all up. Three days after that
we took the town. Some of our soldiers were sent to dig out the tunnel,
and with them was Shamus Mackenzie."

"And they never found the Black Officer," I said, thinking of young
Campbell in Sekukoeni's fighting koppie.

"Oh, yes," said the boatman, "Shamus found the body of the Black Officer,
all black with smoke, and he laid him down on a green knoll, and was
standing over the dead man, and was thinking of how many places they had
been in together, and of his own country, and how he wished he was there
again. Then the dead man's face moved.

"Shamus turned and ran for his life, and he was running till he met some
officers, and he told them that the Black Officer's body had stirred.
They thought he was lying, but they went off to the place, and one of
them had the thought to take a flask of brandy in his pocket. When they
came to the lifeless body it stirred again, and with one thing and
another they brought him round.

"The Black Officer was not himself again for long, and they took him home
to his own country, and he lay in bed in his house. And every day a red
deer would come to the house, and go into his room and sit on a chair
beside the bed, speaking to him like a man.

"Well, the Black Officer got better again, and went about among his
friends; and once he was driving home from a dinner-party, and Shamus was
with him. It was just the last night of the hundred. And on the road
they met a man, and Shamus knew him--for it was him they had seen by the
fire on the march, as I told you at the beginning. The Black Officer got
down from his carriage and joined the man, and they walked a bit apart;
but Shamus--he was so curious--whatever happened he must see them. And
he came within hearing just as they were parting, and he heard the
stranger say, 'This is the night.'

"'No,' said the Black Officer, 'this night next year.'

"So he came back, and they drove home. A year went by, and the Black
Officer was seeking through the country for the twelve best men he could
find to accompany him to some deer-hunt or the like. And he asked
Shamus, but he pretended he was ill--Oh, he was very unwell!--and he
could not go, but stayed in bed at home. So the Black Officer chose
another man, and he and the twelve set out--the thirteen of them. But
they were never seen again."

"Never seen again? Were they lost in the snow?"

"It did come on a heavy fall, sir."

"But their bodies were