Black Mischief

At quarter past, William came from Sir Samson Courteney to discuss the possibility of making a road out to the Legation. William and Basil did not like each other.

At half past, the Lord Chamberlain came to consult about cookery. A banquet was due to some Wanda notables next week. Seth had forbidden raw beef. What was he to give them? “Raw beef,” said Basil. “Call it steak tartare.”

“That is in accordance with modern thought?”

“Perfectly.”

At noon Basil went to see the Emperor.

The heat, rarely intolerable in the hills, was at this time of day penetrating and devitalising. The palace roofs glared and shimmered. A hot breeze lifted the dust and powdered the bodies of the dan-gling courtiers and carried across the yard a few waste shreds of paper, baked crisp and brittle as dead leaves. Basil sauntered with half-shut eyes to the main entrance.

Soldiers stood up and saluted clumsily; the captain of the guard trotted after him and plucked at his sleeve.

“Good-morning, captain.”

“Good-morning, Excellency. You are on your way to the Emperor?”

“As usual.”

“There is a small matter. If I could interest your Excellency… It is about the two gentlemen who were banged. One was my cousin.”

“Yes?”

“His post has not yet been filled. It has always been held by my family. My uncle has made a petition to His Majesty…”

“Yes, yes. I will speak on his behalf.”

“But that is exactly what you must not do. My uncle is a wicked man, Excellency. It was he who poisoned my father. I am sure of it. He wanted my mother. It would be most unjust for him to have the post. There is my little brother—a man of supreme ability and devotion…”

“Very well, captain, I’ll do what I can.”

“The angels preserve your Excellency.’

The Emperor’s study was strewn with European papers and catalogues; his immediate concern was a large plan of Debra-Dowa on which he was working with ruler and pencil.

“Come in, Seal, I’m just rebuilding the city. The Anglican Cathedral will have to go, I think, and all the South quarter. Look, here is Seth Square with the avenues radiating from it. I’m calling this Boulevard Basil Seal.”

“Good of you, Seth.”

“And this Avenue Connolly.”

“Ah, I wanted to talk about him.” Basil sat down and approached his subject discreetly. “I wouldn’t say anything against him. I know you like him and in his rough and tumble way he’s a decent soldier.

But d’you ever feel that he’s not quite modern?”

“He never made full use of our tank.”

“Exactly. He’s opposed to progress throughout.

He wants to keep the army under his control. Now there’s the question of boots. I don’t think we told you, but the matter came before the Ministry and we sent in a recommendation that the guards should be issued with boots. It would increase their efficiency a hundred per cent. Half the sick list is due to hookworm, which as you know comes from going about barefooted. Besides, you know, there’s the question of prestige. There’s not a single guards’ regiment in Europe without boots. You’ve seen them for yourself at Buckingham Palace. You’ll never get the full respect of the powers until you give your troops boots.”

“Yes, yes, by all means. They shall have boots at once.”

“I was sure you’d see it that way. But the trouble is that Connolly’s standing out against it. Now we’ve no power at present to issue an army ordnance. That has to come through him—or through you as commander-in-chief of the army.”

“I’ll make out an order to-day. Of course they must have boots. I’ll hang any man I see barefooted.”

“Fine. I thought you’d stand by us, Seth. You know,” he added reflectively, “we’ve got a much easier job now than we should have had fifty years ago. If we’d had to modernise a country then it would have meant constitutional monarchy, bi-cameral legislature, proportional representation, women’s suffrage, independent judicature, freedom of the press, referendums…”

“What is all that?” asked the Emperor.

“Just a few ideas that have ceased to be modern.”

Then they settled down to the business of the day.

“The British Legation are complaining again about their road.”

“That is an old question. I am tired of it. Besides you will see from the plan I have orientated all the roads leading out of the capital; they go by the points of the compass. I cannot upset my arrangements.”

“The Minister feels very strongly about it.”

“Well, another time… no, I tell you what I will do. Look, we will name this street after him. Then he will be satisfied.”

The Emperor took up his indiarubber and erased Connolly’s name from the new metropolis. Avenue Sir Samson Courteney he wrote in its place.

“I wish we had a tube railway,” he said. “Do you think it would pay?”

“No.”

“So I feared. But one day we will have one. Listen. You can tell Sir Samson that. When there is a tube railway he shall have a private station in the Legation compound. Now listen; I have had a letter from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. They want to send out a Commission to investigate Wanda methods of hunting. Is it cruel to spear lions, do you think?”

“No.”

“No. However, here is the letter. From Dame Mildred Porch. Do you know her?”

“I’ve heard of her. An intolerable old gas-bag.”

“What is gas-bag? An orator?”

“Yes in a way.”

“Well, she is returning from South Africa and wishes to spend a week here. I will say yes?”

“I shouldn’t.”

“I will say yes… And another thing. I have been reading in my papers about something very modern called birth control. What is it?”

Basil explained.

“I must have a lot of that. You will see to it. Perhaps it is not a matter for an ordnance, what do you think? We must popularise it by propagandaeducate the people in sterility. We might have a little pageant in its honour…”

Sir Samson accepted the rebuff to his plans with characteristic calm. “Well, well, I don’t suppose young Seth will keep his job long. There’s bound to be another revolution soon. The boy’s head over heels in debt they tell me. I daresay the next government, whoever they are, will be able to afford something. And anyway, you may laugh at me, Prudence, but I think it’s uncommonly decent of the young fellow to name that avenue after me. I’ve al-ways liked him. You never know. Debra-Dowa may become a big city one day. I like to think of all the black johnnies in a hundred years’ time driving up and down in their motor cars and going to the shops and saying, ‘Number a hundred Samson Courteney’ and wondering who I was. Like, like…”

“Like the Avenue Victor Hugo, Envoy.”

“Exactly, or St. James’s Square.”

But the question of the boots was less easily settied.

On the afternoon of the day when the new ordnance was issued, Basil and Mr. Youkoumian were in conference. A major difficulty had arisen with regard to the plans for the new guest house at the Palace. The Emperor had been captivated by some photographs he had discovered in a German architectural magazine and had decided to have the new building constructed of steel and vita-glass. Basil had spent half the morning in a vain attempt to per-suade the royal mind that this was not a style at all suitable to his tropical climate and he was now at work with his financial secretary on a memorandum of the prohibitive extravagance of the new plans, when the door was pushed noisily open and the Duke of Ukaka strode into the room.

“Clear out, Youkoumian,” he said. “I want to talk to your boss.”

“O.K., General. Ill op off. No offence.’

“Nonsense. Mr. Youkoumian is financial secretary of the Ministry. I should like him to be present at our interview.”

“What me, Mr. Seal? I got nothing to say to the General.”

“I wish you to stay.”

“Quick,” said the Duke, making a menacing motion towards him.

“Very sorry, gentlemen,” said Mr. Youkoumian and shot through the door into his own office.

First trick to Connolly.

“I notice even that little dago has the sense to take off his boots.”

Second trick to Connolly.

But in the subsequent interview Basil held his own. The General began: “Sorry to have to sling that fellow out. Can’t stand his smell. Now let’s talk. What’s all this infernal nonsense about boots?”

“His Majesty’s ordnance seemed perfectly explicit to me.”

“His Majesty’s trousers. For the Lord’s sake come off the high horse, old boy, and listen to me. I don’t give a hoot in hell about your modernisation. It’s none of my business. You can set every damn coon in the place doing cross-word puzzles for all I care.

But I’m not going to have any monkeying about with my men. You’ll lame the whole army in a day if you try to make ‘em wear boots. Now look here, there’s no reason why we should scrap over this. I’ve been in the country long enough to see through Youkoumian’s game. Selling junk to the government has been the staple industry of Debra-Dowa as long as I can remember it. I’d as soon you got the boodle as any one else. Listen. If I tip the wink to the peo-ple on the line I can have the whole consignment of boots carried off by Sakuyu. You’ll get compensation, the ordnance will be forgotten and no one will be any the worse off. What do you say? Is it a deal?”

For an appreciable time Basil hesitated in a decision of greater importance than either of them realised. The General sat jauntily on the edge of the table bending his rising cane over his knee; his expression was one of cordiality and of persuasive good sense. Basil hesitated. Was it some atavistic sense of a caste, an instinct of superiority, that held him aloof? Or was it vexed megalomania because Mr. Youkoumian had trotted so obediently from the room in his stockinged feet?

“You should have made your representations be-fore,” he said. “The tone of your first note made discussion impossible. The boots will be issued to the war department next week.”

“Bloody young fool,” said Connolly and took his leave.

As the door opened Mr. Youkoumian hastily stepped back from the keyhole. The General pushed past him and left the Ministry.

“Oh, Mr. Seal, why the ell do you want a bust up with im for? Look, how about I go after im and fix it, eh, Mr. Seal?”

“You won’t do anything of the sort. Well carry right on with the plans for the pageant of contraception.”

“Oh dear, oh dear, Mr. Seal, there ain’t no sense at all in aving bust ups.”

News of the rupture spread like plague through the town. It was first-class gossip. The twenty or so spies permanently maintained by various interests in the Imperial Household carried tidings of the split through the legations and commercial houses; runners informed the Earl of Ngumo; Black Bitch told her hairdresser; an Eurasian bank clerk told his manager and the bank manager told the Bishop; Mr. Youkoumian recounted the whole incident in graphic gesture over the bar of the Empereur Seth; Connolly swore hideously about it at the Perroquet to Prince Fyodor; the Minister of the Interior roared out a fantastically distorted version to the assembled young ladies of the leading maison de societe. That I74 evening there was no dinner table of any importance in Debra-Dowa where the subject was not discussed in detail.

“Pity,” remarked Sir Samson Courteney. “I suppose this’ll mean that young Seal will be coming up here more than ever. Sorry, Prudence, I daresay he’s all right, but the truth is I can never find much to say to the chap…. interested in different things … always going on about local politics….

Damn fool thing to quarrel about anyway. Why shouldn’t he wear boots if he wants to?”

“That wasn’t quite the point, Envoy.”

“Well, it was something of the kind, I know.”

“Ha! Ha!” said Monsieur Ballon. “Here is a thing Sir Samson did not foresee. Where is his fine web now, eh? Gossamer in the wind. Connolly is our man.”

“Alas, blind, trusting husband, if he only knew,” murmured the first to the second secretary.

“The Seal-Courteney faction and their puppet emperor have lost the allegiance of the army. We must consolidate our party.”

It was in this way it happened that next morning there occurred an event unique in Black Bitch’s experience. She was in the yard in front of her house laundering some of the General’s socks (for she could not bear another woman to touch her man’s I75 clothes), chewing nut and meditatively spitting the dark juice into the soap-suds, when a lancer dismounted before her in the crimson and green uniform of the French Legation.

“Her Grace, the Duchess of Ukaka.”

She lifted her dress, so as not to soil it, and wiped her hands on her knickers. “Me,” she said.

The man saluted, handed her a large envelope; saluted again, mounted and rode away.

The Duchess was left alone with her large envelope; she squatted on her heels and examined it, turning it this way and that, holding it up to her ear and shaking it, her head sagely cocked on one side. Then she rose, padded into the house and across the hall to her bedroom; there, after circumspection, she raised a loose corner of the fibre matting and slipped the letter beneath it.

Two or three times during the next hour she left her wash-tub to see if her treasure was safe. At noon the General returned to luncheon and she handed it over to him, to await his verdict.

“Hullo, Black Bitch, what do you suppose this is? Madame Ballon wants us to dine at the French Legation tomorrow.”

“You go?”

“But it’s for both of us, old girl. The invitation is addressed to you. What d’you think of that?”

“Oh, my! Me dine with Madame Ballon! Oh, my, that’s good!”

The Duchess could not contain her excitement; she threw back her head, lolled her eyes, and emitting deep gurgles of pleasure began spinning about the room like a teetotum.

“Good for the old geyser,” said the Duke, and later when the acceptance was written and despatched by the hand of the Imperial Guard’s most inspiring sergeant-major, and Connolly had answered numerous questions about the proper conduct of knife, fork, glass and gloves, and the Duchess had gone bustling off to Mr. Youkoumian’s store for ribbon and gold braid and artificial peonies to em-bellish her party frock, he went back to barracks with unusual warmth at heart towards the French Legation, remarking again, “Good for the old geyser. He’s the first person who’s troubled to ask Black Bitch to anything in eight years. And wasn’t she pleased as Punch about it too, bless her black heart?”

As the time approached Black Bitch’s excitement became almost alarming and her questions on etiquette so searching that the General was obliged to thump her soundly on the head and lock her in a cupboard for some hours before she could be reduced to a condition sufficiently subdued for diplomatic society. The dinner party, however, was a great success. The French Legation were there in full force, the director of the railway with his wife and daughters, and Lord Boaz, the Minister for the Interior. Black Bitch as Duchess of Ukaka took precedence and sat beside M. Ballon who spoke to her in English in praise of her husband’s military skill, influence and discretion. Any small errors in deportment which she may have committed were completely eclipsed by the Minister for the Interior who complained of the food, drank far too much, pinched the ladies on either side of him, pocketed a dozen cigars and a silver pepper mill which happened to take his fancy, and later in the drawing-room insisted on dancing by himself to the gramophone until his slaves appeared to hoist him into his car and carry him back to Mme. Fifi,’ of whose charms he had been loudly boasting throughout the evening with a splendour of anatomical detail which was, fortunately, unintelligible to many of the people present.

In the dining room when the succession of wines finally ended with the few ceremonial spoonfuls of sweet champagne and the men were left alone—the Minister for the Interior being restrained with difficulty from too precipitately following the ladies—M. Ballon signalled for a bottle of eau de vie and moving round to the General’s side, filled his glass and prompted him to some frank criticism of the Emperor and the present regime.

In the drawing-room the French ladies crowded about their new friend and before the evening was out several of them, including Madame Ballon, had dropped the ‘Duchess’ and were on terms of calling her ‘Black Bitch.’ They asked her to come and see their gardens and children, they offered to teach her tennis and picquet, they advised her about an Armenian dressmaker in the town and a Hindu fortune teller; they were eager to lend her the patterns of their pyjamas; they spoke seriously of pills; best of all they invited her to sit on the committee which was being organised in the French colony to decorate a car for the forthcoming Birth-Control Gala. There was no doubt about it; the Connollys had made the French set.

Ten days later the boots arrived at Debra-Dowa; there were some formalities to be observed but these were rendered simple by the fact that the departments involved were now under the control of the Ministry of Modernisation. Mr. Youkoumian drew up an application to himself from the Ministry of War for the delivery of the boots; he made out a chit from the War Office to Ministry of Supplies; passed it on to the treasury, examined and counter-signed it, drew himself a cheque and in the name of the Customs and Excise Department allowed his own claim to rebate of duty on the importation of articles of ‘national necessity.’ The whole thing took ten minutes. A few hours later a thousand pairs of I79 black boots had been dumped in the square of the Guards barracks where a crowd of soldiers rapidly collected and studied them throughout the entire afternoon with vivid but nervous interest.

That evening there was a special feast in honour of the boots. Cook-pots steaming over the wood fires; hand drums beating; bare feet shuffling un-forgotten tribal rhythms; a thousand darkies crooning and swaying on their haunches, white teeth flashing in the fire light.

They were still at it when Connolly returned from dinner at the French consulate.

“What in hell are the boys making whoopee for to-night? It’s not one of their days, is it?”

“Yes General, very big day,” said the sentry. “Boots day.”

The singing reached Basil as he sat at his writing table at the Ministry, working long after midnight at the penal code.

“What’s going on at the barracks?” he asked his servant.

“Boots.”

“They like em, eh?”

“They like em fine.”

“That’s one in the eye for Connolly,” he said, and next day, meeting the General in the Palace Yard he could not forbear to mention it. “So the boots went down all right with your men after all, Connolly.”

“They went down.”

“No cases of lameness yet I hope?”

The General leant over in his saddle and smiled pleasantly. “No cases of lameness,” he replied. “One or two of belly ache though. I’m just writing a re-port on the matter to the Commissioner of Supplies—that’s our friend Youkoumian, isn’t it? You see my adjutant made rather a silly mistake. He hadn’t had much truck with boots before and the silly fellow thought they were extra rations. My men ate the whole bag of tricks last night.”

Dust in the air; a light wind rattling the leaves in the eucalyptus trees. Prudence sat over the Panorama of Life gazing through the window across the arid legation croquet lawn; dun grass rubbed bare between the hoops, a few sapless stalks in the beds beyond. She drew little arabesques in the corners of the page and thought about love.

It was the dry season before the rains when the cattle on the hills strayed miles from their accustomed pastures and herdsmen came to blows over the brackish dregs of the drinking holes; when, preceded by a scatter of children, lions would sometimes appear, parading the streets of the town in search of water; when Lady Courteney remarked that her herbaceous borders were a positive eyesore.

How out of tune with nature is the spirit of man! wrote Prudence in her sprawling, schoolroom characters. When the earth proclaims its fertility, in running brooks, bursting seed, mating of birds and frisking of lambs then the thoughts of man turn to athletics and horticulture, water colour painting and amateur theatricals. Now in the arid season when nature seems all dead under the cold earth, there is nothing to think about except sex. She bit her pen and read it through, substituting hot soil for cold earth. ‘I am sure I’ve got something wrong in the first part.’ she thought and called to Lady Courteney who, watering-can in hand, was gloomily surveying a withered rose tree. “Mum, how soon after the birds mate are the lambs born?”

“Eggs, dear, not lambs,” said her mother and pottered off towards some azalea roots which were desperately in need of water.

“Damn the panorama of life,” said Prudence, and she began drawing a series of highly-stylised profiles which by an emphasis of the chin and disordering of the hair had ceased during the last six weeks to be portraits of William and had come to represent Basil Seal. “To think that I wanted to be in love so much,” she thought, “that I even prac-tised on William.”

“Luncheon,” said her mother, repassing the win-182 dow. “And I shall be late again. Do go in and be bright to your father.’

But when Lady Courteney joined them in the dining-room she found father, daughter and William sitting in moody silence.

“Tinned asparagus,” said Sir Samson. “And a letter from the Bishop.”

“He’s not coming out to dinner again?”

“No, no, it isn’t as bad as that. But apparently Seth wants to pull down his Cathedral for some reason. What does he expect me to do about it I should like to know? Shocking ugly building any-how. I wish, Prudence and William, you’d take the ponies out this afternoon. They haven’t had any proper exercise for days.”

“Too hot,” said Prudence.

“Too busy,” said William.

“Oh, well,” said Sir Samson Courteney. And later he remarked to his wife: “I say, there isn’t any trouble between those two, is there? They used to be such pals.”

“I’ve been meaning to mention it for some time, Sam, only I was so worried about the antirrhinums. I don’t think Prudence is at all herself. D’you think it’s good for a girl of her age living at this height all the year round? It might be an idea to send her back to England for a few months. Harriet could put her up in Belgrave Place. I’m not sure it wouldn’t be a good thing for her to go out in London for a season and meet some people of her own age. What d’you think?”

