Then McVeigh cursed.

“What I contended all along—­the house-boys are not to be trusted.”

“It does look serious,” Harriwell admitted, “but we’ll come through it all right.  What the sanguinary niggers need is a shaking up.  Will you gentlemen please bring your rifles to dinner, and will you, Mr. Brown, kindly prepare forty or fifty sticks of dynamite.  Make the fuses good and short.  We’ll give them a lesson.  And now, gentlemen, dinner is served.”

One thing that Bertie detested was rice and curry, so it happened that he alone partook of an inviting omelet.  He had quite finished his plate, when Harriwell helped himself to the omelet.  One mouthful, he tasted, then spat out vociferously.

“That’s the second time,” McTavish announced ominously.

Harriwell was still hawking and spitting.

“Second time, what?” Bertie quavered.

“Poison,” was the answer.  “That cook will be hanged yet.”

“That’s the way the bookkeeper went out at Cape Marsh,” Brown spoke up.  “Died horribly.  They said on the Jessie that they heard him screaming three miles away.”

“I’ll put the cook in irons,” sputtered Harriwell.  “Fortunately we discovered it in time.”

Bertie sat paralysed.  There was no color in his face.  He attempted to speak, but only an inarticulate gurgle resulted.  All eyed him anxiously.

“Don’t say it, don’t say it,” McTavish cried in a tense voice.

“Yes, I ate it, plenty of it, a whole plateful!” Bertie cried explosively, like a diver suddenly regaining breath.

The awful silence continued half a minute longer, and he read his fate in their eyes.

“Maybe it wasn’t poison after all,” said Harriwell, dismally.

“Call in the cook,” said Brown.

In came the cook, a grinning black boy, nose-spiked and ear-plugged.

“Here, you, Wi-wi, what name that?” Harriwell bellowed, pointing accusingly at the omelet.

Wi-wi was very naturally frightened and embarrassed.

“Him good fella kai-kai,” he murmured apologetically.

“Make him eat it,” suggested McTavish.  “That’s a proper test.”

Harriwell filled a spoon with the stuff and jumped for the cook, who fled in panic.

“That settles it,” was Brown’s solemn pronouncement.  “He won’t eat it.”

“Mr. Brown, will you please go and put the irons on him?” Harriwell turned cheerfully to Bertie.  “It’s all right, old man, the Commissioner will deal with him, and if you die, depend upon it, he will be hanged.”

“Don’t think the government’ll do it,” objected McTavish.

“But gentlemen, gentlemen,” Bertie cried.  “In the meantime think of me.”

Harriwell shrugged his shoulders pityingly.

“Sorry, old man, but it’s a native poison, and there are no known antidotes for native poisons.  Try and compose yourself, and if——­”