d
everything turned black.

The rolling thunder recalled to him the thunder of the Mambava drums at
the Dances of the Moon; and in the darkness he remembered the voice of
Muene-Motapa pleading with him to cast off the old, to become a new
man, to return amid the black forebears of mankind, kill hope and even
conscience, forget and be at peace. In the turmoil of the storm around
the fort and in his breast he even seemed to see the king in apparition
before him, and to hear the words:

"Consent, Bangana. Consent."

"Bah! as if anything in life were worth all this. All sound and fury;
all pompous silliness like this storm. Presently there will not be an
echo or a trace of it."

He found the door, burst out into the corridor, then walked sedately
under the flickering lamps toward the commandant's rooms. That
yellow-visaged man jumped up from behind his desk, stammering:

"Yes, it's dinner time."

The candles on the dinner table jarred at the peals of thunder; but
Lawrence Teck sat impassive. Toward the end of the meal he vouchsafed:

"Have you reported my showing up?"

"I was going to put it on the wire to-morrow morning."

"If it could be arranged I should like to precede the news to America."

The commandant, without knowing why, felt a touch of alarm.

"Then I'll send my report direct to the governor, and mark it
confidential at your request."

That night the commandant, lying under his mosquito net, wakeful from
prickly heat, was haunted by the face of Lawrence Teck. "She must be
very beautiful," he sighed. "Why didn't they print her picture?" And
he occupied himself with trying to imagine what she looked like.

By the time he was falling asleep he had decided that she must have
yellow hair and large, blue eyes. Just as he dozed off he had a
ravishing impression of her--a composite of an Austrian arch-duchess,
whose likeness he had admired in a periodical, and a Neapolitan singer
who had overwhelmed him in a music hall at home, long ago, when the
world had seemed a place stored with love, fame, and wealth, instead of
with prickly heat, malaria, and shiny, black faces.

"My angel!" breathed the poor commandant of Fort Pero d'Anhaya,
sleeping for the first time in many a night with an infantile smile on
his countenance that suggested a half-deflated balloon.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Hamoud, wearing the blue robe edged with gold embroidery, and carrying
in his right hand the Venetian goblet, was