rt, and I can tell
you it's no end of a joke quoting them everywhere, especially when
you quote out of an entirely different book. I am not a brave man, but
nobody ever was a surer shot with an Express longbow, and no one ever
killed more Africans, men and elephants, than I have in my time. But
I do love blood. I love it in regular rivers all over the place, with
gashes and slashes and lopped heads and arms and legs rolling about
everywhere. Black blood is the best variety; I mean the blood of black
men, because nobody really cares twopence about them, and you can
massacre several thousands of them in half-a-dozen lines and offend no
single soul. And, after all, I am not certain that black men have any
souls, so that makes things safe all round, as someone says in the
_Bab Ballads_.

CHAPTER II.

I was staying with my old friend Sir HENRY HURTUS last winter at
his ancestral home in Yorkshire. We had been shooting all day with
indifferent results, and were returning home fagged and weary with our
rifles over our shoulders. I ought to have mentioned that COODENT--of
course, you remember Captain COODENT, R.N.--was of the party. Ever
since he had found his legs so much admired by an appreciative public,
he had worn a kilt without stockings, in order to show them. This,
however, was not done from vanity, I think, but rather from a high
sense of duty, for he felt that those who happened to be born with
personal advantages ought not to be deterred by any sense of false
modesty from gratifying the reading public by their display. Lord, how
we had laughed to see him struggling through the clinging brambles
in Sir HENRY's coverts with his eye-glass in his eye and his Express
at the trail. At every step his unfortunate legs had been more and
more torn, until there was literally not a scrap of sound skin upon
them anywhere. Even the beaters, a stolid lot, had roared when old
VELVETEENS the second keeper had brought up to poor COODENT a lump of
flesh from his right leg, which he had found sticking on a thorn-bush
in the centre of the high covert. Suddenly Sir HENRY stopped and
shaded his eyes with his hand anxiously. We all imitated him, though
for my part, not being a sportsman, I had no notion what was up.
"What's the time of day, Sir HENRY?" I ventured to whisper. Sir HENRY
never looked at me, but took out his massive gold Winchester repeater
and consulted it in a low voice. "Four thirty," I heard him say, "they
are about due.