‘I will,’ said Fielding.  ’In fact, I meant you to ask me to.  I laughed, because I notice that whenever you are particularly obedient to Papa, then you are particularly resolved to have your own way.’

Miss Le Mesurier’s foot tapped under the table.

‘Of course,’ she said, with a withering shrug of her shoulders, ’that’s wit, Mr. Fielding.’  Repartee was not her strong point.

‘No,’ he replied, ’merely rudeness.  And what’s the use of being a privileged friend of the family if you can’t be rude?’

Drake came to the rescue.  ‘Mr. Le Mesurier is quite right,’ said he.  ‘Incidents of the kind I mentioned are best left untold.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Fielding.  ’A man loses all sight of humanitarian principles the moment he’s beyond view of a fireside.’

‘Oh, does he?’ replied Drake.  ’The man by the fireside is apt to confuse sentiment with humanitarian principles; and sentiment, I admit, you have to get rid of when you find yourself surrounded with savages.’

’Exactly!  You become assimilated with the savages, and retain only one link between yourself and civilisation.’

‘And that link?’

‘Is a Maxim gun.’

‘My dear fellow, that’s nonsense,’ Drake answered in some heat.  ’It’s easy enough to sit here and discuss humanitarian principles, but you need a pretty accurate knowledge of what they are, and what they are not, before you begin to apply them recklessly beyond the reach of civilisation.  When I went first to Africa, I stayed for a time at Pretoria, and from Pretoria I went north in a pioneer company.  You want to have been engaged in an expedition of that kind to quite appreciate what it means.  We were on short rations a good part of the time, with a fair prospect of absolute starvation ahead, and doing forced marches all the while.  When we camped of an evening, I have seen men who had eaten nothing since breakfast, and little enough then, just slip the saddles from the horses, and go fast asleep under the nearest tree, without bothering about their supper.  Then, perhaps, an officer would shake them up, and they’d have to go collecting brushwood for fires.  That’s a pretty bad business in the dark, when you’re dead tired with the day’s tramp.  You don’t much care whether you pick up a snake or a stick of wood.  I remember, too,’ and he gave a laugh at the recollection, ’we used to be allowed about a thimbleful of brandy a day.  Well, I have noticed men walk twenty yards away from the camps to drink their tot, for fear some one might jog their elbows.  And it was only one mouthful after all—­you didn’t need to water it.  Altogether, that kind of expedition would be something considerably more than an average strain upon a man’s endurance, if it was led through a friendly country.  But add to your difficulties the continual presence of an enemy, outnumbering you incalculably, always on the alert for you to slacken discipline for a second,