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Rolls stamped at the fighters: "Stash that racket!" but still the two kerries acted, rattling anon like castanets, and the clattering antlers of antagonist stags rattling together.

Only when Rolls, roaring at them anew, drew his revolver, did the duel consent to stop, and then the Pondo dropped something at the Swahili's ear, to which the Swahili consented with nods, so that Rolls understood that the feud was still to be settled elsewhere.

"Silly brutes," he grumbled, sitting anew to his tin plate: "we can't afford to have 'em cracking one another's skulls up here"—for just "here" was cannibal, there had been two pitched laager-battles, flow of blood, and the sentries standing out in the dark now about the bivouac were not there for nothing.

"Well, you were saying——" Cobby said, mopping his forehead and a chest all exposed at the opening of his dirty shirt, the sleeves rolled up.

"It's only details that remain over," Rolls answered, casting an underglance at Macray, who lay on his elbow, eating with evident effort and unease: "the dart is to get within the three enclosures one dark night, chloroform 'our mother,' and bring her off like a sack of mealies."