In the quest for easy cash,
        Aye, jump his claim and burrow to the heart of it,
But the innocents and fools
        Get all the goods, and we the trash,
        And that’s the most exasperating part of it!

Nobody in camp slept that night.  When the tusks had been chopped out, and our camp carried across and pitched beside Monty’s—­ivory weighed—­lion-proof boma built—­and elephant-heart portioned out to the men, who gorged themselves on it in order that their own hearts might grow great and strong; when all the myriad matters had been seen to that make camping in the tropics such a business, then there were tales to be told.  We demanded Monty’s first; he ours; and because his was likely to be much the shortest we won that argument.

“Wait one minute, though,” he insisted.  “Before I begin, have you any notion who a man with a beard could be—­bruised face-broken front teeth—­Mauser rifle—­big dark beard cut shovel-shape—­enormously powerful by the look of his shoulders and arms?  I came on him three, no, four days’ march back.”

“Schillingschen!” we exclaimed with one voice.

“Show me Schillingschen!” echoed Brown, who was very drunk by that time, nearly ready to be put to bed.  “Show me Schillingschen, an’ I’ll show you a corpse!”

“He’s right,” nodded Monty.  “The man’s dead.  Blew his brains out with his last cartridge.  Looked to me to have lost himself.  Slept in trees, I should say.  Clothing all torn.  Hadn’t been dead long when some of my boys came on him and drove away the jackals.  Had he been in a fight, do you know?”

But we would not tell him that tale until we had his own.

“Mine’s short and simple,” he began.  “Some ruffians boarded my ship at Suez, who made such eyes at me, and so obviously intended to do me damage at the first opportunity, that I talked it over with the captain (giving him a hint or two of the possible reason) and he agreed to slip me off secretly at Ismailia.  It was easy—­middle of the night, you know—­had the doctor isolate the ruffians on the starboard side while the ship anchored—­some cooked-up excuse about quarantine—­and kept ’em out of sight of what was happening until the ship went on again.  Very simple.”

“Go on, Didums—­we’ll be all night talking—­what did you do with the King of Belgium?” Fred demanded.

“Nothing.  Didn’t go near the King of Belgium.  I was quarantined at Ismailia on wholly imaginary grounds for fourteen days; and who should come smiling into the same lazaretto on the last day but Frederick Courtney—­a very old friend of mine!”

“He was to go to Somaliland,” I said.

“So he told me.  He’s on his way there now.  Decided for reasons of his own to enter the country by way of Abyssinia.  Told me of the advice he’d given you fellows, and assured me he’d seen King Leopold himself on the very matter scarcely a year before.  Of course, he said, I might succeed where he failed, using influence and all that sort of thing, but he assured me Leopold was hard to deal with, and difficult to tie down.  His advice was, go back to Elgon, and hunt for the stuff there.”