An ivory trader in North Kenia

by A. Arkell-Hardwick

There is no twilight in those latitudes (within two degrees of the equator), so that very soon after our start we were tramping along in the black darkness. I had no knowledge of the road; only a rough idea of the general direction. I steered by the aid of a pocket-compass and a box of matches. After the first hour I noticed that the men commenced to stagger and lag behind with their lately unaccustomed burdens, and I had to be continually on the alert to prevent desertions. I numbered them at intervals, to make sure that none of them had given me the slip, but an hour and a half after starting I missed three men with their loads, in spite of all my precautions. I shouted back into the darkness, and the men accompanying me did the same, and, after a slight interval we were relieved to hear an answering shout from the missing men. After waiting a few moments, we shouted again, and were amazed to find that the answering shout was much fainter than before. We continued shouting, but the answers grew gradually fainter and more faint till they died away altogether. I could not understand it at first, but the solution gradually dawned upon me. We were on a large plain, and a few hundred yards to the left of us was a huge belt of forest, which echoed our shouts to such an extent that the men who were looking for us were deceived as to our real position, and in their search were following a path at right angles to our own. I could not light a fire to guide them, as the grass was very long and dry, and I should probably have started a bush fire, the consequences of which would have been terrible. I therefore fired a gun, and was answered by another shot, seemingly far away over the plain to the right. Telling the men to sit down and rest themselves on the path, I ordered Jumbi to follow me, and, after carefully taking my bearings by compass, started to walk quickly across the plain to intercept them.

It was by no means a pleasant experience, trotting across those plains in the pitchy blackness, with the grass up to my waist, and huge boulders scattered about ready and willing to trip me up. I got very heated and quite unreasonably angry, and expressed my feelings to Jumbi very freely. I was in the midst of a violent diatribe against all natives generally, and Swahili porters in particular, which I must admit he bore with commendable patience, when the earth gave way beneath me, and I was precipitated down some apparently frightful abyss, landing in a heap at the bottom, with all the breath knocked out of my body. I laid there for a little while, and endeavoured to collect my scattered faculties. Soon I stood up, and struck a match, and discovered that I had fallen into an old game-pit, about 8 feet deep. It was shaped like a cone, with a small opening at the top, similar to the old-fashioned oubliette. I looked at the floor, and shuddered when I realized what a narrow squeak I might have had; for on the centre of the floor were the mouldering remains of a pointed stake, which had been originally fixed upright in the earth floor on the place where I had fallen.

“Is Bwana (master) hurt?” said the voice of Jumbi from somewhere in the black darkness above.

I replied that I was not hurt, but that I could not get out without assistance; whereupon Jumbi lowered his rifle, and, to the accompaniment of a vast amount of scrambling and kicking, hauled me bodily out.

We were by this time very near to the men for whom we were searching, as we could hear their voices raised in argument about the path. We stopped and called to them, and presently they joined us, and we all set off together to join my main party. We reached it without further mishap, and resumed our interrupted march.

It was very dark indeed. I could not see my hand when I held it a couple of feet from my face. One of the men happening to remark that he had been over the path some years before, I immediately placed him in the van as guide, threatening him with all sorts of pains and penalties if he did not land us at our destination some time before midnight.

I was particularly anxious to rejoin George, as I had the tents, blankets, and food, and he would have a very uninteresting time without me. We marched, therefore, with renewed vigour, as our impromptu guide stated that he thought one more hour’s march would do the business. It didn’t, though. For two solid hours we groped blindly through belts of forest, across open spaces, and up and down wooded ravines, until somewhere about eleven p.m., when we reached a very large and terribly steep ravine, thickly clothed with trees, creepers, and dense undergrowth. We could hear the rushing noise of a considerable volume of water at the bottom, and in the darkness it sounded very, very far down.

I halted at the top to consider whether to go on or not, but the thought of George waiting patiently for my appearance with supper and blankets made me so uncomfortable that I decided to push on if it took me all night. We thereupon commenced the difficult descent, but halfway down my doubts as to the advisability of the proceeding were completely set at rest by one of the men falling down in some kind of a fit from over-fatigue. The others were little better, so I reluctantly decided to wait for daylight before proceeding further. I tried to find something to eat among the multifarious loads, and fortunately discovered a piece of dry bread that had been thrown in with the cooking utensils at the last moment. I greedily devoured it, and, wrapping myself in my blankets, endeavoured to sleep as well as I was able on a slope of forty-five degrees. A thought concerning George struck me just before I dropped off to sleep, which comforted me greatly. “George knows enough to go in when it rains,” I thought. “He will leave the men with the cattle, and go over to Kriger’s place and have a hot supper and a soft bed, and all kinds of good things like that,” and I drew my blankets more closely round me and shivered, and felt quite annoyed with him when I thought of it.

At daylight we were up and off again, and, descending the ravine, crossed the river at the bottom, and continued the march. On the way I shot a guinea-fowl, called by the Swahilis “kanga,” and after an hour and a half of quick walking I came up with George.

He had passed a miserable night, without food, blankets, or fire, and, to make matters worse, it had drizzled all night, while he sat on a stone and kept watch and ward over the cattle. The men who had accompanied him were so tired that they had refused to build a boma to keep the cattle in. He seemed very glad to see me. We at once got the tent put up, a fire made, and the boma built, and soon made things much more comfortable. In fact, we got quite gay and festive on the bread and marmalade, washed down with tea, which formed our breakfast.