“I daresay you’re right. All that What-d’you-call-it of Life she keeps working away at… Only you must write to Harriet. I’m far too busy at the moment. Got to think of something to say to the Bishop.”

But next day Prudence and William went out with the ponies. She had an assignation with Basil.

“Listen, William, you’re to go out of the city by the lane behind the Baptist school and the Jewish abattoirs, then past the Parsee death house and the fever hospital.”

“Not exactly the prettiest ride.”

“Darling. Don’t be troublesome. You might get seen the other way. Once you’re clear of the Arab cemetery you can go where you like. And you’re to fetch me at Youkoumian’s at five.”

“Jolly afternoon for me, leading Mischief all the time.”

“Now, William, you know you manage him perfectly. You’re the only person I’d trust to take him. I can’t leave him outside Youkoumian’s, can I, because of discretion.’

“What you don’t seem to see is that it’s pretty dim for me, floundering about half the day, I mean, in a dust heap with two ponies while you neck with the chap who’s cut me out.”

“William, don’t be coarse. And anyway ‘cut you out’ nothing. You had me all to yourself for six months and weren’t you just bored blue with it?”

“Well, I daresay he’ll be bored soon.”

“Cad.”

Basil still lived in the large room over Mr. Youkoumian’s Store. There was a verandah, facing onto a yard littered with scrap iron and general junk, accessible by an outside staircase. Prudence passed through the shop, out and up. The atmosphere of the room was rank with tobacco smoke. Basil, in shirt sleeves, rose from the deck chair to greet her. He threw the butt of his Burma cheroot into the tin hip bath which stood unemptied at the side of the bed; it sizzled and went out and floated throughout the afternoon, slowly unfurling in the soapy water. He bolted the door. It was half dark in the room. Dusty parallels of light struck through the shutters onto the floor boards and the few, shabby mats. Prudence stood isolated, waiting for him, her hat in her hand. At first neither spoke. Presently she said, “You might have shaved,” and then, “Please help with my boots.”

Below, in the yard, Madame Youkoumian up-braided a goat. Strips of sunlight traversed the floor I85 as an hour passed. In the bath water, the soggy stub of tobacco emanated a brown blot of juice.

Banging on the door.

“Heavens,” said Prudence, “that can’t be William already.”

“Mr. Seal, Mr. Seal.’

“Well, what is it? I’m resting.’

“Well you got to stop,” said Mr. Youkoumian. “They’re looking for you all over the town. Damn fine rest I’ve had this afternoon, like ell I aven’t.”

“What is it?”

“Emperor must see you at once. E’s got a new idea. Very modern and important. Some damn fool nonsense about Swedish drill.”

Basil hurried to the Palace to find his master in a state of high excitement.

“I have been reading a German book. We must draft a decree at once… communal physical exercises. The whole population, every morning, you understand. And we must get instructors from Europe. Cable for them. Quarter of an hour’s exercise a morning. And community singing. That is very important. The health of the nation depends on it. I have been thinking it over. Why is there no cholera in Europe? Because of community singing and physical jerks… and bubonic plague… and leprosy.’

Back in her room Prudence reopened the Pano-186 rama of Life and began writing: a woman in love.., “A woman,” said Mr. Youkoumian. “That’s what Seth needs to keep im quiet. Always sticking is nose in too much everywhere. You listen to me, Mr. Seal—if we can fix Seth with a woman our modernisation will get along damn fine.”

“There’s always Fifi.”

“Oh, Mr. Seal, e ad er when e was a little boy. Don’t you worry. I’ll fix it O.K.”

Royal interruptions of the routine of the Ministry were becoming distressingly frequent in the last few days as the Emperor assimilated the various books that had arrived for him by the last mail. Worst of all the Pageant of Birth Control was proving alto-gether more trouble than it was worth; in spite of repeated remonstrances, however, it continued to occupy the mind of the Emperor in precedence of all other interests. He had already renamed the site of the Angelican Cathedral, Place Marie Stopes.

“Heaven knows what will happen if he ever discovers psycho-analysis,” remarked Basil, gloomily foreseeing a Boulevard Kraft-Ebbing, an Avenue CEdipus and a pageant of coprophagists.

“Hell discover every damn modern thing,” said Mr. Youkoumian, “if we don’t find him a woman damn quick… ere’s another letter from the Vicar Apostolic. If I adn’t ordered all that stuff from Cairo I’d drop the whole pageant. But you can’t use it for nothing else but what it’s for—so far as I can see, not like boots what they can eat.”

The opposition to the pageant was firm and wide-spread. The conservative party rallied under the leadership of the Earl of Ngumo. This nobleman, himself one of a family of forty-eight (most of whom he had been obliged to assassinate on his succession to the title) was the father of over sixty sons and uncounted daughters. This progeny was a favourite boast of his; in fact he maintained a concert party of seven minstrels for no other purpose than to sing at table about this topic when he entertained friends. Now in ripe age, with his triumphs behind him, he found himself like some scarred war veteran surrounded by pacifists, his prestige assailed and his proudest achievements held up to vile detraction. The new proposals struck at the very roots of sport and decency and he expressed the general feeling of the landed gentry when he threatened amid loud grunts of approval to dismember any man on his estates whom he found using the new-fangled and impious appliances.

The smart set, composed (under the leadership of Lord Boaz) of cosmopolitan blacks, courtiers, younger sons and a few of the decayed Arab intelli-gentsia, though not actively antagonistic, were tepid in their support they discussed the question languidly in Fifi’s salon and, for the most part, adopted a sophisticated attitude maintaining that of course they had always known about these things, but why invite trouble by all this publicity; at best it would only make contraception middle class. In any case this circle was always suspect to the popular mind and their allegiance was unlikely to influence public opinion in the Emperor’s favour.

The Churches came out strong on the subject. No one could reasonably accuse the Nestorian Patriarch of fanatical moral inflexibility—indeed there had been incidents in his Beatitude’s career when all but grave scandal had been caused to the faithful—but whatever his personal indulgence, his theology had always been unimpeachable. Whenever a firm lead was wanted on a question of opinion, the Patriarch had been willing to forsake his pleasures and pronounce freely and intransigently for the tradition he had inherited. There had been the ugly affair of the Metropolitan of Matodi who had proclaimed himself fourth member of the Trin-ity; there was the parish priest who was unsound about the Dual Will; there was the ridiculous heresy that sprang up in the province of Mhomala that the prophet Esias had wings and lived in a tree; there was the painful case of the human sacrifices at the Bishop of PODO’s consecration—on all these and other uncertain topics the Patriarch had given proof of a sturdy orthodoxy.

Now, on the question of birth control, his Beatitude left the faithful in no doubt as to where their duty lay. As head of the established Church he called a conference which was attended by the Chier Rabbi, the Mormon Elder and the chief representatives of all the creeds of the Empire; only the Anglican Bishop excused himself, remarking in a courteous letter of refusal, that his work lay exclusively among the British community who, since they were already fully informed and equipped in the matter, could scarcely be injured in any way by the Emperor’s new policy; he wished his Beatitude ever) success in the gallant stand he was making for the decencies of family life, solicited his prayers and remarked that he was himself too deeply embroiled with the progressive party, who were threatening the demolition of his Cathedral, to confuse the issue with any other cause, however laudable it might be in itself.

As a result of the conference, the Patriarch composed an encyclical in rich, oratorical style and despatched copies of it by runners to all parts of the island. Had the influence of the established Church on the popular mind been more weighty, the gala should have been doomed, but as has already been mentioned the Christianising of the country was still so far incomplete that the greater part of the Empire retained with a minimum of disguise their older and grosser beliefs and it was, in fact, from the least expected quarter, the tribesmen and villagers, that the real support of Seth’s policy suddenly appeared. This development was due directly and solely to the power of advertisement. In the dark days when the prejudice of his people compassed him on every side and even Basil spoke unsympathetically of the wisdom of postponing the gala, the Emperor found among the books that were mailed to him monthly from Europe, a collection of highly inspiring Soviet posters. At first the difficulties of imitation appeared to be insuperable. The Courier office had no machinery for reproducing pictures. Seth was contemplating the wild expedient of employing slave labour to copy his design when Mr. Youkoumian discovered that some years ago an enterprising philanthropist had by bequest introduced lithog-raphy into the curriculum of the American Baptist school. The apparatus survived the failure of the attempt. Mr. Youkoumian purchased it from the pastor and resold it at a fine profit to the Department of Fine Arts in the Ministry of Modernisation. An artist was next found in the Armenian colony who, on Mr. Youkoumian’s introduction, was willing to elaborate Seth’s sketches. Finally there resulted a large, highly coloured poster well calculated to I9I convey to the illiterate the benefits of birth control. It was in many ways the highest triumph of the new ministry and Mr. Youkoumian was the hero. Copies were placarded all over Debra-Dowa; they were sent down the line to every station latrine, capital and coast; they were sent into the interior to vice-regal lodges and headmen’s huts, hung up at prisons, barracks, gallows and juju trees, and wherever the poster was hung there assembled a cluster of inquisitive, entranced Azanians.

It portrayed two contrasted scenes. On one side a native hut of hideous squalor, overrun with children of every age, suffering from every physical incapacity—crippled, deformed, blind, spotted and insane; the father prematurely aged with paternity squatted by an empty cook-pot; through the door could be seen his wife, withered and bowed with child bearing, desperately hoeing at their inadequate crop. On the other side a bright parlour furnished with chairs and table; the mother, young and beautiful, sat at her ease eating a huge slice of raw meat; her husband smoked a long Arab hubble-bubble (still a caste mark of leisure throughout the land), while a single, healthy child sat between them reading a newspaper. Inset between the two pictures was a detailed drawing of some up-to-date contraceptive apparatus and the words in Sakuyu: WHICH HOME DO YOU CHOOSE?

Interest in the pictures was unbounded; all over the island woolly heads were nodding, black hands pointing, tongues clicking against filed teeth in un-syntactical dialects. Nowhere was there any doubt about the meaning of the beautiful new pictures.

See: on right hand: there is rich man: smoke pipe like big chief: but his wife she no good: sit eating meat: and rich man no good: he only one son.

See: on left hand: poor man: not much to eat: but his wife she very good, work hard in field: man he good too: eleven children: one very mad, very holy. And in the middle: Emperor’s juju. Make you like that good man with eleven children.

And as a result, despite admonitions from squire and vicar, the peasantry began pouring into town for the gala, eagerly awaiting initiation to the fine new magic of virility and fecundity.

Once more wrote Basil Seal, in a leading article in the “Courier” the people of the Empire have overridden the opposition of a prejudiced and interested minority, and with no uncertain voice have followed the Emperor’s lead in the cause of Progress and the New Age.

So brisk was the demand for the Emperor’s juju that some time before the day of the carnival Mr. Youkoumian was frantically cabling to Cairo for fresh supplies.

Meanwhile the Nestorian Patriarch became a very frequent guest at the French Legation.

“We have the army, we have the Church,” said M. Ballon. “All we need now is a new candidate for the throne.”

“If you ask me,” said Basil, one morning soon after the distribution of the poster, “loyalty to the throne is one of the hardest parts of our job.”

“Oh, gosh, Mr. Seal, don’t you ever say a thing like that. I seen gentlemen poisoned dead for less. What’s e done now?”

“Only this.” He handed Mr. Youkoumian a chit which had just arrived from the Palace: For your information and necessary action; I have decided to abolish the following: Death penalty.

Marriage.

The Sakuyu language and all native dialects.

Infant mortality.

Totemism.

Inhumane butchery.

Mortgages.

Emigration.

Please see to this. Also organise system of reser-voirs for city’s water supply and draft syllabus for competitive examination for public services. Suggest compulsory Esperanto. Seth.

“E’s been reading books again, Mr. Seal, that’s what it is. You won’t get no peace from im not till you fix im with a woman. Why can’t e drink or something?”

In fact the Ministry’s triumph in the matter of birth control was having highly embarrassing consequences. If before, Basil and Mr. Youkoumian had cause to lament their master’s tenacity and single-ness of purpose, they were now harassed from the opposite extreme of temperament. It was as though Seth’s imagination like a volcanic lake had in the moment of success become suddenly swollen by the irruption of unsuspected, subterranean streams until it darkened and seethed and overflowed its margins in a thousand turbulent cascades. The earnest and rather puzzled young man became suddenly capricious and volatile; ideas bubbled up within him, bearing to the surface a confused sediment of phrase and theory, scraps of learning half understood and fantastically translated.

“It’s going to be awkward for us if the Emperor goes off his rocker.”

“Oh, my, Mr. Seal, you do say the most damned dangerous things.”

That afternoon Basil called at the Palace to discuss the new proposals, only to find that since his luncheon the Emperor’s interests had veered suddenly towards archaeology.

“Yes, yes, the abolitions. I sent you a list this morning, I think. It is a mere matter of routine. I leave the details to the Ministry. Only you must be quick please… it is not that which I want to discuss with you now. It is our Museum.”

“Museum?”

“Yes, of course we must have a Museum. I have made a few notes to guide you. The only serious difficulty is accommodation. You see it must be in-augurated before the arrival of the Cruelty to Animals Commission at the beginning of next month. There is hardly time to build a house for it. The best thing will be to confiscate one of the town palaces. Ngumo’s or Boaz’s would do after some slight adjustments. But that is a matter for the Ministry to decide. On the ground floor will be the natural history section. You will collect examples of all the flora and fauna of the Empire, lions, butterflies, birds’ eggs, specimens of woods, everything. That should easily fill the ground floor. I have been reading,” he added earnestly, “about ventilation. That is very important. The air in the cases must be continually renewed—a cubic metre an hour is about the right draught—otherwise the specimens suffer. You will make a careful note of that. Then on the first floor will be the anthropological and historical section—examples of native craft, Portuguese and Arab work, a small library. Then in the Central Hall, the relics of the Royal House. I have some of the medals of Amurath upstairs under one of the beds in a box—photographs of myself, some of my uniforms, the cap and gown I wore at Oxford, the model of the Eiffel Tower which I brought back from Paris. I will lend some pages of manuscript in my own hand to be exhibited. It will be most interesting.’

For some days Mr. Youkoumian busied himself with the collection of specimens. Word went round that there was a market for objects of interest at the Ministry of Modernisation and the work of the office was completely paralysed by the hawkers of all races who assembled in and around it, peddling brass pots and necklaces of carved nut, snakes in baskets and monkeys in cages, cloth of beaten bark and Japanese cotton, sacramental vessels pouched by Nestorian deacons, iron-wood clubs, homely household deities, tanned human scalps, cauls and navel strings and wonder-working fragments of meteorite, amulets to ward off the evil eye from camels, M. Ballon’s masonic apron purloined by the legation butler, and a vast monolithic phallus borne by three oxen from a shrine in the interior. Mr. Youkoumian bar-gained briskly and bought almost everything he was offered, reselling them later to the Ministry of Fine Arts of which Basil had created him the director. But when, at a subsequent interview, Basil men-I97 tioned their progress to the Emperor he merely nodded a listless approval and even while he un-screwed the cap of his fountain pen to sign the order evicting the Earl of Ngumo from his town house, began to speak of the wonders of astronomy.

“Do you realise the magnitude of the fixed stars? They are immense. I have read a book which says that the mind boggles at their distances. I did not know that word, boggles. I am immediately founding an Institute for Astronomical Research. I must have Professors. Cable for them to Europe. Get me tip-top professors, the best procurable “

But next day he was absorbed in ectogenesis. “I have read here,” he said, tapping a volume of speculative biology, “that there is to be no more birth. The ovum is fertilised in the laboratory and then the foetus is matured in bottles. It is a splendid idea. Get me some of those bottles… and no boggling.”

Even while discussing the topic that immediately interested him, he would often break off in the middle of a sentence, with an irrelevant question. “How much are autogyros?” or “Tell me exactly, please, what is Surrealism” or “Are you convinced of Dreyfus’ innocence?” and then, without pausing for the reply would resume his adumbrations of the New Age.

The days passed rapturously for Mr. Youkoumian who had found in the stocking of the Museum work for which early training and all his natural instincts richly equipped him; he negotiated endlessly between the Earl of Ngumo and Viscount Boaz, armed with orders for the dispossession of the lowest bidder; he bought and resold, haggled, flattered and depreciated, and ate and slept in a clutter of dubious antiques. But on Basil the strain of modernity began to leave its traces. Brief rides with Prudence through the tinder-dry countryside, assignations furtively kept and interrupted at a moment’s notice by some peremptory, crazy summons to the Palace, alone broke the unquiet routine of his day.

“I believe that odious Emperor is slowly poisoning you. It’s a thing he does do,” said Prudence. “And I never saw any one look so ill.”

“You know it sounds absurd but I miss Connolly. It’s rather a business living all the time between Seth and Youkoumian.”

“Of course you wouldn’t remember that there’s me too, would you,” said Prudence. “Not just to cheer me up you wouldn’t?”

“You’re a grand girl, Prudence. What Seth calls tip-top. But I’m so tired I could die.”

And a short distance away the legation syce moodily flicked with his whip at a train of ants while the ponies shifted restlessly among the stones and shelving earth of a dry watercourse.

Two mornings later the Ministry of Modernisation received its sharpest blow. Work was going on as usual. Mr. Youkoumian was interviewing a coast Arab who claimed to possess some “very old, very genuine” Portuguese manuscripts; Basil, pipe in his mouth, was considering how best to deal with the Emperor’s latest memorandum, Kindly insist straw hats and gloves compulsory peerage, when he received an unexpected and disturbing call from Mr. Jagger, the contractor in charge of the demolition of the Anglican Cathedral; a stocky, good-hearted little Britisher who after a succession of quite honourable bankruptcies in Cape Town, Mombasa, Dares-salaam and Aden had found his way to Debra-Dowa where he had remained ever since, occupied with minor operations in the harbour and along the railway line. He threaded his way through the antiquities which had lately begun to encroach on Basil’s office, removed a seedy-looking caged vul-ture from the chair and sat down; his manner was uncertain and defiant.

“It’s not playing the game, Mr. Seal,” he said. “I tell you that fair and square and I don’t mind who knows it, not if it’s the Emperor himself.”

“Mr. Jagger,” said Basil impressively, “you should have been long enough in this country to know that that is a very rash thing to say. Men have been poisoned for less. What is your trouble?”

“This here’s my trouble,” said Mr. Jagger, producing a piece of paper from a pocket full of pencils and foot rules and laying it on the table next to the mosaic portrait of the late Empress recently acquired by the Director of Fine Arts. “What is it, eh, that’s what I want to know.”

“What indeed?” said Basil. He picked it up and examined it closely.

