Harley Greenoak sat smoking a pipe in the one living-room of the
Commandant's modest little bungalow. It was night. The only other
occupant of the room was its owner; and he was moving tranquilly about
arranging his "specimens," dividing his attention about evenly between
these and the subject of conversation. Yet the latter was weighty with
the issues of life and death.
"If things go as you say, Greenoak," he was observing, "we haven't a man
too many; either here, or over the Kei, or indeed along the whole
frontier. Yet, look how my hands are tied. You know, I was always
against allowing those burgher forces to go home, at any rate until a
sufficiently equivalent force had been raised to supply their place. I
am hampered at every turn, and if it wasn't that I believe we are only
at the beginning of our troubles instead of the end, I'd resign."
"Don't do that, Commandant, if only that it would be a precious
difficult thing to supply yours," answered Greenoak.
"I advised what should be done, and that was to make a quick and secret
march, and arrest Sandili and Matanzima, together with some half-dozen
more mischievous of the _amapakati_ whom _we_ know, and promise to hang
the lot on the first outbreak among their people. When I put it to the
Government I was forbidden to move. You know the rest."