THE PHILANDERERS

BY A.E.W. MASON

Author of 'The Courtship of Morrice Buckler'

1897




PROLOGUE


Five Englishmen were watching a camp fire in the centre of a forest
clearing in mid-Africa. They did not speak, but sat propped against logs,
smoking. One of the five knocked out the ashes of his pipe upon the
ground; a second, roused by the movement, picked up a fresh billet of
wood with a shiver and threw it on to the fire, and the light for a
moment flung a steady glow upon faces which were set with anxiety. The
man who had picked up the billet looked from one to the other of the
faces, then he turned and gazed behind him into the darkness. The floor
of the clearing was dotted with the embers of dying fires, but now and
again he would hear the crackle of a branch and see a little flame spirt
up and shine upon the barrels of rifles and the black bodies of the
sleeping troops. Round the edge of the clearing the trees rose massed and
dark like a cliff's face. He turned his head upwards.

'Look, Drake!' he cried suddenly, and pointed an arm eastwards. The man
opposite to him took his pipe from his mouth and looked in that