ved to have your own way.'

Miss Le Mesurier's foot tapped under the table.

'Of course,' she said, with a withering shrug of her shoulders, 'that's
wit, Mr. Fielding.' Repartee was not her strong point.

'No,' he replied, 'merely rudeness. And what's the use of being a
privileged friend of the family if you can't be rude?'

Drake came to the rescue. 'Mr. Le Mesurier is quite right,' said he.
'Incidents of the kind I mentioned are best left untold.'

'I don't doubt it,' said Fielding. 'A man loses all sight of humanitarian
principles the moment he's beyond view of a fireside.'

'Oh, does he?' replied Drake. 'The man by the fireside is apt to confuse
sentiment with humanitarian principles; and sentiment, I admit, you have
to get rid of when you find yourself surrounded with savages.'

'Exactly! You become assimilated with the savages, and retain only one
link between yourself and civilisation.'

'And that link?'

'Is a Maxim gun.'

'My dear fellow, that's nonsense,' Drake answered in some heat. 'It's
easy enough to sit here and discuss humanitarian principles, but you need
a pretty accurate knowledge of what they are, and what they are not,
before you begin to apply them recklessly beyond the reach of
civilisation. When I went first to Africa, I stayed for a time at
Pretoria, and from Pretoria I went north in a pioneer company. You want
to have been engaged in an expedition of that kind to quite appreciate
what it means. We were on short rations a good part of the time, with a
fair prospect of absolute starvation ahead, and doing forced marches all
the while. When we camped of an evening, I have seen men who had eaten
nothing since breakfast, and little enough then, just slip the saddles
from the horses, and go fast asleep under the nearest tree, without
bothering about their supper. Then, perhaps, an officer would shake them
up, and they'd have to go collecting brushwood for fires. That's a pretty
bad business in the dark, when you're dead tired with the day's tramp.
You don't much care whether you pick up a snake or a stick of wood. I
remember, too,' and he gave a laugh at the recollection, 'we used to be
allowed about a thimbleful of brandy a day. Well, I have noticed men walk
twenty yards away from the camps to drink their tot, for fear some one
might jog their elbows. And it was only one mouthful after all--you
didn't need to water it. Altogether, that kind of expedition would be
something considerably mo