“Oh, nothing. His colonel trusted him to take twenty Tommies out to wash, or groom camels, or something at the back of Suakin, and Stalky got embroiled with Fuzzies five miles in the interior. He conducted a masterly retreat and wiped up eight of ’em. He knew jolly well he’d no right to go out so far, so he took the initiative and pitched in a letter to his colonel, who was frothing at the mouth, complaining of the ’paucity of support accorded to him in his operations.’ Gad, it might have been one fat brigadier slangin’ another! Then he went into the Staff Corps.” “That--is--entirely--Stalky,” said Abanazar from his arm-chair. “You’ve come across him, too?” I said. “Oh, yes,” he replied in his softest tones. “I was at the tail of that--that epic. Don’t you chaps know?” We did not--Infant, McTurk, and I; and we called for information very politely. “’Twasn’t anything,” said Tertius. “We got into a mess up in the Khye-Kheen Hills a couple o’ years ago, and Stalky pulled us through. That’s all.” McTurk gazed at Tertius with all an Irishman’s contempt for the tongue-tied Saxon. “Heavens!” he said. “And it’s you and your likes govern Ireland. Tertius, aren’t you ashamed?” “Well, I can’t tell a yarn. I can chip in when the other fellow starts _bukhing_. Ask him.” He pointed to Dick Four, whose nose gleamed scornfully over the rug. “I knew you wouldn’t,” said Dick Four. “Give me a whiskey and soda. I’ve been drinking lemon-squash and ammoniated quinine while you chaps were bathin’ in champagne, and my head’s singin’ like a top.” He wiped his ragged mustache above the drink; and, his teeth chattering in his head, began: “You know the Khye-Kheen-Malôt expedition, when we scared the souls out of ’em with a field force they daren’t fight against? Well, both tribes--there was a coalition against us--came in without firing a shot; and a lot of hairy villains, who had no more power over their men than I had, promised and vowed all sorts of things. On that very slender evidence, Pussy dear--” “I was at Simla,” said Abanazar, hastily. “Never mind, you’re tarred with the same brush. On the strength of those tuppenny-ha’penny treaties, your asses of Politicals reported the country as pacified, and the Government, being a fool, as usual, began road-makin’--dependin’ on local supply for labor. ’Member _that_, Pussy? ’Rest of our chaps who’d had no look-in during the campaign didn’t think there’d be any more of it, and were anxious to get back to India. But I’d been in two of these little rows before, and I had my suspicions. I engineered myself, _summa ingenio_, into command of a road-patrol--no shovellin’, only marching up and down genteelly with a guard. They’d withdrawn all the troops they could, but I nucleused about forty Pathans, recruits chiefly, of my regiment, and sat tight at the base-camp while the road-parties went to work, as per Political survey.” “Had some rippin’ sing-songs in camp, too,” said Tertius.