In size, shape and texture it resembled an English five-pound note and was printed on both sides with intricate engraved devices of green and red. There was an Azanian eagle, a map of the Empire, a soldier in the uniform of the Imperial Guard, an aeroplane, and a classical figure bearing a cornu-copia but the most prominent place was taken by a large, medallion portrait of Seth in top hat and European tail coat. The words FIVE POUNDS lay in flourished script across the middle; above them THE IMPERIAL BANK OF AZANIA and below them a facsimile of Seth’s signature.

The normal currency of the capital and the railway was in Indian rupees, although East African shillings, French and Belgian colonial francs and Marie Therese thalers circulated with equal freedom; in the interior the mediums of exchange were rock-salt and cartridges.

“This is a new one on me,” said Basil. “I wonder 201 if the Treasury knows anything about it. Mr. Youkoumian, come in here a minute, will you?”

The Director of Fine Arts and First Lord of the Treasury trotted through the partition door in his black cotton socks; he carried a model dhow he had just acquired.

“No, Mr. Seal,” he pronounced, “I ain’t never seen a thing like that before. Where did the gentleman get it?”

“The Emperor’s just given me a whole packet of them for the week’s wages bill. What is the Imperial Bank of Azania anyway. I never see such a thing all the time I been in the country. There’s something here that’s not on the square. You must understand Mr. Seal that it’s not any one’s job breaking up that Cathedral. Solid granite shipped all the way from Aberdeen. Why Lord love you the pulpit alone weighs seven and a half ton. I had two boys hurt only this morning through the font swinging loose as they were hoisting it into a lorry. Smashed up double one of them was. The Emperor ain’t got no right to try putting that phoney stuff across me.”

“You may be quite confident,” said Basil with dignity, “that in all your dealings with His Majesty you will encounter nothing but the highest generos-ity and integrity. However I will institute inquiries on your behalf.”

“No offence meant, I’m sure,’

‘ said Mr. Jagger.

Basil watched him across the yard and then snatched up his topee from a fossilised tree-fern. “What’s that black lunatic been up to this time?” he asked, starting off towards the Palace.

“Oh, Mr. Seal, you’ll get into trouble one day with the things you say.”

The Emperor rose to greet him with the utmost cordiality.

“Come in, come in. I’m very glad you’ve come. I’m in some perplexity about Nacktkultur. Here have I spent four weeks trying to enforce the edict prescribing trousers for the official classes, and now I read that it is more modern not to wear any at all.”

“Seth, what’s the Imperial Bank of Azania?”

The Emperor looked embarrassed.

“I thought you might ask…. Well, actually it is not quite a bank at all. It is a little thing I did myself. I will show you.”

He led Basil to a high cupboard which occupied half the wall on one side of the library, and opening it showed him a dozen or so shelves stacked with what might have been packets of writing paper.

“What is that?”

“Just under three million pounds,” said the Emperor proudly. “A little surprise. I had them done in Europe.”

“But you can’t possibly do this.”

“Oh, yes, I assure you. It was easy. All these on this shelf are for a thousand pounds each. And now that the plates have been made, it is quite inexpensive to print as many more as we require. You see there were a great many things which needed doing and I had not a great many rupees. Don’t look angry, Seal. Look, I’ll give you some.’

‘ He pressed a bundle of fivers into Basil’s hand. “And take some for Mr. Youkoumian, too. Pretty fine picture of me, eh? I wondered about the hat. You will see that in the fifty pound notes I wear a crown.”

For some minutes Basil attempted to remon-strate; then quite suddenly he abandoned the argument.

“I knew you would understand,” said the Emperor. “It is so simple. As soon as these are used up we will send for some more. And tomorrow you will explain to me about Nacktkultur, eh?”

Basil returned to his office very tired.

“There’s only one thing to hope for now. That’s a fire in the Palace to get rid of the whole lot.”

“We must change these quick,” said Mr. Youkoumian. “I know a damn fool Chinaman might do it. Anyway the Ministry of Fine Arts can take one at par for the historical section.”

It was on that afternoon that Basil at last lost his confidence in the permanence of the One Year Plan.

SIX

From Dame Mildred Porch to her husband.

S. S. Le President Carnot.

Matodi.

March 8th.

MY DEAR STANLEY,

I am writing this before disembarking.

It will be posted at Marseilles and should reach you as nearly as I can calculate on 17th of the month. As I wrote to you from Durban, Sarah and I decided to break our return journey in Azania. The English boat did not stop here. So we had to change at Aden into this outward bound French ship. Very dirty and unseamanlike. have heard very disagreeable accounts of the hunting here. Apparently the natives dig deep pits into which the poor animals fall; they are often left in these traps for several days without food or water (imagine what that means in the heat of the jungle) and are then mercilessly butchered in cold blood. Of course the poor ignorant people know no better. But the young Emperor is by all accounts a comparatively enlightened and well educated person and I am sure he will do all he can to introduce more humane methods, if it is really necessary to kill these fine beasts at all—as I very much doubt. I expect to resume our journey in about a fortnight. I enclose cheque for another month’s household expenses. The coal bill seemed surprisingly heavy in your last accounts. I hope that you are not letting the servants become extravagant in my absence. There is no need for the dining-room fire to be lit before luncheon at this time of year. Yours affec.p>

Mildred.

Dame Mildred Porch’s Diary.

March 8th.

Disembarked Matodi 12.45. Quaint and smelly. Condition of mules and dogs appalling, also children. In spite of radio message British consul was not there to meet us. Quite civil native led us to his office. Tip five annas. Seemed satisfied. Consul not English at all. Some sort of Greek. Very unhelpful (probably drinks). Unable or unwilling to say when train starts for Debra-Dowa, whether possible engage sleeper. Wired legation. Went to Amurath Hotel. Positive pot-house. Men sitting about drinking all over terrace. Complained. Large bedroom overlooking harbour apparently clean. Sarah one of her headaches. Complained of her room over street. Told her very decent little room.

March 9th.

No news of train. Sarah disagreeable about her room. Saw Roman Missionary. Unhelpful. Typical dago attitude towards animals. Later saw American Baptists. Middle class and unhelpful because unable talk native languages. No answer legation. Wired again.

March loth.

No news train. Wired legation again. Unhelpful answer. Fed doggies in market place. Children tried to take food from doggies. Greedy little wretches. Sarah still headache.

March nth.

Hotel manager suddenly announced train due to leave at noon. Apparently has been here all the time. Sarah very slow packing. Outrageous bill. Road to station blocked broken motor lorry. Natives living in it. Also two goats. Seemed well but cannot be healthy for them so near natives. Had to walk last quarter mile. Afraid would miss train. Arrived with five minutes to spare. Got tickets no sleepers. Just in time. V. hot and exhausted. Train did not start until three o’clock. Arrived dinner time Lumo station where apparently we have to spend night. Shower bath and changed underclothes. Bed v. doubtful. Luckily remembered Keatings Durban.

Interesting talk French hotel manager about local conditions. Apparently there was quite civil war last summer. How little the papers tell us. New Emperor v. go-ahead. English advisor named Seal. Any relation Cynthia Seal? Hotel man seemed to doubt government’s financial stability. Says natives are complete savages but no white slave traffic—or so he says.

March 12th.

Awful night. Bitten all over. Bill outrageous. Thought manager decent person too. Explained provisions hard to get. Humbug. Train left at seven in morning. Sarah nearly missed it. Two natives in carriage. I must say quite civil but v. uncomfortable as no corridor and had left so early. Tiring journey. Country seemed dry. Due in Debra-Dowa some time this afternoon. Must say shall be thankful.

Dame Mildred Porch and Miss Sarah Tin were in no way related to each other but constant com-panionship and a similarity of interests had so characterised them that a stranger might easily have taken them to be sisters as they stepped from the train onto the platform at Debra-Dowa. Dame Mildred was rather stout and Miss Tin rather spare. Each wore a khaki sun-hat in an oilcloth cover, each wore a serviceable, washable frock, and thick shoes and stockings, each had smoked spectacles and a firm mouth. Each carried an attache case containing her most inalienable possessions—washing things and writing things, disinfectant and insecticide, books, passport, letters of credit—and held firmly to her burden in defiance of an eager succession of porters who attempted in turn to wrest it from her.

William pushed his way forward and greeted them amiably. “Dame Mildred Porch? Miss Tin? How are you? So glad you got here all right. I’m from the Legation. The Minister couldn’t come himself. He’s very busy just now, but he asked me to come along and see if you were all right. Any luggage? I’ve got a car outside and can run you up to the Hotel.”

“Hotel? But I thought we should be expected at the Legation. I wired from Durban.”

“Yes, the Minister asked me to explain. You see we’re some way out of the town. No proper road. Awful business getting in and out. The Minister thought you’d be much more comfortable in the town itself. Nearer the animals and everything. But he particularly said he hoped you’d come over to tea one day if you ever have the time.”

Dame Mildred and Miss Tin exchanged that look of slighted citizenship which William had seen in the eyes of every visitor he had ever greeted at Debra-Dowa. “I tell you what,” he said. “I’ll go and look for the luggage. I daresay it’s got stolen on the way. Often is, you know. And I’ll get our mail out at the same time. No King’s Messengers or anything here. If there’s no European travelling it’s put in charge of the guard. We thought of wiring to you to look after it and then we thought probably you had the devil of a lot of luggage yourselves.”

By the time that the two-seater car had been loaded with the legation bags and the two ladies there was very little room left for their luggage. “I say, d’you mind awfully,” said William. “I’m afraid we’ll have to leave this trunk behind. The hotel’ll fetch it up for you in no time.”

“Young man, did you come to meet us or your own mail?”

“Now, you know,” said William, “that simply isn’t a fair question. Off we go.” And the overladen little car began jolting up the broad avenue into the town.

“Is this where we are to stay?” asked Miss Tin as they drew up opposite the Grand Cafč et Hotel Restaurant de VEmpereur Seth.

“It doesn’t look terribly smart,” admitted William, “but you’ll find it a mine of solid comfort.”

He led them into the murky interior, dispersing a turkey and her brood from the Reception Hall. “Any one in?” There was a bell on the counter which he rang.

“Ullo,” said a voice from upstairs. “One min-ute,” and presently Mr. Youkoumian descended, buttoning up his trousers. “Why, it’s Mr. Bland. Ullo, sir, ow are you? I ad the Minister’s letter about the road this afternoon and the answer I am afraid is ‘nothing doing.’ Very occupied, the Emperor…”

“I’ve brought you two guests. They are English ladies of great importance. You are to make them comfortable.”

“I fix them O.K.,” said Mr. Youkoumian.

“I’m sure you’ll find everything comfortable here,” said William. “And I hope we shall see you soon at the Legation.”

“One minute, young man, there are a number of things I want to know.”

“I fix you O.K.,” said Mr. Youkoumian again.

“Yes, you ask Mr. Youkoumian here. He’ll tell you everything far better than I could. Can’t keep them waiting for the mail, you know.”

“Impudent young puppy,” said Dame Mildred as the car drove away. “I’ll report him to the Foreign Office as soon as I get home. Stanley shall ask a question about him in the House.”

Mail day at the British Legation. Sir Samson and Lady Courteney, Prudence and William, Mr. Legge and Mrs, Legge, Mr. and Mrs. Anstruther, sitting round the fireplace opening the bags. Bills, provisions, family news, official despatches, gramophone records, newspapers scattered on the carpet. Presently William said, “I say, d’you know who I ran into on the platform? Those two cruelty-to-animals women who kept telegraphing.”

“How very annoying. What have you done with them?”

“I shot them into Youkoumian’s. They wanted to come and stay here.”

“Heaven forbid. I do hope they won’t stay long. Ought we to ask them to tea or anything?”

“Well, I did say that perhaps you’d like to sec them sometime.”

“Hang it, William, that’s a bit thick.”

“Oh, I don’t suppose they thought I meant it.”

“I sincerely hope not.”

March 12th (continued).

Arrived Debra-Dowa late in afternoon. Discourteous cub from Legation met us and left Sarah’s trunk at station. Brought us to frightful hotel. But Armenian proprietor v. obliging. Saved me visit to bank by changing money for us into local currency. Quaint bank notes with portrait of Emperor in European evening dress. Mr. Seal came in after dinner. He is Cynthia’s son. V. young and ill-looking. Off hand manner. V. tired, going to bed early.

That evening M. Ballon’s report included the en-try: Two British ladies arrived, suspects. Met at station by Mr. Bland. Proceeded Youkoumian’s.

“They are being watched?”

“Without respite.”

“Their luggage?’

“A trunk was left at the station. It has been searched but nothing incriminating was found. Their papers are in two small bags which never leave their hands.”

“Ah, they are old stagers. Sir Samson is calling out his last reserves.”

March 13th. Sunday.

No news Sarah’s trunk. Went to Anglican Cathedral but found it was being pulled down. Service in Bishop’s drawing-room. Poor congregation. V. silly sermon. Spoke to Bishop later about cruelty to animals. Unhelpful. Old Humbug. Later went to write name in book at Palace. Sarah in bed. Town very crowded, apparently preparing for some local feast or carnival. Asked Bishop about it but he could not tell me. Seemed unaccountably embarrassed. Asked Mr. Youkoumian. Either he cannot have understood my question or I cannot have understood what I thought him to say. Did not press point. He did not speak English at all well but is an obliging man.

March I4th.

Hideous night. Mosquito in net and v. large brown bugs in bed. Up and dressed at dawn and went for long walk in hills. Met quaint caravan—drums, spears, etc. No news Sarah’s trunk.

Other people besides Dame Mildred were interested in the little cavalcade which had slipped un-obtrusively out of the city at dawn that day. Un-obtrusively, in this connection, is a relative term. A dozen running slaves had preceded the procession, followed by a train of pack mules; then ten couples of mounted spearmen, a platoon of uniformed Imperial Guardsmen and a mounted band, blowing down reed flutes eight feet long and beating hand drums of hide and wood. In the centre on a mule loaded with silver and velvet trappings, had ridden a stout figure, heavily muffled in silk shawls. It was the Earl of Ngumo travelling incognito on a mission of great delicacy.

“Ngumo left town to-day. I wonder what he’s after.”

“I think the Earl’s pretty fed up, Mr. Seal. I take his ‘ouse Saturday for the Museum. ‘E’s gone back to ‘is estates I expect.”

“Estates, nothing. He’s left five hundred men in camp behind him. Besides, he left on the Popo road. That’s not his way home.”

“Oh, gosh, Mr. Seal, I ‘ope there ain’t going to be no bust up.”

Only three people in Debra-Dowa knew the reason for the Earl’s departure. They were M. Ballon, General Connolly, and the Nestorian Patriarch. They had dined together on Saturday night at the French Legation, and after dinner, when Mme. Ballon and Black Bitch had withdrawn to the salon to discuss their hats and physical disorders, and the sweet champagne frothed in the shallow glasses, the Patriarch had with considerable solemnity revealed his carefully guarded secret of State.

“It happened in the time of Gorgias, my predecessor, of evil memory,” said his Beatitude, “and the intelligence was delivered to me on my assumption of office, under a seal so holy that only extreme personal vexation induces me to break it. It concerns poor little Achon. I say ‘poor little’ although he must now, if he survives at all, be a man at least ninety years of age, greatly my own senior. He as you know was the son of the Great Amurath and it is popularly supposed that a lioness devoured him while hunting with his sister’s husband, Seyid, in the Ngumo mountains. My Lords, nothing of the kind happened. By order of his sister and the Patriarch Gorgias the wretched boy was taken while under the influence of liquor to the monastery of St. Mark the Evangelist and incarcerated there.”

“But this is a matter of vital importance.’

‘ cried M. Ballon. “Is the man still alive?”

“Who can say? To tell you the truth I have not visited the Monastery of St. Mark the Evangelist. The Abbot is inclined to the lamentable heresy that the souls in hell marry and beget hobgoblins. He is pertinacious in error. I sent the Bishop of Popo there to reason with him and they drove the good man out with stones.”

“Would they accept an order of release over your signature?”

“It is painful to me to admit it, but I am afraid they would not. It will be a question of hard cash or nothing.”

“The Abbot may name his own price. I must have Achon here in the capital. Then we shall be ready to strike.”

The bottle circulated and before they left for the drawing-room M. Ballon reminded them of the gravity of the occasion. “Gentlemen. This is an important evening in the history of East Africa. The future of the country and perhaps our own lives depend on the maintenance of absolute secrecy in regard to the Earl of Ngumo’s expedition on Mon-day. All inside this room are sworn to inviolable silence.”

As soon as his guests were gone he assembled his subordinates and explained the latest developments; before dawn the news was in Paris. On the way home in the car Connolly told Black Bitch about it. “But it’s supposed to be secret for a little, so keep your silly mouth shut, see.”

March 14th (continued).

As Keatings obviously deteriorated went to store attached hotel to buy some more. Met native Duchess who spoke English. V. helpful re bugs. Went with her to her home where she gave me insecticide of her own preparation. Gave me tea and biscuits. V. interesting conversation. She told me that it has just been discovered that Emperor is not real heir to the throne. Elderly uncle in prison. They have gone to get him out. Most romantic, but hope new Emperor equally enlightened re animals.

March 15th.

Better night. Native Duchess’ insecticide v. helpful though nasty smell. Received invitation dine Palace to-night. Short notice but thought it best accept for us both. Sarah says nothing to wear unless trunk turns up.

It was the first time since Seth’s accession that European visitors had been entertained at the Palace. The Ministry of Modernisation was called in early that morning to supervise the invitations and the menu.

“It shall be an entirely Azanian party. I want the English ladies to see how refined we are. I was doubtful about asking Viscount Boaz. What do you think? Will he be sober?… and there is the question of food. I have been reading that now it is called Vitamins. I am having the menu printed like this. It is a good, modern, European dinner, eh?”

Basil looked at the card. A month ago he might have suggested emendations. To-day he was tired.

“That’s fine, Seth; go ahead like that.”

“You see,” said the Emperor proudly, “already we Azanians can do much for ourselves. Soon we shall not need a Minister of Modernisation. No, I do not mean that, Basil. Always you are my friend and advisor.”

So the menu for Seth’s first dinner party went to the Courier office to be printed and came back a packet of handsome gilt edged cards, laced with silk ribbons in the Azanian colours and embossed with a gold crown.

March 15th.

IMPERIAL BANQUET FOR WELCOMING THE ENGLISH

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

Menu of Foods.

Vitamin A

Tin Sardines

Vitamin B

Roasted Beef

Vitamin C

Small Roasted Suckling Porks

Vitamin D

Hot Sheep and Onions

Vitamin E

Spiced Turkey

Vitamin F

Sweet Puddings

Vitamin G

Coffee

Vitamin H

Jam

“It is so English,” explained Seth. “From courtesy to your great Empire.”

