John Ames was an excellent specimen of this class of public official. Born on a Natal farm, he could speak the native languages fluently, and had all the idiosyncrasies of the native character at his fingers' ends, a phase of useful knowledge which a few years spent at an English public school had failed to obliterate, and which, on his return to the land of his birth, he was able to turn to practical account. He had come to Rhodesia with the early Pioneers, and having served through the Matabele war of 1893, had elected to remain in the country. He was of goodly height and proportion, standing six feet in his socks, handsome withal, having regular features, and steadfast and penetrating grey eyes; and at the time we make his acquaintance had just turned thirty, but looked more. "Here's a pretty kettle of fish," he was saying, as he sat in his compound on the day following the events recorded in the last chapter. "This thing will have to be gone into, Inglefield, and that pretty thoroughly." "Certainly, old chap, certainly. But what is the `thing' when all's said and done, and what sort of fish are in the kettle? You forget you've been pattering away to these chaps for the last half-hour, and except for a word or two, I haven't caught any of it. Even now I don't know what it's all about." "These police of yours seem to have been rather playing the fool," was the direct answer. He addressed as Inglefield was the sub-inspector in charge of the Matabele Police, whose camp lay about a mile away. Inglefield was an English importation, an ex-subaltern in a line regiment, who having lived at the rate of about double his means for a few years, had, in common with not a few of his kind, found it necessary to migrate with the object of "picking up something;" and he had duly "picked up" a commission in the Matabele Police. Now Inglefield twirled his moustache and looked annoyed. "Oh, the police again!" he retorted, somewhat snappishly. "I say, Ames. Can they by any chance ever do anything right according to you fellows?" The two men were seated together outside the hut which Ames used for an office. In front of them about a dozen Matabele squatted in a semicircle. One of these--a ringed man--had been speaking at some length, but the bulk of his conversation was utterly unintelligible to Inglefield.