Harley Greenoak sat smoking a pipe in the one living-room of the Commandant’s modest little bungalow. It was night. The only other occupant of the room was its owner; and he was moving tranquilly about arranging his “specimens,” dividing his attention about evenly between these and the subject of conversation. Yet the latter was weighty with the issues of life and death.

“If things go as you say, Greenoak,” he was observing, “we haven’t a man too many; either here, or over the Kei, or indeed along the whole frontier. Yet, look how my hands are tied. You know, I was always against allowing those burgher forces to go home, at any rate until a sufficiently equivalent force had been raised to supply their place. I am hampered at every turn, and if it wasn’t that I believe we are only at the beginning of our troubles instead of the end, I’d resign.”

“Don’t do that, Commandant, if only that it would be a precious difficult thing to supply yours,” answered Greenoak.

“I advised what should be done, and that was to make a quick and secret march, and arrest Sandili and Matanzima, together with some half-dozen more mischievous of the amapakati whom we know, and promise to hang the lot on the first outbreak among their people. When I put it to the Government I was forbidden to move. You know the rest.”

Greenoak nodded. The other went on—

“Look what came of bagging those other two, Vunisa and Pahlandhle. Their Reserve has been fairly well behaved ever since. We can’t hang them because the Gcalekas are an independent nation, but their people don’t know we can’t, and so are behaving themselves for fear we should. But the Colonial tribes are British subjects, and therefore rebels if they begin the row, so there’d be no ‘prisoner of war’ treatment for them. By the way, what has become of that hair-brained young dare-devil who helped us to grab them? I don’t seem to have seen him about lately.”

“Dick Selmes? Oh, he’s being taken care of,” answered Greenoak, drily. “He’s over at Waybridge’s farm. He’s got an attraction there.”

“H’m. Well, but if you start on this undertaking you’ll have to leave him to himself for a while. And you’re his bear-leader.”

“He won’t object to that,” laughed Greenoak. “And he seems by this time to be uncommonly well able to take care of himself.”

“So I should think. And I always thought you kept him quite enough in leading-strings. No, it’s no good. I can’t satisfactorily locate this beast even now,” bringing to the light a small wooden box from which he had just removed the lid, and which contained the identical specimen of the lizard tribe which we saw him puzzling over in the small hours of the morning which had witnessed the attack on the Kangala camp. “I didn’t bring the right book. I shall have to wait until I get back to my library.”

King Williamstown was the official headquarters of the F.A.M. Police, and there the Commandant owned a roomy and commodious bungalow, which contained a varied library, well stocked with standard works dealing with his favourite science.

Now he replaced the box and went over to the window. It was open, but the blind was down. This he pulled up and stood gazing meditatively out into the night, as though to penetrate darkness and space to where the plotting chiefs were even then arranging for the wave of steel and torch which should presently sweep the land. In good sooth he might well feel anxious. He was a singularly observant and keen-minded man, with a cool, matter-of-course courage that would stick at nothing once his judgment had commended any given line of action as necessary. He had consistently maintained that, given a free hand, he would have guaranteed there should have been no outbreak at all in the first instance; when such had befallen, he was confident of his power to stem it, but again he was hampered by official orders and counter orders. And now, when the most dangerous outbreak of all was imminent, once again Red Tape wriggled its way in.

Greenoak, seated back in his armchair, refilled and lit his pipe in silence. He too was busy with his own thoughts, and forebore to interrupt those of his friend. These two men, who understood each other so well, were both of the concentrative order of mind, and when there was anything of importance to be thought out, they thought it out thoroughly, and round and round. Here there was something very important indeed, an enterprise which held out to Harley Greenoak quite as big a chance of losing his life as any he had ever taken. But that was not what engaged his attention for the most part. It was the chance of failure, and all that such would involve. The Commandant’s favourite dogs, two beautiful black spaniels, which had just leaped in through the open window, came frisking up to him, wagging their tails, and whining for notice. Mechanically his hand passed over each glossy head, and still there was silence between the two men. Then the Commandant shut down the window and turned into the room again.

“Well, Greenoak, if any other man was bound on this errand, I should say it would be useless. But yourself—”

“I shall feel the pulse of the locations anyway, and can gauge pretty accurately whether the farmers who are still sticking to their places ought to leave. I’ll have a good talk with Matanzima.”

“Not Sandili?”

“Sheer waste of time. He’d be too drunk.”

“You may find a difficulty in getting away. In any case, you’ll be shadowed at every step.”

Greenoak laughed drily as he toyed with the spaniels’ ears.

“I don’t want to brag,” he said, “but we’ve known each other a long time. Did you ever know me ‘shadowed’ to any purpose by any one I didn’t intend should shadow me?”

“No, I can’t say I did. I don’t believe any one ever did.”

“Well, it happened once—not long ago either. And who the dickens do you think succeeded in doing it?”

“Who?”

“Our young friend, Dick Selmes. No more, no less.” And he told the other, briefly, of his enterprise in Slaang Kloof.

“Well, that doesn’t count, for of course he guessed where you were bound for, and the distance and surroundings were so trifling that there was no opportunity of throwing him off the scent. Here, of course, it’s different. You’re a wonderful fellow, Greenoak, but I don’t know why your glass has been standing empty so long. Here. Fill up.”

Several glasses already used, and a large but more than half-emptied decanter on the table—item a good deal of tobacco ash, pointed to the fact that some of the Police officers and an outside friend or two had been spending the evening with the Commandant. The latter now charged his glass, and pushed the excellent Boer brandy—whisky was hardly known on the frontier in those days—over to Greenoak.

“We’ll drink success, at any rate,” he said, “to the ‘secret service’ department............