King Henry VI
It was impossible to feel down-hearted for long, and my spirits began to rise again. Even the heat did not affect us as much as one might have thought. Of course we were burnt as mahogany brown as it is possible for a white woman to be, and I think very little marked us out from our Somalis in point of colour. Our very fair hair looked quite odd in contrast.
Our hunters reported one morning that in spooring for leopard they had come on the tracks of a large caravan, and overtaking some part of it gathered that the outfit belonged to some English officer on sport bent. Every Englishman is an officer to the Somalis. It is really rather funny. It is quite like the way every American is—to the Englishman—a martial colonel. I was intensely sorry to know we were so near to other hunters. It was very selfish too, for the country was big enough, in all conscience, to hold us all. But I was sorry, and there’s an end of it. Cecily said perhaps it was all a mistake, because how could anyone be hunting in the forbidden ground of the Ogaden unless they were as signally favoured as ourselves? I suggested that they might be, because we did not surely suppose we were the only people with relatives able to pull the strings. We were both a bit “shirty” because we were vexed to know we had not got the Ogaden to ourselves. A nice sporting spirit, wasn’t it?
We were at lunch, battling with an altogether impossible curry Cecily had perpetrated, for she always said you can curry anything, even old boots, at a push, and they would be rendered appetising. Oryx beat her efforts culinary, and she had to admit at last that curry powder and oryx meat should be strangers.
As she had had all the trouble of stirring the concoction over a grilling fire on a grilling day I struggled on as long as I possibly could in order that the amateur chefs feelings should not be hurt, but confessed myself beaten in the end and very hungry, so we fell to opening a tin of meat.
“I fear no beef that’s canned by Armour,” sang Cecily, coming events not having cast any shadows before.
“Salaam, ladies!” said an English voice close at hand.
It was the leader of the opposition shoot. The younger, my kinsman, was quarrelling with a syce about the proper way to hold a pony. I don’t know if we were glad to see them or not. Anyway we had to pretend to be, besides making the usual ridiculous remarks about the smallness of the world, and how odd it was we should have come across each other again.
