Tom told his story, the doctor breaking in every now and then with sympathetic little ejaculations.
"'Tis hard luck; to be sure it is," he said, when Tom had told him of his uncle's blunt refusal to allow him to accompany the expedition. "But the major's right, you know, and I couldn't venture any attempt to persuade'm. We call'm Ould Blazes, you see."
"I couldn't ask you to, Doctor. I've come on a fool's errand, and have only myself to blame. I must just make the best of it. What is to be is to be."
"That's right, now. And sure here's the major himself."
"Pf! pf!" blew Major Burnaby, as he entered the room. "Glad that's over for the day at any rate. You've got the young scamp in hand, I see, Corney. Tom, untwizzle that ringer; I must tub before I do anything else."
Tom looked up to where his uncle was pointing, above his head, and saw the wire of an electric bell twisted round a bracket on the wall. He got up and pressed the button, and the major-domo appeared.
"Tub, Saladin," said the major. "And look here, this is my nephew; put him up a bed and do him well."
"All right, sah! all same for one," returned the negro cheerfully.
In a few moments the major could be heard splashing and gasping in the next room, and ere long he returned in mufti, looking cool and comfortable in a suit of white ducks and a silk cummerbund. He asked the doctor to stay to dinner, and Tom sat listening eagerly to his seniors' conversation, and admiring his uncle's thorough grasp of even the minutest details of the expedition.
It was to set out, he learned, in three or four days' time, some three hundred and fifty strong, from Port Florence, and was to cross the Nyanza in steam launches. The only Europeans besides the major and Dr. O'Brien were Captain Lister and a subaltern, the non-commissioned officers being trustworthy Soudanese. Their objective was the village of a petty chief, about a hundred and fifty miles west of the Nyanza, who had revolted against British authority, and in concert with the remnants of an old Arab slave-dealing gang had raided his more peaceful neighbours. In the course of subsequent proceedings he had treacherously killed a British officer, and a punitive expedition became inevitable. The greater part of the military forces of the Protectorate were engaged in police work on the north-eastern frontier; but they were hastily recalled, and within a month, thanks to Major Burnaby's energy, the punitive column was ready to start. The stores for the expedition were collected at rail-head, and the major had been very busy day and night in getting them up from the coast, and seeing that everything possible, to the smallest detail, was done to secure the safety and success of the column.