"Horders, very speshul, sir," he said, his eyes twinkling; and then to himself, and almost aloud--for this gallant fellow had a way of addressing his remarks to no one in particular, and his thoughts to the open: "Lor'! Bless me 'art! If he ain't no more'n a baby, just a mere shaver; and they tells me he speaks this 'ere lingo like a good 'un. Lingo, do they call it? Just a norrible mess o' words, that's what I says, and yer can't make not one of 'em understand. Why, bless me soul! I sees an old chap with coal-black eyes, an' a beard as white as snow, a-sittin' in a doorway o' one of the things round 'ere they calls 'uts--'uts, is they? My word! My uncle!--as some of these 'ere orficer men calls it--just 'oles I call 'em. 'Uts! And there was that there man--more like a monkey he looked--and though I shouted at 'im, not a word could he understand, nor me the lingo he flung back at me. I should say----" Geoff's rather short and abrupt "Well?" brought the good fellow's ruminating to a sudden ending; he coughed loudly to clear his voice, and those sharp eyes of his again twinkled. "Bless my 'art! I was a-wanderin'," he told himself; and then aloud: "Horders, speshul, sir. Colonel ----, sir, said I was to find you at once, and you was to report at Head-quarters immediately. Shall I dismiss, sir?" "Please," Geoff told him, and stood watching the man and pondering--pondering not so much as to the reason for this order and the nature of the interview before him as to the reason which had produced what he was sure was a twinkling in the eyes of the man who had brought the message. "Confound the fellow!" he was saying. "I'm sure he had a little joke on of his own, and was almost laughing; and I've seen him before somewhere. Now where?" In his turn, he too was cut short abruptly, and enjoined to remember his orders, and not to allow himself to indulge in a species of "brown study". For if that gallant soldier had been duly and correctly dismissed, he was still and always a soldier, a punctilious fellow, who throughout long years had never failed to carry out the orders of a superior, and who, now that he had conveyed such an order to an officer, considered it only his mere duty to see that that young officer acted on the order promptly. He was standing near at hand, his rifle still at his shoulder, his head thrown back, those eyes of his watching Geoff shrewdly. "Horders, speshul, sir," he muttered in guttural tones, which just managed to reach our hero. "Beg pardon, sir----" But Geoff had already come to his senses again, and went striding off to the Head-quarters hut, with the orderly following closely. There he found himself confronted just outside the hut, and beneath a tope of palms which threw its grateful shade above some chairs placed there for the Staff of the expedition, by one of the senior Staff Officers.