The Keepers of the King's Peace Part 29

"Wrong," said Hamilton; "you're describing a Vertical Interval."

Bones glared at him.

"Are you sure, dear old chap?" he demanded truculently. "Have a look at the book, jolly old friend, your poor old eyes ain't what they used to be----"

"Lieutenant Tibbetts," said Hamilton in ponderous reproof, "you are behaving very strangely."

"Look here, dear old Ham," wheedled Bones "can't you pretend you asked me what a Vertical Interval was?"

Hamilton reached round to find something to throw, but this was Sanders's study.

"You have a criminal mind, Bones," he said helplessly. "Now get on with it. What are 'Hachures'?"

"Hachures?" said Bones, shutting his eye. "Hachures? Now I know what Hachures are. A lot of people would think they were chickens, but I know ... they're a sort of line ... when you're drawing a hill ...

wiggly-waggly lines ... you know the funny things ... a sort of...."

Bones made mysterious and erratic gestures in the air, "shading ...

water, dear old friend."

"Are you feeling faint?" asked Hamilton, jumping up in alarm.

"No, silly a.s.s ... shadings ... direction of water--am I right, sir?"

"Not being a thought-reader I can't visualize your disordered mind,"

said Hamilton, "but Hachures are the conventional method of representing hill features by shading in short vertical lines to indicate the slope and the water flow. I gather that you have a hazy idea of what the answer should be."

"I thank you, dear old sir, for that generous tribute to my grasp of military science," said Bones. "An' now proceed to the next torture--which will you have, sir, rack or thumbscrew?--oh, thank you, Horace, I'll have a gla.s.s of boiling oil."

"Shut up talking to yourself," growled Hamilton, "and tell me what is meant by 'Orienting a Map'?"

"Turning it to the east," said Bones promptly. "Next, sir."

"What is meant by 'Orienting a Map'?" asked Hamilton patiently.

"I've told you once," said Bones defiantly.

"Orienting a Map," said Hamilton, "as I have explained to you a thousand times, means setting your map or plane-table so that the north line lies north."

"In that case, sir," said Bones firmly, "the east line would be east, and I claim to have answered the question to your entire satisfaction."

"Continue to claim," snarled Hamilton. "I shall mark you zero for that answer."

"Make it one," pleaded Bones. "Be a sport, dear old Ham--I've found a new fis.h.i.+n' pool."

Hamilton hesitated.

"There never are any fish in the pools you find," he said dubiously.

"Anyway, I'll reserve my decision until I've made a cast or two."

They adjourned for tiffin soon after.

"How did you do, Bones?" asked Patricia Hamilton.

"Fine," said Bones enthusiastically; "I simply bowled over every question that your dear old brother asked. In fact, Ham admitted that I knew much more about some things than he did."

"What I said," corrected Hamilton, "was that your information on certain subjects was so novel that I doubted whether even the staff college shared it."

"It's the same thing," said Bones.

"You should try him on military history," suggested Sanders dryly. "I've just been hearing from Bosambo----"

Bones coughed and blushed.

"The fact is, sir an' Excellency," he confessed, "I was practisin' on Bosambo. You mightn't be aware of the fact, but I like to hear myself speak----"

"No!" gasped Hamilton in amazement, "you're wronging yourself, Bones!"

"What I mean, sir," Bones went on with dignity, "is that if I lecture somebody on a subject I remember what I've said."

"Always providing that you understand what you're saying," suggested Hamilton.

"Anyway," said Sanders, with his quiet smile, "Bones has filled Bosambo with a pa.s.sionate desire to emulate Napoleon, and Bosambo has been making tentative inquiries as to whether he can raise an Old Guard or enlist a mercenary army."

"I flatter myself----" began Bones.

"Why not?" said Hamilton, rising. "It's the only chance you'll have of hearing something complimentary about yourself."

"_I_ believe in you, Bones," said a smiling Patricia. "I think you're really wonderful, and that Ham is a brute."

"I'll never, never contradict you, dear Miss Patricia," said Bones; "an'

after the jolly old Commissioner has gone----"

"You're not going away again, are you?" she asked, turning to Sanders.

"Why, you have only just come back from the interior."

There was genuine disappointment in her eyes, and Sanders experienced a strange thrill the like of which he had never known before.

"Yes," he said with a nod. "There is a palaver of sorts in the Morjaba country--the most curious palaver I have ever been called upon to hold."

And indeed he spoke the truth.

Beyond the frontiers of the Akasava, and separated from all the other Territories by a curious bush belt which ran almost in a straight line for seventy miles, were the people of Morjaba. They were a folk isolated from territorial life, and Sanders saw them once every year and no more frequently, for they were difficult to come by, regular payers of taxes and law-abiding, having quarrels with none. The bush (reputedly the abode of ghosts) was, save at one point, impenetrable. Nature had plaited a natural wall on one side, and had given the tribe the protection of high mountains to the north and a broad swamp to the west.

The fierce storms of pa.s.sion and hate which burst upon the river at intervals and sent thousands of spears to a blooding, were scarcely echoed in this sanctuary-land. The marauders of the Great King's country to the north never fetched across the smooth moraine of the mountains, and the evil people of The-Land-beyond-the-Swamp were held back by the treacherous bogland wherein, _cala-cala_, a whole army had been swallowed up.

Thus protected, the Morjabian folk grew fat and rich. The land was a veritable treasure of Nature, and it is a fact that in the dialect they speak, there is no word which means "hunger."[5]

[Footnote 5: It is as curious a fact that amongst the majority of cannibal people there is no equivalent for "thank you."--E. W.]

Yet the people of the Morjaba were not without their crises.