At eight o’clock that evening Dame Mildred and Miss Tin arrived at the Palace for the banquet. The electric light plant was working that evening and a string of coloured bulbs shone with Christmas welcome over the main doorway. A strip of bright linoleum had been spread on the steps and as the taxi drew up a dozen or so servants ran down to conduct the guests into the hall. They were in mixed attire; some in uniforms of a kind, tunics frogged with gold braid discarded or purloined in the past from the wardrobes of visiting diplomats; some in native costume of striped silk. As the two ladies stepped from the car a platoon of guards lounging on the Terrace alarmed them with a ragged volley of welcome.

There was slight delay as the driver of the taxi refused to accept the new pound note which Dame Mildred tendered him in payment, but the captain of the guard, hurrying up with a jingle of spurs curtailed further discussion by putting the man under arrest and signified in a few graphic gestures his sorrow for the interruption and his intention of hanging the troublesome fellow without delay.

The chief saloon was brilliantly lighted and already well filled with the flower of Azanian native society. One of the first acts of the new reign had been an ordnance commanding the use of European evening dress. This evening was the first occasion for it to be worn and all round the room stood sombre but important figures completely fitted up by Mr. Youkoumian with tail coats, white gloves, starched linen and enamelled studs; only in a few cases were shoes and socks lacking; the unaccustomed attire lent a certain dignified rigidity to their deportment. The ladies had for the most part allowed their choice to fix upon frocks of rather startling colour; aniline greens and violets with elaborations of ostrich feather and sequin. Viscountess Boaz wore a backless frock newly arrived from Cairo combined with the full weight of her ancestral jewellery; the Duchess of Mhomala carried on her woolly head a three pound tiara of gold and garnets; Baroness Batulle exposed shoulders and back magnificently tattooed and cicatrised with arabesques.

Beside all this finery the guests of honour looked definitely dowdy as the Lord Chamberlain conducted them round the room and performed the introductions in French scarcely more comfortable than Dame Mildred’s own.

Two slaves circulated among them carrying trays of brandy. The English ladies refused. The Lord Chamberlain expressed his concern. Would they have preferred whiskey; no doubt some could be produced? Or beer?

“Mon ban homme,” said Dame Mildred severely, “il vous faut comprendre que nous ne buvons rien de tout, jamais”; an announcement which considerably raised their prestige among the company; they were not much to look at, certainly, but at least they knew a thing or two which the Azanians did not. A useful sort of woman to take on a journey, reflected the Lord Chamberlain, and inquired with po-lite interest whether the horses and camels in their country were as conveniently endowed.

Further conversation was silenced by the arrival of the Emperor, who at this moment entered the hall from the far end and took his seat on the raised throne which had stood conspicuously on the dais throughout the preliminary presentations. Court etiquette was still in a formative stage. There was a moment of indecision during which the company stood in embarrassed silence waiting for a lead. Seth said something to his equerry, who now advanced down the room and led forward the guests of honour. They curtseyed and stood on one side, while the other guests filed past in strict precedence. Most of them bowed low in the Oriental manner, raising the hand to forehead and breast. The curtsey however had been closely observed and found several imitators among both sexes. One elderly peer, a stickler for old-world manners, prostrated himself fully and went through the mimic action of covering his head with dust. When all had saluted him in their various ways, Seth led the party in to dinner; fresh confusion over the places and some ill-natured elbowing; Dame Mildred and Miss Tin sat on either side of the Emperor; soon every one was eating and drinking at a great pace.

March 15th (continued).

Dinner at Palace. Food v. nasty. Course after course different kinds of meat, overseasoned and swimming in grease. Tried to manage some of it from politeness. Sarah ate nothing. Emperor asked great number of questions some of which I was un-able to answer. How many suits of clothes had the King of England? Did he take his bath before or after his breakfast? Which was the more civilised? What was the best shop to buy an artesian well? etc. Sara v. silent. Told Emperor about coeducation and ‘free-discipline.’ Showed great interest.

Dame Mildred’s neighbour on her other side was the punctilious man who had prostrated himself in the drawing-room; he seemed engrossed in his eating. In point of fact he was rehearsing in his mind and steeling his nerve to enunciate some English conversation in which he had painfully schooled himself during that day: at last it came up suddenly.

“Ow many ox ave you?” he demanded, lifting up sideways from his plate a great bearded face, “ow many sons? ow many daughters? ow many brothers? ow many sisters? My father is dead fighting.”

Dame Mildred turned to him a somewhat startled scrutiny. There were crumbs and scraps of food in various parts of his beard. “I beg your pardon?” she said.

But the old gentleman had shot his bolt; he felt that he had said all and more than all that good breeding required, and to tell the truth was more than a little taken aback by his own fluency. He gave her a nervous smile and resumed his dinner without again venturing to address her.

“Which of the white ladies would you like to have?”

“The fat one. But both are ugly.”

“Yes. It must be very sad for the English gentlemen to marry English ladies.”

Presently when the last vitamin had been guzzled, Viscount Boaz rose to propose the health of the guests of honour. His speech was greeted by loud applause and was then done into English by the Court Interpreter: “Your Majesty, Lords and Ladies. It is my privilege and delight this evening to welcome with open arms of brotherly love to our city Dame Mildred Porch and Miss Tin, two ladies renowned throughout the famous country of Europe for their great cruelty to animals. We Azanians are a proud and ancient nation but we have much to learn from the white people of the West and North. We too, in our small way, are cruel to our animals”–and here the Minister for the Interior digressed at some length to recount with hideous detail what he had himself once done with a woodman’s axe to a wild boar—”but it is to the great nations of the West and North, and specially to their worthy representatives that are with us to-night, that we look as our natural leaders on the road of progress. Ladies and gentlemen we must be Modern, we must be refined in our Cruelty to Animals. That is the message of the New Age brought to us by our guests this evening. May I, in conclusion, raise my glass and ask you to join with me in wishing them old age and prolonged fecundity.’

The toast was drunk and the company sat down. Boaz’s neighbours congratulated him on his speech. There seemed no need for a reply and indeed Dame Mildred, rarely at a loss for telling phrases, would on this occasion have been hard put to it to acknowledge the welcome in suitable terms. Seth appeared not to have heard either version of the speech. He sat inattentive, his mind occupied with remote spec-225 ulation. Dame Mildred attempted two or three conversations.

“A very kindly meant speech, but he seems to misunderstand our mission…. It is so interesting to see your people in their own milieu. Do tell me who is who… Have they entirely abandoned native costume?…”

But she received only abstracted answers.

Finally she said, “I was so interested to learn about your uncle Achon.” The Emperor nodded. “I do hope they get him out of the monastery. Such a us-less life, I always think, and so selfish. It makes people introspective to think all the time about their own souls, don’t you think? So sensible of that Earl of wherever it is to go and look for him.’

But Seth had not heard a word.

March 16th.

Could not sleep late after party. Attempted to telephone legation. No reply. Attempted to see Mr. Seal. Said he was too busy. No sign of Sarah’s trunk. She keeps borrowing my things. Tried to pin down Emperor last night, no result. Went for walk in town. V. crowded, no one working. Apparently some trouble about currency. Saw man strike camel, would have reported him but no policeman about. Begin to feel I am wasting my time here.

The Monastery of St. Mark the Evangelist, though infected of late with the taint of heresy, was the centre of Azanian spiritual life. Here in remote times Nestorian missionaries from Mesopotamia had set up a church and here when the great Amurath proclaimed Christianity the official creed of the Empire, the old foundations had been un-earthed and a native community installed. A well substantiated tradition affirmed that the little river watering the estate was in fact the brook Kedron conveyed there subterraneously; its waters were in continual requisition for the relief of skin diseases and stubborn boils. Here too were preserved among other relics of less certain authenticity, David’s stone prised out of the forehead of Goliath (a boulder of astonishing dimensions), a leaf from the Barren Fig Tree, the rib from which Eve had been created, and a wooden cross which had fallen from heaven quite unexpectedly during Good Friday luncheon some years back. Architecturally, however, there was nothing very remarkable; no cloister or ambulatory, library, gallery, chapter house or groined refectory; a cluster of mud huts around a larger hut; a single stone building, the church dedicated to St. Mark by Amurath the Great. It could be descried from miles round, perched on a site of supreme beauty, a shelf of the great escarpment that overlooked the Wanda lowlands, and through it the brook Kedron, narrowed at this season to a single thread of silver, broke into innumerable iridescent cascades as it fell to join the sluggish Izol five thousand feet below. Great rocks of volcanic origin littered the fields. The hillside was full of unexplored caverns whence hyenas sallied out at night to exhume the corpses which it was a pious practice to transport from all over the Empire to await the last trump on that holy ground.

The Earl of Ngumo had made good time. The road lay through the Sakuyu cattle country, high plains, covered with brown and slippery grass. At first the way led along the caravan route to the royal cities of the north; a clearly defined track well frequented. They exchanged greetings with mule trains coming in to market and unusual bands of travellers, loping along on foot, drawn to the capital by the name of the great Gala and the magnetic excitement which all the last weeks had travelled on the ether, radiating in thrilling waves to bazaar, farm and jungle, gossiped about over camp fires, tapped out on hollow tree trunks in the swamplands, sniffed, as it were, on the breeze, sensed by sub-human facul-ties, that something was afoot.

Later they diverged into open country; only the heaps of stones bridging the water courses and an occasional wooden culvert told them they were still on the right road. On the first night they camped among shepherds. The simple men recognised a great nobleman and brought him their children to touch.

“We hear of changes in the great city.”

“There are changes.”

On the second night they reached a little town. The headman had been forwarned of their approach. He came out to meet them, prostrating himself and covering his head with dust.

“Peace be upon your house.”

“You come from the great city of changes. What is your purpose among my people?”

“I wish well to your people. It is not suitable for the low to babble of what the high ones do.”

They slept in and around the headman’s hut; in the morning he brought them honey and eggs, a trussed chicken, dark beer in a jug and a basket of flat bread: they gave him salt in bars, and continued their journey.

The third night they slept in the open; there was a picket of royal guards somewhere in that country. Late on the fourth day they reached the Monastery of St. Mark the Evangelist.

A monk watching on the hill top sighted them and fired a single musket shot into the still air; a troop of baboons scattered frightened into the rocks. In die church below the great bell was rung to summon the community. The Abbot under his yel-low sunshade stood in the enclosure to greet them; he wore steel rimmed spectacles. A little deacon be-side him plied a horse-hair fly whisk.

Obeisance and benediction. The Earl presented the Patriarch’s letter of commendation, which was slipped unopened into the folds of the Abbot’s bosom, for it is not etiquette to show any immediate curiosity about such documents. Official reception, in the twilit hut; the Earl seated on a chair hastily covered with carpet. The chief men of the monastery stood round the wall with folded hands. The Abbot opened the letter of introduction, spat and read it aloud amid grunts of approval; it was all preamble and titles of honour; no word of business. A visit to the shrine of the Barren Fig Tree; the Earl kissed the lintel of the door three times, laid his forehead against the steps of the sanctuary and made a present of a small bag of silver. Dinner in the Abbot’s lodging; it was one of the numerous fast days of the Nestorian Church; vegetable mashes in wooden bowls, one of bananas, one of beans; earthenware jugs and brown vessels of rough beer. Ponderous leave takings for the night. The Earl’s tent meanwhile had been pitched in the open space within the enclosure; his men squatted on guard; they had made a fire; two or three monks joined them; soon they began singing, wholly secular words in a monotonous cadence. Inside the tent a single small lamp with floating wick. The Earl squatted among his rugs, waiting for the Abbot who, he knew, would come that night. Presently through the flap of the tent appeared the bulky white turban and straggling beard of the prelate. The two great men squatted opposite each other, on either side of the little lamp; outside the guards singing at the camp fire; beyond the stockade the hyenas and a hundred hunting sounds among the rocks. Grave courtesies: “Our little convent resounds with the fame of the great Earl… his prowess in battle and in bed… the thousand enemies slain by his hand… the lions he has speared… his countless progeny…”

“All my life I have counted the days wasted until I saluted the Abbot… his learning and sanctity… his dauntless fidelity to the faith, his chastity… the austerities of his spiritual practices…”

Slowly by a multitude of delicately graded steps the conversation was led to a more practical level. Was there any particular object in the Earl’s visit, other than the infinite joy afforded to all by his presence?

What object could be more compelling than the universal ambition to pay respect to the Abbot and the glorious shrine of the Barren Fig Leaf? But there was, as it so happened, a little matter, a thing scarcely worth a thought, which since he was there, the Earl might mention if it would not be tedious to his host.

Every word of the Earl’s was a jewel, valued be-yond human computation; what was this little mat-ter?

It was an old story… in the days of His Beatitude Gorgias of evil memory… a prisoner, brought to the convent; now an old man… One of whom only high ones might speak… supposing that this man were alive…

“Oh, Earl, you speak of that towards which my lips and ears are sealed. There are things which are not suitable.’

“Abbot, once there comes a time for everything when it must be spoken of.”

“What should a simple monk know of these high affairs. But I have indeed heard it said that in the times of His Beatitude Gorgias of evil memory, there was such a prisoner.”

“Does he still live?”

“The monks of St. Mark the Evangelist guard their treasures well.”

After this all important admission they sat for some time in silence; then the Abbot rose and with ample formalities left his guest to sleep. Both parties felt that the discussion had progressed almost too quickly. There were decencies to be observed.

Negotiations were resumed after Mass next morning and occupied most of the day; before they parted for the night Earl and Abbot had reduced their differences to a monetary basis. Next morning the price was decided and Achon, son of Amurath, legitimate Emperor of Azania, Chief of the Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, was set at liberty.

The event took place without ceremony. After a heavy breakfast of boiled goatsmeat, cheese, olives, smoked mutton, goose and mead—it was one of the numerous feast days of the Nestorian Church—the Earl and the Abbot set out for the hillside unaccompanied except by a handful of slaves. A short climb from the compound brought them to the mouth of a small cave.

“We will wait here. The air is not good.”

Instead they sent in a boy with lantern and ham-mer. From the depths they heard a few muffled words and then a series of blows as a staple was splintered from the rock. Within five minutes the slave had returned leading Achon by a chain attached to his ankle. The prince was completely naked, bowed and shrivelled, stained white hair hung down his shoulders, a stained white beard over his chest; he was blind, toothless and able to walk only with the utmost uncertainty.

The Earl had considered a few words of homage and congratulation. Instead he turned to the Abbot. “He won’t be able to ride.”

“That was hardly to be expected.”

Another night’s delay while a litter was constructed; then on the fifth morning the caravan set out again for Debra-Dowa. Achon swung between the shoulders of four slaves, heavily curtained from curious eyes. Part of the time he slept; at others he crooned quietly to himself, now and then breaking into little moans of alarm at the sudden jolts and lurches in his passage. On the eighth day, under cover of darkness, the little procession slipped by side roads and unfrequented lanes into the city and having delivered his charge to the Patriarch, the Earl hurried out to the French Legation to report to M. Ballon the successful performance of his mission.

Meanwhile Dame Mildred was not enjoying herself at all. Every one seemed to conspire to be unhelpful and disobliging. First there was the intolerable impudence of that wretched boy at the Legation. She had attempted to ring them up every morning and afternoon; at last, when she had almost despaired of effecting connection Mme. Youkoumian had announced that she was through. But it had been a most unsatisfactory conversation. After some minutes with an obtuse native butler (‘probably drinks’ Dame Mildred had decided) the voice had changed to a pleasant, slightly languid English tone.

“I am Dame Mildred Porch. I wish to speak to the Minister.”

“Oh, I don’t suppose you can do that, you know. Can do anything for you?”p>

“Who are you?”

“I’m William.”

“Well I wish to speak to you in particular—it’s about Miss Tin’s trunk.”

“Drunk?”

“Miss Sarah Tin, the organising secretary of the overseas department of the League of Dumb Chums. She has lost her trunk.”

“Ah.”

There was a long pause. Dame Mildred could hear a gramophone being played at the other end of the line.

“Hullo… Hullo…. Are you there?”

Then William’s gentle drawl said: “You know the trouble about the local telephone is that one’s always getting cut off.”

There had been a click and the dance music suddenly ceased. “Hullo… Hullo.” She rattled the machine but there was no answer. “I’m convinced he did it on purpose,” she told Miss Tin. “If we could only prove it.”

Then there was trouble about her money. The twenty or so pounds which she had changed into Bank of Azania currency on her first afternoon seemed to be quite worthless. Even Mr. Youkoumian, from whom she had first received them, was unable to help, remarking that it was a question of politics; he could not accept the notes himself in settlement of the weekly hotel bill or in payment for the numerous articles of clothing which Miss Tin was obliged to purchase from day to day at his store.

Then there was the Emperor’s prolonged neglect of the cause of animals. The banquet so far from being the prelude to more practical association, seemed to be regarded as the end of her visit. Her daily attempts to obtain an audience were met with consistent refusal. At times she fell into a fever of frustration; there, all over the country, were dumb chums being mercilessly snared and speared, and here was she, impotent to help them; throughout those restless Azanian nights Dame Mildred was continually haunted by the appealing reproachful eyes, limpid as spaniel puppies’, of murdered lions, and the pathetic patient whinnying of trapped baboons. Consciousness of guilt subdued her usually confident manner; who was she to complain—betrayer that she was of mandril, hyena, and wild pig, wart hog and porcupine—if Mr. Youkoumian over-charged her bill or mislaid her laundry?

“Mildred, I don’t think you’re looking at all well. I don’t believe this place agrees with you.”

“No, Sarah, I’m not sure that it does. Oh, do let’s go away. I don’t like the people or the way they look or anything and we aren’t doing any good.”

“Basil, Mum wants me to go home—back to England, I mean.”

“I shan’t like that.”

“Do you mean it? Oh, lovely Basil, I don’t want to go a bit.”

“We may all have to go soon. Things seem breaking up here… only I’m not so sure about going to England…. Can’t we go somewhere else?”

“Darling, what’s the good of talking… we’ll see each other again, whatever happens. You do promise that, don’t you?”

“You’re a grand girl, Prudence, and I’d like to cat you.”

“So you shall, my sweet… any thing you want.”

Strips of sunlight through the shutters; below in the yard a native boy hammering at the engine of a broken motor car.

“I am sending Mme. Ballon and the other ladies of the legation down to the coast. I do not anticipate serious trouble. The whole thing will pass off without a shot being fired. Still it is safer so. Monsieur Floreau will accompany them. He will have the delicate work of destroying the Lumo bridge. That is necessary because Seth has three regiments at Ma-todi who might prove loyal. The train leaves on the day before the gala. I suggest that we advise Mr. and Mrs. Schonbaum a few hours before it starts. It would compromise the coup d’etat if there were an international incident. The British must fend for themselves.”

“What is the feeling in the army, General?”

