"Yes, there is a panic on the Stock Exchange," Stamfordham said, "because every one thinks there will be war—but there probably won't."
"Not?" said Rendel. "Can it be stopped?"
Stamfordham answered him by unfolding the piece of paper and laying it down before him on the table. It was a map of Africa, roughly outlined, but still clearly enough to show unmistakably what it was intended to convey, for all down the map from north to south there was a thick line drawn to the west of the Cape to Cairo Railway—the latter being indicated, but more faintly, in pencil—starting at Alexandria and running down through the whole of the continent, bending slightly to the southward between Bechuanaland and Namaqualand, and ending at the Orange River. East of that line was written ENGLAND, west of it GERMANY, and below it some lines of almost illegible writing in pencil.
Rendel almost gasped.
"What?" he said; "a partition of Africa?"
"Yes," said Stamfordham. Then he said with a sort of half smile, "The partition, that is to say, so far as it is in our own hands. But," speaking rapidly, "I will just put you in possession of the facts of the case and give you the clue. We abandon to Germany everything that we have a claim to west of this line. It does not come to very much," in answer to an involuntary movement on Rendel's part; and he swept his hand across the coast of the Gulf of Guinea as though wiping out of existence the Gold Coast, Ashanti, Sierra Leone, and all that had mattered before. "Germany abandons to us everything that she lays claim to on the east of it, including therefore the whole course of the Cape to Cairo Railway."
"But has Germany agreed?" said Rendel, stupefied with surprise.
"Germany has agreed," said Stamfordham. "We have just heard from Berlin."
Rendel felt as if his breath were taken away by the rapid motion of the events.
"That means peace, then?" he said.