iers carried to accelerate the speed of
their charges.

About three hundred prisoners who had been housed in six prisons at the
post marched out of the gates that morning, toward what fate and what
future I could not guess. Neither had the poor devils themselves more
than the most vague conception of what lay in store for them, except
that they were going elsewhere to continue in the slavery that they had
known since their capture by their black conquerors--a slavery that was
to continue until death released them.

My position was altered at the post. From working about the
headquarters office, I was transferred to the colonel's living
quarters. I had greater freedom, and no longer slept in one of the
prisons, but had a little room to myself off the kitchen of the
colonel's log house.

My master was always kind to me, and under him I rapidly learned the
language of my captors, and much concerning them that had been a
mystery to me before. His name was Abu Belik. He was a colonel in the
cavalry of Abyssinia, a country of which I do not remember ever
hearing, but which Colonel Belik assured me is the oldest civilized
country in the world.

Colonel Belik was born in Adis Abeba, the capital of the empire, and
until recently had been in command of the emperor's palace guard.
Jealousy and the ambition and intrigue of another officer had lost him
the favor of his emperor, and he had been detailed to this frontier
post as a mark of his sovereign's displeasure.

Some fifty years before, the young emperor, Menelek XIV, was ambitious.
He knew that a great world lay across the waters far to the north of
his capital. Once he had crossed the desert and looked out upon the
blue sea that was the northern boundary of his dominions.

There lay another world to conquer. Menelek busied himself with the
building of a great fleet, though his people were not a maritime race.
His army crossed into Europe. It met with little resistance, and for
fifty years his soldiers had been pushing his boundaries farther and
farther toward the north.

"The yellow men from the east and north are contesting our rights here
now," said the colonel, "but we shall win--we shall conquer the world,
carrying Christianity to all the benighted heathen of Europe, and Asia
as well."

"You are a Christian people?" I asked.

He looked at me in surprise, nodding his head affirmatively.

"I am a Christian," I said. "My people are the most powerful on e