on band
of little native men played outside the club under the trees, with two
or three hurricane lamps lighting their music and serious dark faces,
and the flying foxes hawked above them. Inside there was the feeling of
a jolly family circle--rather a big family of "grown-ups"--or a country
house party.

Dancing was beginning as we came away; men had changed from flannels to
evening dress, and ladies had dumbied home and back, and a bridge
tournament was being arranged. Think of the variety of costume this
means, and grouping and lights. The brother and G. had come in from
riding, G. in grey riding-skirt and white jacket, and the brother in
riding-breeches and leggings, and two men and a lady came in with clubs
from golf. Other men were in flannels, and some had already got into
evening kit, and it was the same with ladies--what a queer mixture.
Everyone seems perfectly independent of everyone else, except one or two
matrons who have the interests of the youths at heart, and bustle their
"dear boys" out of draughts, where "they will sit, after getting hot at
Badminton, and won't get ready for dancing or bridge." One cannot but
admire the brotherly and sisterly relationship that seems to exist
between these kindly exiles, the way they make the best of things and
stand by each other, such a little group of white people, possibly
thirty all told, in the midst of a countless world of blacks.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Let us now discourse on duck-shooting for a change, and because it is a
safe subject, and like fishing, "has no sting in the tail of it." One of
the "dear boys" at the club asked if I'd care to go duck-shooting on
Sunday. This "youth" is country-bred, and for length and breadth and
colour and accent, you'd think he had just come out from the Isle of
Skye, the land of his people, where you know they run pretty big and
fit.

It was very kind of these fellows I think, asking me to join them. A
doubtful bag doesn't matter--it's a new country and I feel as keen as a
cockney on his first 12th--so I unpack my American automatic five
shooter, beside which all last year's single-trigger double-barrel
hammer-less ejectors are as flintlocks! "Murderous weapon, and
bloodthirsty shooter"--some old-fashioned gunners of to-day will say,
just as our grandfathers spoke when breechloaders came in, and that
delightful pastime with ramrod and wads, powder flask and shot belt went