he cried, and the shikari turned with his companion
and came back.

"It is the postman," he said as though the delivery of letters along the
Dinder River were the most commonplace of events.

"The postman!" cried Hillyard. "What in the world do you mean?"

"Yes," Hamet explained. "He carries letters between Abyssinia and Senga
on the Blue Nile. He is now on his way back to Abyssinia."

"But how long does it take him?" Hillyard asked in amazement.

"He goes and returns once a year. The journey takes him four months each
way unless he meets with a party shooting. Then it takes longer for he
goes with the party to get meat."

Hillyard stared at the Arab in amazement. He was a lean slip of a man,
almost as black as a negro, with his hair running back above the
temples, and legs like walking-sticks. He stood wreathed in smiles and
nodding confirmation of Hamet's words. But to Hillyard, with the
emotions of the dark hour just past still shivering about him, he seemed
something out of nature. Hillyard leaned from his donkey and took the
carbine from the postman's hand. It was an ancient thing of Spanish
manufacture, heavy as a pig of lead.

"But this can't be of any use," he cried. "Is the man never attacked?"

Hamet talked with the Arab in a dialect Hillyard did not understand at
all; and interpreted the conversation.

"No. He has only once fired his rifle. One night--oh, a long way farther
to the south--he waked up to see an elephant fighting his little donkey
in the moonlight and he fired his rifle and the elephant ran away. You
must know that all these little Korans he carries on his arms and round
his neck have been specially blessed by a most holy man."

The postman's shoulders, elbows, wrists and neck were circled about by
chaplets on which little wooden Korans were strung. He fingered them and
counted them, smiling like a woman displaying her jewels to her less
fortunate friends.

"So he is safe," continued Hamet. "Yes, he will even have his picture
taken. Yes, he can afford to suffer that. He will stand in front of the
great eye and the machine shall go click, and it will not do him any
harm at all. He has a letter for you." Hamet dropped from his enthusiasm
over the wonderful immunity of the postman from the dangers of
photography into a most matter-of-fact voice.

"A letter for me? That's impossible," cried Hillyard.

But the Arab was thrusting his hand here and there in the load on the
donkey's back