Luttrell was rehearsing a speech, but why? And what had the Sudanese
with the mallet to do with it?

A sudden and rapid sequence of events brought the truth home to him with
a shock. At a point of his speech Luttrell stamped twice, and the
Sudanese soldier swung his mallet with all his force. The head of it
struck the great support full and square. The beam jumped from its
position, hopped once on its end, and fell with a crash. And from above
there mingled with the crash a most horrid clang, for, with the removal
of the beam, two trap-doors swung downwards. Hillyard looked up; he saw
the stars, and something falling. Instinctively he stepped back and shut
his eyes. When he looked again, within the chamber, midway between the
floor and roof, two sacks dangling at the end of two ropes spun and
jerked--as though they lived.

Rayne had stepped back and stood quivering from head to foot by
Hillyard's side; Hillyard himself felt sick. He knew very well now what
he was witnessing--the rehearsal of an execution. The Sudanese soldiers
were grinning from ear to ear with delight and pride. The one person
quite unmoved was Harry Luttrell, whose ingenuity had invented the
device.

"Let it be done just so," he said to the soldiers. "I shall not forgive
a mistake."

They saluted, and he dismissed them and turned at last to Martin
Hillyard.

"It's good to see you again," he said, as he shook hands; and then he
looked sharply into Hillyard's face and laughed. "Shook you up a bit,
that performance, eh? Well, they bungled things in Khartum a little
while ago. I can't afford awkwardness here."

Senga was in the centre of that old Khalifa's tribe which not so many
years ago ruled in Omdurman. It was always restless, always on the
look-out for a Messiah.

"Messiahs are most unsettling," said Luttrell, "especially when they
don't come. The tribe began sharpening its spear-heads a few weeks ago.
Then two of them got excited and killed. That's the consequence," and he
jerked his head towards the compound, from which the two friends were
walking away.

Hillyard was to hear more of the matter an hour later, as they all sat
at dinner in the mess-room. There were thousands of the tribe, all in a
ferment, and just half a battalion of Sudanese soldiers under Luttrell's
command to keep them in order.

"Blacker thinks we ought to have temporised, and that we shall get
scuppered," said Luttrell. He was the one light-hearted man at that
tab