screamed an excited policeman, rushing up.

"Gad, it is!" shouted Saunders. "Boy, pony-quick!"

The Doctor rushed to his house for brandy and bandages, shouting meanwhile for his pony, while from the police lines yells arose on all sides. Saunders remained glued to the spot, glasses to his eyes.

"Hughes, I believe he's alive! Have a look."

"Yes..." agreed Hughes dubiously; "that's never deader! Here come the ponies."

The trio mounted and galloped down the hill hell-forleather, while behind them panted a dozen excited constables on foot. The leading horsemen seeing them spurred forwards, shouting that the white man lived!

"Tally-ho!" screamed the Dootor, racing to be first up. As they came nearer, they saw Phipps seated on the centre horse, supported on either side by a white-clad native. He had lost his helmet, but had bound up his head with a turban which protected him from the sun. He was certainly alive, but obviously weak, for he waved his hand feebly to them in greeting.

"Thank God you're alive, old chap!" shouted Saunders, shaking him warmly by the hand. "We all thought those infernal pagans had got you."

"How are you, old man?" yelled Hughes. "Are you hurt?"

"No," replied Phipps, smil

ing weakly; "only damned tired."

"Now clear out you two!" gasped the panting Doctor, who had arrived a bad third. "This is my palaver! Drink this, Phipps," he added, forcing some brandy between his teeth."Feel better?"

Tenderly they brought him to the station, where the Doctor examined him and reported him none the worse, but quite worn out. His succourers came in for a magnificent reception from the police (whom they more usually met only on the strictest professional terms), second only to that accorded to Phipps himself; and there were prouder men in the Protectorate than those dusky scallywags. To the Sheikh who had brought him in Saunders spoke in the vernacular

few

Later in the evening Phipps had recovered sufficiently to tell the story of his adventures, which were, briefly, as follows:

When the hut started burning, they opened a very rapid fire on the pagans; but when the third constable was hit, he decided that it was time to go. He and the other constable clambered out, and escaping through the smoke lay hidden in another hut until it was quite dark. Then they took to the grass to try to reach Lungwana, but were discovered, and the policeman was killed. Phipps emptied his revolver into his pursuers and took to his heels, but losing his way got completely bushed. After three days wandering about, he eventually came to the village belonging to Muri Baku. Then, thinking that the game was up, he walked boldly in and

confronted the Sheikh, assuring him that he was quite prepared to be killed, but that the Sheikh would die first in a very unpleasant manner at his own hands: a revolver pointed at that gentleman's chest backed up his argument. What was his surprise when the Sheikh assured him that he was a friend of the Government, and after giving him food, produced a bed, and said that he would escort him to Jaki personally in the morning. Fearing treachery, Phipps hardly slept a wink, and in the morning started off with the Sheikh.

The long ride, after his three days' exposure, proved too much for him, and he fainted several times. But the Sheikh treated him with the greatest kindness, and eventually supported him in his arms for the last stage of the journey.

M. H. M.

BEING an optimist has compensations. Indeed, it would need to have, for no virtue has ever landed any one in more damnable scrapes than optimism has landed me. But before the crash comes it does help to keep one happy.

Next morning, after that nasty night, I was singing in my bath and full of wild hopes; the fact being that a new and consoling way of looking at things had suggested itself in the very act of shaving.

"They are afraid of me!" I said to myself.

After a night's sleep the adventure by the shore had grown perhaps a little blurred in some of its details. I wished I could see that curved thing rising against the night sky a trifle more distinctly in my mind's eye, so that I could take my oath in court it was a weapon. Still, I remained perfectly assured I had been attacked, and the sustaining conclusions I now drew were, firstly, that "they" (whoever they were; and I tried to keep an open mind on that point) were so afraid of me that they were ready to stick at nothing to lay me out; secondly, that they were afraid to tackle me by day, but had to choose a dark night and a lonely place;

and thirdly, that with such a splendid chance it must have been nerves that made them bungle it.

"People in that state of mind will do something or other to give themselves away," I thought hopefully.

