“You should not tell zat dam feldwebel nozink!” he advised in nasal English.  “Nefer mind vat you tell heem he is all ze same not your frien.  He only obey hees officers.  Zey say to cut your troat—­he cut it!  Zey say to tell you a lot o’ lies—­he tell!  He iss not a t’inker, but a doer:  and hees faforite spectacle iss ze blood of innocence!  Do not effer say I did not fell you!  On ze ozzer hand, tell no one zat I did tell!  Zese are dangerous people!”

He resumed business with his account book, and I whispered to Fred and Will what advice he had given.  Seeing us with our heads together, Schubert crossed the room, beginning to get very drunk now that the shock of the flogging had had time to reinforce the alcohol. (The blows had sobered him at first.)

“What have you decided?” he asked, standing before us with his legs apart and his hands behind him in his favorite attitude—­swaying gently back and forward because of the drink, and showing all his teeth in a grin.

“Nothing,” Fred answered.  “We’ll think it over.”

“Too late in the morning!” he answered, continuing to sway.  “I can do nothing for you in the morning.”

“What can you do to-night?” Fred asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.  “I can report.  The report will go in at dawn.”

“You may tell your superiors,” Fred answered, rising, “that if they care to make us a reasonable offer, I don~t say we won’t do business!”

Schubert leered.

“To-morrow will be too late!” he repeated.

It was Fred’s turn to shrug shoulders, and he did it inimitably, turning his back on Schubert and helping Will support me to the door.  The feldwebel stood grinning while I held to the doorpost and they dragged Brown to his feet.  He made no offer to help us in any way at all, nor did any of the sergeants.

There was no getting action from Brown.  He was as dead to the world as a piece of wood, and there being no other obvious solution of the problem, Will hoisted him upon his back and carried him, he snoring, all the way home to camp.  Fred hoisted and carried me, for the pain of my wound when I tried to walk was unbearable.

We reached camp abreast and were challenged by the sentries, who made a great show of standing guard.  They took Brown and threw him on the bed in his own tent—­accepted Fred’s offer of silver money—­and departed, marching up-street in their heavy, iron-bound military boots with the swing and swagger only the Nubian in all the world knows just how to get away with.

I lay on the bed in Fred’s tent, and then Kazimoto came to us, hugely troubled about something, stirring the embers of the fire before the tent and arranging the lantern so that its rays would betray any eavesdropper.  He searched all the shadows thoroughly, prodding into them with a stick, before he unburdened his mind.

“Those askaris were not put here to guard our tents,” he told us. (The really good native servant when speaking of his master’s property always says our, and never your.) “As soon as you were gone the Greeks and the Goa came.  They and the askaris questioned me.  It was a trick!  You were drawn away on purpose!  One by one—­two by two—­they questioned us all, but particularly me.”