lishing
brought more of the picture to light, till, plain enough in places and
faded in others, there stood out, the portrait of a man in an
old-fashioned naval uniform with stars on his breast, and underneath
some letters in the form of a scroll.

"That's not native work," I exclaimed. "These are English letters," for
I could distinctly make out the word "man" followed by a "t" and an "h."
"Rub it hard, Jack."

The grease on the parchment refused to give way to further polishing,
however, and remembering a bottle of ammonia I kept for insect bites, I
mixed some with kaffir beer and poured it on the head of the tomtom. One
touch of the handkerchief was sufficient once the strong alkali got to
work, and out came the grand old face of Nelson and underneath his
motto:

"England expects that every man this day will do his duty."

Jack dropped the drum as if it had bitten him.

"What does it mean?" he gasped. "My father had this on his chest. I
remember it well!"

I was, however, too busy with the reverse end of the drum to heed him.
On the other side the ammonia brought out a picture of the _Victory_,
with the head of a roaring lion below it.

"Good God!" exclaimed Jack. "My father had that on his back. Quick, Jim,
rub hard! There should be the family crest to the right--an eagle with a
snake in its talons and R. B. underneath."

I rubbed in the spot indicated, and out came the crest and initials
exactly as Jack had described them. There was something horribly uncanny
and gruesome in finding the tattoo marks of the dead man on the
parchment of a Barotse tomtom two hundred miles north of the Zambesi,
and for a moment I was too overcome with astonishment to grasp exactly
what it meant. Then it came to my mind in a flash that the parchment was
nothing else than human skin, and Richard Bridges' skin at that. I put
it down with sudden reverence, and, beckoning to its owner, demanded its
full history. At first he showed signs of fear, but promising him a
waist length of cloth if he told the truth, he squatted on his hams
before us and began.

"Many, many moons ago, before the white men came to trade across the Big
Water as they do now, two white baases came into this country to look
for white stones and gold. One baas was bigger than the other, and on
his chest and on his body were pictures of birds, and beasts, and
strange things. On his chest was a great inkoos with one eye covered,
and on his back a hut with trees