“I called a meeting of the Staff to-day and told them of Prince Achon’s arrival in Debra-Dowa. They know what is expected of them. Yesterday their salaries were paid in the new notes.”

“And the Prince, your Beatitude?”

“He is no worse.”

“But content?”

“Who can say? He has been sleeping most of the day. He does not speak. He is all the time searching for something on the floor, near his foot. I think he misses his chain. He eats well.”

“Mr. Seal, I think I go down to Matodi day after tomorrow. Got things to fix there, see? How about you come too?”

“No good this week, Youkoumian. I shall have to wait and see poor Seth’s gala.”

“Mr. Seal, you take my tip and come to Matodi. I hear things. You don’t want to get into no bust-up.”

“I’ve been hearing things too. I want to stay and see the racket.”

“Damn foolishness.”

It was not often that the Oriental Secretary called on the Minister. He came that evening after dinner. They were playing animal-snap.

“Come in, Walsh. Nice to see you. You can settle a dispute for us. Prudence insists that a giraffe neighs like a horse. Now does it?”

Later he got the Minister alone.

“Look here, sir, I don’t know how closely you’ve followed local affairs, but I thought I ought to come and tell you. There’s likely to be trouble on Tues-day on the day of this birth control gala.”

“Trouble? I should think so. I think the whole thing perfectly disgusting. None of us are going.”

“Well, I don’t exactly know what sort of trouble. But there’s something up. I’ve just heard this evening that the French and Americans are going down to the coast en bloc by the Monday train. I thought you ought to know.”

“Pooh, another of these native disturbances. I remember that last civil war was just the same. Ballon thought he was going to be attacked the whole time. I’d sooner risk being bombed up here than bitten by mosquitoes at the coast. Still, jolly nice of you to tell me.”

“You wouldn’t mind, sir, if my wife and myself went down on the train.”

“Not a bit, not a bit. Jolly glad. You can take charge of the bags. Can’t say I envy you but I hope you have a jolly trip.”

On the morning preceding the gala, Basil went as usual to his office. He found Mr. Youkoumian busily packing a canvas grip with the few portable objects of value that had been collected for the museum. “I better take care of these in case anything appens,” he explained. “Catching train eleven o’clock. Very much crowded train. I think many wise men will be aboard. You better come too, Mr. Seal. I fix it O.K.”

“What is going to happen?”

“I don’t know nothing, Mr. Seal. I don’t ask no questions. All I think that if there is a bust up I will better be at the coast. They were preaching in all the churches Sunday against the Emperor’s birth control. Madame Youkoumian told me, which is a very pious and churchgoing woman. But I think there is more than that going to happen. I think General Connolly knows something. You better come to the coast, Mr. Seal. No?”

There was nothing to do that morning; no letters to answer; no chits from the palace; the work of the Ministry seemed suddenly over. Basil locked his office door, pocketed the key and strode across the yard to see Seth. Two officers at the gate-house hushed their conversation as Basil passed them.

He found Seth, in an elegant grey suit and pale coloured shoes, moodily pouring over the map of the new city.

“They have stopped work on the Boulevard Seth. Jagger has dismissed his men. Why is this?”

“He hadn’t been paid for three weeks. He didn’t like the new bank notes.’

“Traitor. I will have him shot. I sent for Connolly an hour ago. Where is he?”

“A great number of Europeans left for the coast by this morning’s train—but I don’t think Connolly was with them.”

“Europeans leaving? What do I care? The city is full of my people. I have watched them from the tower with my field glasses. All day they come streaming in by the four roads…. But the work must go on. The Anglican Cathedral, for example; it should be down by now. I’ll have it down if I have to work with my own hands. You see it is right in the way of the great Northern thoroughfare. Look at it on the plan—so straight…”

“Seth, there’s a lot of talk going about. They say there may be trouble tomorrow.”

“God, have I not had trouble to-day and yesterday? Why should I worry about tomorrow?”

That evening Dame Mildred and Miss Tin saw a very curious sight. They had been to tea with the Bishop and leaving him, made a slight detour, in order to take advantage of the singular sweetness of the evening air. As they passed the Anglican Cathedral they noticed a young man working alone. He wore light grey and parti-coloured shoes and he was engaged in battering at the granite archway at the West End with an energy very rare among Azanian navvies.

“How like the Emperor.”

“Don’t be absurd, Sarah.”

They left the grey figure chipping diligently in the twilight, and returned to their hotel where the Youkoumians’ departure had utterly disorganised the service.

“Just when we had begun to make them understand how we liked things…” complained Dame Mildred.

Next morning the ladies were up early. They had been awaked before dawn by the traffic under their windows, mules and ponies, chatter and scuffling, cars hooting for passage. Dame Mildred opened the shutters and looked down into the crowded street. Miss Tin joined her.

“I’ve been ringing for twenty minutes. There doesn’t seem to be a soul in the hotel.”

Nor was there; the servants had gone out last night after dinner and had not returned. Fortunately Dame Mildred had the spirit stove without which she never ventured abroad, some biscuits and cubes of bouillon. They breakfasted in this way upstairs while the crowd outside grew every moment in volume and variety, as the sun, brilliant and piercing as on other less notable mornings, mounted over the city. Dust rose from the crowded street and hung sparkling in the air.

“So nice for the Emperor to have a good day for his Pageant. Not at all like any of the pageants I can remember in England. Do you remember the Girl Guides’ rally when there was that terrible hail storm—in August, too? How the Brownies cried.”

The route of the procession lay past the Hotel de I’Empereur Seth. Shop fronts had been boarded up and several of the householders had erected stands and temporary balconies outside their windows. Some weeks earlier, when the Pageant had first been announced, Mr. Youkoumian had advertised accommodation of this kind and sold a number of tickets to prospective sightseers. In the subsequent uncertainty he had abandoned this among other of his projects. Now however two or three Indians, a Greek and four or five Azanians in gala clothes presented themselves at the hotel to claim their seats in the stand. They explored the deserted vestibule and dining-room, climbed the stairs and finally reached the bedrooms of the English ladies. Hardened by long exposure to rebuffs and injustice, the Indians paid no attention to Dame Mildred’s protests. Instead they pulled up the bed across the window, seated themselves in positions of excellent advantage and then producing small bags of betel nuts from their pockets settled down to wait, patiently chewing and spitting. Encouraged by this example the other intruders took possession of the other windows. The Greek politely offered Miss Tin a place in their midst and accepted her refusal with somewhat puzzled concern. The two ladies of the Azanian party wandered round the room picking up and examining the articles on the washstand and dressing table, and chattering with simple pleasure over the contents of the chest of drawers.

“This is an intolerable outrage. But I don’t see what we can do about it at the moment. Sir Samson will have to lodge a complaint.”

“We can’t possibly remain here. We can’t possibly go out into the street. There is only one place for us—the roof.”

This position was easily accessible by means of a ladder and trap door. Hastily equipping themselves with rugs, pillows, sunshades, two light novels, cameras and the remains of the biscuits, the resolute ladies climbed up into the blazing sunlight. Dame Mildred handed up their provisions to Miss Tin, then-followed her. The trap door could not be bolted from above but fortunately the tin roof was weighted in many places by rock boulders, placed there to strengthen it in times of high wind. One of these they rolled into place, then sliding down the hot corrugations to the low cement parapet, they made their nest in a mood of temporary tranquillity.

“We shall see very well from here, Sarah. There will be plenty of time to have those natives punished tomorrow.”

Indeed from where they sat the whole city lay very conveniently exposed to their view. They could see the irregular roofs of the Palace buildings in their grove of sapling blue gums and before them the still unfinished royal box from which the Emperor proposed to review the procession; small black figures could be observed working on it, tacking up coloured flags, spreading carpets and bobbing up the path with pots of palm and fern. They could see the main street of the city diverge, to the barracks on one side and the Christian quarter on the other. They could see the several domes and spires of the Catholic, Orthodox, Armenian, Anglican, Nestorian, American Baptist and Mormon places of worship; the minaret of the mosque, the Synagogue, and the flat white roof of the Hindu snake temple. Miss Tin took a series of snapshots.

“Don’t use all the films, Sarah, there are bound to be some interesting things later.”

The sun rose high in the heavens; the corrugated iron radiated a fierce heat. Propped on their pillows under green parasols the two ladies became drowsy and inattentive to the passage of time.

The procession was due to start at eleven but it must have been past noon before Dame Mildred, coming to with a jerk and snort, said, “Sarah, I think something is beginning to happen.”

A little dizzily, for the heat was now scarcely bearable, the ladies leant over the parapet. The crowd was holloing loudly and the women gave out their peculiar throbbing whistle; there seemed to be a general stir towards the royal box, quarter of a mile down the road.

“That must be the Emperor arriving.”

A dozen lancers were cantering down the street forcing the crowds back into the side alleys and courtyards, only to surge out again behind them.

“The procession will come up from the direction of the railway station. Look, here they are.”

Fresh swelling and tumult in the crowded street. But it was only the lancers returning towards the Palace.

Presently Miss Tin said, “You know, this may take all day. How hungry we shall be.”

‘I’ve been thinking of that for some time. I am going to go down and forage.”

“Mildred, you can’t. Anything might happen to you.”

“Nonsense, we can’t live on this roof all day with four petit-beurre biscuits.”

She rolled back the stone and carefully, rung by rung, descended the ladder. The bedroom doors were open and as she passed she saw that quite a large party was now assembled at the windows. She reached the ground floor, crossed the dining-room and opened the door at the far end where she had been informed by many penetrating smells during the past weeks, lay the kitchen quarters. Countless flies rose with humming alarm as she opened the larder door. Uncovered plates of horrible substances lay on the shelves; she drew back instinctively; then faced them again. There were some black olives in an earthenware basin and half a yard of brick-dry bread. Armed with these and breathing heavily she again climbed to the trap door.

“Sarah, open it at once.” The rock was withdrawn. “How could you be so selfish as to shut it? Supposing I had been pursued.”

“I’m sorry, Mildred. Indeed I am, but you were so long and I grew nervous. And, my dear, you have been missing such a lot. All kinds of things have been happening.”

“What things?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly, but look.’

Indeed, below the crowds seemed to be in a state of extreme agitation, jostling and swaying without apparent direction around a wedge-shaped phalanx of police who were forcing a way with long bamboo staves; in their centre was an elderly man under arrest.

“Surely, those are the clothes of the native priests? What can the old man have been up to?”

“Almost anything. I have never had any belief in the clergy after that curate we liked so much who was Chaplain of the Dumb Chums and spoke so feelingly and then…”

“Look, here is the procession.’

Rising strains of the Azanian anthem; the brass band of the Imperial Guards swung into sight drowning the sounds of conflict. The Azanians loved a band and their Patriarch’s arrest was immediately forgotten. Behind the soldiers drove Viscount and Viscountess Boaz, who had eventually consented to act as patrons. Then marching four abreast in brand new pinafores came the girls of the Amurath Memorial High School, an institution founded by the old Empress to care for the orphans of murdered officials. They bore, somewhat unsteadily, a banner whose construction had occupied the embroidery and dressmaking class for several weeks. It was em-blazoned in letters of appliqučl silk with the motto: “WOMEN OF TOMORROW DEMAND AN EMPTY CRADLE.” Slowly the mites filed by, singing sturdily.

“Very sensible and pretty,’

‘ said Miss Tin. “Dear, Mildred, what very stale bread you have brought.’

“The olives are excellent.’

“I never liked olives. Good gracious, look at this.’

The first of the triumphal cars had come into sight. At first an attempt had been made to induce ladies of rank to take part in the tableaux; a few had wavered, but Azanian society still retained certain standards; the peerage were not going to have their wives and daughters exhibiting themselves in aid of charity; the idea had to be dropped and the actresses recruited less ambitiously from the demi-monde. This first car, drawn by oxen, represented the place of women in the modern world. Enthroned under a canopy of coloured cotton, sat Mile. ‘Fifi’ Fatim Bey; in one hand a hunting crop to symbolise sport, in the other a newspaper to symbolise learning; round her were grouped a court of Azanian beauties with typewriters, tennis rackets, motor bicycling goggles, telephones, hitch-hiking outfits and other patents of modernity inspired by the European illustrated papers. An orange and green appliqučd standard bore the challenging motto THROUGH STERILITY TO CULTURE.

Enthusiastic applause greeted this pretty invention. Another car came into sight down the road, bobbing decoratively above the black pates; other banners.

Suddenly there was a check in the progress and a new note in the voice of the crowd.

“Has there been an accident? I do hope none of the poor oxen are hurt.”

The trouble seemed to be coming from the front of the procession, where bodies of men had pushed through from the side streets and were endeavouring to head the procession back. The brass band stopped, faltered and broke off, scattering before the assault and feebly defending their heads with trombones and kettle drums.

“Quick, Sarah, your camera. I don’t know what in the world is happening but I must get a snap of it. Of course the sun would be in the wrong place.”

“Try with the very small stop.”

“I do pray they come out; I had such bad luck with those very interesting films of Cape Town that the wretched man ruined on the boat. You know it looks like quite a serious riot. Where are the po-lice?”

The attackers having swept the band out of the road and underfoot, were making easy work of the High School Orphans; they were serious young men armed with dubs, the athletic group, as the ladies learned later, of Nestorian Catholic Action, muscu-lar Christians who for many weeks now had been impatiently biding their time to have a whack at the modernists and Jews who were behind the new movement.

Down went the embroidered banner as the girls in their pinafores ran for safety between the legs of the onlookers.

The main focus of the assault was now the triumphal car immediately in front of the Hotel de I’Empereur Seth. At the first sign of disturbance the members of the tableau had abandoned their poses and huddled together in alarm; now without hesitation they forsook their properties and bundled out of the waggon into the street. The Christian party swarmed onto it and one of them began addressing the crowd. Dame Mildred snapped him happily as he turned in their direction, arms spread, mouth wide open, in all the fervour of democratic leadership.

Hitherto except for a few jabs with trumpets and drumsticks, the attackers had met with no opposition. Now however the crowd began to take sides; individual scuffles broke out among them and a party of tribesmen from up country, happily welcoming this new diversion in a crowded day, began a concerted charge to the triumphal car round which there was soon raging a contest of I’m-king-of-the- castle game. The Nestorian orator was thrown over-board and a fine savage in lion skins began doing a jig in his place. The patient oxen stood unmoved by the tumult.

“Quick, Sarah, another roll of films. What can the police be thinking of?”

Then authority asserted itself.

From the direction of the royal box flashed out a ragged volley of rifle shots. A bullet struck the parapet with a burst of splintered concrete and ricochetted, droning, over the ladies’ heads. Another volley and something slapped on to the iron roof a few yards from where they sat. Half comprehending, Dame Mildred picked up and examined the irregular disc of hot lead. Shrill wails of terror rose from the street below and then a clattering of horses and oxen. Without a word spoken Dame Mildred and Miss Tin rolled to cover.

The parapet was a low one and the ladies were obliged to lie full length in positions of extreme discomfort. Dame Mildred slid out her arm for a cushion and hastily withdrew it as a third burst of firing broke out as though on purpose to frustrate her action. Presently silence fell, more frightening than the tumult. Dame Mildred spoke in an awed whisper.

“Sarah, that was a bullet.”

“I know. Do be quiet or they’ll start again.”

For twenty minutes by Miss Tin’s wrist watch the two ladies lay in the gutter, their faces almost touching the hot, tarnished iron of the roof. Dame Mildred shifted onto her side.

“Oh, what is it, Mildred?”

“Pins and needles in my left leg. I don’t care if I am shot.”

Dim recollections of some scouting game played peaceably in what different circumstances among Girl Guides in the bracken of Epping, prompted Dame Mildred to remove her topee and, holding it at arm’s length, expose it over the edge of their rampart. The silence of the stricken field was unbroken. Slowly, with infinite caution, she raised her head.

“For heaven’s sake, take care, Mildred. Snipers-.”

But everything was quiet. At length she sat up and looked over. From end to end the street was silent and utterly deserted. The strings of flags hung limp in the afternoon heat. The banner of the Amurath High School lay spread across the way, dis-hevelled and dusty from a thousand footsteps but still flaunting its message bravely to the heavens, WOMEN OF TOMORROW DEMAND AN EMPTY CRADLE. The other banner lay crumpled in the gutter. Only one word was visible in the empty street. STERILITY pleaded in orange and green silk to an unseeing people.

“I think it is all over.”

The ladies sat up and stretched their cramped legs, dusted themselves a little, straightened their hats and breathed deeply of the fresh air. Dame Mildred retrieved her camera and wound on the film. Miss Tin shook out the pillows and looked for food. The olives were dry and dull skinned, the bread crisp as biscuit and gritted with dust.

“Now what are we going to do? I’m thirsty and I think one of my headaches is coming on.’

Regular steps of marching troops in the street below.

“Look out. They’re coming again.”

The two ladies slid back under cover. They heard the grounding of rifle butts, some unintelligible or-ders, marching steps proceeding down the street. Inch by inch they emerged again.

“Some of them are still there. But I think it’s all right.”

A picket of Guards squatted round a machine gun on the pavement opposite.

“I’m going down to find something to drink.”

They rolled back the stone from the trap door and descended into the silent hotel. The sightseers had left their bedrooms. There was no one about on either floor.

“I wonder where they keep the Evian.”

They went into the bar. Alcohol everywhere, but no water. In a corner of the kitchen they found a dozen or so bottles bearing the labels of various mineral waters—Evian, St. Galmier, Vichy, Malvern—all empty. It was Mr. Youkoumian’s practice to replenish them, when required, from the foetid well at the back of the house.

“I must get something to drink or I shall die. I’m going out.”

“Mildred.”

“I don’t care, I am.”

She strode through the twilit vestibule into the street. The officer in charge of the machine gun section waved her back. She walked on, making pacific gestures. He spoke to her rapidly and loudly, first in Sakuyu, then in Arabic. Dame Mildred replied in English and French.

“Taisez-vous, officier. Je dčsire de I’eau. Ou peut on trouver ça, s’il vous plaît.”

The soldier showed her the hotel, then the machine gun.

“British subject. Me. British subject. No savvy? Oh, don’t any of you speak a word of English?”

The soldiers grinned and nodded, pointing her back to the hotel.

“It’s no good. They won’t let us out. We must wait.”

“Mildred, I’m going to drink wine.”

“Well, let’s take it up to the roof—it seems the only safe place,’

Armed with a bottle of Mr. Youkoumian’s Koniak they strode back up the ladder, “Oh, dear, it’s very strong.”

“I think it may help my headache.”

The afternoon wore on. The burning sun dipped towards the edge of the mountains. The ladies sipped raw brandy on the iron roof.

At length there was a fresh movement in the street. An officer on mule back galloped up, shouting an order to the picket. They dismantled their machine gun, hoisted it onto their shoulders, fell in, and marched away towards the palace. Other patrols tramped past the hotel. From their eminence they could see bodies of troops converging from all sides on the palace square.

