Colin smiled at her grimly.

'Well, you wouldn't have noticed, of course, that I've got just a touch
of a limp--it's only if I'm not in my best form that it shows. I owe
that to a spear through my thigh one night that the Blacks rushed my
camp when I was asleep. And I'd given their gins rations that very
morning.'

'And then?' Lady Bridget's voice was tense.

'Oh then--after they'd murdered a white man or two, the rest of us
whites--there wasn't more than a handful of us at that time up on the
Leura--banded together and drove them off into the back country. We
had a dangerous job with those Blacks until King Mograbar was shot
down.'

'King Mograbar! How cruelly unjust. It was his country you were
STEALING.' She accentuated the last word with bitter scorn.

'Well! If you come to that, I suppose Captain Cook was stealing when he
hoisted the British flag in Botany Bay,' said McKeith.

'And if he hadn't, what about the glorious British record, and the
March of Civilisation?' put in Vereker Wells.

Bridget shot a scathing glance at the aide-de-camp.

'I don't admire your glorious British record, I think it's nothing but
a record of robbery, murder, and cruelty, beginning with Ireland and