mere act of punishment, there were many instances of coolness and bravery.  One man got detached from the rest, and suddenly found himself confronted by eight of the enemy.  In an instant his horse was shot under him, but almost in the same instant he was standing in front of the eight with his rifle to his shoulder.  Before they could close on him with their knobkerries and assegais, or before they could shoot him down, he had used his magazine fire with such deadly effect that four of his enemy were dead and the other four were sprinting for dear life.  Baden-Powell had two pretty adventures in this engagement.  Having emptied his Colt’s repeater, he threw it carefully under a peculiar tree, so that he might find it when business was done; then he went to work with his revolver.  As he rode forward he came upon an open stretch of ground, and the first object that struck his attention was a well-knit Kaffir on one knee covering his body with a Martini-Henry.  The distance was about eighty yards, and Baden-Powell, telling the story, says that he felt so indignant at the fellow’s rudeness that he rode at him as hard as he could gallop, calling him every name under the sun.  But the Kaffir was not to be moved even by the best-bred abuse, and he remained kneeling with the rifle pointed at B.-P., until that horseman, with locked jaws and gleaming eyes (those who know him will understand), was only ten yards off.  Then he fired, and B.-P. says he felt quite relieved “when I realised he had clean missed me.”  That nigger was shot immediately afterwards by one of Baden-Powell’s men, who was riding to his help from behind.

The other close shave will make the nervous turn cold to think of it.  B.-P. had ridden to the help of two men kept at bay by a nigger under a tree, and when the nigger had been killed, he was standing for a moment under the tree, when something moving above him made him look up.  It was a gun-barrel taking aim at him.  The man behind the gun, standing on a branch, was so jammed against the trunk of the tree as to look part of it, and while B.-P. was making a note of this fact for his next lecture on scouting, bang went the gun, and the ground in front of his toes was as if a small earthquake had struck it.  That nigger’s knobkerrie and photograph are now in the Baden-Powell museum—­a museum which began with butterflies and birds’ eggs, and now includes mementos of nearly every tribe and animal on the face of the earth.

After the fight Baden-Powell got back to Buluwayo in time for late lunch, and—­“made up for lost time in the office.”  From now it was a case of office for many weary weeks, and Baden-Powell could only at rare intervals steal away for exercise, which he took in the form of hard scouting, sometimes by himself, sometimes with Burnham—­“a most delightful companion.”  His rides with the famous American gave him great pleasure, and each man, both born scouts, learned something from the other.  While he was enjoying these expeditions