f things,
even an insignificant rebuff. If they sent out a small party, which was
defeated, it would be a great blow to the prestige of the country
through Africa--the Arabs would carry the news to India--and it would be
necessary, then, to despatch such a force that failure was impossible.
To supply this there was neither money nor men.

Alec was put off with one excuse after another. To him it seemed that
hindrances were deliberately set in his way, and in fact the relations
of England with the rest of Europe made his small schemes appear an
intolerable nuisance. At length he was met with a flat refusal.

But Alec MacKenzie could not rest with this, and opposition only made
him more determined to carry his business through. He understood that it
was hard at second hand to make men realise the state of things in that
distant land. But he had seen horrors beyond description. He knew the
ruthless cruelty of the slave-raiders, and in his ears rang, still, the
cries of agony when a village was set on fire and attacked by the Arabs.
Not once, nor twice, but many times he had left some tiny kraal nestling
sweetly among its fields of maize, an odd, savage counterpart to the
country hamlet described in prim, melodious numbers by the gentle
Goldsmith: the little naked children were playing merrily; the women sat
in groups grinding their corn and chattering; the men worked in the
fields or lounged idly about the hut doors. It was a charming scene. You
felt that here, perhaps, one great mystery of life had been solved; for
happiness was on every face, and the mere joy of living was a sufficient
reason for existence. And, when he returned, the village was a pile of
cinders, smoking still; here and there were lying the dead and wounded;
on one side he recognised a chubby boy with a great spear wound in his
body; on another was a woman with her face blown away by some clumsy
gun; and there a man in the agony of death, streaming with blood, lay
heaped upon the ground in horrible disorder. And the rest of the
inhabitants had been hurried away pellmell on the cruel journey across
country, brutally treated and half starved, till they could be delivered
into the hands of the slave merchant.

Alec MacKenzie went to the Foreign Office once more. He was willing to
take the whole business on himself, and asked only for a commission to
raise troops at his own expense. Timorous secretaries did not know into
what difficulties this determined