["The Rear Column"] is based on a historical episode. In the late eighteen-eighties, Henry M. Stanley, the explorer of the Congo, led an expedition to relieve one Emin Pasha … in the Sudan. Stanley's officers were British volunteers, and he left a column commanded by two of them—a Major Barttelot and a civilian named Jameson—behind at a camp in the Congo jungle, to wait for a promised contingent of porters. Three other officers, on their way to join Stanley … stopped off at the camp for supplies, as they had been instructed to do, but Barttelot was so furious at Stanley for abandoning him that he refused to give them any without specific written permission; unable to go forward, they were forced to remain at the camp. I set forth all this history and name all these characters, who actually lived, to demonstrate that, although it rarely occurs...