“Well, it’s a small world!” Dominey exclaimed.  “What brought you out here really—­lions or elephants?”

“Neither.”

“You mean to say that you’ve taken up this sort of political business just for its own sake, not for sport?”

“Entirely so.  I do not use a sporting rifle once a month, except for necessity.  I came to Africa for different reasons.”

Dominey drank deep of his hock and seltzer and leaned back, watching the fireflies rise above the tall-bladed grass, above the stumpy clumps of shrub, and hang like miniature stars in the clear, violet air.

“What a world!” he soliloquised.  “Siggy Devinter, Baron Von Ragastein, out here, slaving for God knows what, drilling niggers to fight God knows whom, a political machine, I suppose, future Governor-General of German Africa, eh?  You were always proud of your country, Devinter.”

“My country is a country to be proud of,” was the solemn reply.

“Well, you’re in earnest, anyhow,” Dominey continued, “in earnest about something.  And I—­well, it’s finished with me.  It would have been finished last night if I hadn’t seen the smoke from your fires, and I don’t much care—­that’s the trouble.  I go blundering on.  I suppose the end will come somehow, sometime—­Can I have some rum or whisky, Devinter—­I mean Von Ragastein—­Your Excellency—­or whatever I ought to say?  You see those wreaths of mist down by the river?  They’ll mean malaria for me unless I have spirits.”

“I have something better than either,” Von Ragastein replied.  “You shall give me your opinion of this.”

The orderly who stood behind his master’s chair, received a whispered order, disappeared into the commissariat hut and came back presently with a bottle at the sight of which the Englishman gasped.

“Napoleon!” he exclaimed.

“Just a few bottles I had sent to me,” his host explained.  “I am delighted to offer it to some one who will appreciate it.”

“By Jove, there’s no mistake about that!” Dominey declared, rolling it around in his glass.  “What a world!  I hadn’t eaten for thirty hours when I rolled up here last night, and drunk nothing but filthy water for days.  To-night, fricassee of chicken, white bread, cabinet hock and Napoleon brandy.  And to-morrow again—­well, who knows?  When do you move on, Von Ragastein?”

“Not for several days.”

“What the mischief do you find to do so far from headquarters, if you don’t shoot lions or elephants?” his guest asked curiously.

“If you really wish to know,” Von Ragastein replied, “I am annoying your political agents immensely by moving from place to place, collecting natives for drill.”

“But what do you want to drill them for?” Dominey persisted.  “I heard some time ago that you have four times as many natives under arms as we have.  You don’t want an army here.  You’re not likely to quarrel with us or the Portuguese.”