wards, and stokers from the ships,
gangers and navvies from the railways, ne'er-do-wells of all
descriptions, with but here and there an old "river digger," or genuine
prospector to leaven the lump.

Added to his stubborn and uncompromising honesty, Dick possessed
another trait which severely handicapped him in this German-governed
dust-hole of creation, in that he was uncompromisingly British, and
took no pains to conceal the fact; and here in Luderitzbucht the
arrogance of the German officials, and the way in which they boasted of
Their Army, and Their Kaiser, and Their Beer, and Their Sauerkraut,
and, in short, of every product of their whole blamed Fatherland,
exasperated Dick to a degree. Though not very big, he was a bundle of
muscle and sinew, and already he had been fined heavily for making a
mess of one or two spread-eagled Teutons who had been unwise enough to
mistake his quiet manner for timidity.

Dick strolled back over the low-lying sand-dunes to the little
township, where lights were already twinkling in the stores and beer-
halls; and, passing the largest of these, he suddenly realized that he
was thirsty, and, momentarily forgetting the state of his finance, he
turned into the bar for a bottle of beer. The brightly-lit room was
full of people, naturally mostly Germans, who, whilst imbibing vast
quantities of their national beverage, were singing, bragging and
swearing at the top of their voices, and after the manner of their
kind. At the farther end of the room a big corpulent swashbuckler was
holding forth loudly to a circle of admiring cronies; his peroration
was an introduction to a toast; that toast was "To the Day!"

Dick had heard it frequently of late; in fact, wherever Germans and
beer came together, that toast was being drank at the time.

"The Day!" . . . Dick, and every other Britisher knew what "Day" was
meant, and as a rule took but little notice of these fire-eating gas-
bags; anyway, though he understood German, he spoke it but little. And
so he stood quietly imbibing his bottle of beer whilst Bombastus
Furiosis still held forth. His quiet attitude evidently misled the
orator, whose guttural German became mixed with quite enough English to
make his remarks perfectly understandable to the few Britishers amongst
the crowd.

Boasting and bragging, and with his discourse liberally garnished with
"Donner-wetters," and such-like meteorological expressions dear to the
Teuton, this big chap