104 THE GREAT COMPANIES 



remove your hat as the Portuguese flag is 

 reverently lowered and folded up for the night. 

 A delicious coolness now makes itself felt, and on 

 returning to the dining-room you see that a clean 

 cloth has been laid therein, whilst appetising 

 odours float ever and anon from the neighbouring 

 kitchen. In the meantime, you visit the com- 

 mandant's office, and are rewarded by the discovery 

 of a fine collection of antelope heads, with one or 

 two pairs of buffalo horns, and the skull of a small 

 female hippopotamus from the neighbouring river. 

 Your chief care must now be to abstain from 

 admiring these trophies too eloquently, for assuredly 

 if you do your host will not be satisfied unless you 

 accept them, or some of them. Then your eye is 

 plucked to a dado of gay Indian cloth surrounding 

 the varnished boarding of the walls, whereon hang 

 coloured portraits of their Majesties of Portugal, 

 together with photographs of the members of your 

 host's family, with whom he hopes to spend his 

 leave at Alcoba^a next year. You then make 

 some complimentary remarks concerning the 

 quality and serviceableness of two archaic rifles 

 lying in a corner, and express well simulated sur- 

 prise on being told, with a deprecating smile, that 

 the commandant is, personally, not much of a 

 sportsman. He has, you are informed, two ex- 

 cellent native hunters to whom he confides his 

 ancient weapons, and who bring him in guinea- 

 fowls and venison for his solitary table. Also that 

 one of these, Sangaroti by name, was knocked 

 down only the week before last by a charging 

 byffaloj and still walks lamely. " But what can you 



