dering where yer wer', Tom, when
I see'd a troop of big black monkeys makin' fur this very grove where we
is. Wonderin' if they was them beasts that Swahili chap told us on, I
follered 'em up; and then, all at onst, I see'd ye, Tom, a-strugglin'
with that beast theer, and I comes up at the double and puts my rifle
inter his ear and blows his bloomin' brains out, jest as ye was well-
nigh spent, me joker."

"Thank you, Larry," said I; "you've saved my life."

"All right," he replied jokingly, pulling me up and rubbing me down,
helping to arrange my tattered jumper and trousers, which that devil of
a baboon had nearly torn to pieces; his bites, luckily for me, not being
as bad as they had seemed, now that the blood was rubbed off. "I hopes,
Tom, ye'll remember me in yer will when ye're dead, me joker!"

"I will do better than that," said I, as we both moved off to join some
of the other bluejackets scouting away behind us, who had come up during
the stoppage of our march through the wild country. "I will remember
you, Larry, as long as I live!"

The surgeon accompanying our column presently came up to me and neatly
strapped up the cuts which the baboon had inflicted on me with his
teeth. He wanted me to retire to the rear and stop with the baggage
guard; but, I would have none of that, no, not I!

"I would rather go on, sir, if you will allow me," said I. "Now that I
have rested and you have put that stuff on the wounds, I feel all right
again, sir; and I don't want to be left out of the fighting and lose the
chance of paying out those Arab beggars for a few scratches like these.
Why, sir, chaps that don't know me would say that I was a coward!"

"Very good, my lad," said the surgeon good-humouredly, for he was a rare
good fellow, and a prime favourite with all on board the _Mermaid_; "you
can go on with the column if you like. We want such men as you in the
battle front; and, I think, we generally have them, too!" I therefore
resumed my place in the ranks, though let off scouting duty, as was
Larry, the two of us being now relieved by fresh hands from amongst the
bluejackets; and so, I now marched along with the column, which pursued
its way onward steadily inland, steering the same west south-west
course, until we had travelled some fifteen miles away from our base.

We halted for the night on a beautiful grassy plain, covered with red
and white clover, with thistles and dog-roses and dandelions intermixed,