Meanwhile the cook had a fire going, or theoretically he had, though very often it was a long time before it got started. The camel men hacked down thorn bushes, using native axes, and hangols, or wooden crooks, for pulling the wood about with. The chant that accompanies all Somali occupations was loud and helpful. Sometimes we took a hand at this zareba building, using an English axe or a bill-hook, and the men would laugh in surprise, and hold the boughs in readiness for us to chop. They liked the English axes. “Best axe I see,” the camel-man in chief said. But we would not lend them permanently, because they would have been broken at once. Every mortal thing goes to pieces in the hands of these Somalis; most extraordinary. Only tough native implements could stand against such treatment. Buck were carried slung on Sniders, and bent the weapon into graceful curves. The sights and even the triggers were knocked off. The Somali boys broke all the handles off the pans, and seemed incapable of taking care of anything. Many of the native harns gave out at the different wells because of the smashing about they received, and meant our buying more from passing tribes.
At night my shikar pistol, loaded, lay to my hand on a box at my bedside, for what I don’t quite know, as I should have disliked immensely to use it. But it seemed the correct thing; the butler expected it. He always asked me to give him the weapon from my belt about supper time, and I next saw it in readiness for midnight affrays. “Chota-hazari” was served us by the butler calling loudly outside our tents, or by delicately tapping two stones together as an intimation that a cup of tea stood on the ground at the entrance, when it meant making a long arm to reach it. The teacups were not Dresden; they were of thick enamel—we only had one each and two over in case of accidents or visitors—and to appreciate them at their true value we would have needed the mouths of flukes.
Sometimes a case of necessaries required for breakfast would be in our tents doing duty as furniture, and then it was very funny indeed. The cook would come and chant outside that unless he could have the box Mem-sahib no breakfast would see, and if Mem-sahib no breakfast saw she would upbraid the chef because he had not got the box. All this would be woven into a little tune in a mixture of Somali, Hindostanee, and so-called English. Mem-sahib would chant back to the effect that the necessaries would appear all in good time. The cook would retire to stir up the fire and cuff his assistant, a tow-headed “youth,” whose raison d’etre appeared to be the cleaning, or making worse dirty, of the pans, and preparing things for the culinary artist. The tow-headed one was a mere dauber; at least our cook told us so in effect, with great disdain, when I suggested the assistant should be allowed to try his ’prentice hand. That was one day when I got worried about my digestion holding out against the insidious attacks made on it by the high-class cookery we were supposed to be having.
It was a long time before I got used to the hot nauseating smell of the camels. It was ever present in camp, and when the wind blew into one’s tent the indescribable aroma transcended all others. Barring the horrid odour, we had nothing else to complain of in our patient dumb servants. The camels were good tempered beasts, taking them all round; very different to Indian camels, among whom it would have been impossible to wander so nonchalantly o’ nights. All our camels, save one, were of the white variety usually to be found in Berbera. The one exception was a trojan creature, dark and swarthy looking, who hailed from distant Zeila. He was a splendid worker, untiring and ungrumbling, never roaring at loading-up time. But the Gel Ad, or Berbera, camel is considered by experts to be the better animal. We preferred “Zeila” to any animal we had; we christened him after his home. It is very odd, and may be will be found difficult to understand, as to explain, but in some of the camels’ faces we traced the most speaking likenesses to friends and relatives, either through expression, form, or fancy. Anyway, they were like many of our acquaintances; and so, to Cecily and myself, the different camels were thoroughly described and known as “Uncle Robert,” “Aunt Helena,” or “Mrs. Stacy,” and so on and so forth. One haughty white camel, with a lofty sneer of disdain and arrogance about it, was so very like a human beauty of our acquaintance that we smiled every time we looked at the animal. Our caravan on the march straggled like a flock of geese. Some two or three of the camel-men had to lead the van; the others lagged behind in a bunch. The hunters took it in turns to ride the spare ponies, and Cecily and I rode the steeds we had purchased at the first Somali karia we came upon.
I often wondered what our followers thought of two women being in the position to command attention, deference, and work—the Somali feminine is such a very crushed down creature, and takes a back seat at all times. Even if a superabundance of meat is on hand she is not spared a tit-bit, but is presented with fearsome scraps and entrails, the while the masculine element gorges on the choicest morsels. This is rather different to our home system. I remember an Englishman of my acquaintance telling me once, with no acrimony of tone, nothing but calm acceptance of the inevitable, that he had never tasted the breast of chicken since his marriage five years before! What a glimpse into a household!
My first excursion was after that oryx I had so set my heart upon, and Clarence, to his joy, accompanied me.
“Much better than I was,” but still not quite fit even yet. I carefully stalked a small herd of oryx, four to be precise, crawling about on hands and knees for upwards of an hour, and when my chance came at last, and a bull (not anything very wonderful I am glad to remember) passed broadside on, well within range, I fired—and missed! At the very instant a violent stab agony in my damaged leg made me cringe involuntarily. The oryx was gone!
I sat down, and but for the presence of my shikari I am sure I should have cried.
Game was now most plentiful, gerenük, oryx, and aoul being more often in sight than not. Thunderstorms became more frequent, and rain more insistent. Since leaving the place where we sojourned so long we had not known one day in which rain did not fall some time during the twenty-four hours. We had managed fairly well by going out “between whiles,” but now there weren’t any, and there came a time of no half measures. Steady downpours bothered us no end. I am very used to water, because my habitat in England is in that delectable spot where of all other places nobody dreams of going out minus an umbrella. And I have seen rain in many corners of the world, but never rain like the Somali variety. It is for all the world like holding on to the string of a shower bath—it pours and pours. Of course whilst the rain is on there is no use in endeavouring to spoor, for all traces of game are simply wiped out by the floods of water as a sponge cleans a slate. We could do nothing save remain in our soaked tents and fume. Things were very bad and uncomfortable at this time. For a whole week we never knew what it was to be dry. Every mortal thing we had was drenched, and the poor tents were no more use than brown paper in face of the continued avalanches of water. We used to wring our blankets each night, and but for copious doses of quinine I don’t know how I should have pulled through. Cecily pinned her faith on weak whisky-and-water, of which latter commodity there was now no scarcity, and both our schemes worked admirably, and bar a little rheumatism in my left shoulder I carried on all right. At last—“a fine day; let us go out and kill something” came and, the conditions being splendid for spooring, we went off bent on an execution—of anything.
Running in and out among some rocks were the quaintest little rabbits, without tails, Manx rabbits, odd stumpy greyish bodies, and an engaging air of indifference to passers-by.