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"Well—but——" Rolls said. "Myself, I'd never see fit to forewarn the enemy."

"Miscreant! The insolent licence—— Well, now he has my challenge."

Rolls shrugged. Challenges, flourishes, moral ebullitions were hardly his style, but the plain way toward an end; and in the next three weeks, while preparations were under weigh, and Cobby tearing himself out of his place in civilization, Rolls' unimaginative sense had enough to do to check the other's excess of zest and effort. "Our money won't run to it," he would say: "we don't aim to be an invading army with baggage, look. There's no chop any road in bringing arc-lamps and gelignite, telephone-sets and nitro-toluol...."

"To have done it, and be done with it, Rolls," Cobby said: "to be back here in Fleet Street, doing surface-tension! If we go, we go as white men, armed with the white man's wit and might—not with seven matches."

Rolls flung his hand. "Well, there may be something in it. Go your own road."

Hence, on the day of departure, cartfuls of paraphernalia lay stored for the expedition within that belly of the Saxon. To watch all snugly stored, Rolls, hardly yet quite on his legs, had been aboard some hours, and Cobby, at the eleventh hour, was walking alone with quick steps toward the ship along the dockside, pulled askew by a bag, when a voice said behind him: "Carry your bag, sir?"