thieving expedition.

Whilst they were away, one of the deadly epidemics that occasionally visited El-Ammeh swept through the city, claiming among its many victims Annette Le Breton.

CHAPTER IV

With the passing years, the Sultan Casim Ammeh increased in wealth and power. He gave very little thought to France now. It was a vague power, too far away to trouble him, and only once had it really sent a feeler in his direction; that ill-fated expedition headed by Colonel Le Breton.

Emboldened by his success, he had extended his marauding. But, if he heard nothing more of France, France occasionally heard of him, in the form of complaints from various parts of the Protectorate, from other chiefs whose territory he had raided. The Government knew his name but it had no idea where he came from.

On one occasion the Sultan and his robber horde swept down to within a hundred miles of St. Louis. But there he met with a severe defeat. He retired to his desert stronghold, deciding not to adventure in that direction again. And he owed his defeat to strange guns such as had not come into his life before. Guns that fired not a couple of shots, but a whole volley; an endless fusillade that even his wild warriors could not face.

He went back to El-Ammeh determined to get hold of some of those wonderful guns.

Obviously it was out of the question to attack St. Louis where they came from. If they were to be obtained, they must be searched for in some other direction.

Sore with defeat, he brooded on the strange guns. And very often he talked of them to the boy he called his son.

Raoul Le Breton was about thirteen when the Sultan met with his first rebuff at the hands of France. And he had the welfare and prestige of the desert kingdom at heart, and was as anxious as the Sultan to possess this new weapon.

Far away in the south was the outpost of another European power; just a handful of white men struggling to keep a hold on a country an indifferent and short-sighted government was inclined to let slip.

Round and about the River Gambia the British had a footing. Among the men most determined to keep a hold on this strip of territory was Captain George Barclay.

He was a man of about twenty-eight, of medium height and wiry make, with a thin face and steady grey eyes where tragedy lurked. His confrères said that Barclay had no interests outside of his work. But they were wrong.

He had one thing that was more to him than his own life; a tiny, velvety-eyed, golden-haired daughter.

He had come out to North-West Africa in quest of forgetfulness.

At twenty-three, although he was only a penniless lieutenant, the beauty of the London season, the prospective heiress of millions, had thought well to marry him. It was a runaway match. For his sake Pansy Carrington had risked losing both wealth and position. She was only nineteen, and her guardian and godfather, whose acknowledged heiress she was, had disapproved of George Barclay; gossip said because he was madly in love with her himself, although he was nearly thirty years her senior.

However, whether this was so or not, Henry Langham had forgiven the girl. He had taken her back into his good graces, and, in due course, had become godfather to the second Pansy. "Grand-godfather," the child called him as soon as she could talk.

It had seemed to George Barclay that no man's life could be happier than his. Then, without any warning, tragedy came upon him after five years of bliss. For one day his girl-wife was brought back to him dead, the result of an accident in the hunting-field.

With her death all light had gone out of his life. To escape from himself he had gone out to Gambia; and his tiny daughter now lived, as her mother had lived before her, with her godfather, Henry Langham.

But it was not of his daughter Barclay was thinking at that moment; other matters occupied his mind.

He stood on the roof of a little stone fort, gazing at the landscape in a speculative manner.

The building itself consisted of four rooms, set on a platform of rock some three feet from the ground. All the windows were small, and high up and barred. One room had no communication with the others: it was a sort of guardroom entered by a heavy wooden door. To the other three rooms one solid door gave entry, and from one of them a ladder and trap-door led up to the roof which had battlements around it.

Below was a large compound, rudely stockaded, in which half a dozen native huts were built.

In that part of Gambia Captain Barclay represented the British Government. He had to administer justice and keep the peace, and in this task he was aided by a white subaltern, twenty Hausa soldiers, and a couple of maxim guns.

On three sides of the little British outpost an endless expanse of forest showed, with white mist curling like smoke about it. On the fourth was a wide shallow valley, with dwarf cliffs on either side, alive with dog-faced baboons. The valley was patched with swamps and lakes, and through it a river wended an erratic course, its banks heavily fringed with reeds and mimosa trees; a valley from which, with approaching evening, a stream of miasma rose.

Barclay's gaze, however, never strayed in the direction of the shallow valley.

He looked to the north.

A week or so ago word had come through that a notorious raider was on the move; a man whom the French Government had been endeavouring to catch for the last five years or more. What he was doing so far south as Gambia, the district officer did not know. But he knew he was there.

Only the previous day news had come that one of the villages within his, Barclay's, jurisdiction had been practically wiped out. A similar fate might easily fall to the lot of the British outpost, considering that the Arab chief's force outnumbered Barclay's ten to one.

From the roof of his quarters the Englishman saw the sun set. It seemed to sink and drown in a lake of orange that lay like a blazing furnace on the horizon; a lake that spread and scattered when the sun disappeared, drifting off in islands of clouds, gold, rose, mauve and vivid red, sailing slowly across a tense blue sky, getting ever thinner and more ragged, until night came suddenly and swallowed up their tattered remains.

A dense, purple darkness fell upon the land, soft and velvety, that reminded Barclay of his little daughter's eyes. And in a vault as darkly purple, a host of great stars flashed. Away in the forest an owl hooted. From the wide valley came the coughing roar of a leopard. Every now and again some night bird passed, a vague shadow in the darkness. In silver showers the fireflies danced in the thick, hot air. Down in the compound glow-worms showed, looking like a lot of smouldering cigarette ends cast carelessly aside.

Upon the roof, with gaze fixed on the misty, baffling darkness that soughed and hissed around him, Barclay stayed, until the gong took him down to dinner.

There his junior waited, a round-faced youngster of about nineteen.

The meal was a poor repast of tinned soup, hashed tinned beef, yams and coffee, all badly cooked and indifferently served.

During the course of the meal the youngster remarked:

"What a joke if we nabbed the Sultan Casim Ammeh, or whatever he calls himself, and went one better than the French johnnies."

"It would be more than a joke. It would be a jolly good riddance," Barclay responded.

"It's queer nobody knowing where he really comes from."

"You may be sure he doesn't play his tricks anywhere near his own headquarters. More likely than not, he and his cut-throat lot start out disguised as peaceful merchants, in separate bands, and join up when they reach the seat of operations. There are vast tracts of Senegal practically unexplored. They would give endless cover to one of his kidney."

"If you had the luck to bag him, what should you do?"

"Shoot him