re fighting. What should he do with
himself for the rest of his life there? Here there would be plenty.
And his wives? Well, the King had promised him six new ones here, and
he had but two at home, and they were not new. His mind was made up.

"Great Great One. I will _konza_ to the Black Elephant of the Inswani,"
he replied. "But may I not go as far with my white chief as the King's
impi goeth? Then I return with the King's lions."

"That thou mayest do, Kumbelwa," said the King.

So it came about that a few days later our two friends took leave of the
King--and started on their return journey. They had plenty of bearers
now, and a valuable load, and, moreover, travelled with a formidable
escort of five hundred shields.

"I tell you what it is, Haviland," Oakley observed, as they turned to
take a last look at the great stockade with its array of ghastly and
grinning heads, spiked on the stakes. "That chum of yours is a
bloodthirsty young villain. But he's jolly well worth being chummy with
on an occasion like this."

"Rather. The fellows at Saint Kirwin's who used to call him `Haviland's
Chum' to rag me, would stare if they only knew how I had run against him
over here. In fact, they wouldn't believe it."

"Why don't you put it into print?"

"Then they'd believe it still less."

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

CONCLUSION.

Saint Kirwin's was jubilant, and the reason for its jubilation lay in
the fact that it had just obtained an unexpected and unlooked-for whole
holiday, and that thanks to the request of a now famous
explorer-naturalist, who had been invited to revisit his old school and
to deliver a lecture in a scientific interest. So interesting and
withal instructive, indeed, had he rendered this, that while cordially
thanking him in the name of the whole school, the headmaster--not our
old friend and sometime terror, Dr Bowen, otherwise Nick--had made him
promise to continue it the following week. This he had agreed to do,
but only to ask a favour in his turn, and that was to grant the school a
whole holiday on the following day--and to an old Kirwinian who had
greatly distinguished himself the headmaster had felt that much was due.
So Haviland went to bed that night the most popular person within those
classic walls; and until late, in more than one dormitory, traditions of
his doughty deeds of a dozen years ago were repeated, and those in his
whilom dormitory felt themselves of immeasurable