His colleague, the Vice-Consul, was an ex-Naval Officer, who had given up the Navy for a while to serve in the East African Consulates, in the idea that they entailed little office work, good pay, and any amount of shooting, varied with agreeable _safaris_ at the expense of the Government. This particular example of his kind had been rather sharply called back to more humdrum duties and the preparation of statistics by Roger himself, when he was acting Consul-General. So now was the time to get his own back:— "_Hullo_, old chap! _Who’d_ have thought it. Where have you sprung from? We’d all given you up for lost—thought you’d gone ’Fanti,’ eloped with a missionaryess for the far interior and were founding an empire on your own...." "I’ve brought here," interrupted Roger, with a set face, "_Mrs. John Baines_" (Lucy had retreated out of ear-shot with Halima to the verandah of the Consulate)—"_Mrs. John Baines_, whose husband has been killed, I fear, in the Ulunga country. I should be much obliged if you could put her up here till we can get a dau to take us over to Unguja.... As for me..." "_Aw*fully sorry old chap. *Of course_, I can make room for _you_ ... give you _some_ sort of a shakedown.... You’re a fellow _man_ and you’ll understand.... But the fact is I’m—I’m not—quite prepared—er—to entertain a white lady here. Bachelor establishment you know.... _You_ twig? ... Dare say you’re fixed up just the same at—where is it? at Medina, What?" Roger turned away angrily. "Lucy! ... Mrs. Baines!" "Yes, Captain Brentham." "I’ll get a boat and we’ll go over to the Mission station across the Bay. I expect they’ll have room—indeed they must _make_ room—for you there till our dau is ready to sail...." Then turning to the Vice-Consul: "Be good enough to send a cablegram to-day to the Agency at Unguja stating that H.M. Consul for Zangia arrived here this morning from the interior with Mrs. John Baines from Ulunga, and add that I shall arrive at Unguja to report as soon as I can charter a dau; unless a gun-boat comes in first. My Camp is at Kisolutini. You can send on any letters that come for me there...." "Well, but I say..." Roger having been joined by the wondering and disappointed Lucy, who had taken a great fancy to the picturesque Consulate, strode out with an angry face, flushed under the tan. No return message came for him from the Agency at Unguja. And a few days afterwards he embarked with Lucy and Halima (who had already agreed to marry the Goanese cook), his Wanyamwezi porters, and a selected collection of trophies and mineralogical specimens, in an Arab dau, for the island port of Unguja. This time—December 27, 1888—Lucy was too anxious about her future to notice or to care whether it had bugs or not in its rotting timbers or its frowsy thatch.