“Trouble!” he said.  “Trouble!  If you have any frien’s fetch them—­send for them!”

“Can yon send a letter for us to British East?” Fred asked him.

“God forbid!” He jumped at the very thought, and shrugged himself like a man standing under a water-spout.  “What would they do to me if I were found out?”

“What is the nature of the trouble?” Fred asked him.

“Ali, who should tell!  Trouble, I tell you, trouble!  Zat cursed Schubert sat here drinking until dawn.  I heard heem say many t’ings!  Send for your friens!”

He turned his back on us and ran in.  There was a lieutenant arrayed in spotless white with a saber in glittering scabbard watching us all from the boma gate.  A little later that morning we knew better why the Jew fled indoors at sight of him.

Schubert was standing in mid-square with a hundred askaris lined up two-deep in front of him.  There were no other Germans on parade.  The corporals were Nubians, and the rest of the rank and file either Nubian or some sort of Sudanese.  He was haranguing them in a bastard mixture of Swahili, Arabic, and German, they standing rigidly at attention, their rifles at the present.

Not content with the effect of his words, he strode up presently to a front-rank man and hit him in the face with clenched fist.  In the effort to recover his balance the man let his rifle get out of alignment.  Schubert wrenched it from him.  It fell to the ground.  He struck the man, and when he stooped to pick the rifle up kicked him in the face.  Then he strode down the line and beat two other men for grinning.  All this the lieutenant watched without a sign of disapproval, or even much interest.

Meanwhile the chain-gang emerged from the boma gate, going full-pelt, fastened neck to neck, the chain taut and each man carrying a water-jar.  The minute they had crossed the square Schubert commenced with company drill, and for two hours after that, with but one interval of less than five minutes for rest, he kept them pounding the gravel in evolution after evolution—­manual exercise at the double—­skirmishing exercise—­setting up drill—­goose-step, and all the mechanical, merciless precision drill with which the Germans make machines of men.

His debauch did not seem in the least to have affected him, unless to make his temper more violently critical.  By seven o’clock the sun was beating down on him and dazzling his eyes from over the boma wall.  The dust rose off the square.  The words of command came bellowing in swift succession from a throat that ought to have been hard put to it to whisper.  If anything, he grew more active and exacting as the askaris wearied, and by the time the two hours were up they were ready to a man to drop.

But not so he.  He dismissed them, and swaggered over to the marketplace to hector and bully the natives who were piling their wares in the shade of the great grass roof.  Then he went into the boma to breakfast just as a sergeant in khaki came over and unlocked the hospital door.  I followed the sergeant in, but he ordered me out again.