"Only what we hear people say," replied Hildebrandt. "Some say he is just a Sous African German who do some bad sing in Sous Africa and com up here ten, twelf year ago to join the Denhardts. Ozzers say he com from Germany long before, wiz Dr. Fischer, and zat he was natural son of our old Emperor Wilhelm One. First, Emperor put him in army, and several times pay his debts, and zen when he kill anozzer officer in duel he pack him off to Africa and say, ’Never let me see your face again.’ But p’raps zat is only story invented by ze man himself. Somtimes I sink our Government use him in som way. I dare say your Government do ze same by zis ozzer man you hate so, Vill-o-bee Patterne. What a fonny name! Your English names are somtimes more fonny zan ours!" The German Commandant, consulted by Roger (who in April, 1897, was on his way to the coast after having made everything safe behind him), was rather noncommittal about Stolzenberg. The conversation was in German, punctuated with phrases of Swahili on the part of the Commandant, who was proud of having acquired a smattering of this African tongue. He was rather non-committal about the denizen of the Red Crater. He was a "derben Kerl" ... "Simba yule, kabisa," the terror of the Masai. He kept the Masai occupied in that quarter while the Germans tackled the Wa-hehe on the south. He must be given some latitude ... the Commandant would see he did not impinge on the Concession ... perhaps he might be persuaded to take command of a large irregular force against the Wa-hehe.... "’_Divide et impera_,’ sehen Sie? Em glas Rheinwein, nicht so? Und Soda? Ein lang-trinken in der Englische phrase...." It seemed incongruous that this scene—the rather stiff German major, in strict, white, military uniform and an encumbering sword, a black sentry, not far away, walking with a plap, plap, plap of his bare feet up and down the prescribed number of paces; a plainly furnished, white-washed room in a square fort with pretentious crenellations along its high white walls; the oleograph portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II; the camp table, the Rhine wine in long-necked bottles, the enamelled iron tumblers and the soda siphons; and the click of a typewriter in the next apartment—should come up before his mental vision as he sat with Lucy and Maud and the Schräder partners on a balcony in the Strand, waiting for Queen Victoria to pass to her Jubilee thanksgiving at St. Paul’s! Why should he think of Adolf Stolzenberg then? He was but part of the African nightmare which he would fain roll up and forget. A few weeks of England had put Africa’s nose out of joint. To work for the redemption of a tiny portion of German Africa when such gigantic developments of British Africa were dawning in the imagination of far-seeing men, or when an evolution still more important was taking place in his own land, in the Far East, in America....