driven back to Rosebery. It was more interesting to me as a subjective study than an objective display of learning.

'Poor creatures!' the lecturer said of the natives. 'Don't put them in a false light. Whatever claims they may have to equable treatment, they have no claim to be considered romantic. The ancient romance of this country is the romance of a nobler race the romance of the Tyrian trader, Tyrian or Sabaean. Allow me but a trifling emendation, and Matthew Arnold's lines will serve to indicate that romance.' Substituting 'Zambesians' for 'Iberians,' he gave us the last lines of 'The Scholar Gipsy.' 'In that era of Tyre's trade,' he concluded, 'I place the golden age of our country a golden age which under our own Imperial rule begins anew.'

'H'm,' said Spenser. 'That live Mashona building-boy's worth many dead Phoenicians to me, at any rate. As to defining romance, we'd better agree to differ. 'Do well unto thyself, and all men will speak well of thee,' he went on, with a tang of bitterness. 'Jew-boys and Arabs mopped up trade when they were living, now they jump other men's kudos, being dead.'

'Never mind.' I said. 'Art for Art's sake, aspiration for aspiration's, faith for faith's! And some there be which have no memorial; who are perished as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them.'

'Never mind,' it was his turn to say. 'That granite kopje church is rising, and Magbwe Ruins stand the quick and the dead. These shall both come up for judgment and get justice. Yes, if they have to wait for it till the Supreme Court of Alt holds session.'

NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD CHAMPION

We were going on an expedition long before the morning light came. Our ship was an armed steamer a converted cargo boat. We had reinforced our naval guns' crews and our Indian ship's guard by taking officers and native soldiers (askaris) aboard at a certain bay. We had reinforced our artillery by borrowing a Maxim from the shore. I had a guest on board that night, a cheerful padre. How he seemed to relish his craft, and how able I esteemed him. I was very raw at the work, and he helped me to understand what my defects were both in nature and grace. He had the sort of smile, I thought the real, right sort to warm a naval parishioner's heart. He was very keen on the new sort of thrills and experiences that he had sought for himself by coming aboard.

We reclined on camp beds high up on the bridge-deck, but we did not drop asleep when the electric light failed and faded. We asked each other's ages, and discussed parts of England as we had known them in more peaceful days; then we assured one another that we wanted to rise early. We were to steam off on our sudden raid in the dark. Coffee had been ordered about 5:30; action might be expected to begin not much later than 6 a.m. We speculated as to whether it were true that our ship would have to face an old field gun's fire on the morrow, as well as a Maxim's. I was eloquent as I told how our four-inch gun might be expected to shake the ship. After that, in the dimness we talked shop; we had neither of us possibly had many easy openings for that ravishing employment lately.

Was it right to pray for our own side's success? I was steadfast in my scruples as to praying thus, my new-found friend was inclined to be a little scornful of them. 'Is there a God of the Germans fighting the English tribal God?' I asked rather irreverently, and my friend showed that he was shocked. I apologized. 'Let's leave the Supreme Power out,' I said. 'Let's consider the action of the saints in this war. Are they supposed to be scrapping like the gods in Homer English Saint George against German Saint Michael and so on?' But my friend did not seem very keen about either Homer or hagiology. He explained that he was a C.M.S. man, and not a medievalist. The discussion languished, ere he murmured 'Good night.'

I slept rather fitfully. I was awake long before the ship moved away on her fierce errand. At last, when she had been steaming some while, I stole down in the dark to the bathroom. When I came out of it the grey twilight was beginning. I crept aft and looked over the bulwark, wondering how far we were away now. The shore Maxim was in place there with plenty of sand bags about it, but the officer in charge of it was still stretched abed. His friend the Intelligence Officer, who had messed with us last night, was snoring on another bed beside him. I stood looking at a dusky island in the moonlight, and began praying a favorite prayer of mine for those times, asking God to let Saint Michael cover our heads in the day of battle. I muttered the prayer very low, but it appeared that somebody heard. A slim figure, seemingly in khaki, that I had not noticed, rose up from a seal; on the sand bags.

'Are you praying something about battles?' it asked. I started, and assented clumsily.

'How does one pray about battles nowadays?' the investigator proceeded. He spoke in the friendliest way, and managed to set even me at ease. So I told him what I had prayed for.

'It sounds a fair sort of prayer; better than some I've heard,' he allowed, as he sat down again. 'Some people seem to forget the last lot of the Books in the Bible when they pray nowadays.' I heartily agreed.

'I don't believe for one,' he went on, 'that Saint Michael is passionately interested in wiping out either English or askaris or Germans. It's surely better to pray about him like you prayed. I should think the negative work appeals to him more than the positive, the salvage more than the blotting.'

His voice was clear, and evidently carried. The Maxim's warden grumbled, and began to sit up in bed.

'Possibly,' this disturber of slumber went on quite unconcernedly, 'Saint Michael has a clearer notion as to the real enemy than some clients who invoke him.'

Then the officer in pyjamas accosted me, and the thread of the other's talk was lost. When I moved off to dress he had already left his perch among the sand bags. I climbed the ladder, and had my coffee. Soon after came the scurry to stations. We were coming into the bay in the glory of that morning under hangings of amber and rose and feathery grey. The four-inch gun's crew were in their places. I stood trying to read the Prayer before Action in its very small print. I murmured what I was doing to my cheery colleague, so much more enthusiastic than I was about what seemed to be coming. Then someone came up and spoke to me. It was surely my friend from the sand bags. I could see him properly now. He was surely an officer. He stood up slender and shapely in his khaki, but he was not wearing a single star or a regimental badge of any kind. Had he forgotten these in the hurry of this eager morning? With but a few words, he passed on towards the guns' crews. Soon our four-inch gun was shaking the ship horribly. We were shelling a trench that ran up a hillside, they said. I sat under cover of the bulwark near some kneeling riflemen, far from enjoying myself. Yet no gun roared back in answer to our own. It seemed to be one-sided enough, this operation of war.

'It's a fearful weapon,' remarked my colleague rather complacently, as he paced towards the gun platform. One prayed for those who were naked to its fearsomeness up on the hill there, and prayed about Saint Michael's intervention to Saint Michael's Commander-in-Chief. The long-drawn moments slurred by us. A bell rang as the ship wound her way in slowly. The mournful cry of him who took the soundings came again and again. Then we stopped dead anew, and our gun's mouth roared and flamed.

'Such a crowd of askaris; the hill's black with them!' So the signalman cried to the doctor, as he sped by on a message. I