ftly from his shoulder.

"Bury all these men," said Hamilton, and spent a beastly night in the
forest.

So passed Bemebibi, and his people gave him up to the ghosts, him and
his highmen.

There were other problems less tragic, to be dealt with, a Bosambo
rather grieved than sulking, a haughty N'gori to be kicked to a sense of
his unimportance, chiefs, major and minor, to be brought into a
condition of penitence.

Hamilton went zigzagging up the river swiftly. He earned for himself in
those days the name of "Dragon-fly," or its native equivalent, and the
illustration was apt, for it seemed that the _Zaire_ would poise,
buzzing angrily, then dart off in unexpected directions, and the spirit
of complacency which had settled upon the land gave place to one of
apprehension, which, in the old days, followed the arrival of Sanders in
a mood of reprisal.

Hamilton sent a letter by canoe to his second-in-command. It started
simply:

"Bones--I will not call you 'dear Bones,'" it went on with a hint of the
rancour in the writer's heart, "for you are not dear to me. I am
striving to clear up the mess you have made so that when His Excellency
arrives I shall be able to show him a law-abiding country. I have missed
you, Bones, but had you been near on more occasion than one, I should
not have missed you. Bones, were you ever kicked as a boy? Did any good
fellow ever get you by the scruff of your neck and the seat of your
trousers and chuck you into an evil-smelling pond? Try to think and send
me the name of the man who did this, that I may send him a letter of
thanks.

"Your absurd weakness has kept me on the move for days. Oh, Bones,
Bones! I am in a sweat, lest even now you are tampering with the
discipline of my Houssas--lest you are handing round tea and cake to the
Alis and Ahmets and Mustaphas of my soldiers; lest you are brightening
their evenings with imitations of Frank Tinney and fanning the flies
from their sleeping forms," the letter went on.

"Cad!" muttered Bones, as he read this bit.

There were six pages couched in this strain, and at the end six more of
instruction. Bones was in the forest when the letter came to him,
unshaven, weary, and full of trouble.

He hated work, he loathed field exercise, he regarded bridge-building
over imaginary streams, and the whole infernal curriculum of military
training, as being peculiarly within the province of the boy scouts and
wholly beneath the dignity of an office