to put them on, shaking his head sadly as he scanned the numerous rents and tears in them, which naturally had resulted from our frightful journey.  Then he took his boots, scrubbed them with a handful of fern, and finally rubbed them over with a piece of fat, which he had carefully saved from the inco meat, till they looked, comparatively speaking, respectable.  Having inspected them judiciously through his eye-glass, he put the boots on and began a fresh operation.  From a little bag that he carried he produced a pocket-comb in which was fixed a tiny looking-glass, and in this he surveyed himself.  Apparently he was not satisfied, for he proceeded to do his hair with great care.  Then came a pause whilst he again contemplated the effect; still it was not satisfactory.  He felt his chin, on which the accumulated scrub of a ten days’ beard was flourishing.

“Surely,” thought I, “he is not going to try to shave.”  But so it was.  Taking the piece of fat with which he had greased his boots, Good washed it thoroughly in the stream.  Then diving again into the bag he brought out a little pocket razor with a guard to it, such as are bought by people who are afraid of cutting themselves, or by those about to undertake a sea voyage.  Then he rubbed his face and chin vigorously with the fat and began.  Evidently it proved a painful process, for he groaned very much over it, and I was convulsed with inward laughter as I watched him struggling with that stubbly beard.  It seemed so very odd that a man should take the trouble to shave himself with a piece of fat in such a place and in our circumstances.  At last he succeeded in getting the hair off the right side of his face and chin, when suddenly I, who was watching, became conscious of a flash of light that passed just by his head.

Good sprang up with a profane exclamation (if it had not been a safety razor he would certainly have cut his throat), and so did I, without the exclamation, and this was what I saw.  Standing not more than twenty paces from where I was, and ten from Good, were a group of men.  They were very tall and copper-coloured, and some of them wore great plumes of black feathers and short cloaks of leopard skins; this was all I noticed at the moment.  In front of them stood a youth of about seventeen, his hand still raised and his body bent forward in the attitude of a Grecian statue of a spear-thrower.  Evidently the flash of light had been caused by a weapon which he had hurled.

As I looked an old soldier-like man stepped forward out of the group, and catching the youth by the arm said something to him.  Then they advanced upon us.

Sir Henry, Good, and Umbopa by this time had seized their rifles and lifted them threateningly.  The party of natives still came on.  It struck me that they could not know what rifles were, or they would not have treated them with such contempt.

“Put down your guns!” I halloed to the others, seeing that our only chance of safety lay in conciliation.  They obeyed, and walking to the front I addressed the elderly man who had checked the youth.