ture amid fresh scenery, fresh talk, and
fresh faces, an appetite that shall uphold the credit of the great
empire in a strange land. Once more we found a village which they called
Stanley; but it was different from Aberdeen. Tenantless buildings of
brownstone stared seaward from the low downs, and there lay behind them
a stretch of weather-beaten wall. No need to ask what these things
meant. They cried aloud: "It is a deserted cantonment, and the
population is in the cemetery."

I asked, "What regiment?"

"The Ninety-second, I think," said the General. "But that was in the old
times--in the Sixties. I believe they quartered a lot of troops here and
built the barracks on the ground; and the fever carried all the men off
like flies. Isn't it a desolate place?"

My mind went back to a neglected graveyard a stone's throw from
Jehangir's tomb in the gardens of Shalimar, where the cattle and the
cowherd look after the last resting-places of the troops who first
occupied Lahore. We are a great people and very strong, but we build Our
empire in a wasteful manner--on the bones of the dead that have died of
disease.

"But about the fortifications, General? Is it true that etc., etc.?"

"The fortifications are right enough as things go; what we want is men."

"How many?"

"Say about three thousand for the Island--enough to stop any expedition
that might come. Look at all these little bays and coves. There are
twenty places at the back of the island where you could land men and
make things unpleasant for Hong-Kong."

"But," I ventured, "isn't it the theory that any organised expedition
ought to be stopped by our fleet before it got here? Whereas the forts
are supposed to prevent cutting out, shelling, and ransoming by a
disconnected man-of-war or two."

"If you go on that theory," said the General, "the men-of-war ought to
be stopped by our fleets, too. That's all nonsense. If any Power can
throw troops here, you want troops to turn 'em out, and--don't we wish
we may get them!"

"And you? Your command here is for five years, isn't it?"

"Oh, no! Eighteen months ought to see me out. I don't want to stick here
for ever. I've other notions for myself," said the General, scrambling
over the boulders to get at his tiffin.

And that is just the worst of it. Here was a nice General helping to lay
out fortifications, with one eye on Hong-Kong and the other, his right
one, on England. He would be more than human not to sell