After the great heat of the early hours of the afternoon we made another start, heading straight now for the return journey over the Marehan. Cecily bagged a couple of dik-dik out of a bunch of three. All those hereabouts did not find the two-is-company axiom worth considering, and ran about everywhere in threes. We secured two guinea fowl, too, for future meals. They were decidedly gamey by night; the heat was so against keeping any sort of meat. I very often thought this unceasing pondering on what could be provided for the next feast made for dreadful greediness. When we pitched tents Clarence reported that one of the camel men very sick. “Him die all right.” I was not very much put about, because by this I had learned the Somali ways, and knew that every one of them considers himself at the portals of death’s door if he has merely a pain somewhere. They cannot be called cowards by any means, and will bear pain well enough when it comes, but in minor illnesses they cave in sooner than any other nation I have come across, and get so terribly alarmed about themselves. Theirs is not the stoicism of the American Indian, in matters large and small, the delightful sangfroid of the Chinaman is absent, and the calm of the Englishman unknown. We had really, up to now, been singularly fortunate in the health of the caravan, and most of the minor ills from which the men had suffered could fairly have been ascribed to gorging. This gluttony over meat occasionally landed them into double-distilled bilious attacks.
I was in a frightful tantrum with some one—of course nobody would own to being the delinquent—who had dropped, or somehow made away with, the very best oryx shield we had. Going over the trophies, which we knew individually, I missed the treasure. The immortal one counselled “Give thy thoughts no tongue.” But, after all, he was giving directions to a young man just about to go out into the world, and had not dreamed of the conditions that would govern the loss of an oryx shield most hardly come by. I gave all the thoughts I had by me vehement voice, and, more than that, I borrowed a few from Cecily.
We had camped where there had once been a lake as large as at Sinnadogho. It was now a mere hole, and all the one-time springs were dry. Some Midgan hunters here gave us news of having seen a lion an hour or so ago. No wonder they reported such a find.
Lions and all other game seemed about to follow the dodo in these parts. We were so thoroughly disgusted now that all our object was to push back to our old haunts in the Ogaden, and enjoy ourselves for the short time left to us in the country. I am not wilfully rubbing it in about this Marehan and Haweea locality, because I myself hate bewailing as much as any one. But, to let you in on the ground floor, all this part of the expedition was hateful, and our one desire was to get it over. No wonder our shikari uncle, wise in his generation, had never passed the Bun Arnwein. We intended to lie low about our having done so also.
After our temper had dwindled a little; we went to see the sick man, armed with a few medicines, and our vexation merged into forgetfulness, and then to pity. The poor fellow lay on a camel mat, his dirty tobe tangled about him, in acute pain, and often in delirium. It could not be a touch of the sun very well, for Somalis and the sun are well acquainted. Cecily suggested that dirty water of a short time ago as the root of the evil, but here again, had we not seen the men drinking quite as filthy water, and thriving the better for it. We really were stuck to know what to do, and fled to our everlasting remedy, champagne. It was difficult to get any down, and the little we managed to dispose of made no earthly difference to the writhing man. Cecily tried catapultic questions in a Somali accent that came from her inner consciousness.
“Wurrer anoncsha” (head-ache)?
“Aloche anonesha” (stomach-ache)?
There was no reply, and Cecily had expended all the lingo she knew.
The man went on suffering all night, and we did all we could, putting mustard leaves on his side and keeping him warm, for the nights here were bitterly cold. Ever and again we tried to force champagne between his set teeth. Of no avail. He died about five o’clock in the morning. Clarence said it was Kismet, but I think, and always shall, it was a newt. Anyway, it was something swallowed in that filthy water, too much even for the inner mechanism of a Somali.