“They’re calling in the guard. It must be all right now. But I feel too sleepy to move.”

Presently, as the soldier withdrew, little bodies of civilians emerged from hiding. A marauding band of Christians swung confidently into view.

“I believe they’re coming here.”

Splintering of glass and drunken, boastful laughter came from the bar below. Another party broke in the shutters of the drapers opposite and decked themselves with lengths of bright stuff. But oblivious of the excursions below them, worn out by the heat and anxiety of the day, and slightly drugged by Mr. Youkoumian’s spirits, the two ladies slept.

It was after seven when they awoke. Sun had set and there was a sharp chill in the air. Miss Tin shivered and sneezed.

“My head’s splitting. I’m very hungry again,” she said, “and thirstier than ever.”

The windows were all dark. Blackness encircled them save for a line of light which streamed across the street from the door of the bar and a dull red glow along the roof tops of the South quarter, in which the Indian and Armenian merchants had their warehouses.

“That can’t be sunset at this time. Sarah, I believe the town is on fire.”

“What are we to do? We can’t stay here all night.”

A sound of tipsy singing rose from below and a small knot of Azanians came into sight, swaying together with arms across each other’s shoulders; two or three of them carried torches and lanterns. A party sallied out from the bar below; there was a confused scuffling. One of the lamps was dropped in a burst of yellow flame. The tussle broke up, leaving a little pool of burning oil in the centre of the road.

“We can’t possibly go down.”

Two hours dragged by; the red glow behind the roof tops died, revived, and died again; once there was a short outbreak of firing some distance away. The beleaguered ladies sat and shuddered in the darkness. Then the lights of a car appeared and stopped outside the hotel. A few topers emerged from the bar and clustered round it. There were some words spoken in Sakuyu and then a clear English drawl rose to them.

“Well, the old girls don’t seem to be here. These chaps say they haven’t seen any one.”

And another answered: “I daresay they’ve been raped.”

“I hope so. Let’s try the Mission.”

“Stop,” shrieked Dame Mildred. “Hi! Stop.”

The motor car door clicked to; the engine started up.

“Stop,” cried Miss Tin. “We’re up here.” Then, in a moment of inspiration, untaught in the Girl Guides, Dame Mildred threw down the half-empty bottle of brandy. William’s head popped out of the car window and shouted a few words of easily acquired abuse in Sakuyu; then a pillow followed the bottle onto the roadway.

“I believe there’s some one up there. Be an angel and go and see, Percy. I’ll stick in here if there’s going to be any bottle throwing.”

The second secretary advanced with caution and had reached only the foot of the stairs when the two ladies greeted him.

“Thank God, you’ve com,’

‘ said Miss Tin.

“Well,” he said, a little confused by this sudden cordiality; “jolly nice of you to put it like that. All I mean is we just dropped in to see that you were all right. Minister said we’d better. Not scared or anything, I mean.”

“All right? We’ve had the most terrible day of our lives.”

“Oh, I say, not as bad as that I hope. We heard at the Legation that there’d been some kind of a disturbance. Well, you’ll be right as rain now, you know. Everything pretty quiet except for a few drunks. If there’s anything we can do, just let us know.”

“Young man, do you intend leaving us here all night?”

“Well… I suppose it sounds inhospitable, but there’s nothing else for it. Full up at the Legation you know. The Bishop arrived unexpectedly and two or three of the commercial fellows took fright and came over for some reason. Jolly awkward…. You see how it is, don’t you?”

“Do you realise that the town is on fire?”

“Yes, rare old blaze. We passed quite near it. It looks awfully jolly from the Legation.”

“Young man, Miss Tin and myself are coming with you now.”

“Oh, look here, I say, you know…”

“Sarah, get in the car. I will bring down a few things for the night.”

The discussion had brought them to the street. William and Anstruther exchanged glances of despair. Sir Samson’s instructions had been: ‘Just see that those tiresome old women are safe, but on no account bring them back here. The place is a bear garden already.’ (This with a scowl towards the Bishop who was very quietly playing Pegity with Prudence in a corner of the drawing-room.)

Dame Mildred, putting little trust in Miss Tin’s ability to restrain the diplomats from starting without her, took few pains with the packing. In less than a minute she was down again with an armful of night clothes and washing materials. At last with a squeeze and a grunt she sank into the back seat.

“Tell me,” asked William with some admiration, as he turned the car round. “Do you always throw bottles at people when you want a lift?’

SEVEN

SIR SAMSON COURTENEY arose next morning in a mood of high displeasure, which be-came the more intense as with every minute of his leisurely toilet he recalled in detail the atro-cious disorders of the preceding evening.

“Never known anything like it,” he reflected on the way to the bathroom. “These wretched people don’t seem to realise that a legation is a place of business. How can I be expected to get through the day’s work, with my whole house overrun with un-invited guests?”

First there had been the Bishop, who arrived during tea with two breathless curates and an absurd story about another revolution and shooting in the streets. Well, why not? You couldn’t expect the calm of Barchester Towers in a place like Azania. Missionary work was known to involve some physical wrork. Nincompoops. Sir Samson lashed the bath water in his contempt and vexation. Then, when they were half-way through dinner who should turn up but the Bank Manager and a scrubby little chap named Jagger. Never heard of him. More wild talk about murder, loot and fire. Dinner started all over again with the result that the duck was ruined. And then the most damnable treachery of all: his wife, of all people, infected with the general panic, had begun to ask about Dame Mildred and Miss Tin. Had they gone down to the coast when the other English people left? Should not something be done about them? The Minister pooh-poohed the suggestion for some time but at length so far yielded to popular appeal as to allow William and Percy to take the car and go out, just to see that the old women had come to no harm. That was the explicit limit of their instructions. And what did they do but bring them along too. Here in fact was the en-tire English population of Debra-Dowa taking ref-uge under his roof. “They’ll have to clear out to-day,” decided the Minister as he lathered his chin, “every man jack of them. It’s an intolerable impo-sition.”

Accommodation in the compound had eventually been found for all the newcomers. The Bishop slept in the Legation, the curates with the Anstruthers, who, in the most sporting manner, moved the children into their own room for the night, Dame Mildred and Miss Tin at the Legges, and the Bank Manager and Mr. Jagger alone in the bungalow vacated by the Walshes. By the time Samson came down to breakfast, however, they were all together again, chattering uproariously on the croquet lawn.

“… my back quite sore… not really accus-262 tomed to riding. ‘

‘ “Poor Mr. Raith. “

“The Church party started it. The priests had been haranguing them for days against birth control. The police learned that an attempt would be made to break up the procession so they arrested the Patriarch just be-fore it was due to start… “

“Troops cleared the streets… fired over their heads… no damage done… “

“… a bullet within a few inches, literally inches, of my head… ” Seth went back to the Palace as soon as it was clear the procession couldn’t take place. My word, he looked angry… “

“Young Seal with him… “

“… it wasn’t so bad when the beast was going uphill. It was that terrible sliding feeling… “Poor Mr. Raith… “

“Then the patrols were all withdrawn and concentrated in front of the Palace. Jagger and I were quite close and saw the whole thing. They had the whole army drawn up in the square and gradually when they realised the shooting was over the crowd began to come back, little knots of sixes and sevens creeping out from the side alleys and then creeping in round the soldiers. This was about half-past five… “

“… and not having proper breeches my knees got sorubbed… “

“PoorMr. Raith…”

“Everyone thought Seth was going to appear. The royal box was still there, shoddy sort of affair but it provided a platform. Every one kept looking in that direction. Suddenly who should climb up but the Patriarch, who had been released from prison by the rioters, and after him Connolly and old Ngumo and one or two others of the notables. Well, the crowd cheered like mad for the Patriarch, and Ngumo, and the soldiers cheered for Connolly and started firing off their rifles again into the air and for a quarter of an hour the place was in an uproar…”

“… and two bruises on the lower part of my shin where the stirrups came…”

“Poor Mr. Raith…”

“Then came the big surprise of the day. The patriarch made a speech, don’t suppose half the people heard it. Announced that Seth had abdicated and that Achon, Amurath’s son who’s supposed to have been dead for fifty years, was still alive and would be crowned Emperor to-day. The fellows near started cheering and the others took it up—they didn’t know why—and soon they had a regular party going. Meanwhile the Christians had been making hay in the Indian and Jewish quarters, breaking up the shops and setting half the place on fire. That’s when Jag-ger and I made our get-away…”

“… very stiff and chafed…”

“… poor, poor Mr. Raith.”

“All talking shop as usual,” said Sir Samson, as these voices floated in to him through the dining-room windows. “And eating me out of house and home,” he added sourly as he noted that there was a shortage of kedgeree that morning.

“But what about Basil Seal?” Prudence asked.

“He went off with Seth, I believe,’

‘ said the Bank Manager, “wherever that may b.’

Lady Courteney appeared among her guests, wearing gum boots and pushing a barrow and spade. Emperors might come and go, but there was heavy digging to be done in the lily pond.

“Good-morning,” she said. “I do hope you all slept well after your adventures and found enough breakfast. I’m afraid this is a very topsy-turvy house party. Prudence, child, I want you to help with the mud-puddle this morning. Mr. Raith, I’m sure you’re tired after your ride. Take an easy morning like a sensible man. The Bishop will show you the best parts of the garden. Take some deck chairs. You’ll find them on the porch. Dame Mildred and Miss Tin, how are you both? I hope my maid found you all you needed. Do please all make yourselves at home. Mr. Jagger, perhaps you play croquet.”

The Envoy Extraordinary finished his second cup of coffee, filled and lit his pipe, and avoiding the social life of the lawn, pottered round by the back way to the Chancery. Here at least there survived an atmosphere of normal tranquillity. Anstruther, Legge and William were playing cut-throat bridge.

“Sorry to disturb you, fellows. I just wanted to know whether any of you knew anything about this revolution?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. Care to take a hand, sir?” 265 “No, thanks very much. I think I’ll have a talk with the Bishop about his Cathedral. Save writing that letter. Daresay everything’ll be all right now that Seth’s left—I suppose I shall have to write a report of this business. No one will read it. But one of you might pop down into town sometime and see exactly what’s happened, will you?”

“That’s going to be a bore,” said William, as the Minister left them. “God, what a mean dummy.”

An hour later he visited them again.

“I say, I’ve just got a letter asking me to this coronation. I suppose some one from here ought to go? It means putting on uniform and mine’s got so infernally tight. William, be a good fellow and represent me, will you?”

The Nestorian Cathedral, like the whole of the city, was of quite recent construction, but its darkness and stuffiness endowed it with an air of some antiquity. It was an octagonal, domed building, consisting of a concentric ambulatory round an inner sanctuary. The walls were painted in primitive sim-plicity with saints and angels, battle scenes from the Old Testament history and portraits of Amurath the Great, faintly visible in the murky light of a dozen or so branch candlesticks. Three choirs had been singing since dawn. There was an Office of enormous length to be got through before the coronation Mass—psalms, prophecies, lections, and many minor but prolix rites of purification. Three aged lectors recited Leviticus from manuscript scrolls while a band of deacons played a low rhythm on hand drums and a silver gong. The Church party were in the ascendent at the moment and were not disposed to forego a single liturgical luxury.

Meanwhile chairs and carpets were being arranged in the outer aisle and an awning improvised through which, after the Mass, the new Emperor was to be led to take the final vows in the presence of the populace. All roads to the Cathedral were heavily policed and the square was lined with guardsmen. At eleven M. Ballon arrived and took his place in the seats set aside for the diplomatic corps. The Americans had all left the town so that he was now in the position of doyen. The native nobility had already assembled. The Duke of Ukaka found a place next to the Earl of Ngumo.

“Where’s Achon now?”

“Inside with the priests.”

“How is he?”

“He passed a good night. I think he finds the robes uncomfortable.”

Presently the Office ended and the Mass began, said behind closed doors by the Patriarch himself, with all the complex ritual of his church. An occasional silver tinkle from inside informed the wor-shippers of the progress of the ceremony, while a choir of deacons maintained a solemn chant somewhere out of sight in the gloom. M. Ballon stirred uneasily, moved by tiny, uncontrollable shudders of shocked atheism. Presently William arrived, carrying cocked hat, white gloves, very elegant in gold braid. He smiled pleasantly at M. Ballon and sat beside him.

“I say, have they started?”

M. Ballon nodded but did not reply.

A long time passed and the diplomat shifted from buttock to buttock in his gilt chair. It was no longer a matter of anti-clericalism but of acute physical discomfort.

William twiddled his gloves and dropped his hat and gaped miserably at the frescoed ceiling. Once absentmindedly he took out his cigarette case, tapped a cigarette on the toe of his shoe and was about to light it when he caught a glance from M. Ballon which caused him hastily to return it to his pocket.

But eventually an end came. The doors of the inner sanctuary were thrown open; the trumpeters on the Cathedral steps sounded a fanfare; the band in the square recognised their signal and struck up the Azanian Anthem. The procession emerged into the open. First came the choir of deacons, the priests, Bishops and the Patriarch. Then a canopy of bro-cade supported on poles at each corner by the four premier peers of the Empire. Under it shuffled the new monarch in the robes of state. It was not clear from his manner that he understood the nature of the proceedings. He wriggled his shoulders irritably under the unaccustomed burden of silk and jewellery, scratched his ribs and kept feeling disconsolately towards his right foot and shaking it sideways as he walked, worried at missing his familiar chain. Some drops of the holy oil with which he had been recently anointed trickled over the bridge of his nose and, drop by drop, down his white beard. Now and then he faltered and halted in his pace and was only moved on by a respectful dig in the ribs from one of his attendant peers. M. Ballon, William and the native nobility fell in behind him and with slow steps proceeded to the dais for the final ceremonies.

A great shout rose from the concourse as the im-perial party mounted the steps and Achon was led to the throne prepared for him. Here, one by one, he was invested with the royal regalia. First, holding the sword of state, the Patriarch addressed him: “Achon, I give you this sword of the Empire of Azania. Do you swear to fight in the cause of Justice and Faith, for the protection of your people and the glory of your race?’

The Emperor grunted and the ornate weapon was laid across his lap and one of his listless hands placed upon its hilt while cannonades of applause rose from his assembled subjects.

Then the gold spur.

“Achon, I give you this spur. Do you swear to ride in the cause of Justice and Faith for the protection of your people and the glory of your race?”

The Emperor gave a low whimper and turned away his face; the Earl of Ngumo buckled the spur about the foot that had so lately borne a graver weight. Huzzas and holloing in the crowded square.

Finally the crown.

“Achon, I give you this crown. Do you swear to use it in the cause of Justice and Faith for the protection of your people and the glory of your race?”

The Emperor remained silent and the Patriarch advanced towards him with the massive gold tiara of Amaruth the Great. With great gentleness he placed it over the wrinkled brow and straggle of white hairs; but Achon’s head lolled forward under its weight and the bauble was pitched back into the Patriarch’s hands.

Nobles and prelates clustered about the old man and then dismay spread among them and a babble of scared undertones. The people, seeing that something was amiss, broke off short in their cheering and huddled forward towards the dais.

“Tcha!” exclaimed M. Ballon. “This is something infinitely vexatious. It was not to be foreseen.”

For Achon was dead.

“Well,” said Sir Samson, when, rather late for luncheon, William brought back news of the coronation, “I can’t for the life of me see how they think they’re any better off. They’ll have to get Seth back now I suppose and we’ve all been disturbed for nothing. It’ll look infernally silly when we send in a re-port of this to the F. O. Not sure we hadn’t better keep quiet about the whole business.”

“By the way,” said William. “I heard something else in the town. The bridge is down at Lumo, so there’ll be no more trains to the coast for weeks.”

“One thing after another.’

They were all there, cramped at the elbows, round the dining-room table, Bishop and curates, Bank Manager and Mr. Jagger, Dame Mildred and Miss Tin, and they all began asking William questions about the state of the town. Was the fire completely put out? Was there looting in the shops? Did the life of the place seem to be going on normally? Were there troops patrolling the streets? Where was Seth? Where was Seal? Where was Boaz?

“I don’t think it at all fair to tease William,” said Prudence, “particularly when he looks so nice in his uniform.”

“But if, as you say, this bridge is demolished.’

‘ demanded Dame Mildred, “how can one get to Ma-todi?”

“There isn’t any other way, unless you like to ride down on a camel with one of the caravans.”

“D’you mean to say we must stay here until the bridge is rebuilt?”

“Not her,’

‘ interposed Sir Samson involuntarily, “not here.”

“I think the whole thing is scandalous,’

‘ said Miss Tin.

At last, before coffee was served, the Minister left the table.

“Got to get back to work,” he said cheerfully, “and I shall be at it all the afternoon so I’d better say good-bye now. I expect you’ll all be gone before I get through with it.”

And he left in the dining-room seven silent guests whose faces were eloquent of consternation. Later they assembled furtively in a corner of the garden to discuss their circumstances.

“I must admit,” said the Bishop, “that it seems to me unreasonable and inconsiderate of the Minister to expect us to return to the town until we have more reassuring information about the conditions.”

“As British subjects we have the right to be protected by our flag,” said Dame Mildred, “and I for one intend to stay here whether Sir Samson likes it or not.”

“That’s right,’

‘ said Mr. Jagger.

And after further mutual reassurances, the Bishop was sent to inform their host of their decision to remain. He found him peacefully dozing in a hammock under the mango trees.

“You put me in a very difficult position,’

‘ he said when the situation had been explained to him. “I wish that nothing of the sort had occurred at all. I am sure you would all be much more comfortable and equally safe in the town, but since you wish to remain pray consider yourselves my guests for as long as it takes to relieve your apprehensions,’

‘ and feeling that affairs had got completely outside his control, the Envoy relapsed into sleep.

Later that afternoon, when Lady Courteney had contrived to find occupation for all her guests, some at the bagatelle board, others with Pegity, photograph albums, cards or croquet, the party suffered a further and far from welcome addition; a dusty figure in native costume who propped a rifle against the fireplace before coming forward to shake her hand.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she said, “have you come to stay with us too?”

“Only for to-night,” said Basil. “I’ve got to be off first thing tomorrow. Where can I put up my camels?”

“Good gracious, I don’t think we’ve ever had such a thing here before. Have you more than one?”

“Ten. I’m passing as a Sakuyu merchant. They’re outside with the boys. I daresay they’ll find a place for them. They’re vicious beasts though. D’you think I could have some whiskey?”

“Yes, no doubt the butler can find you some, and would you like William to lend you some clothes?”

“No, I’ll stay in these, thanks. Got to get used to moving about in them. It’s the only way I can hope to get through. They had two shots at bumping me off yesterday.”

The company forsook their pastimes and crowded round the newcomer.

“How are things in the city?”

