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“Oh, he was trying to drill a lot of non-combatants this morning, and asked me how to get them out of a corner. Of course I favoured him with a few directions, with the result that his squad got more gloriously mixed up than ever. Only wish I had seen them!”

“Tarleton is a good fellow,” said Colin, with apparent irrelevance.

“Don’t be a prig, young ’un. Must have a bit of fun sometimes. What is a man to do, stuck down in a desert under a commandant who’s either a scoundrel or silly?”

“You mean what the Major was telling us at tiffin? But it’s perfectly true: they did surrender the moment they saw him.”

“I daresay. He has carefully circulated all these rumours about his miraculous powers, and then pretends to be surprised that the niggers believe them. He’s a blatant theatrical egotist—a regular old Crummles. ‘I can’t think who puts these things in the papers. I don’t.’ Oh no, of course not!”

“If you mean that Major Keeling is a hypocrite, I don’t agree with you.”

“Now don’t get white-hot. If he isn’t, then he has read Scott till his brain is turned. You’re such an innocent that you don’t see the man does everything for effect. His appearance, his perpetual squabbles with headquarters, his popularity-hunting up here, the idiotic things he does—they’re all calculated to produce an impression, to make the unsophisticated stare, in fact. Why, one of my patrols came across him riding alone at midnight not long ago, miles away from here. The man must be either mad or a fool.”