"Buzzing all gone?"
"Practically," replied Wilmshurst.
"All right; stick to five grains of quinine during the whole of the voyage—and don't be afraid to let me know if you aren't up to the mark. Suppose you've heard nothing further of your brother?"
Wilmshurst shook his head.
"Not since the letter written just before the war, and that took nearly twelve months before it reached me. It's just possible that Rupert is in the thick of it with the Rhodesian crush."
Barkley made no comment. He was an old college chum of Rupert Wilmshurst, who was fifteen years older than his brother Dudley. The elder Wilmshurst was a proverbial rolling stone. Almost as soon as he left Oxford he went abroad and, after long wanderings in the interior of China, Siberia, and Manchuria, where his adventures merely stimulated the craving for wandering on the desolate parts of the earth, he went to the Cape, working his way up country until he made a temporary settlement on the northern Rhodesian shores of Lake Tanganyika.
It was thence that he wrote to his brother Dudley, who had just taken up a Crown appointment on the Coast, mentioning that he had penetrated into the territory known as German East.
The subaltern remembered the letter almost by heart.
"There'll be trouble out here before very long," wrote Rupert. "Britishers settling down in this part almost invariably roll a cricket-pitch or lay out a football field. With Hans it is very different. The Germans' idea of colonization is to start building up a military organization. Every 'post' in which there are German settlers has its company of armed blacks—Askaris they call them. And as for ammunition, they are laying in stores sufficient to wage a two-years' war; not merely small arms ammunition, but quick-firer shells as well. Quite by accident I found kegs of cartridges buried close to my camp. For what reason? The natives are quiet enough, so the ammunition is not for use against them. I am sending this letter by a trusty native to be posted at Pambete, as it would be unwise to make use of the German colonial post. Meanwhile I am penetrating further into this stretch of territory under the Black Cross Ensign—possibly in the direction of Tabora. My researches may be taken seriously by the Foreign Office, but I have my doubts. Fortunately I have a jolly good pal with me, a Scotsman named Macgregor, whom I met at Jo-burg. Don't be anxious if you don't hear from me for some time."
The letter was dated July, 1914, and three years, Dudley reflected, is a very exaggerated interpretation of the term "some time." Even taking into consideration the lack of efficient internal and external communication, the state of war embroiling practically the whole civilized world and the perils to which shipping was subjected owing to the piratical exploits of the Huns—all these facts would hardly offer sufficient explanation for a total absence of news from Rupert Wilmshurst unless——