“As bad as can be. The army feel they’ve been sold a pup and won’t leave barracks. Connolly’s gone off with most of his staff to try and find Seth. The Patriarch’s in hiding somewhere in the town. Ngumo’s men have had a big dust up with the po-lice and are pretty well on top at the moment. They’ve got into the liquor saloons which Connolly closed yesterday. As soon as it’s dark they’ll start looting again.”

“There” said Dame Mildred, “and the Minister expected us to leave to-day.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t count on being too safe here. There’s a gang breaking up the American Legation now. Ballon’s ordered an aeroplane from the mainland. I expect you’ll get a raid to-night or to-mor-row. Your sowars don’t look up to much serious work.”

“And where are you going?”

“After Seth and Boaz. We’ve a rendezvous five days’ ride out of town at a farm of Boaz’s on the edge of the Wanda country. There’s just a chance of getting the boy back if he plays his cards properly. But there’s bound to be serious fighting whatever happens.”

Shivers of half-pleasant alarm went through his listeners.

“Mr. Seal,” Lady Courteney benignly interposed at last. “I think it’s very mischievous of you saying all this. I’m sure that things are not nearly as bad as you make out. You’re just talking. Now go and get yourself some whiskey and talk to Prudence and I think you might put that dirty gun outside in the lobby.”

“Oh, Basil, what is going to happen? I can’t bear your going off like this and everything being so messy.”

“Don’t you worry, Prudence, everything’ll be all right. We’ll meet again. I promise you.”

“But you said it was dangerous.”

“I was just piling it on to scare the old women.”

“Basil, I don’t believe you were.”

“I should think they’ll take you off by air from Khormaksar. You’ve got Walsh down at Matodi. He’s a sound enough fellow. As soon as he learns what’s happened he’ll get through to Aden and arrange everything. You’ll be all right, just you see.”

“But it’s you I’m worrying about.”

“Don’t you do that, Prudence. It’s one of the things there’s no sense in at all. People are always doing it and it doesn’t get them anywhere.”

“Anyway, you look lovely in those clothes.”

Basil talked a great deal at dinner; the same large party was assembled but he kept them all silent with tales of Sakuyu savagery, partly invented, partly remembered from the days of Connolly’s confidence. “… shaved all the hair off her head and covered it with butter. White ants ate straight through into her skull… you still find blind old Europeans working with the slaves on some of the farms in the interior; they’re prisoners of war that were conveniently forgotten about when peace was made… the Arab word for Sakuyu means Man-without-mercy… when they get drink in them they go completely insane. They can stay like that for days at a time, utterly unconscious of fatigue. They’d think nothing of the road out here if they thought they’d find alcohol when they got here. May I have another glass of whiskey?…”

When the men were left together at the table, the Minister said, “My boy, I don’t know how much truth there is in all you’ve been saying but I think you might not have talked like that before the ladies. If there is any danger, and I for one don’t for a moment believe there is, the ladies should be kept in ignorance of the fact.”

“Oh, I like to see them scared,” said Basil. “Pass the decanter, will you, Jagger, and now, sir, what arrangements are we making for defence?”

“Arrangements for defence?”

“Yes, of course, you can’t possibly have every one separated in the different bungalows. They could all have their throats cut one at a time and none of us any the wiser. The compound is far too big to form a defensible unit. You’d better get every one up here, arrange for shifts of guard and put a picket of your sowars with horses half a mile down the road to the town to bring the alarm if a raiding party comes into sight. You run in and talk to the women. I’ll arrange it all for you.”

And the Envoy Extraordinary could find nothing to say. The day had been too much for him. Every one was stark crazy and damned bad-mannered too.

They could do what they liked. He was going to smoke a cigar, alone, in his study.

Basil took command. In half an hour the Legges and the Anstruthers bearing children wrapped in blankets and their meagre supply of firearms, arrived in the drawing-room.

“I suppose that this is necessary,” said Lady Courteney, “but I’m afraid that you’ll none of you be at all comfortable.”

An attempt to deceive the children that nothing unusual was afoot proved unsuccessful; it was not long before they were found in a corner of the hall enacting with tremendous gusto the death agonies of the Italian lady whose scalp was eaten by termites.

“The gentleman in the funny clothes told us,’

‘ they explained. “Coo, mummy, it must have hurt.”

The grown-ups moved restlessly about.

“Anything we can do to help?”

“Yes, count the cartridges out into equal piles… it might be a good thing to prepare some bandages too… Legge, the hinges of this shutter aren’t too good. See if you can find a screw driver.”

It was about ten o’clock when it was discovered that the native servants who had been massed in the legation kitchens from the surrounding households, had silently taken their leave. Only Basil’s camel boys remained in possession. They had compounded for themselves a vast stew of incongruous elements and were sodden with eating.

“Other boys going home. No want cutting off heads. They much no good boys. We like it fine living here.”

News of the desertion made havoc among the nerves in the drawing-room. Sir Samson merely voiced the feelings of all his guests when, turning petulantly from the table, he remarked: “It’s no good. My heart is not in halma this evening.”

But the night passed and no assault was made. The men of the party watched, three hours on, three hours off, at the various vulnerable points. Each slept with a weapon beside him, revolver, rook rifle, shot-gun or meat chopper. Continuous low chattering in the rooms upstairs, rustle of dressing gowns, patter of slippers and frequent shrill cries from the youngest Anstruther child in nightmare, told that the ladies were sleeping little. At dawn they assembled again with pale faces and strained eyes. Lady Courteney’s English maid and the Goan butler went to the kitchen and, circumventing with difficulty the recumbent camel boys, made hot coffee. Spirits rose a little; they abandoned the undertones which had become habitual during the last ten hours and spoke in normal voices; they began to yawn. Basil said, “One night over. Of course your real dan-ger will come when supplies begin running short in the town.’

That discouraged them from any genuine cheerfulness.

They went out onto the lawn. Smoke lay low over the town.

“Something still burning.”

Presently Anstruther said, “I say, though, look over there. Aren’t those clouds?”

“It’s a week early for the rains.”

“Still, you never know.”

“That’s rain all right,” said Basil. “I was counting on it to-day or tomorrow. They got it last week in Kenya. It’ll delay the repairs on the Lumo bridge pretty considerably.”

“Then I must get those bulbs in this morning,” said Lady Courteney. “It’ll be a relief to have something sensible to do after tearing up sheets for bandages and sewing sandbags. You might have told me before, Mr. Seal.”

“If I were you,” said Basil, “I should start checking your stores and making out a scheme of rations. I should think my boys must have eaten a good week’s provisions last night.”

The party split up and attempted to occupy themselves in useful jobs about the house; soon, however, there came a sound which brought them out helter-skelter, all together again, chattering on the lawn; the drone of an approaching aeroplane.

“That’ll be Ballon,’

‘ said Basil, “making his get-away.’

But as the machine came into sight it became clear that it was making for the Legation; it flew low, circling over the compound and driving the ponies to frenzy in their stables. They could see the pilot’s head looking at them over the side. A weighted flag fluttered from it to the ground, then the machine mounted again and soared off in the direction of the coast. The Anstruther children ran, crowing with delight, to retrieve the message from the rose garden and bring it to the Minister. It was a brief pencil note, signed by the squadron-leader at Aden. Am bringing two troop carriers, three bombers. Be prepared to evacuate whole British population from Legation in one hour from receiving this. Can carry official archives and bare personal necessities only.

“That’s Walsh’s doing. Clever chap, always said so. But I say, though, what a rush.”

For the next hour the Legation was in a ferment as a growing pile of luggage assembled on the lawn.

‘Official archives, indeed. There may be some papers about somewhere, William. See if any of them seem at all interesting.’

“We’ll have to put the ponies out to grass and hope for the best.’

“Lock all doors and take the keys away. Not that it’s likely to make any difference.’

“Envoy, you can’t bring all the pictures.’

“How about passports?”

The visitors from the town, having nothing to pack, did what they could to help the others.

“I’ve never been up before. I’m told it often makes people unwell.”

“Poor Mr. Raith.”

Basil, suddenly reduced to unimportance, stood by and watched the preparations, a solitary figure in his white Sakuyu robes leaning over his rifle like a sentinel.

Prudence joined him and they walked together to the edge of the compound, out of sight behind some rhododendrons. She was wearing a red bčret jauntily on one side of her head.

“Basil, give up this absurd Emperor, darling, and come with us.”

“Can’t do that.’

“Please.”

“No, Prudence, everything’s going to be all right. Don’t you worry. We’ll meet again somewhere.”

Rain clouds on the horizon grew and spread across the bright sky.

ť8s “It seems so much more going away when it’s in an aeroplane, if you see what I mean.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Prudence, Prudence,” from Lady Courteney be-yond the rhododendrons. “You really can’t take so many boxes.”

In Basil’s arms Prudence said, “But the clothes smell odd.”

“I got them second-hand from a Sakuyu. He’d just stolen an evening suit from an Indian.”

“Prudence!”

“All right, mum, coming… sweet Basil, I can’t really bear it.”

And she ran back to help eliminate her less serviceable hats.

Quite soon, before any one was ready for them, the five aeroplanes came into sight, roaring over the hills in strictly maintained formation. They landed and came to rest in the compound. Air Force officers trotted forward and saluted, treating Sir Samson with a respect which somewhat surprised his household.

“We ought to start as soon as we can, sir. There’s a storm coming up.”

With very little confusion the party embarked. The Indian troopers and the Goan butler in one troop carrier, the children, clergy and senior members in the other. Mr. Jagger, William and Prudence took their places in the cockpits of the three bombers. Just as they were about to start, Prudence remembered something and clambered down. She raced back to the Legation, a swift, gay figure under her red beret, and returned panting with a loose sheaf of papers.

“Nearly left the Panorama of Life behind,” she explained.

The engines started up with immense din; the machines taxied forward and took off, mounted steadily, circled about in a neat arrow head, dwin-dled and disappeared. Silence fell on the compound. It had all taken less than twenty minutes.

Basil turned back alone to look for his camels.

Prudence crouched in the cockpit, clutching her beret to her head. The air shrieked past her ears while the landscape rolled away below in a leisurely fashion; the straggling city, half shrouded in smoke, disappeared behind them; open pasture dotted with cattle and little clusters of huts; presently the green lowlands and jungle country. She knew without particular regret that she was leaving Debra-Dowa for good.

“Anyway,” she reflected, “I ought to get some new ideas for the Panorama,’

‘ and already she seemed to be emerging into the new life which her mother had planned for her, and spoken of not long ago seated on Prudence’s bed as she came to wish her good-night. Aunt Harriet’s house in Belgrave Place; girls’ luncheons, dances and young men, week-ends in country houses, tennis and hunting; all the easy circumstances of English life which she had read about often but never experienced. She would resume the acquaintance of friends she had known at school, “and shan’t I be able to show off to them. They’ll all seem so young and innocent…” English cold and fog and rain, grey twilight among isolated, bare trees and dripping coverts; London streets when the shops were closing and the pavements crowded with people going to Tube stations with evening papers; empty streets, late at night after dances, revealing unsuspected slopes, sluiced by men in almost mediaeval overalls… an English girl returning to claim her natural herit-age…

The aeroplane dipped suddenly, recalling her to the affairs of the moment. The pilot shouted back to her something which was lost on the wind. They were the extremity of one of the arms of the V. A goggled face from the machine in front looked back and down at them as they dropped below him but her pilot signalled him on. Green undergrowth swam up towards them; the machine tilted a little and circled about, looking for a place to land.

“Hold tight and don’t worry,” was borne back to her on the wind. An open space appeared among the trees and bush. They circled again and dropped precisely into place, lurched for a moment as though about to overturn, righted themselves and stopped dead within a few feet of danger.

“Wizard show that,’

‘ remarked the pilot.

“Has anything awful happened?”

“Nothing to worry about. Engine trouble. I can put it right in two shakes. Stay where you are. We’ll catch them up before they reach Aden.”

Rain broke late that afternoon with torrential tropic force. The smouldering warehouses of the city sizzled and steamed and the fire ended in thin black mud. Great pools collected in the streets; water eddied in the gutters, clogging the few drains with its burden of refuse. The tin roofs rang with the falling drops. Sodden rioters waded down the lanes to shelter; troops left their posts and returned to barracks huddled under cover in a stench of wet cloth. The surviving decorations from the pageant of birth control clung limply round the posts or, grown suddenly too heavy, snapped their strings and splashed into the mud below. Darkness descended upon a subdued city.

For six confused days Basil floundered on towards the lowlands. For nine hours out of the twenty-four the rain fell regularly and unremittingly so that it usurped the sun’s place as the measure of time and the caravan drove on through the darkness striving hopelessly to recover the hours wasted under cover during the daylight.

On their second day’s journey Basil’s boys brought a runner to him, who was carrying a sodden letter in the end of a cleft staff.

“A great chief will not suffer his messengers to be robbed.”

“There is a time,” said Basil, “when all things must be suffered.”

They took the message. It read: From Viscount Boaz, Minister of the Interior of the Azanian Empire, to the Earl of Ngumo, Greeting. May this reach you. Peace be upon your house. Salute in my name and in the name of my family, Achon whom some style Emperor of Azania, Chief of the Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas. May his days be many and his progeny uncounted. I, Boaz, no mean man in the Empire, am now at Gulu on the Wanda marches; with me is Seth whom some style Emperor. I tell you this so that Achon may know me for what I am, a loyal subject of the crown. I fear for Seth’s health and await word from your Lordship as to how best he may be relieved of what troubles him. Boaz.

“Go on in front of us,” Basil ordered the man, “and tell Lord Boaz that Achon is dead.”

“How can I return to my Lord, having lost the letter he gave me. Is my life a small thing?”

“Go back to your Lord. Your life is a small thing beside the life of the Emperor.”

Later two beasts lost their footing in the bed of a swollen watercourse and were washed down and tumbled among the boulders; during the third night’s march five of the hindermost deserted their leaders. The boys mutinied, first for more money; later they refused every inducement to proceed. For two days Basil rode on alone, swaying and slipping towards his rendezvous.

Confusion dominated the soggy lanes of Matodi. Major Walsh, the French secretaries and Mr. Schonbaum daily despatched conflicting messages by wireless and cable. First that Seth was dead and that Achon was Emperor, then that Achon was dead and Seth was Emperor.

“Doubtless Mme. Ballon could tell us where General Connolly is to be found.”

“Alas, M. Jean, she will not speak.”

“Do you suspect she knows more?”

“M. Ballon’s wife should be above suspicion.”

The officials and soldiers loafed in the dry inter-vals about barracks and offices; they had no instructions and no money; no news from the capital. De-stroyers of four nations lurked in the bay standing by to defend their nationals. The town governor made secret preparations for an early escape to the mainland. Mr. Youkoumian, behind the bar at the Amurath Hotel, nervously decocted his fierce spirits.

“There ain’t no sense in aving bust-ups. Ere we are, no Emperor, no railway, and those low niggers making ell with my property at Debra-Dowa. And just you see, in less than no time the civilised nations will start a bombardment. Gosh.”

In the dingy calm of the Arab club the six senior members munched their khat in peace and spoke gravely of a very old error of litigation.

Amidst mud and liquid ash at Debra-Dowa a leaderless people abandoned their normal avocations and squatted at home, occupying themselves with domestic bickerings; some of the rural immigrants drifted back to their villages, others found temporary accommodation in the saloons of the deserted palace, expecting something to happen.

Among the dry clinkers of Aden, Sir Samson and Lady Courteney waited for news of the missing aeroplane. They were staying at the Residency where everything was done that hospitality and tact could do, to relieve the strain of their anxiety; newspaper agents and sympathetic compatriots were kept from them. Dame Mildred and Miss Tin were shipped to Southampton by the first P. & O. Mr.

Jagger made preparations to leave a settlement he had little reason to like. Sir Samson and Lady Courteney walked alone on the cliff paths, waiting for news. Air patrols crossed to Azania, flying low over the impenetrable country where Prudence’s machine was last observed, returned to refuel, set out again and at the end of the week had seen nothing to report. The military authorities discussed and despaired of the practicability of landing a search party.

In the dry spell between noon and sunset, Basil reached Seth’s encampment at Gulu. His men had taken possession of a small village. A dozen or so of them, in ragged uniforms, sat on their haunches in the clearing, silently polishing their teeth with pieces of stick.

His camel lurched down onto its knees and Basil dismounted. None of the guardsmen rose to salute him; no sign of greeting from inside the mud huts. The squatting men looked into the steaming forest beyond him.

He asked: “Where is the Emperor?” But no one answered.

“Where is Boaz?”

“In the great house. He is resting.”

They indicated the headman’s hut which stood on the far side of the compound, distinguished from the others by its superior size and a narrow verandah, floored with beaten mud and shaded by thatch.

“Why is the Emperor not in the great house?”

They did not answer. Instead they scoured their teeth and gazed abstractedly into the forest, where a few monkeys swung in the steaming air, shaking the water from bough to bough.

Basil crossed through them to the headman’s hut. It was windowless and for a short time his eyes could distinguish nothing in the gloom. Only his ears were aware of a heavily breathing figure somewhere not far distant in the dark interior. Then he gradually descried a jumble of household furniture, camp equipment and the remains of a meal; and Boaz asleep. The great dandy lay on his back in a heap of rugs and sacking; his head pitched forward into his blue-black curly beard. There was a rifle across his middle. He wore a pair of mud-splashed riding breeches, too tight to button to the top, which Basil recognised as the Emperor’s. A Wanda girl sat at his head. She explained: “The Lord has been asleep for some time. For the last days it has been like this. He wakes only to drink from the square bottle. Then he is asleep again.”

“Bring me word when he wakes.”

Basil approached the oafish fellows in the clearing.

“Show me a house where I can sleep.”

They pointed one out to him without rising to accompany him to its door. Water still dripped through its leaky thatch, there was a large puddle of thin mud made during the rain. Basil lay down on the dry side and waited for Boaz to wake.

They called him an hour after sunset. The men had lit a fire, but only a small one because they knew that at midnight the rain would begin again and dowse it. There was a light in the headman’s hut—a fine brass lamp with wick and chimney. Boaz had put out two glasses and two bottles of whiskey. Basil’s first words were, “Where is Seth?”

“He is not here. He has gone away.”

“Where?”

“How shall I know? Look, I have filled your glass.”

“I sent a messenger to him, with the news that Achon was dead.”

“Seth had already gone when the messenger came.”

“And where is the messenger?”

“He brought bad tidings. He is dead. Turn the light higher. It is bad to sit in the dark.”

He gulped down a glass of spirit and refilled his glass. They sat in silence.

Presently Boaz said, “Seth is dead.”

“I knew. How?”

“The sickness of the jungle. His legs and his arms swelled. He turned up his eyes and died. I have seen others die in just that way.”

Later he said, “So now there is no Emperor. It is a pity that your messenger did not come a day sooner. I hanged him because he was late.”

“Boaz, the sickness of the jungle does not wait on good or bad news.”

