And so were UNREDD and SPOYLPAPEROS. Alas! for their melancholy fate--they had died of laughter! They had their desert! [Illustration: "_They had their desert!_"] * * * * * INCIDENT IN THE INDIAN SPORTING TOUR OF ALIBI PASHA (COLONEL ALIAS ALIBI). [Illustration] SIR,--You were sending your Correspondents all over the world, and you never did a better thing than when you summoned me to your presence, and said, "Colonel, are you ready?" and I replied, "I am!" If it hadn't been for my uncommon clearness of vision, the party of detectives whom you sent out in search of me would never have discovered me in my rocky lair on the southern coast of Cornwall, to which secluded spot I had for a time retreated, your Colonel _en retraite_, the only time he ever retreated in his life, and then not from foes, but from too many and too kind friends, in order to scheme out at my leisure a new and original plan for tracing the real and only source of the Nile at half the cost of STANLEY'S expedition, with double the profits. "The _Genuine Nile Water Company Limited_," and the "_Nile Sauce for Cheops and Steaks_," will be two of the greatest financial successes of this or any other time. "Yeo ho, my boys! Yeo ho!" I shouted from the height above to four toiling minions in the cockle-shell of a boat below. My! how glad they were. Odds Colonels and cockle-shells! but, it I hadn't exerted my lungs, they'd have returned disconsolate to you, as you were waiting at the railway station, with your baggage all labelled, and your dog _Toby_ waving adieux to your followers. What a wigging they'd have got! But, seeing me, you smiled as you wert wont to smile, and in two-twos the historic question was asked--"Colonel, are you ready?" (as I have already reminded you), and the equally historic answer had been given, "I am!" [Illustration: "Yeo ho, my boys! Yeo ho!" I shouted.] My weapons and my sporting togs are always at hand, packed for travelling at the shortest possible notice. And here let me remark to you that, when you were in the desert, had you been armed with my patent revolving, twenty-times-a-second, double-action repeating rifle, the strange story of the conflict between yourself and the ostrich would have been utterly impossible. Excuse me, Sir, but, as it is, I consider it scarcely within the bounds of probability. I know probability will take big bounds, and I'm a bit of a traveller myself, but your escape uninjured from that wild bird, and the escape also of TOBY, who is not a sporting dog, is one of the strangest tales on record, by the side of which, perhaps, even the daring exploit, which I am now about to narrate as a plain unvarnished tale, may seem a mere ordinary, every-day occurrence. But to proceed.