treated as a broken tool.

Yet he did not dare to approach our camp, for fear lest Fred should
carry out his threat and fight. The fight would certainly be reported
by the askari on watch at the crossroads, and that would destroy his
chance of making believe to be in our confidence. So he kept sending
notes to me when the others were absent, even the native boy who
brought them--not daring to enter our camp, but fastening the message
to a stone and throwing it in through the tent door.

They were strange, illiterate messages, childishly conceived, varying
between straight-out offers to help us escape and dark insinuations
that he knew of something it would pay us well to investigate.

It was an English missionary spending three days in Muanza on his way
to Lake Tanganika, who came to see what he could do for my wound and
cleared up the mystery quite a little by reporting what he had heard in
the non-commissioned mess, where he had been invited to eat a meal.

"The Greek," he said, "is trying to curry favor by pretending he knows
your plans. If he succeeds in worming into your confidence and
persuading you to make plans to escape with him, they will feel
justified in putting you in jail--and that, I understand, is where they
want you."

"Will you do me a favor?" I asked.

He hesitated. It was kindness that had sent him down to ease my pain,
if possible, not anti-Germanism; it was part of German policy to pose
as the friend of all missionaries, and if anything he was prejudiced
against us--particularly against Brown, whom he had visited in jail,
and who assured him the only hymn he ever sang was "Beer, glorious
beer!"

"That depends," he answered.

"We are quite sure any letters we write will be opened," I said.

He answered that he could hardly believe that.

"If we could send a letter unopened to British East it would solve our
worst problem," I told him. "If you know of a dependable messenger who
would carry our letter, I would contribute fifty pounds out of my own
pocket to the funds of your mission."

I made a mistake there, and realized it the next moment.

"What kind of letter is worth fifty pounds?" he asked me. "Isn't it
something illegal that you fear might get you into worse trouble if
opened and read?"

I argued in vain, and only made my case worse by citing as an instance
of German official turpitude the staff surgeon's neglect of me.

"But he tells me you refuse to be treated by him!"