was playing chess all by
himself with a folding board open on his knees. He did not look up,
although by that time he surely should have heard us. Fred began to
walk quietly, signaling to the camp hangers-on to say nothing. We
followed him silently in Indian file. As he came near the awning Fred
tip-toed, and I felt like giggling, or yelling--like doing anything
ridiculous.

He who played chess yawned suddenly, and closed the chess-board with a
snap. He got up lazily, smiled, stretched himself like a great
good-looking cat, faced Fred, and laughed outright.

"Glad to see you all! Did you get many elephants?" he asked.

"Monty, you old pirate--I knew it was you!" said Fred, holding a hand
out.

Monty took it, and forced him into the chair he had just vacated.

"You damned old liar!" he said, nodding approvingly.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THEY TOIL NOT, NEITHER DO THEY SPIN

Now for opulence and place
And the increment unearned
We will thieve and stab and cover it with perjury,
Contemptuous of grace
And the lesson never learned
That the Rules are not amenable to surgery.
We will steal a neighbor's tools
In the quest for easy cash,
Aye, jump his claim and burrow to the heart of it,
But the innocents and fools
Get all the goods, and we the trash,
And that's the most exasperating part of it!

Nobody in camp slept that night. When the tusks had been chopped out,
and our camp carried across and pitched beside Monty's--ivory
weighed--lion-proof boma built--and elephant-heart portioned out to the
men, who gorged themselves on it in order that their own hearts might
grow great and strong; when all the myriad matters had been seen to
that make camping in the tropics such a business, then there were tales
to be told. We demanded Monty's first; he ours; and because his was
likely to be much the shortest we won that argument.

"Wait one minute, though," he insisted. "Before I begin, have you any
notion who a man with a beard could be--bruised face-broken front
teeth--Mauser rifle--big dark beard cut shovel-shape--enormously
powerful by the look of his shoulders and arms? I came on him three,
no, four days' march back."

"Schillingschen!" we exclaimed with one voice.

"Show me Schillingschen!" echoed Brown, who was very drunk by that
time, nearly ready to be put to bed. "Show me Schillingschen, an' I'll
show you a corpse!"

"He's