recognition on both sides was
instantaneous. Captain Tiburce Morisot--that was the Frenchman's
name--made another curious recognition of which I was a witness. I was
dining with him at the Hotel Misseri when there entered a big stalwart
fellow who sat down opposite to us. "I beg your pardon," said my
entertainer, speaking across the table, "but I think that you and I have
met before somewhere." "So I was thinking," the big man answered; "I was
trying to size you up in my own mind but I can't manage it." "Were you
ever in Africa?" the other asked him. "Yes," the big man answered, "I
spent some years there." "Big game shooting?" asked my host "Yes," said
the other. "Do you remember coming across a party of Frenchmen who
were cutting a military road?" He named the region, and the man who
was interrogated answered "Yes," he did remember it. "You brought a
giraffe's heart into the camp," said Morisot, "and asked leave to roast
it at our fire." "I did," the other answered, "and, by Jove! you're the
man who was in command of that party." They renewed their acquaintance
with a cordial handgrip, and clinked glasses together. The big
Englishman was Colonel Archibald Campbell, afterwards known as Schipka
Campbell, and there was a story told of these two, which is perhaps
worth relating. They went up to Schumla together, and there for week
after week they lived in a deadly monotony which was varied only by the
intrusion of an occasional shell, hurled by one of the Russian guns from
the other side of the river. "It's getting horribly dull here," said the
Frenchman one day. "Suppose we go and sit, by way of a change, on the
fortifications and get shelled at." The suggestion was probably made
in a purely humorous mood, but the Scotchman chose to appear to take it
seriously and said that it was a very good idea. In all likelihood the
answer was as humorously meant as the suggestion, but each carried on
the game with so much gravity that in the end they did actually go and
sit upon the glacis, where they smoked their pipes until such time as
a big shell burst between them, when the Frenchman hinted that they
had done enough for honour, and the pair leisurely withdrew. And here I
recall an experience of my own which befell me a year and a half later,
but may perhaps best be dealt with now. I had been elected to the Savage
Club, and one night I encountered there a number of old campaigning
men--newspaper correspondents, artists, and doctors