THE DERELICT 99 



man's point of view, most interesting interior imagin- 

 able. The hut consisted of but one room, the walls 

 of which were hung from roof to floor with skins and 

 trophies of many different kinds of animals and birds. 

 The daraa floor of the room was also carpeted with pelts, 

 a magnificent lion skin forming the centre trophy. A 

 roughly-hewn table, a loosely-swung hammock, an old 

 deck-chair, a huge brass-fastened oak chest, and a litter 

 of saddlery and rusty ' odds and ends ' thrown carelessly 

 into a corner completed the inventory of furniture. 

 Thoroughly fatigued after the long ride, Jack flung himself 

 at full length on the lion skin, and within a very few 

 minutes he was wrapped in that deep, dreamless slumber 

 which comes to little children and weary men only. 



" Upon awakening Jack found that his host had returned, 

 and that he was busily engaged in plucking a leash of 

 lesser bustard, or, as the Boer has it, koorhaan. 



" ' I am afraid bean coffee and boiled mealies are not 

 much to your taste/ said the owner of the hut to Morti- 

 more, as his eyes rested on a pannikin of cold coffee and 

 a couple of boiled corn-cobs which lay on the table un- 

 touched. Jack declared, however, that so soundly had 

 he slept he did not hear the native bring in the improvised 

 meal. 



" It was during the dressing and cooking of the game 

 that Jack learned something of the history of his host, 



whom henceforth I will call G . G was a younger 



son of one of the oldest and best-known families in the 

 west of England, and after distinguishing himself at 

 Winchester and New College, Oxford, he was launched 

 into the ocean of so-called fashionable life that sea of 

 shoals in which so many impecunious younger sons have 



