“You’ll go before a Medical Board at Colaba Hospital. They may detain you there, give you a period of sick leave, or invalid you out of the Service. Depends on how your right arm shapes. . . . You’ll be all right, I think.”
“And if my arm goes on satisfactorily I shall be able to come back to East Africa in a month or two perhaps?” continued Bertram.
“Yes. Nice cheery place, what?” said the Medical Officer and departed. He never could suffer fools gladly and he personally had had enough, for the moment, of heat, dust, stench, monotony, privation, exile, and overwork. . . . Hurry back to East Africa! . . . Zeal for duty is zeal for duty—and lunacy’s lunacy. . . . But perhaps the lad was just showing off and talking through his hat, what?
§4
The faithful Ali, devoted follower of his old master’s peregrinations, saw the muddy, blood-stained greasy bundles, which were that master’s kit, safe on board the Madras from the launch which had brought the party of wounded officers from the Kilindini pier. Personally he conducted the bundles to the cabin reserved for Second-Lieutenant B. Greene, I.A.R., and then sought their owner where he reclined in a chaise longue on deck, none the better for his long journey on the Uganda Railway.
“I’m coming back, Ali,” said he as his retainer, a monument of restrained grief, came to him.
“Please God, Bwana,” was the dignified reply.
“What will you do while I am away?” he asked, for the sake of something to say.
“Go and see my missus and childrens, my little damsels and damsons at Nairobi, sah,” was the sad answer. “When Bwana sailing now?”
“Not till this evening,” answered Bertram, “and the last thing I want you to do for me is to take these two chits to Stayne-Brooker Mem-Sahib and Stayne-Brooker Miss-Sahib as quickly as you can. You’ll catch them at tiffin if you take a trolley now from Kilindini. They must have them quickly. . . . If they come to see me before the ship sails at six, there’ll be an extra present for one Ali Suleiman, what?”