Africa for years, and he
certainly knew the country very well. This circumstance, coupled with
the fact that he was a very handy man with horses, as all colonists
are, had procured him the first small step from the ranks which
facilitates bullying if a man be a bully by nature, and is physically
fitted to be a successful one. Connal was a hulking ruffian, and in me
had ideal game. The brute was offensive to me from the hour I joined.
The details are of no importance, but I stood up to him at first in
words, and finally for a few seconds on my feet. Then I went down like
an ox, and Raffles came out of his tent. Their fight lasted twenty
minutes, and Raffles was marked, but the net result was dreadfully
conventional, for the bully was a bully no more.

But I began gradually to suspect that he was something worse. All this
time we were fighting every day, or so it seems when I look back.
Never a great engagement, and yet never a day when we were wholly out
of touch with the enemy. I had thus several opportunities of watching
the other enemy under fire, and had almost convinced myself of the
systematic harmlessness of his own shooting, when a more glaring
incident occurred.

One night three troops of our squadron were ordered to a certain point
whither they had patrolled the previous week; but our own particular
troop was to stay behind, and in charge of no other than the villanous
corporal, both our officer and sergeant having gone into hospital with
enteric. Our detention, however, was very temporary, and Connal would
seem to have received the usual vague orders to proceed in the early
morning to the place where the other three companies had camped. It
appeared that we were to form an escort to two squadron-wagons
containing kits, provisions, and ammunition.

Before daylight Connal had reported his departure to the commanding
officer, and we passed the outposts at gray dawn. Now, though I was
perhaps the least observant person in the troop, I was not the least
wideawake where Corporal Connal was concerned, and it struck me at once
that we were heading in the wrong direction. My reasons are not
material, but as a matter of fact our last week's patrol had pushed its
khaki tentacles both east and west; and eastward they had met with
resistance so determined as to compel them to retire; yet it was
eastward that we were travelling now. I at once spurred alongside
Raffles, as he rode, bronzed and bearded, with