THE GREAT IMPERSONATION

CHAPTER I

The trouble from which great events were to come began when Everard
Dominey, who had been fighting his way through the scrub for the last
three quarters of an hour towards those thin, spiral wisps of smoke,
urged his pony to a last despairing effort and came crashing through
the great oleander shrub to pitch forward on his head in the little
clearing. It developed the next morning, when he found himself for the
first time for many months on the truckle bed, between linen sheets,
with a cool, bamboo-twisted roof between him and the relentless sun. He
raised himself a little in the bed.

"Where the mischief am I?" he demanded.

A black boy, seated cross-legged in the entrance of the banda, rose to
his feet, mumbled something and disappeared. In a few moments the tall,
slim figure of a European, in spotless white riding clothes, stooped
down and came over to Dominey's side.

"You are better?" he enquired politely.

"Yes, I am," was the somewhat brusque rejoinder. "Where the mischief am
I, and who are you?"

The newcomer's manner stiffened. He was a person of dignified carriage,
and his tone conveyed some measure of rebuke.

"You are within half a mile of the Iriwarri River, if you know where
that is," he replied,--"about seventy-two miles southeast of the
Darawaga Settlement."

"The devil! Then I am in German East Africa?"

"Without a doubt."

"And you are German?"

"I have that honour."

Dominey whistled softly.

"Awfully sorry to have intruded," he said. "I left Marlinstein two and a
half months ago, with twenty boys and plenty of stores.