Mills grunted, and they entered the skoff kia--the largest of the
huts, sacred to the uses of a dining-room. It contained two canvas
chairs, a camp table, a variety of boxes to sit upon, and some
picture-paper illustration on the mud wall. A candle in a bottle
illuminated it, and a bird in the thatch overhead twittered volubly
at their presence. Some tattered books lay in the corner.

They washed in the open air, sluicing themselves from buckets, and
dressed again in clean dungarees in another hut.

"Skoff (food) 'll be ready by now," said Mills; "but I think a
gargle's the first thing. You'll have whisky, or gin?"

The Frenchman pronounced for whisky, and took it neat. Mills stared.

"If I took off a dose like that," he observed, "I should be as drunk
as an owl. You know how to shift it!"

"Eh?"

"Gimme patience," prayed the trader. "You bleat like a yowe. I said
you can take it, the drink. Savvy? Wena poosa meningi sterrik. Have
some more?"

"Oh yais," smiled the guest. "Ver' good w'isky, eh?"

He tossed off another four fingers of the liquor, and they sat down
to their meal. The food was such as most tables in Manicaland
offered. Everything was tinned, and the menu ran the gamut of edibles
from roast capon (cold) to pate de foie gras in a pot. When they had
finished Mills passed over his tobacco and sat back. He watched the
other light up and blow a white cloud, and then spoke.

"Look here, Frenchy," he said, looking at him steadily; "I don't
quite cotton to you, and I think it proper you should say a bit more
than you have said."

"Eh!" queried the other, smiling.

Mills glowered, but restrained himself. "I want to know who you are,
and I guess I mean to know too, so out with it!"

"Ah yais," replied the Frenchman, and removed his pipe from his
mouth. He trimmed the bowl fastidiously with his thumb, smiling the
while. Of a sudden he looked up, and the smile was gone. He gave
Mills back a look as purposeful as his own.

"I'm the man that save' you in the river," he said meaningly.

"Well," began the trader hotly, but stopped.

"That's true," he answered thoughtfully, as though speaking to
himself. "Yes, that's true. You've got me, Frenchy."

"Yais," went on the Frenchman, leaning forward across the table, and
speaking with an emphasis that was like an insult. "You sink there in
the sand. I stop and save you. I stop, you see, although the men from
Macequece coom after me and want to kill me."

"