“‘Of course I am not,’ I says. ‘Would _you_ be a naturalised Boer?’ “‘I’m fighting against ’em,’ he says, lighting a cigarette, ‘but it’s all a matter of opinion.’ “‘Well,’ I says, ‘you can hold any blame opinion you choose, but I’m a white man, and my present intention is to die in that colour.’ “He laughed one of those big, thick-ended, British laughs that don’t lead anywhere, and whacked up some sort of compliment about America that made me mad all through. “I am the captive of your bow and spear, Sir, but I do not understand the alleged British joke. It is depressing. “I was introdooced to five or six officers that evening, and every blame one of ’em grinned and asked me why I wasn’t in the Filipeens suppressing our war! And that was British humour! They all had to get it off their chests before they’d talk sense. But they was sound on the Zigler. They had all admired her. I made out a fairy-story of me being wearied of the war, and having pushed the gun at them these last three months in the hope they’d capture it and let me go home. That tickled ’em to death. They made me say it three times over, and laughed like kids each time. But half the British _are_ kids; specially the older men. My Captain Mankeltow was less of it than the others. He talked about the Zigler like a lover, Sir, and I drew him diagrams of the hopper-feed and recoil-cylinder in his note-book. He asked the one British question I was waiting for, ‘Hadn’t I made my working-parts too light?’ The British think weight’s strength. “At last—I’d been shy of opening the subject before—at last I said, ‘Gentlemen, you are the unprejudiced tribunal I’ve been hunting after. I guess you ain’t interested in any other gun-factory, and politics don’t weigh with you. How did it feel your end of the game? What’s my gun done, anyway?’ “‘I hate to disappoint you,’ says Captain Mankeltow, ‘because I know you feel as an inventor.’ I wasn’t feeling like an inventor just then. I felt friendly, but the British haven’t more tact than you can pick up with a knife out of a plate of soup. “‘The honest truth,’ he says, ‘is that you’ve wounded about ten of us one way and another, killed two battery horses and four mules, and—oh, yes,’ he said, ‘you’ve bagged five Kaffirs. But, buck up,’ he said, ‘we’ve all had mighty close calls’—shaves, he called ’em, I remember. ‘Look at my pants.’ “They was repaired right across the seat with Minneapolis flour-bagging. I could see the stencil. “‘I ain’t bluffing,’ he says. ‘Get the hospital returns, Doc.’ “The doctor gets ’em and reads ’em out under the proper dates. That doctor alone was worth the price of admission.