Not one word did we exchange all this while with Coutlass and his friends.  Not one overture did we make to them, or they to us.  But there was no doubt of their intention to do their worst.  They gloated over us —­eyed us with lofty disdain and scornful superior knowledge.  They were so full of the notion of having us jailed for their misdeed that they positively ached to come and jeer at us, and I believe were only saved from doing that by the shortness of the time.

At last, three days after decision had been reached, we threw our blankets with a red one uppermost over the top of both tents in the sun; and within thirty minutes after that Lady Saffren Waldon had spread on the commandant’s roof a blue cotton dress, a white petticoat, and a blazing red piece of silken stuff.  There and then the Greeks and the Goanese pledged one another out in the open with copious draughts in turn from the neck of one whisky bottle, and we began to pray they might not get too drunk before night.  Judging by their meaning glances at us, they considered us their mortal and cruel enemies whom it would be an act of sublime virtue to bring to book.

The trial of the natives for murder had taken place, accompanied by the usual amount of thrashing of witnesses and the usual stir throughout the countryside.  These were charged with having murdered an askari near their village—­a big bully sent to arrest a man, who had taken leave to help himself to more than rations, and had made a lot too free with the village women.  So German military honor had to be upheld exemplarily.  Condign vengeance was sure and swift.  The execution was to take place on the drill-ground on the day we chose for our departure.

There was no risk of investigations that day.  Had we known it, we could have gone away in all likelihood in broad daylight, so busy was the garrison in marshaling into place and policing the swarms of villagers brought in from as far as sixty miles away to witness German justice.  Even the customary parade of the band was canceled for that occasion, and that was our only real ground for uneasiness, for it prevented our having a last talk with Brown of Lumbwa and assuring ourselves that courage would not fail him in the pinch.

We worried in plenty without cause, as it seems that humans must do on the eve of putting plans, however well laid, to the test.  We had a thousand scares—­a thousand doubts—­and overlooked at least a thousand evidences that fortune favored us.  Toward the end our hearts turned to water at the thought that Kazimoto would probably fail to do his part, although why we should have doubted him after his faithful record, and knowing his hatred of German rule, we would have found it hard to say.

Several times that morning we showed ourselves about the town, with the purpose of allaying any possible suspicion and saving the authorities the trouble of asking what we were up to.  With the same end in view we attended the execution in the afternoon, and sincerely wished before it was over that we had stayed away.