In this confident state of mind I came down for breakfast. My host, I found, was staying in bed after his night's vigil, and my hostess was daintier and more inaccessible than ever. After breakfast I reflected for a little over a pipe, and then I asked her for a bit of lunch to put in my pocket, and told her I was going for a long walk, She got the lunch and gave it me without wasting a superfluous word, and off I set.

It was a breezy morning with a lot of thin cloud in the sky, and a ruffled sea; cool and stimulating; the very day for a walk. I followed the exact route we took the night before, trying to identify such landmarks as rises and falls in the ground, and sharp curves in the shore and farms close to the coast; but I found it was practically impossible-every feature seemed so utterly altered in daylight. My object was to find the spot where I had been attacked, and at last

I had to be content with knowing that it must have been one of three or four places where the feature of a low cliff immediately under the turf was to be seen.

At one such place there was a long stretch of wall following the shore-line, which could have given shelter for any one to stalk me practically from the start. At another I noticed a farm close by, and from this an assailant could easily have slipped down to the beach and run back again. At a third the configuration of the rocks was such that it would have been simple for him to have waited below the bank till he heard us coming, made a noise to bring me down, and then gone up above without exposing himself against the sky. In fact, one could draw no definite conclusions at all.

Besides, there was the very distasteful alternative (and the more plausible it seemed the more distasteful it grew) that there might well have been two people in it; one-who might have followed me, the stone-thrower; and the other -who might, for instance, have been patrolling the shore from the opposite direction, the attacker.

Suspicious as I had felt at the moment, I shrank from this alternative, and in justification I asked myself

"Why didn't she use her pistol, and be done with it?" But, on the other hand, it was а most extraordinary coincidence that her father should have passed that spot

certainly within three or four minutes previously, and that he should have seen no sign of my enemy. So far as I could remember the length of time I had spent groping among the rooks, it was just possible for Mr Rendall to pass by and for the other man then to begin his work of decoying me, but certainly it was an unpleasant coincidence.

And finally there was a last alternative: that I might have been mistaken in thinking I was actually assailed, and instead of that- But what other conceivable explanation could there be? I tried hard, but could think of none.

With the flame of optimism burning now somewhat low, I kept on following the shore till I was well past the scenes of both my night adventures, and had come to the little sandy bay with the huddle of low grey farm buildings just clear of the tide. I found Peter, senior, painting his boat on the shore, and hailed him cheerfully with the same old guttural accent.

"Painting your boat, I see," said I.

He gave me a long look and one word.

"Aye," said he, and went on painting.

It struck me at once that he was even more wary and more reticent than before, but I was determined to extract some information.

"I have been guarding you against the Germans! Last night I patrolled your coast!" I informed him with great enthusiasm.

"I dinna ken."

I wondered, but I saw that there was not much more to be learned here. He had denied that any of his household were out, for what that was worth, and at that I bade him good morning and turned back.

I fell to walking more and more slowly, and at last I stopped and decided to accompany my thoughts with a little lunch. The boundary wall at this point ran close to the edge of the rocks, and was rather higher than usual. I thought for a moment of sitting down and lunching under its lee, and then I noticed that it was very loosely built of large beach boulders, and that the off-shore breeze was whistling through it like a sieve; so I decided to descend to the sheltered beach and lunch there. That decision saved my life.

I olambered down, chose a rock to sit behind, and was just putting my hand in my pocket for my packet of sandwiches, when "crack!"-something whistled close to my head, and

went my head again as a bullet smacked once more upon the ledge behind. Yet another shot followed, and seemed to miss everything, for I heard no sound of lead on stone, and then up went my head and hand together, and I was covering that bit of wall with my own revolver. I saw that my enemy was no very dead shot, and I meant to risk his fire and snap at the flash through the wall. I knew I could get quite near enough his peep-hole to startle him, and after I had sprinkled the near neighbourhood of that aperture for five or six seconds, I thought it probably odds against his keeping his head sufficiently to do much aiming. To be quite candid, I must confess that it was a soothing sensation to feel I was the better man with a gun, and that I should have been in a proper fright if it had been the other way about. One hears a good deal of discussion on the quality of courage nowadays, and there is my own small contribution.