It would have been inhospitable to offer any of the curry, so we begged them to sample the tinned beef. Our butler waited on us, and drenched the four of us in a successful attempt to open a champagne bottle. Oh yes, we gave them champagne, to make up for other deficiencies. I told them if they would wait for dinner they should have a Carlton-like meal. After lunch they would see our skins and heads, so we excavated the skulls, and displayed all we had for admiration. We tried not to feel superior, but it was rather difficult when we heard they had not as yet got a shot even at a rhino. I lay low about the price we paid for ours! We evidently went up a little in their estimation, because they invited us to take part in a big shoot next day, and seemed really anxious we should accept. We said we were about to trek in an opposite direction, but I was rather taken aback when the elder warrior asked me how I knew which direction the proposed shoot was to take? They invited us to go over and see their trophies, but we did not mean to give them one single chance to crow, and instantly on their departure struck camp and moved on towards a large Somali encampment which had recently suffered many grievous losses from the depredations of leopards.
We were anxious to see the spoor for ourselves. A great many of the leopards reported are nothing in the wide world but hyæna in spite of the fact that the leopard, being a cat, does not, in quiescence, show his claws in the pug marks, and the hyæna, being a dog, does; besides, the shape of the pad is entirely different. The hyaena has a triangle-shaped back pad, with two large side toes and two smaller centre ones, whilst the pug of the leopard is similar to that of lion but proportionately smaller. In spite of these mistakes on the part of some unlettered Somali, almost every black man spoors in a way no white man ever can hope to do. The former can follow tracks of game over ground that tells us nothing. Stony ground, wet ground, loose ground, dry ground, all alike give up secrets to him whereof we cannot hear the faintest whispers. The whole jungle is an open book to the black shikari, and compared to him the cleverest chiel among us is but a tyro.
We camped some two miles from the karia, and barely arrived when the head-man arrived to say “Salaam,” He brought with him all his sisters and his cousins and his aunts. A very plain lot they looked too, although Clarence whispered to me that in Somaliland one of the women was rated as a great beauty. I don’t know how he knew, unless the local M. A. P. said so. After a closer inspection of the lady I came to the conclusion that, for a beauty, she really was not bad looking.
They were very prying though, and really dangerous to have round, as one could not be everywhere at once. They all had advanced kleptomania. My tent was overflowing with them, though I had given orders to keep the place clear, and somebody annexed my sponge, hair-brush, and even a tooth-brush vanished from Cecily’s tent, though we never saw any one penetrate it. I don’t know what use the tooth-brush would be. The Somalis do not neglect their teeth, far from it, but they use for cleaning purposes a soft stick, rubbing and polishing away at all sorts of odd moments. The result is of dazzling whiteness.
It was unnecessary also for them to help themselves as we were more than generous, and in response to their unblushing demands for presents we gave them at least four tobes, a turban or two, and an umbrella without a handle, which the proud proprietor unfurled and at once subsided beneath.
When Cecily in the warmth of her heart began to bestow things we really had need of ourselves I begged her to curb her Santa Claus-like ideas, and let us try and get to the leopard subject. But they were not to be switched off so easily. The head-man yearned for a rifle, and seemed to think we were the very people to satisfy him, and I don’t wonder, when we had been playing universal provider to them for half an hour. There is nothing on earth a black man longs for so earnestly as a rifle of his own. It does not matter if it is a mere piece of gas piping with sights set on it, so that he may call it rifle. A vast amount of rubbish is palmed off by rascally traders, who get the arms through in spite of regulations and precautions. The maker is nothing, the skill of the user nothing, the mere name rifle is everything; and the fact that a native was not—it may still be so, I don’t know—allowed to own such a treasure made the prospect more enchanting than ever. I refused the head-man’s request, so trifling as it was too, as firmly and politely as possible, and offered him a pen-knife instead. He took one somewhat superciliously, and went off with it with both blades open. We had not once got to the main point, the leopard, whose existence was supposed to be a daily menace to their karia. I bade Clarence go after our guest, and extract particulars.
After a little time a convoy appeared with return gifts, a couple of goats, and dirty harns without number full of camels’ milk. I thought at one time the extreme uncleanliness of the harns accounted for the unpleasant taste of the milk, but I liked it no better when I sampled it from a can of my own providing.
The leopard, for this time rumour had not lied, had made serious depredations, and carried off nightly goats, sheep, and even a baby camel. It jumped the zareba wall with ease apparently. We decided to have “machan,” or rather a small enclosure, built, and sit up for the thief. I never see much fun in this sitting up business. It is so often all waiting and no coming. We set some of the men to construct the shelters, and arranged them some six hundred yards away from the Somali encampment on the side where the leopard had most often made an entry. We decided to have a small zareba each, two hundred yards apart, and took up our residence for the night about 6 p.m. Cecily had Clarence with her; I had mine to myself. I was most uncomfortably crowded as it was, but Cecily had a little more space in her prison.
We tied up a goat between us, and settled down to dreary hours of silent watching. Though we kept quiet, the Somalis never gave over singing and shouting for a moment. I wondered at a leopard going near the place at all. But it may have used the din to its own advantage.