A light came to Bones's eyes.
"By Jove, sir!" he said heartily, "that was it, of course.... The last thing I remember was...."
"Kick that man of yours and come back to the bungalow," Hamilton interrupted, "there's a job for you, my boy."
He walked across and stirred the second sleeper with the toe of his boot.
Ali Abid wriggled round and sat up.
He was square of face, with a large mouth and two very big brown eyes. He was enormously fat, but it was not fat of the flabby type. Though he called himself Ali, it was, as Bones admitted, "sheer swank" to do so, for this man had "coast" written all over him.
He got up slowly and saluted first his master, then Sanders, and lastly Hamilton.
Bones had found him at Cape Coast Castle on the occasion of a joy-ride which the young officer had taken on a British man-of-war. Ali Abid had been the heaven-sent servant, and though Sanders had a horror of natives who spoke English, the English of Ali Abid was his very own.
He had been for five years the servant of Professor Garrileigh, the eminent bacteriologist, the account of whose researches in the field of tropical medicines fill eight volumes of closely-printed matter, every page of which contains words which are not to be found in most lexicons.
They walked back to the Residency, Ali Abid in the rear.