[Illustration: "Fair and full I caught him."]
Down on his back he fell crashing, bearing me with him as he went over and fixing the spike firmly in the earth, pinned like some huge beetle by a human pin. As my legs flew up they encountered the second giant, and, winding round his chest, crushed every vestige of life out of him and flung his mangled body full twenty yards to the rear. I had escaped, but my position was still uncomfortably awkward. By this time, however, the rout was complete, and four of my men, by dint of tremendous exertions, succeeded in extricating me from my curious entanglement. My pinned foeman turned out to be the Ranee's brother, HADJU THAR MEEBHOY. We bore him back with us to camp, where, marvellous to relate, after a prolonged illness, he eventually recovered.
Of course he has never been quite the same man since. He has to be careful about his diet, but with the childlike simplicity of an Oriental he finds a constant pleasure in opening and shutting the little aluminium doors which our dear old surgeon, TOBY O'GRADY, constructed to replace the KHAN's stomach and the small of his back. I came to be great friends with him and it was through him that I gained the knowledge which prompted the adventure I am now about to relate.
A WORD ABOUT THE ST. HENRY JAMES'S THEATRE.
There is something in a name, especially when it happens to be the title of a play. At the St. James's, Mr. ALEXANDER'S latest venture has been _Guy Domville_, by the American novelist HENRY JAMES, who if he knew as much about play-writing as he does about novel-writing would probably be in the first flight of dramatists; _and_ he would not have chosen so hopeless a name for his hero and for his play as _Guy Domville_. For the anti-James jokers would delight in finding that _Guy could_ be "_guy'd_," and to say as to "_Domville_" that "a first night audience '_vill dom_' the play." For all that, if ALEXANDER be the sagacious commander in the dramatic field that he has hitherto shown himself, it is not likely that he should have been completely mistaken in accepting a play which a portion of the public has refused to accept. Of course, a manager cannot afford to keep a play going until the public come _en masse_ to see it, and therefore, unless there is "a turn of the tide" (and such things have happened before now, and a condemned piece has had a long and prosperous career), Mr. ALEXANDER will himself be obliged to do to the play what those who ridicule and chaff it have already done, _i.e._ "_take it off_."