keys were usually picketed between the two tents in a long
line. He also told us the ten men had five Mauser rifles between them,
in addition to the German's own battery of three guns, one of which he
carried all day and kept beside his bed at night; the other two were
carried behind him in the daytime by a gun-bearer.

That was good news on the whole. Coutlass went out on the strength of
it and began to drink beer from the big earthenware crock in which the
women had just brewed a fresh supply. Brown joined him within five
minutes, and at the end of an hour, they were swearing everlasting
friendship, Coutlass promising Brown his cattle back, and Brown
assuring him that Greece and the Greeks had always held his warmest
possible regards.

"Thermopylae, y'know, old boy, an' Marathon, an' all that kind o'
thing! How many miles in a day could a Greek run in them days? Gosh!"

They two drank themselves to sleep among the gentle cattle in the
circular enclosure in the midst of the village, and we--going out in
turns at intervals to make sure our own boys were not drinking--matured
our plans in peace.

We were too few to dare undertake the task in front of us without the
aid of Brown and the Greek. It was a case of who was not against us
must be for us, and the end must justify both men and means. We tried
to work out ways of managing without them, but when we thought of our
Baganda prisoner, and the almost certainty that both he and Coutlass
would race to give our game away to Schillingschen if let out of sight
for a minute, the necessity of making the best, not the worst, of the
Greek seemed overwhelming.

Early next morning, before the village had awakened from its glut of
beer and hippo meat, we shook Coutlass and Brown to their feet none too
gently, and, with the Baganda firmly secured by the wrists between two
of our men, started off, Fred leading.

The village awoke as if by magic before we had dragged away the thorns
from the gate, and the chief leaped to the realization that the beads
he had promised his women were about as concrete as his drunken dreams.
He and a swarm of his younger men followed us, begging and
arguing--mile after mile--growing angrier and more importunate. It was
by my advice that we crossed the stream into the sleeping sickness zone
and left them shuddering on their own side. Our own men did not know
so much about the ravages of that plague, and in any case were willing
to dare wha