“You don’t think, having once found out that I saw and recognised him, he would consider the game lost, and slink away to the coast again?”

“Sebastian?  Oh, no; that is the absolute antipodes of his type and temperament.”

“He will never give up because of a temporary check, you think?”

“No, never.  The man has a will of sheer steel—­it may break, but it will not bend.  Besides, consider:  he is too deeply involved.  You have seen him; you know; and he knows you know.  You may bring this thing home to him.  Then what is his plain policy?  Why, to egg on the natives whose confidence he has somehow gained into making a further attack, and cutting off all Salisbury.  If he had succeeded in getting you and me massacred at Klaas’s, as he hoped, he would no doubt have slunk off to the coast at once, leaving his black dupes to be shot down at leisure by Rhodes’s soldiers.”

“I see; but having failed in that?”

“Then he is bound to go through with it, and kill us if he can, even if he has to kill all Salisbury with us.  That, I feel sure, is Sebastian’s plan.  Whether he can get the Matabele to back him up in it or not is a different matter.”

“But taking Sebastian himself; alone?”

“Oh, Sebastian himself alone would naturally say:  ’Never mind Buluwayo!  Concentrate round Salisbury, and kill off all there first; when that is done, then you can move on at your ease and cut them to pieces in Charter and Buluwayo.’  You see, he would have no interest in the movement, himself, once he had fairly got rid of us here.  The Matabele are only the pieces in his game.  It is me he wants, not Salisbury.  He would clear out of Rhodesia as soon as he had carried his point.  But he would have to give some reasonable ground to the Matabele for his first advice; and it seems a reasonable ground to say, ’Don’t leave Salisbury in your rear, so as to put yourselves between two fires.  Capture the outpost first; that down, march on undistracted to the principal stronghold.’”

“Who is no tactician?” I murmured, half aloud.

She laughed.  “That’s not tactics, Hubert; that’s plain common sense—­and knowledge of Sebastian.  Still, it comes to nothing.  The question is not, ‘What would Sebastian wish?’ it is, ’Could Sebastian persuade these angry black men to accept his guidance?’”

“Sebastian!” I cried; “Sebastian could persuade the very devil!  I know the man’s fiery enthusiasm, his contagious eloquence.  He thrilled me through, myself, with his electric personality, so that it took me six years—­and your aid—­to find him out at last.  His very abstractness tells.  Why, even in this war, you may be sure, he will be making notes all the time on the healing of wounds in tropical climates, contrasting the African with the European constitution.”

“Oh, yes; of course.  Whatever he does, he will never forget the interests of science.  He is true to his lady-love, to whomever else he plays false.  That is his saving virtue.”