sense of freedom incidental to a life spent in the jungle, and every now and again his words became what was long ago known as gibberish; but nearly every utterance was intelligible to the Doctor.

After some time had passed, the Doctor took the carved stones out of the desk drawer, and, handing one to his companion, said—

“By the way, I wonder if you are still deaf to the sound of this thing. Try it again.”

“What’s the good? I’m not such a fool as to fancy that any sound can come from a stone.”

“Doesn’t Shakespeare say something about ‘sermons in stones’?”

“Oh, Shakespeare? He could hear things and see things that no one else could. Well, give me the stone.”

He put the roughly carved lips to his ear, while the Doctor raised the other to his own mouth.

“You can hear no murmur?” said the Doctor.

“Nothing whatever. I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll go asleep.”

“I can give you a bed.”

“A bed? What rot! No, thank you, I’ll be comfortable enough here.”

He curled himself up and went asleep before the Doctor’s eyes.

When the Doctor entered his sitting-room the next morning the apartment was empty.

XIV.

I was a fool for not detaining him by force,” said Dr Koomadhi, in telling the Commissioner, a few hours later, that his son-in-law had paid a visit to his (the Doctor’s) house. “But there really is nothing to be alarmed about. He has a whim, but he’ll soon tire of it.”

“I hope to heavens he’ll return by to-morrow evening,” said the Commander. “The Penguin will be here in the morning, and we must get him aboard by some means. What a pity you didn’t lock him in.”

“To tell you the truth, I was afraid to do so—if he had made a row in the morning on feeling himself a prisoner the thing would be over the town before noon. Oh, you may be certain that he’ll turn up again either to-day or tomorrow.”

That night one of the officers of the Houssas gave Dr Koomadhi a circumstantial account of a strange chimpanzee which one of the men had seen on the outskirts of the jungle at daybreak. If the thing wasn’t a chimpanzee it certainly was a gorilla, the officer said, and he meant to have a shot at it. Would the Doctor join him in the hunt? he inquired.

The Doctor said he would be delighted to do so, but not before the next evening, he had so much on hand.

The Penguin’s gun was heard early in the morning, and Dr Koomadhi had the privilege of reading his ‘Saturday Review’ at breakfast.

He went to the Residency before noon. The Commissioner was not there. He had gone aboard the Penguin, Mr Letts, the Secretary, said, without looking up from his paper.

“I wonder if you know anything about Minton, Mr Letts,” whispered Koomadhi.

“I wonder if you know anything about him, Dr Koomadhi,” said Mr Letts.

“He has not been near me since the night before last,” said the Doctor. “Has he been here?”

Before the Secretary could reply a servant knocked at the office door conveying Mrs Minton’s compliments to Dr Koomadhi, and to inquire if he would be good enough to step into the breakfast-room until the Commissioner returned from the mail steamer.

Dr Koomadhi said he would be pleased to do so, and he left the office and followed the servant into the breakfast-room—an apartment which occupied one end of the Residency, and had windows opening upon the verandah, and affording a view of that portion of the jungle which was nearest Picotee.

He scarcely recognised Gertrude Minton. The deadly pale, worn woman who greeted him silently, had nothing in common with the brilliant daughter of the Commissioner who, a few months before, had been as exquisite as a lily in the midst of a jungle.

“What are we to do—what are we to do?” she whispered. “You have seen him since we saw him. What did he say? Will he return in time to be put aboard the steamer? Oh, for God’s sake, give me a word of hope—one word to keep me from going mad too!”

“Mrs Minton,” said Dr Koomadhi, “you have asked me a great many questions. May I remind you that I never asked but one question of you?”

“One question? What do you mean?”

“I asked you if you thought you could marry me. What was your answer?”

“Why do you come here to remind me of that? If you are thinking of that fault of mine—it was cruel, I know, but I did not mean it—if you are thinking of that rather than of the best way to help us, you had much better have stayed away.”

“You said you would as soon marry a baboon as marry me.”

