Waking up six hours later, Drake looked out upon a brown curtain of London fog.  The lamps were lit at the crossings in Trafalgar Square—­half-a-mile distant they seemed, opaque haloes about a pin’s point of flame, and people passing in the light of them loomed and vanished like the figures of a galanty-show.  From beneath rose the bustle of the streets, perceptible only to Drake, upon the fourth floor, as a subterranean rumble.  ‘London,’ he said to himself, ‘I live here,’ and laughed unappalled.  Listening to the clamour, he remembered a map, seen somewhere in a railway guide, a map of England with the foreign cables, tiny spider-threads spun to the four quarters and thickening to a solid column at Falmouth and Cromer, the world’s arteries, he liked to think, converging to its heart.

The notion of messages flashing hourly along these wires brought to mind the existence of the Meteor.  He sent out for a copy of each number which had appeared since he had begun his voyage, and commencing on the task whilst he was still at breakfast, read through every article written concerning the Boruwimi expedition.  He finished the last in the smoking-room shortly after one o’clock, and rose from his investigation with every appearance of relief.  From the first to the final paragraph, not so much as a mention of Gorley’s name!

The reason for his relief lay in a promise which he had sent to Gorley’s father, that he would suppress the trouble as far as he could; and Drake liked to keep his promises.

Gorley had come out to Matanga with a cloudy reputation winging close at his heels.  There were rumours of dishonesty in the office of a private bank in Kent; his name became a sign for silence, and you were allowed to infer that Gorley’s relatives had made good the deficit and so avoided a criminal prosecution.  It was not surprising, then, that Gorley, on hearing of Drake’s intended march to Boruwimi, should wish to take service under his command.  He called upon Drake with that request, was confronted with the current story, and invited to disprove it.  Gorley read his man shrewdly, and confessed the truth of the charge without an attempt at mitigation.  He asked frankly for a place in the troop, the lowest, as his chance of redemption, or rather demanded it as a grace due from man to man.  Drake was taken by his manner, noticed his build, which was tough and wiry, and conceded the request.  Nor had he reason to regret his decision on the march out.  Gorley showed himself alert, and vigilant, a favourite with the blacks, and obedient to his officers.  He was advanced from duty to duty; a week before the force began its homeward march from Boruwimi he was sent out with a body of men to forage for provisions.  Three days later a solitary negro rushed into camp, one of the few survivors of his tribe, he said.  He told a story of food freely given, a village plundered and burned for thanks, of gold-dust stolen and the owners murdered that they might the better hold their tongues.  He signified Gorley as the culprit.  Drake, guided by the negro, marched towards the spot.  He met Gorley and his company half-way between Boruwimi and the village, carried him along with him, and proved the story true.  Against Gorley’s troops no charge could be sustained; they had only obeyed orders.  But Gorley he court-martialled, and the result has been described.