our Otto more than ever. We had plenty in common, the same loneliness,
fevers, climate, and niggers to wrestle with; moreover he had been
in England, and liked it; he smoked a pipe; he washed. Also, as he
privily confided to us in the young hours of one morning, he had his
doubts as to the divinity of the KAISER, and was not quite convinced
that RICHARD STRAUSS had composed the music of the spheres.

He was a bad Hun (which probably accounted for his presence at the
uttermost, hottermost edge of the ALL-HIGHEST'S dominions), but a good
fellow. Anyhow, we liked him, Frobisher and I; liked his bull-mouthed
laughter, his drinking songs and full-blooded anecdotes, and, on the
occasions of his frequent visits, put our boredom from us, pretended
to be on the most affectionate terms, and even laughed uproariously
at each other's funny stories. Up at M'Vini, in the long long-ago,
the gleam of pyjamas amongst the loquats, and "'Ere gomes ze Sherman
invasion!" booming through the bush, became a signal for general
good-will.

In the fulness of time Otto went home on leave, and, shortly
afterwards, the world blew up.

And now I have met him again, a sodden, muddy, bloody, shrunken,
saddened Otto, limping through a snowstorm in the custody of a
Canadian Corporal. He was the survivor of a rear-guard, the Canuck
explained, and had "scrapped like a bag of wild-cats" until knocked
out by a rifle butt. As for Otto himself, he hadn't much to say; he
looked old, cold, sick and infinitely disgusted. He had always been a
poor Hun.

Only once did he show a gleam of his ancient form of those old hot,