“Will you do me a favor?” I asked.

He hesitated.  It was kindness that had sent him down to ease my pain, if possible, not anti-Germanism; it was part of German policy to pose as the friend of all missionaries, and if anything he was prejudiced against us—­particularly against Brown, whom he had visited in jail, and who assured him the only hymn he ever sang was “Beer, glorious beer!”

“That depends,” he answered.

“We are quite sure any letters we write will be opened,” I said.

He answered that he could hardly believe that.

“If we could send a letter unopened to British East it would solve our worst problem,” I told him.  “If you know of a dependable messenger who would carry our letter, I would contribute fifty pounds out of my own pocket to the funds of your mission.”

I made a mistake there, and realized it the next moment.

“What kind of letter is worth fifty pounds?” he asked me.  “Isn’t it something illegal that you fear might get you into worse trouble if opened and read?”

I argued in vain, and only made my case worse by citing as an instance of German official turpitude the staff surgeon’s neglect of me.

“But be tells me you refuse to be treated by him!” he answered.  “He says you enter his hospital and are insolent if he happens to be too busy to attend to you at once.  He says you refuse to let a native orderly dress your wound!”

He had been entertained to one meal at the commandant’s house on the bill, and regaled by awful accounts of our ferocity.  I did not succeed in inserting as much as the thin end of a different view until he asked me how a man’s name could be professor Schillingschen and his wife’s Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon.

“I don’t understand about titles,” he said.  “Shouldn’t she take his name, or else he hers, or something?”

I assured him that marriage had never as much as entered the head of either of them.

“They’re simply living together,” I said.  “He’s a cynical brute.  She’s a designing female!”

The missionary mind recoiled and refused to believe me.  But after he had thought the matter over and seen the probability, he swung over to a sort of lame admission that a few more of my statements might perhaps be true.

“I will take your letter and guarantee its delivery in British East, provided I may read it and do not disapprove of its contents.” he volunteered.

“That’s not unreasonable,” I said, “but the letter is in code.”

“I should have to see it decoded.”

I told him to find Fred and Will.  He came on them sitting smoking under the great rock near the waterfront that bad been inset with a bronze medallion of Bismarck, and startled them almost into committing an assault on him, by saying that he wanted our secret code at once.  They had been trying to get tobacco to Brown, and sweetmeats to Kazimoto, had failed in both efforts and were short-tempered.  He explained after they had insulted him sufficiently, and they walked down to the camp one on either hand, apologizing all the way.  I imagine they had criticized missions of all denominations pretty thoroughly.