“I checked myself.”

“When you had practically said it.”

“Well, what then?”

“Nothing; you did not marry me, and the alternative was your own choice.”

“The alternative?”

“Yes; you married a baboon. You know it. Is there any doubt on your mind? Come to this window.”

He had suddenly crossed the room to a window facing the jungle. She staggered to his side. He threw open the shutter and pointed out.

What Mrs Minton saw was a huge ape running on all fours across the cleared space just outside the jungle. The creature ran on for some distance, then stopped and turned round gibbering. Then from the jungle there came another ape, only in a more upright posture. With a yell he caught the hand of the first, and the creature stood upright. Then, hand in hand, in a horribly grotesque dance, they advanced together until they were within a hundred yards of the Residency.

“You see—you see,” laughed Dr Koomadhi. “You may still be able to recognise some of his features in spite of the transformation. You have had your choice. A baboon is your husband, and your child——”

The shriek that the woman gave before falling to the floor frightened even Dr Koomadhi.

In a second the room door was opened. Mr Letts appeared. He rushed at Dr Koomadhi, and had his hands on his throat before the Doctor could raise Mrs Minton. He forced the negro backward into the porch, and flung him out almost upon the Commissioner and Mr Ross, the surgeon of the Penguin, who were in the act of entering.

“For heaven’s sake, Letts!” cried the Commissioner.

“You infernal nigger!” shouted Letts, as Dr Koomadhi picked himself up. “You infernal nigger! if ever you show your face here again, I’ll break every bone in your body!”

“What the blazes is the matter?” asked. Ross.

“I believe that that devil has killed Mrs Minton,” said the Secretary. “If he has, by God! I’ll kill him.”

XV.

Dr Koomadhi went to his house in dignified silence. He put a couple of glasses of brandy into a bottle of champagne and gulped down the whole. Then he wrote a short note to the officer of the Houssas, mentioning that he would be happy to help him to shoot the great ape at daybreak.

He sent off the letter, and before he closed his desk he thought he would restore the carved stones to their receptacle. He had put them into his pocket before starting for the Residency; but now when he felt for them in his pocket he failed to find them. He was overcome with the fear that he had lost them. It suddenly occurred to him that they had been thrown out of his pocket by the violence of the man who had flung him into the road. If so, they would be lying on the pathway, and they would be safe enough there until dark, when he could go and search for them.

At moonrise he went out and walked down the road to the “Residency, but when just at the porch he was confronted by Ross, who was leaving the house.

“Hallo!” cried the surgeon. “I was just about to stroll up to you.”

“And I was determined not to miss you,” said Koomadhi. “How is Mrs Minton? It will be brain fever, I’m afraid.”

“It looks very like it,” said Ross. “She is delirious. How did the attack come? That fool of a Secretary will give no explanation of his conduct to you. The Commissioner says he will either apologise or leave the station.”

“The Secretary is a fool,” said Koomadhi. “Great heavens! to think that there are still some men like that—steeped to the lips in prejudice against the race to which I am proud to belong! We’ll not talk of him; but I’ll certainly demand an apology. The poor woman—she is little more than a girl, Ross! The breaking strain was reached when she was in the act of telling me about her husband.”

“Sunstroke, I suppose?”

“Undoubtedly. He has been behaving queerly for some time. Walk back with me and have something to drink.”

“I can only stay for an hour,” said Ross. “Mrs Bryson, the wife of the telegraphist, is nursing Mrs Minton; but it won’t do for me to be absent for long.”

He remained chatting with Koomadhi for about an hour, and then left for the Residency alone.

Dr Koomadhi determined to wait until midnight, when he might be pretty certain that his search for the stones would not be interrupted.

The door of the Residency was opened for Mr Ross by Letts.

“Step this way, Ross,” said he, in a low voice.

Ross went into the Secretary’s room. Sitting on a cane chair with a cigar in his mouth and a tall glass at his elbow was a man from whom came a strong perfume of shaving-soap. The man had plainly been recently shaved. His face was very smooth.

