Driftwood Spars

"Peace, fool Art blind as Ibrahim Mahmud the Weeper," growled that burly Native Officer as the zealous and overanxious young sentry cried out and pointed to where, in the moonlight, the returning reconnoitering-patrol was to be seen as it emerged from the lye-bushes of the dry river-bed. A recumbent comrade of the outpost sentry group sniggered. Truth is stranger than fiction, and many of the coincidences of real life are truly stranger than the most daring imaginings of the fictionist. Now, I, Major Michael Malet-Marsac, happened at the moment to be thinking of my dear and deeply lamented friend John Ross-Ellison, and to be pondering, for the thousandth time, his extraordinary life and more extraordinary death.