# Corporal Connal — The Black Mask character guide

> Corporal Connal in The Black Mask by E. W. Hornung.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Connal, IV Corporal Connal

**First appearance:** 0007-to-catch-a-thief

## Snapshot

A hulking Glasgow-Irish corporal whose talent for horses and bullying earns him rank over better men, until Raffles teaches him a lesson he never forgets.

## Who they are

Connal is a colonial soldier risen from the ranks in a hard-fighting South African campaign, a mongrel type whose physical bulk and local knowledge make him useful and dangerous in equal measure. He singles out the narrator for abuse from the day he joins, and only Raffles's twenty-minute beating ends the bullying—though the narrator begins to suspect something worse than mere brutality. When the troop is left under Connal's charge and ordered to escort wagons eastward, his suspicious navigation puts Raffles and the narrator on alert, making him the pivot of a quiet wartime treachery.

## In the story

### [The Knees of the Gods](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_mask_se/chapters/the-knees-of-the-gods)

A traitor exposed by Raffles during the campaign.

### [II](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_mask_se/chapters/ii)

Connal is a bullying, hulking ruffian who targets Bunny, fights Raffles, and later leads the troop into Boer lines under suspicious circumstances, confirming Bunny's suspicion that he is a spy.

### [Chapter III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_mask_se/chapters/iii)

The traitorous corporal caught stealing horses; he exposes Raffles and Bunny's criminal past.

### [IV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_mask_se/chapters/iv)

Executed for his crimes after being identified as a traitor.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_mask_se/characters/corporal_connal
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_mask_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_mask_se/characters