“Ganz klein wenig!” as the brawny arm dropped. “Just a little more.” . . .
It had been a notable and memorable punishment—but the devil of it was that whenever the Herr Doktor got run down or over-ate himself, he had a most terrible nightmare, wherein Marayam, streaming with blood, pursued him, caught him, and flogged him. And when she tired, he was doomed to urge her on to further efforts. After screaming with agony, he must moan “Zu müde! Zu müde!” and then—when she would have stopped—“Noch nichte!” and “Ganz klein wenig!” so that she began afresh. Then he must struggle, break free, leap at her—and find himself sweating, weeping and trembling beside his bed.
Presently the moaning sleeper cried “Noch nichte!” and a little later “Ganz klein wenig!”—and then with a scream and a struggle, leapt from the camp cot and sprang at Bertram, whose revolver straightway went off. With a cough and a gurgle the soi-disant Desmont collapsed with a ·450 service bullet through his heart.
When Major Mallery returned at dawn he found a delirious Second-Lieutenant Greene (and a dead European, and a wonderful tale from one Ali Suleiman. . . .)
With a temperature of 105·8 he did not seem likely to live. . . .
Whether Bertram Greene lived or died, however, he had, albeit ignorantly, avenged the cruel wrong done to his father. . . . He—the despised and rejected one—had avenged Major Hugh Walsingham Greene. Fate plays some queer tricks and Time’s whirligig performs some quaint gyrations!
PART III
THE BAKING OF BERTRAM BY LOVE
CHAPTER I
Mrs. Stayne-Brooker Again
Luckily for himself, Second-Lieutenant Bertram Greene was quite unconscious when he was lifted from his camp-bed into a stretcher by the myrmidons of Mr. Chatterji and dispatched, carriage paid, to M’paga. What might happen to him there was no concern of Mr. Chatterji’s—which was the important point so far as that gentleman was concerned.
Unconscious he remained as the four Kavirondo porters, the stretcher on their heads, jogged along the jungle path in the wake of Ali and the three other porters who bore his baggage. Behind the stretcher-bearers trotted four more of their brethren who would relieve them of their burden at regular intervals.