at you are a liar,' he growled.

I pulled the bed-cover round me, for I was shivering with cold, and the
German idea of a towel is a pocket-handkerchief. I own I was in a
pretty blue funk.

'A liar!' he repeated. 'You and that swine Pienaar.'

With my best effort at surliness I asked what we had done.

'You lied, because you said you know no German. Apparently your friend
knows enough to talk treason and blasphemy.'

This gave me back some heart.

'I told you I knew a dozen words. But I told you Peter could talk it a
bit. I told you that yesterday at the station.' Fervently I blessed
my luck for that casual remark.

He evidently remembered, for his tone became a trifle more civil.

'You are a precious pair. If one of you is a scoundrel, why not the
other?'

'I take no responsibility for Peter,' I said. I felt I was a cad in
saying it, but that was the bargain we had made at the start. 'I have
known him for years as a great hunter and a brave man. I knew he
fought well against the English. But more I cannot tell you. You have
to judge him for yourself. What has he done?'

I was told, for Stumm had got it that morning on the telephone. While
telling it he was kind enough to allow me to put on my trousers.

It was just the sort of thing I might have foreseen. Peter, left
alone, had become first bored and then reckless. He had persuaded the
lieutenant to take him out to supper at a big Berlin restaurant. There,
inspired by the lights and music--novel things for a backveld
hunter--and no doubt bored stiff by his company, he had proceeded to
get drunk. That had happened in my experience with Peter about once in
every three years, and it always happened for the same reason. Peter,
bored and solitary in a town, went on the spree. He had a head like a
rock, but he got to the required condition by wild mixing. He was
quite a gentleman in his cups, and not in the least violent, but he was
apt to be very free with his tongue. And that was what occurred at the
Franciscana.

He had begun by insulting the Emperor, it seemed. He drank his health,
but said he reminded him of a wart-hog, and thereby scarified the
lieutenant's soul. Then an officer--some tremendous swell at an
adjoining table had objected to his talking so loud, and Peter had
replied insolently in respectable German. After that things became
mixed. There was some kind of a fight, during which Peter calumniated
the German army and all