"No, only to see you all treading on each other's heels to do _konza_ to a woman who's nearly losing her life trying not to laugh at the crowd of you." "Hallo! what's this?" sung out Holmes, not sorry for an excuse to change the subject. "Why, you used a Zulu word, Stanninghame, and yet you say you never were in South Africa before." "Well, and then? I've once or twice known fellows use a Greek word who had never been near the land of Socrates in their lives." "Still, that's different. Every fellow learns Greek at school, but no fellow learns Zulu, eh?" "You can't swear to that. Well, never mind. Perhaps I have been mugging it up as a preliminary to coming out here. Note, however, Holmes, that I used the word advisedly. _Konza_ does not mean to show civility, but to do homage, and that of a tolerably abject kind--in fact, to knuckle under." "All the same, I believe you have been out here before," went on Holmes, staring at him with a new interest. "Only you're such a mysterious chap that you won't let on." "Have it so, if you will. Only, aren't you rather drawing a red herring across the trail, Holmes? We were talking about Miss Ormskirk." "Um--yes, so we were. But, have you talked to her at all, Stanninghame? I believe even you would be fetched if you did." "H'm--well, I'd better leave it alone then, hadn't I, seeing that I undertook this voyage not for love, but for money? What's her name, by the way?" Holmes stared. "Her name," he began---- "Oh--er--I see; her other name? By Jove! it's an odd one. Lilith." "An old one too; the oldest she-name on record, bar none." "What? How does that come in?" "Tradition hath it that Lilith was Adam's first wife. That makes it the oldest she-name on record, doesn't it?" "Of course. What a rum chap you are, Stanninghame! Now, I wonder how many fellows could have told one that?" "Well, I am a 'know-a-little-of-everything,' they tell me," said Laurence, without a shade of self-complacency. "But, I say, what do these two want bothering around? Not another subscription already?" Two individuals, armed with mysterious pencil and paper, were moving from group to group, with a word to each. The hawk-like profile of the one bespoke his nationality if not his tribe, even as the pug-nosed, squab-faced figure-head of the other spoke to his. "It's the 'sweep,'" said Holmes, with kindling interest. "They're going to draw it in the smoke-room. Come along and see it. It'll be something to do." "But I don't want something to do. I want to do nothing, as I told you just now, and---- Hallo! By George, he's gone!" One glance at the retreating Holmes, who was making all sail for the smoke-room, and Laurence tranquilly resumed his former occupation--gazing out over the blue-green surface, to wit. Not long, however, was he to be left to the enjoyment of the same. "Can I have this chair? Is it anybody's?"