“No need to tell him that!” Fred objected.  But Will was watching my face keenly, and went on.

“Schubert asked him who was to say whether you are dead or not.  What d’you suppose the answer was?”

Fred objected again, but Will waved him aside.

“The answer he gave Schubert was:  ’Once he is covered with two meters of earth, I shall not hesitate to sign a certificate!’—­So now you know what to expect!”

Will smiled as he watched me.  His face was as keen and calm as Fred’s was troubled.

“Take more than his guesswork to put you where he’d like to have you—­eh?” he laughed.  And I sat up.

Fred began to grin too.  “You were right, Will!” he admitted.

It was not anger that swept over me and gave me new strength.  Anger, I think, would have hastened the end.  It was sudden recognition of my own superiority to the devils who knew so little mercy.  It was simple inability in the last recourse to admit myself able to be their victim.  Even my leg felt better.  I demanded food; and by the time they returned from their morning march around the township I had made my boy dress me and was sitting up.

We dated the turn of the tide of our fortunes from that hour.  Certainly from that day we began to prosper—­at first gradually, but after a while in the old swift way that had made all our ventures with Monty such amazingly amusing work

We saw the chain-gang—­Kazimoto last, with a shovel over his shoulder—­march away at noon to dig me a grave in the sand close to where they burned the township refuse.  Fred and Will went and watched them a while, contriving to slip a paper of snuff into Kazimoto’s hand while he rested and let the pick-men labor. (Snuff to a Nyamwezi is as comforting as an old sweet pipe to nine white men out of ten.)

When Schubert came that evening at five with an old sack to put my body in, and plenty of askaris to help decide disputes, I was standing up.  He could not very well make even himself believe that a man who could speak and walk was dead, but he could be immensely enraged by what he was pleased to call my schweinspiel.* He cursed me in every language he knew, including several native ones, and ended by threatening to make sure of me before going to so much trouble a second time. [Literally, pig-play.]

We enraged him still further by laughing at him, and Fred got out his concertina that for many days past had lain idle.  The first few notes of it made me realize more than any other thing could have done what depths of despondency we must have plumbed, for hitherto, for as long as I had known Fred, he had always been able with that weird instrument of his to rouse his own spirits and so stir the rest of us.  He resumed old habits now, and gloom departed.