"The Sultan was served by men, and not by such as the heathen who follow the little white man," he said.
Dane could draw the intended inference, and when he nodded Amadu appeared satisfied.
"When I lay in the grass next morning only the wall remained of the town," continued the dusky soldier of fortune. "There were sufficient heads hung about it already, so I fled south to serve the White Queen, as others of my people had done. We would follow the strongest, and knew how the great Emir of the West had mocked the white men who do not speak your tongue. So I came south and learned the drill, and wondered if the English were mad when they sent a lad with the face of a woman to lead us. There were twenty of us, all broken men who had lived by the sword, and some laughed when for the first time our officer spoke to us. Others answered him openly, and, perhaps not understanding all, he said no word to them; but when one night four men returned carrying plunder they had stolen from the heathen, and, mocking at his orders, threatened him, he shot their leader. He stood alone before us, very slight and slender, with the smoke of the pistol curling about him, and any one of those who stood by could have crushed him with their hand; but we went back to our huts when he told us, and henceforward obeyed him.
"It happened that when time had passed, and we knew our officer, as he knew us, we went up with him to chastise certain thieves, and came upon a stockade across the path, with many men who carried guns behind it. The sun hung low over the forest, and we feared treachery when one held out a palm branch; but refusing to heed us, our officer went forward alone to speak with the heathen. He stood as he used to stand, with one hand on his side, so, holding in the other only a little cane, the stockade ten paces from him, and we waiting, as he had bidden us, it may be a hundred, behind him. A wise man would not have done so, but the one who led us feared nothing. He spoke, and his voice came clear through the shadow as he stood twisting his cane a little, one lonely white man demanding submission from the heathen. Then a gun flashed, and he fell forward on his face, and with a cry for vengeance we swept the stockade. The heathen did not wait for the steel, and most of them escaped, for darkness fell suddenly upon the forest.
"We knew they would fly to the stronghold of a thief in the country of the white men who speak a different tongue, where, when certain thieves had done so, our leader might not follow; but when we had buried him we made a plan, and swore to send many of the bushmen after him. The night was far spent when we crept softly about the stockade of that heathen village, but men drunk with palm wine made merry within, doubtless boasting how they had slain our leader. It was one who had served the Sultan, climbing the stockade, drove his bayonet through the watcher at the gate, and no man saw us slip from hut to hut until we gathered softly about the headman's house, where in honor of the strangers who had killed a white man there was feasting.
"Three we could count on held the door, the rest went in, and there remained no one living when they came out again. Then we burned the village, and I went back to the outpost of the next white Captain and told him what we had done. He had eyes like the Captain Maxwell, and listened very quietly, tapping with his fingers on the table—so—but another white man whom I did not know, smote it, calling upon Allah in the speech of the English.
"Then the Captain looked hard at me, asking, 'You had no order?'
"'No. He was our master, and those bush thieves killed him treacherously,' I said boldly, and one white man nodded to the other.
"'You were wise to speak the truth in this,' said the Captain. 'Your master would never have given that order; but there are men who will not believe the rest of your tale.'
"'By salt and by fire,' I was answering, when he lifted his hand.