On the march back two of the Englishmen sickened of ague and died. Six
months later a third was killed in a punitive expedition. The fourth was
drowned off Walfisch Bay before another year had elapsed.




CHAPTER I


Hugh Fielding, while speculating upon certain obscure episodes in the
history of a life otherwise familiar to an applauding public, and at a
loss to understand them, caught eagerly at a simile. Now Fielding came
second to none in his scorn for the simile as an explanation, possibly
because he was so well acquainted with its convenience. 'A fairy lamp' he
would describe it, quite conscious of the irony in his method of
description, 'effective as an ornament upon a table-cloth, but a poor
light to eat your dinner by.'

Nevertheless Fielding hugged this particular simile, applying it as a
sort of skeleton key to the problem of Stephen Drake's career.

He compared Drake's career, or at all events that portion of it which was
closed, to the writing of a book. So many years represent the
accumulation of material, a deliberate accumulation; at a certain date
the book is begun with a settled design, _finis_ being clearly foreseen
from the first word of the preface. But once fairly started the book
throws the writer on one side and takes the lead, drags him, panting and
protesting, after it, flings him down by-ways out of sight of his main