tured Muanza, I suppose,' I
said rather skeptically. 'Well, we might have killed a lot of
Germans, sir, and done a lot of good. But our captain's too
cautious altogether.'

'It's possible,' I said. 'She may have meant to give us the tip,'
he went on. 'I don't think it's likely, but you may be right,' I
said with some detachment. The notion of Our Lady illuminating
the lake that she might give us the tip to kill Germans was not
so very convincing. I'm afraid I choked off the surmiser a bit
with my Tolstoyite incredulity. He drew in his horns there and
then; he confided none of his views to me again on similar
subjects. He was to die at sea a year or so after. They had got
him on to a ship from an island hospital, but he never reached
the South African port they had shipped him for. I am glad now to
think of his faith in Our Lady, Our Lady good at need.

It was before he went down to the coast, that we advanced and
took a great island renowned for its rice commerce. Then the day
came only a month or so after that our troops marched into
Muanza. The main body of its German defenders had steamed away
down that land-locked sound of theirs a little while before. We
had not stormed the place from the lake after all, we had arrived
by a back-door road among the kopjes. Yet there we were at last.
It seemed curious to be in the place that I had peered at
apprehensively on patrol. How mysterious its lights and its
harbor had looked from a darkened bridge or a deck of old. Now I
went to and fro in the glaring Boma square, climbed the road
among the rocks to the Fort Hospital with the tower and its dummy
guns, patrolled the palm-tree promenade where no band played, but
lake-water provided placid music much more to my taste than that
of drums and brass.

It was in the church above the bay, the church of the White
Fathers, that I came upon my sequel, or at least what looks like
the earthly sequel of my story. Afterwards, of course, I may hear
much more. The White Father I had gone to see, took me into the
church one morning and showed me Our Lady's altar. Over it was an
altar-piece of familiar design I think it represented Our Lady of
Good Counsel, but I am not sure. In front votive candles blazed,
in very creditable profusion for those hard times surely. A
silver star with about two-inch points caught my eye. There were
other stars hung there too, much less conspicuous ones. There
were also two or three little models of dhows o