I recognized Bill's voice. I turned and saw the most disreputable Bill that I had ever seen. His clothing was worn to shreds, his shoes were practically all gone, and the only thing about him that was perfectly all right was his grin. I wanted to hug him. I never knew just what happened at the boma except that after two weeks Bill got out, took up our trail, and followed us in all of our meanderings, and finally came up with us at the elephant pit in the gloomy bamboo forest. He had probably travelled a couple of hundred miles in overtaking us.
Bill's training as a tent boy, as I have said, was under Alli. Alli was a Swahili, and he was not only one of the most efficient tent boys and all-around men that we ever had in Africa, but he was especially valuable on safari because of his ability to entertain and amuse his fellow men around the campfire at night. Alli's sense of the dramatic was extremely keen. Night after night he would stand in the centre of a circle of admirers, telling them stories. We would often sit and watch him, and we had no difficulty in following his story, though we understood, at that time, no Swahili at all. He might perhaps be describing to his fellows some white man. He would describe his dress in detail—his tie, his shirt, his cuffs—and we were usually able to recognize the individual from the pantomime of his description. These stories were sometimes made up from the day's experience. For instance, it might be that during the day I had had some interesting experience or adventure the story of which Alli had gathered from the gun boys on their return, and when the work was finished in the evening Alli would give it to his audience in full detail—probably with some additions that furnished intense interest—often eliciting loud applause.
One time we had been on an elephant trail a day and a half. I lay beneath a tree, "all in" with spirillum fever, and felt that I could go no farther that day; so I ordered Bill to make camp. I was awakened from a doze by Bill, and when I asked him if my tent was ready he replied that it was not but that the hammock was. He had improvised a hammock which he ordered me to get into. He had doubled up the loads of the few porters so that four were released to carry me. Bill made the porters trot the ten miles to camp. It was nearly a month before Bill and I had recovered sufficiently to take up the elephant trails again.
Another time I was down with black-water fever in the Nairobi hospital. I had been booked to "go over the Divide" the night before, but somehow missed connections. I opened my eyes with my face to a window overlooking the porch, and there, looking over the rail, was Bill, like a faithful dog. It seemed to me that he stood there for hours with tears in his eyes staring at his master. A few days later he was allowed to come into my room. He approached the foot of the bed with a low "Jambo, Bwana."
I said, "It is all right, Bill; I'll soon be well."
With a great gulping sob, he burst into tears and bolted from the room.
At an African Big Game Dinner in New York almost ten years after I left Bill, one of my friends who had just returned from British East Africa came to me and announced that he knew all about me now, that he had had Bill in his safari, and Bill never lost an opportunity to tell him stories about Bwana Akeley. So I know that Bill is still loyal, and there is no one in all Africa whom I am more keen to see. I missed him constantly on my trip into the gorilla country, but because I entered Africa from the south when I headed for Kivu, I was forced to make up my safari without him.