“That is true. Seth died in another way. By his own hand. With a gun raised to his mouth and his great toe crooked round the trigger. That is how Seth died.”

“It is not what I should have expected.”

“Men die that way. I have heard of it often. His body lies outside. The men will not bury it. They say it must be taken down to Moshu to the Wanda people to be burned in their own fashion. Seth was their chief.”

“We will do that tomorrow.”

Outside round the fire, inevitably, they had started singing. The drums pulsed. In the sodden depths of the forest the wild beasts hunted, shun-ning the light.

“I will go and see Seth’s body.”

“The women are sewing him up. They made a bag for him out of pieces of skin. It is the custom when the chief dies. They put grain in with him and several spices. Only the women know what. If they can get it they put a lion’s paw, I have been told.”

“We will go and look at him.”

“It is not the custom of the people.”

“I will carry the lamp.”

“You must not leave me in the dark. I will come with you.”

Past the camp fire and the singing guardsmen to another hut: here by the light of a little lamp four or five women were at work stitching. Seth’s body lay on the floor half covered by a blanket. Boaz leant tipsily in the doorway while Basil went forward, lamp in hand. The eldest of the women tried to bar his entrance, but he pushed her aside and approached the dead Emperor.

His head lay inclined to one side, the lips agape, the eyes open and dull. He wore his guards tunic, buttoned tight at the throat; the epaulettes awry and bedraggled. There was no wound visible. Basil drew the blanket higher and rejoined the Minister.

“The Emperor did not shoot himself.”

“No.”

“There is no wound to be seen.”

“Did I say he was shot? That is a mistake. He took poison. That is how it happened… it has happened before in that way to other great men. It was a draught given him by a wise man in these parts. When he despaired he took some of it… a large cupful and drank it… there in the hut. I was with him. He made a wry face and said that the draught was bitter. Then he stood still a little until his knees gave. On the floor he rolled up and down several times. He could not breathe. Then his legs shot straight out and he arched his back. That is how he lay until yesterday when the body became limp again. That was how he died…. The messenger was late in coming.”

They left the women to their work. Boaz stum-bled several times as he returned to the headman’s hut and his bottle of whiskey. Basil left him with the lamp and returned in the fire-lit night to his hut.

A man was waiting for him in the shadows. “Boaz is still drunk.”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“Major Joab of the Imperial Infantry at your service.”

“Well, major?”

“It has been like this since the Emperor’s death.”

“Boaz?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see the Emperor die?”

“I am a soldier. It is not for me to meddle with high politics. I am a soldier without a master.”

“There is duty due to a master, even when he is dead.”

“Do I understand you?”

“Tomorrow we take down the body of Seth to be burned at Moshu among his people. He should rejoin the great Amurath and the spirits of his father like a king and a fine man. Can he meet them unashamed if his servants forget their duty while his body is still with them?”

“I understand you.”

After midnight the rain fell. The men round the fire carried a burning brand into one of the huts and lit a fire there. Great drops sizzled and spat among the deserted emben; they changed from yel-low to red and then to black.

Heavy patter of rain on the thatched roofs, quick-ening to an even blurr of sound.

A piercing, womanish cry, that mounted, soared shivering, quavered and merged in the splash and gurgle of the water.

“Major Joab of the Imperial Infantry at your service. Boaz is dead.”

“Peace be on your house.”

Next day they carried the body of the Emperor to Moshu. Basil rode at the head of the procession. The others followed on foot. The body, sewn in skins, was strapped to a pole and carried on the shoulders of two guardsmen. Twice during the journey they slipped and their burden fell in the soft mud of the jungle path. Basil sent on a runner to the Chief saying: “Assemble your people, kill your best meat and prepare a feast in the manner of your people. I am bringing a great chief among you.”

But the news preceded him and tribesmen came out to greet them on the way and conduct them with music to Moshu. The wise men of the surrounding villages danced in the mud in front of Basil’s camel, wearing livery of the highest solemnity, leopards’ feet and snake-skins, necklets of lions’ teeth, shrivelled bodies of toads and bats, and towering masks of painted leather and wood. The women daubed their hair with ochre and clay in the fashion of the people.

Moshu was a royal city; the chief market and government centre of the Wanda country. It was ditched round and enclosed by high ramparts. Arab slavers had settled there a century ago and built streets of two-storied, lightless houses; square, with flat roofs on rubble walls washed over with lime and red earth. Among them stood circular Wanda huts of mud and thatched grass. A permanent artisan population lived there, blacksmiths, jewellers, leather workers, ministering to the needs of the scattered jungle people. There were several merchants in a good way of business with barns storing grain, oil, spices and salt, and a few Indians trading in hardware and coloured cottons, products of the looms of Europe and Japan.

A pyre had been heaped up, of dry logs and straw, six-foot high, in the market place. A large crowd was already assembled there and in another quarter a communal kitchen had been improvised where great cook pots rested over crackling sticks. Earthenware jars of fermented cocoanut sap stood ready to be broached when the proper moment arrived.

The feast began late in the afternoon. Basil and Joab sat among the chiefs and headmen. The wise men danced round the pyre, shaking their strings of charms and amulets, wagging their tufted rumps and uttering cries of ecstasy. They carried little knives and cut themselves as they capered round. Meanwhile Seth’s body was bundled on to the fag-gots and a tin of oil sluiced over it.

“It is usual for the highest man present to speak some praise of the dead.’

Basil nodded and in the circle of fuzzy heads rose to declaim Seth’s funeral oration. It was no more candid than most royal obituaries. It was what was required. “Chiefs and tribesmen of the Wanda,” he said, speaking with confident fluency in the Wanda tongue of which he had acquired a fair knowledge during his stay in Azania. “Peace be among you. I bring the body of the Great Chief, who has gone to rejoin Amurath and the spirits of his glorious ancestors. It is right for us to remember Seth. He was a great Emperor and all the peoples of the world vied with each other to do him homage. In his own island, among the peoples of Sakuyu and the Arabs, across the great waters to the mainland, far beyond in the cold lands of the North, Seth’s name was a name of terror. Seyid rose against him and is no more. Achon also. They are gone before him to prepare suitable lodging among the fields of his ancestors. Thousands fell by his right hand. The words of his mouth were like thunder in the hills. Weep, women of Azania, for your royal lover is torn from your arms. His virility was inexhaustible, his progeny numerous beyond human computation. His staff was a grown palm tree. Weep, warriors of Azania. When he led you to battle there was no retreating. In council the most guileful, in justice the most terrible, Seth the magnificent is dead.”

The bards caught phrases from the lament and sang them. The wise men ran whooping among the spectators carrying torches. Soon the pyre was enveloped in towering flames. The people took up the song and swayed on their haunches, chanting. The bundle on the crest bubbled and spluttered like fresh pine until the skin cerements burst open and revealed briefly in the heart of the furnace the in-candescent corpse of the Emperor. Then there was a subsidence among the timbers and it disappeared from view.

Soon after sunset the flames declined and it was necessary to refuel them. Many of the tribesmen had joined the dance of the witches. With hands on each other’s hips they made a chain round the pyre, shuffling their feet and heaving their shoulders, spasmodically throwing back their heads and baying like wild beasts.

The chiefs gave the sign for the feast to begin.

The company split up into groups, each round a cook pot. Basil and Joab sat with the chiefs. They ate flat bread and meat, stewed to pulp among peppers and aromatic roots. Each dipped into the pot in rotation, plunging with his hands for the best scraps. A bowl of toddy circulated from lap to lap and great drops of sweat broke out on the brows of the mourners.

Dancing was resumed, faster this time and more clearly oblivious of fatigue. In emulation of the witch doctors, the tribesmen began slashing themselves on chest and arms with their hunting knives; blood and sweat mingled in shining rivulets over their dark skins. Now and then one of them would pitch forward onto his face and lie panting or roll stiff in a nervous seizure. Women joined in the dance, making another chain, circling in the reverse way to the men. They were dazed with drink, stamping themselves into ecstasy. The two chains jostled and combined. They shuffled together interlocked.

Basil drew back a little from the heat of the fire, his senses dazed by the crude spirit and the insist ence of the music. In the shadows, in the extremities of the market place, black figures sprawled and grunted, alone and in couples. Near him an elderly woman stamped and shuffled; suddenly she threw up her arms and fell to the ground in ecstasy. The hand drums throbbed and pulsed; the flames leapt and showered the night with sparks.

The headman of Moshu sat where they had dined, nursing the bowl of toddy. He wore an Azanian white robe, splashed with gravy and spirit. His scalp was closely shaven; he nodded it down to the lip of the bowl and drank. Then he clumsily offered it to Basil. Basil refused; he gaped and offered it again. Then took another draught himself. Then he nod-ded again and drew something from his bosom and put it on his head. “Look,” he said. “Pretty.”

It was a beret of pillar-box red. Through the stupor that was slowly mounting and encompassing his mind Basil recognised it. Prudence had worn it jauntily on the side of her head, running across the Legation lawn with the Panorama of Life under her arm. He shook the old fellow roughly by the shoulder.

“Where did you get that?”

“Pretty.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Pretty hat. It came in the great bird. The white 301 woman wore it. On her head like this.” He giggled weakly and pulled it askew over his glistening pate.

“But the white woman. Where is she?”

But the headman was lapsing into coma. He said “Pretty” again and turned up sightless eyes.

Basil shook him violently. “Speak, you old fool. Where is the white woman?”

The headman grunted and stirred; then a flicker of consciousness revived in him. He raised his head. “The white woman? Why, here,” he patted his dis-tended paunch. “You and I and the big chiefs—we have just eaten her.”

Then he fell forward into a sound sleep.

Round and round circled the dancers, ochre and blood and sweat glistening in the firelight; the wise men’s headgear swayed high above them, leopards’ feet and snake skins, amulets and necklaces, lions’ teeth and the shrivelled bodies of bats and toads, jigging and spinning. Tireless hands drumming out the rhythm; glistening backs heaving and shivering in the shadows.

Later, a little after midnight, it began to rain.

EIGHT

WHEN the telephone bell rang Alastair said: “You answer it. I don’t think I can stand up,” so Sonia crossed to the win-dow where it stood and said: “Yes, who is it?… Basil… well, who’d have thought of that? Where can you be?”

“I’m at Barbara’s. I thought of coming round to see you and Alastair.”

“Darling, do… how did you know where we lived?”

“It was in the telephone book. Is it nice?”

“Lousy. You’ll see when you come. Alastair thought it would be cheaper, but it isn’t really. You’ll never find the door. It’s painted red and it’s next to a pretty shady sort of chemist.”

“I’ll be along.”

Ten minutes later he was there. Sonia opened the door. “We haven’t any servants. We got very poor suddenly. How long have you been back?”

“Landed last night. What’s been happening?”

“Almost nothing. Every one’s got very poor and it makes them duller. It’s more than a year since we saw you. How are things at Barbara’s?”

“Well, Freddy doesn’t know I’m here yet. That’s why I’m dining out. Barbara’s going to tell him gently. I gather my mamma is sore with me about something. How’s Angela?”

“Just the same. She’s the only one who doesn’t seem to have lost money. Margot’s shut up her house and is spending the winter in America. There was a general election and a crisis—something about gold standard.”

“I know. It’s amusing to be back.’

“We’ve missed you. As I say, people have gone serious lately, while you’ve just been loafing about the tropics. Alastair found something about Azania in the papers once. I forget what. Some revolution and a minister’s daughter who disappeared. I sup pose you were in on all that.”

“Yes.”

“Can’t think what you see in revolutions. They said there was going to be one here, only nothing came of it. I suppose you ran the whole country.”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“And fell madly in love.”

“Yes.”

“And intrigued and had a court official’s throat cut.”

“Yes.”

“And went to a cannibal banquet. Darling, I just don’t want to hear about it, d’you mind? I’m sure it’s all very fine and grand but it doesn’t make much sense to a stay-at-home like me.”

“That’s the way to deal with him,” said Alastair from his arm chair. “Keep a stopper on the far-flung stuff.”

“Or write a book about it, sweety. Then we can buy it and leave it about where you’ll see and then you’ll think we know…. What are you going to do now you’re back?”

“No plans. I think I’ve had enough of barbarism for a bit. I might stay in London or Berlin or somewhere like that.”

“That’ll be nice. Make it London. We’ll have some parties like the old ones.”

“D’you know I’m not sure I shouldn’t find them a bit flat after the real thing. I went to a party at a place called Moshu…”

“Basil. Once and for all, we don’t want to hear travel experiences. Do try and remember.”

So they played happy families till ten, when Alastair said, “Have we had dinner?” and Sonia said, “No. Let’s.” Then they went out to a new cocktail club which Alastair had heard was cheap, and had lager beer and liver sandwiches; they proved to be very expensive.

Later Basil went round to see Angela Lyne, and Sonia as she undressed said to Alastair, “D’you know, deep down in my heart I’ve got a tiny fear that Basil is going to turn serious on us too.”

Evening in Matodi. Two Arab gentlemen, hand in hand, sauntered by the sea wall.

Among the dhows and nondescript craft in the harbour lay two smart launches manned by British and French sailors, for Azania had lately been mandated by the League of Nations as a joint protec-torate.

“They are always at work polishing the brass.”

“It must be very expensive. And they are building a new customs house.”

“And a police station and a fever hospital, a European club.”

“There are many new bungalows on the hills.”

“They are making a big field to play games in.”

“Every week they wash the streets with water. They take the children in the schools and scratch their arms to rub in poison. It makes them very ill.”

“They put a man in prison for overburdening his camel.”

“There is a Frenchman in charge at the post of-fice. He is always hot and in a great hurry.”

“They are building a black road through the hills to Debra-Dowa. The railway is to be removed.”

“Mr. Youkoumian has bought the rails and what 306 was left of the engines. He hopes to sell them in Eritrea.”

“Things were better in the time of Seth. It is no longer a gentleman’s country.”

The muezzin in the tower turned north towards Mekka and called azan over the city. The Arabs paused reverently and stood in silence… God is great… There is no God but God…. Ma-homet is the apostle of God….

A two-seater car whizzed by, driven by Mr. Reppington, the district magistrate. Mrs. Reppington sat beside him.

“The little bus took that nicely.”

Angelus from the mission church… gratia plena: dominus tecum; Benedicta tu in mulie-ribus…

The car left the town and mounted towards the hills.

“Phew. It’s a relief to get out into the fresh air.”

“Awful road. It ought to be finished by now. I get quite afraid for her back axle.”

“I said we’d drop into the Brethertons for a sundowner.”

“Right you are. Only we can’t stay long. We’re dining with the Lepperidges.”

A mile above the town they stopped at the second of six identical bungalows. Each had a verandah and a garden path; a slotted box on the gate-post for calling cards. The Brethertons were on the verandah.

“Cheerio, Mrs. Reppington. Cocktail?”

“Please.”

“And you, Reppington?”

“Chota peg.”

Bretherton was sanitary inspector and conse-quently of slightly inferior station to Reppington, but that year he would sit for his Arabic exam; if he brought it off it would make them level on the salary list.

“What son of day?”

“Oh, the usual. Just tooled round condemning native houses. How are things at the Fort?”

“Not so dusty. We settled that case I told you about. You know, the one of the natives who built a house in a broken lorry in the middle of the road.”

“Oh, ah. Who won it?”

“Oh, we gave it to the chap in possession on both counts. The Arab who originally owned the car was suing him. So were the Works Department—wanted to evict him because he blocked the traffic. They’ll have to make a new road round him now. They’re pretty fed up, I can tell you. So are the Frenchies.”

“Good show.”

“Yes, give the natives respect for British justice. Can’t make your Frenchy see that… Why, it’s later than I thought. We must be pushing along, old girl. You’re not dining with the Lepperidges by any chance?”

“No.”

The Brethertons were not on dining terms with the Lepperidges. He was O. C. of the native levy, seconded from India and a very considerable man in Matodi. He always referred to Bretherton as the “latrine wallah.”

So the Reppingtons went to dress in their bungalow (fifth of the row), she in black lace, he in white mess jacket. Punctually at 8.I5 they stepped across to the Lepperidges. There were five courses at din-ner, mostly from tins, and a glass dish in the centre of the table held floating flower heads. Mr. and Mrs. Grainger were there; Mr. Grainger was immigration officer. He said: “We’ve had rather a shari this afternoon about that fellow Connolly. You see, strictly speaking he can claim Azanian nationality. He seems to have been quite a big bug under the Emperor. Ran the army for him. Got made a Duke or something. Last sort of fellow one wants hanging about.”

“Quite.”

“Jungly Wallah. They say in the old days he had an affair with the wife of the French minister. That made the Frenchies anxious to get rid of him,”

“Quite. It helps if one can oblige them now and then in small things.”

“Besides, you know, he’s married to a wog. Well, I mean to say…”

“Quite.”

“But I think we’re going to get rid of him all right. Deport him D. B. S. He lost all his money in the revolution.”

“And the woman in the case?”

“Well, that’s no business of ours once we clear him out of here. They seem struck on each other all right. He’ll find it pretty awkward. Aren’t many places would have him. Abyssinia might. It was different when this place was independent.”

“Quite.”

“Jolly good tinned fruit salad, if you don’t mind my saying so, Mrs. Lepperidge.”

“So glad you like it. I got it from Youkoumian’s.”

“Useful little fellow, Youkoumian. I use him a lot. He’s getting me boots for the levy. Came to me himself with the idea. Said they pick up hookworm through going barefoot.”

“Good show.”

“Quite.”

Night over Matodi. English and French police patrolling the water-front. Gilbert and Sullivan played by gramophone in the Portuguese Fort.

Three little maids from school are we,

Pert as a schoolgirl well can be

Filled to the brim with girlish glee—

Three little maids from school.

The melody and the clear voices floated out over the harbour and the water lapping very gently on the sea-wall. Two British policemen marched abreast through the involved ways of the native quarter. The dogs had long ago been rounded up and painlessly put away. The streets were empty save for an occasional muffled figure, slipping by them silently with a lantern. The blank walls of the Arab tenements gave no sign of life.

On a tree by a river a little tomtit

Sang, ‘Willow, tit-willow, tit-willow!’

And I said to him, ‘Dicky bird, why do you sit

Singing: “Willow, tit-willow, tit-willow?” ‘

Mr. Youkoumian tactfully ejected his last customer and fastened the shutters of the caé. “Very sorry,” he said. “New regulation. No drinking after ten-thirty. I don’t want no bust-ups.”

‘it weakness of intellect, birdie?’ I cried, ‘Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?’

With a shake of his poor little head, he replied, ‘Oh, willow, tit-willow, tit-willow!’

The song rang clear over the dark city and the soft, barely perceptible lapping of the water along the sea-wall.

STONYHURST-CHAGFORD-MADRESFIELD.

Sept., 1931—May, 1932.

The End