have so large a party in the tunnel; so at last they brought torches, and there was no man alive on our side but the Black Officer, and he had a wall of corpses built up in front of him, and was fighting across it.  He had more light to see by than the French had, for it was dark behind him, and there would be some light on their side.  So at last they brought some combustibles and blew it 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 found?”

“No, sir—­though they searched high and low; they are not found, indeed, till this day.  It was thought the Black Officer had sold himself and twelve other men, sir.”