. But no, even when I have allowed for this,
I am not disposed to write him down heroically efficient or
journalistically British not on that night at least. Just as
a Colenso now and then slips into our big campaigns, so the
monotony of our frontier triumphs gets diversified, I fear, and
not so very seldom. No. 2. is by no means the only man of the
diversifying type I seem to have met. I refuse to admire No. 2 as
he was that night, though I would excuse him.

For the hero of that night, let us look away from him. What a
splendid night it was in the late autumn in the very end of May!
Stars seemed to fall in profusion. But the steady ranks that were
left showed no thinning to my dazzled eyes. I had much time to
watch them, I remember.

Ours was a gloomy camp among the ruins under the stars. One
trooper was convalescent and irritable as well as disappointed.
The other was shaken and sulky with little to say. There were
great pauses in the talk. I thought how I congratulated Carrot,
the cheerful and irresponsible, on his escape. Assuredly his
would-be captors would have seemed to him dull dogs. Of course he
would have thoroughly deserved ordinary boredom. But theirs was
like a London fog. So it fell about that I had much time to give
heed to the Black Watch as they chattered over their fire hard
by. One was telling tales of lions, tales where the terror was
glamorous and ghostly. A hint of a surmise floated to me. It
recalled a type of mediaeval tale that had once entranced me. But
I said nothing to those young white men beside me whose frowning
faces were a study, and a pitiful one. I was intensely sorry for
them both. I just smoked my pipe, and made ready to go to bed
betimes. I was soon asleep, to dream of holy water and silver
bullets and to wake and rise as the cock was crowing (for the
second cock-crow I suppose) away down the hillside; I said an
added prayer of eager devotion, feeling myself to be a postulant
in great need of its answer. I made for the rock of vantage. I
found the lion's spoor in the growing light, and followed it
slowly and timorously into the bush and beyond. There had been a
shower yesterday about noon, and it was easy enough to follow it.
It led down and then up again. I guessed it might be leading me
to Carrot's huts and the troopers once more. But, no, it dipped
far down to that other group of huts wedged amongst the rocks,
where Carrot's boon comrades lived, where I had bandaged the hurt