“What do you do?  Have you no manners?  Return proper thanks for the lesson you have received!”

Kazimoto stood silent.

“For God’s sake—­” Will began.

“Say ‘Thank you’ to him, Kazimoto!” Fred whispered.

There is no native word for “Thank you”—­only a bastard thing introduced by tyrants from Europe who never understood the African contention that the giver rewards himself if his gift is worth anything at all.

“Asente,” said Kazimoto meekly.

“Why don’t you salute?  Don’t you know where you are?”

“For the love of God salute him!” Will almost shouted.

Kazimoto obeyed.

“Take him and put him on the chain-gang!” ordered the lieutenant.  “You Europeans leave the court!”

“I’m no European!” Will shouted back.  “Thank the Lord I was born in a country you’ll never set foot in!”

“Take them away before I have to make an example of them!” the lieutenant ordered.

Obediently the askaris gathered about us and hustled us out into the open, poking at my bandaged wound to get swifter action, and going as far as to threaten us with their hippo-hide whips.  I trod on the naked toe of one of them with sufficient suddenness and weight to deprive him of the use of it for all time, and luckily for me he did not see who did it.  The askari next to him had boots on, and got the blame.

The black men who were to search our belongings tried to induce us to hurry, but we insisted on seeing the iron ring riveted to Kazimoto’s neck.  The ring had a shackle on it, and through that they passed the long chain that held him prisoner in the midst of a gang of forty men.  Nobody washed the wounds on his back.  We bought water from a woman who was passing with a great jar on her head, and did that much for him.  He was naked.  His clothes that the askaris had torn from him had been thrown outside the court, and some one had stolen them.  Later they gave him a piece of cheap calico to bind round his waist, but during all that hot afternoon he had nothing to keep the sun from his tortured back; nor would they permit us to give him anything.

The mortification of having one’s private belongings gone through by black men in uniform was made more exasperating still by the fact that Coutlass and the other Greek and the Goanese were spectators, amusing themselves with comments that came nearer to causing murder than they guessed.

The real motive of the search was evident within two minutes from the commencement.  The askaris could not read, but they showed a most remarkable affinity for paper that had been written on.  They took the guns and ammunition first, but after that they emptied everything from our bags and boxes on to the sand, and confiscated every scrap of paper, shaking our books to make sure nothing was left between the leaves.

They even took away our writing material in their zeal to find information likely to prove useful to their masters.  But they forgot to search our pockets, so that they overlooked the letter we had written in code to Monty and had not yet sent away by messenger.