“. . . A Christmas-card—will you?” finished Colonel Rock.
Bertram’s face fell. He thought he could hear, afar off, the ominous sound of the grinding of the mill-stones, between the upper and the nether of which he would be ground exceeding small. . . . Would Colonel Frost send him a telegram? What would Colonel Rock say if he took it to him? Could he pretend that he had never received it. Base thought! If he received one every day? . . .
Suppose he were wounded. Could he pretend that his mind and memory were affected—loss of memory, loss of identity, loss of cooking-pots? . . .
“By the way,” said the Colonel, as Bertram saluted to depart, “you’ll leave here to-morrow morning with a thousand porters, taking rations and ammunition to Butindi. You will take the draft from the Hundred and Ninety-Ninth as escort, and report to Major Mallery there. Don’t go and get scuppered, or it’ll be bad for them up at Butindi. . . . Start about five. Lieutenant Bridges, of the Coolie Corps, will give you a guide. He’s been up there. . . . Better see Captain Brent about it to-night. He’ll hand over the thousand porters in good condition in the morning. . . . The A.S.C. people will make a separate dump of the stuff you are to take. . . . Make sure about it, so that you don’t pinch the wrong stuff, and turn up at Butindi with ten tons of Number Nine pills and other medical comforts. . . .”
Bertram’s heart sank within him, but he strove to achieve a look that blent pleasure, firmness, comprehension, and wide experience of convoy-work into one attractive whole. Wending his way to his banda, Bertram found Ali Suleiman making work for himself and doing it.
“I am going to Butindi at five to-morrow morning,” he announced. “Have you ever been that way?”
“Oh, yes, sah, please God, thank you,” replied Ali. “I was gun-bearer to a bwana, one ’Mericani gentlyman wanting to shoot sable antelope—very rare inseck—but a lion running up and bite him instead, and shocking climate cause him great loss of life.”
“Then you could be guide,” interrupted Bertram, “and show me the way to Butindi?”
“Yes, sah,” replied Ali, “can show Bwana everythings. . . . Bwana taking much quinine and other n’dawa [133a] there though. Shocking climate causing Bwana bad homa, bad fever, and perhaps great loss of life also. . . .”
“D’you get fever ever?” asked Bertram.