“Messiahs are most unsettling,” said Luttrell, “especially when they don’t come.  The tribe began sharpening its spear-heads a few weeks ago.  Then two of them got excited and killed.  That’s the consequence,” and he jerked his head towards the compound, from which the two friends were walking away.

Hillyard was to hear more of the matter an hour later, as they all sat at dinner in the mess-room.  There were thousands of the tribe, all in a ferment, and just half a battalion of Sudanese soldiers under Luttrell’s command to keep them in order.

“Blacker thinks we ought to have temporised, and that we shall get scuppered,” said Luttrell.  He was the one light-hearted man at that table, though he was staking his career, his life, and the life of the colony on the correctness of his judgment.  Sir Charles Hardiman would never have recognised in the man who now sat at the head of the mess table the young man who had been so torn by this and that discrimination in the cabin of his yacht at Stockholm.  There was something of the joyous savage about him now—­a type which England was to discover shortly in some strength amongst the young men who were to officer its armies.

“I don’t agree.  I have invited the chiefs to see justice done.  I am going to pitch them a speech myself from the scaffold—­cautionary tales for children, don’t you know—­and then, if old Fee-Fo-Fum with the mallet don’t get too excited and miss his stroke, everything will go like clockwork.”

Hillyard wondered how in the world he was going to deliver Stella Croyle’s message—­a flimsy thing of delicate sentimentality—­to this man concerned with life and death, and discharging his responsibilities according to the just rules of his race, without fear and without too much self-questioning.  Indeed, the Luttrell, Acting-Governor of Senga, was a more familiar figure to Hillyard than he would have been to Stella Croyle.  For he had shaken off, under the pressure of immediate work and immediate decisions, the thin and subtle emotions which were having their way with him two years before.  He had recaptured the high spirit of Oxford days, and was lit along his path by that clear flame.

But there were tact and discretion too, as Hillyard was to learn.  For Mr. Blacker still croaked at the other end of the table.

“It’s right and just and all that of course.  But you are taking too high a risk, Luttrell.”

The very silence at the table made it clear to Hillyard that Luttrell stood alone in his judgment.  But Luttrell only smiled and said: 

“Well, old man, since I disagree, the only course is to refer the whole problem to our honorary member.”

And at once every countenance lightened, and merriment began to flick and dance from one to other of that company like the beads on the surface of champagne.  Only Hillyard was mystified.

“Your honorary member!” he inquired.

Luttrell nodded solemnly, and raised his glass.