Consul.”

“Humph! Come, that sounds respectable. Well, I don’t mean to stir out till we start up country. I’d go to-night if I could. And I leave it to you to see into this matter. It wouldn’t be Christian-like, would it, not to lend the poor fellow a hand. There, as I said before, I trust to you, carte blanche, in that sort of thing to do what you think best.”

“Thank you, Sir James,” said the doctor gravely.

“Oh, you thoroughly approve of what I have said, then?”

“Thoroughly, sir, and I feel very proud of our boys.”

And so it came to pass that Daniel Mann—after the doctor had seen him and had had an interview with the British Consul—was prescribed for with the news that he would be taken upon the expedition. Thanks to this intelligence, he looked at the end of two days quite a different man, even after hearing from the two keepers the anything but cheering words that they thought the governor must be mad.

Two days later the party, bag and baggage, were on their way up country to the extreme point, the rail head, so to speak, of civilisation—the spot where the advance guard of British troops kept back the black wave of savagedom, and where waggons and bullocks were to be purchased and the career of wild adventure was to begin.