hing more and something
different? Was the postman to Abyssinia the expected messenger? The
miracle of that morning predisposed him to think so.

He sat thus for an hour, and then stepping daintily, with timid eyes
alert, a tall reed-buck and his doe came through the glade towards the
water. But they did not drink; they waited, cropping the grass.
Gradually, through a long hour, others gathered, tawny and yellow, and
dappled-brown, and stood and fed until--perhaps a signal was given,
perhaps a known moment had come--all like soldiers at a command, moved
down to the water's edge.

Six nights later Hillyard camped at Lueisa, near to that big tree under
which it is not wise to spread your bed. He took his bath at ten o'clock
at night under the moon, and the water from the river was hot. He
stretched himself out in his bed and waked again that night after the
moon had set, to fix indelibly in his memory the blazing dome of stars
above his head, and the Southern Cross burning in a corner of the sky.
The long, wonderful holiday was ended. To-morrow night he would sleep in
a house. Would he ever come this way again?

In the dark of the morning he struck westwards from the Dinder, across a
most tedious neck of land, for Senga and the Blue Nile.

CHAPTER VI

THE HONORARY MEMBER

At six o'clock in the evening Colin Rayne, a young civilian in the Sudan
Service, heard, as he sat on the balcony of the mess at Senga, the
rhythmical thud of camels swinging in to their rest in the freshness of
the night air.

"There's our man," he exclaimed, and running downstairs, he reached the
door just as Hillyard's twelve camels and his donkeys trooped into the
light. Hillyard was riding bareheaded, with his helmet looped to his
saddle, a young man, worn thin by sun and exercise, with fair burnt
hair, and a brown clean shaven face. Colin Rayne went up to him as he
dismounted.

"Captain Luttrell asked me to look after you. He has got some work on
hand for the moment. We'll see after your affs."

"Thank you."

"You might show me, by the way, where your cartridges are."

Hillyard selected the camel on which they were packed and Rayne called a
Sudanese sergeant to take them into the mess.

"Now we will go upstairs. I expect that you can do with a
whisky-and-soda," he said.

Hillyard was presented to a Doctor Mayle, who was conducting a special
research into the cause of an obscure fever; and to the other officers
of this head