“Hallo, Ross, old chap!” said this man.

“My God, it’s Minton!” cried the surgeon.

“No one else,” said Minton. “What is all this about my poor wife? Don’t tell me that it’s serious.”

“It’s serious enough,” said Ross. “But, unless a change for the worse comes before morning, there is no reason for alarm.”

“Thank God!” said Minton. “What a fool I was to set about investigating that monkey language! I fancied that I had mastered a word or two, and I ventured into the jungle and got lost. I returned here an hour ago in a woful state of dilapidation. I’m getting better every minute. For God’s sake let me know how my poor wife is now!”

“I’ll get your report, Ross, to save your leaving the room,” said Letts.

The Secretary took the surgeon into an empty apartment.

“He returned three-quarters of an hour ago,” he said, in a low voice. “I never got such a shock as when I saw him—luckily I was at the door. He was practically naked; and with his hair tangled over his head, and his face one mass of bristles, he was to all intents and purposes a baboon. That nigger is at the bottom of it all. I followed him when he visited Mrs Minton this morning, and I even brought myself to listen outside the door of the breakfast-room, where they had an interview. I overheard enough to convince me that the ruffian had made Minton the victim of some of his hellish magic. I’ve been long enough on the West Coast to know what some of the niggers can do in this way. I have questioned Minton adroitly, and he admitted to me that Koomadhi had put a certain stone carved like a human ear into his hand, and had induced him to place it at his own ear. That was the famous Sacred Ear stone that the Ashantees speak of in whispers.”

“We’ll talk more of this to-morrow,” said Ross. “I don’t believe much in negro magic; but—my God! what is the meaning of that?”

A window was open in the room, and through it there came the sound of a shot, followed by appalling yells: then came another shot, and such a wild chorus of shrieking as far surpassed in volume the first series.

Letts ran to a cupboard and whipped out a revolver. He rushed outside without a word. Ross followed him: he felt that wherever a revolver was going he should go also.

The two men ran in the moonlight toward Koomadhi’s house, for the yells were still coming from that direction. When they got within sight of the house Letts cried out in amazement. By the light of the full moon the strangest sight that he had ever seen was before his eyes. Koomadhi’s house was invisible; but where it should have been there was an enormous pyramid of jabbering apes. They were so thick upon the roof and the verandah as to conceal every portion of the building, and hundreds were on the pathway around the place. The noise they made was appalling.

Letts and the surgeon crouched behind a cane-brake and watched that strange scene; but they had not been long in concealment before the creatures began trooping off to the jungle. Baboons, chimpanzees, and gorillas, more horrible than had ever been depicted, were rushing from the house yelling and gibbering with grotesque gestures beneath the light of the moon.

Before the last of the monstrous procession had disappeared—while the shrieks of the wild parrots were still filling the air—the two men left their place of concealment and hurried toward the house. They had to struggle through an odour of monkeys that would have overpowered most men. A glance was sufficient to show them that the shutters of the room in which Koomadhi slept had been torn away. Letts sprang through the open window, and Boss heard his cry of horror before he followed him—before he saw the ghastly sight that the moonlight revealed. The body of Dr Koomadhi lay torn and mangled upon the floor, his empty revolver still warm in his hand. Around him lay the carcases of four enormous apes, with bullet-holes in their breasts.

“Ross,” said Letts after a long pause, “there is a stronger power still than the devil even on the West Coast of Africa.”

“Women, I have often heard, have strange notions at times,” said Major Minton, leaning over the deck-chair under the awning of the Penguin, where his wife was sitting, “but that fancy which you say you had before your attack beats the record. Still, I was greatly to blame. I’ll never forgive myself. I had no business interesting myself in that simian jabber. If at any time I feel a craving in such a direction I’ll get an order for the Strangers’ Gallery of the House of Commons when a debate on an Irish question is going on. Poor Koomadhi! Letts declared that, as he lay among the dead apes, it was difficult to say whether he was an ape or a man.”