Roger longed at this time to ascend Meru and explore its hidden wonders; and Lucy gazed with awe at the now fully displayed majesty of Kilimanjaro, rising above the watery plain of Kahe, with its dome of snow and ice, and its lesser peak of Kimawenzi.
But being short of stores they made straight for a newly-founded Evangelical Mission station, at an altitude of four thousand feet, where it was hoped Lucy might find shelter for a few days from the torrential rains, and he himself gather news about the happenings on the coast, and dispatch carriers to Mvita with messages which might be telegraphed to Unguja.
After all their adventures this seemed rather a prosaic phase in the journey, and Lucy found herself actually depressed at being once more with fellow-countrymen. There were three missionaries—a married couple and an assistant bachelor propagandist—at the station of the Evangelical Mission, but they did not seem over surprised at this arrival of a white man and woman from the unknown interior. They received Lucy's halting explanations civilly but coldly, and though they gave her a room to herself and nicely cooked meals, they seemed—to her fancy—to have purposely adopted an almost penitentiary surfeit of services and prayers.
Captain Brentham preferred to camp out at the Chief's village, two miles away. He had known this genial, old, one-eyed ruffian three years before, when he was exploring the approaches to the great Snow Mountain, and making tentative treaties to forestall the Germans. He rather ground his teeth over the changing scene. Since his first journey, missionaries, big-game sportsmen, concession hunters, had thronged into this wonderful country, and had not the slightest respect for its earliest pioneers. Already there was a large and flourishing mission station on the site of his first camp; and when on installing Lucy there he had drawn the missionaries' attention to this fact, and to his having made the site ready for them, purchased it in fact, the present occupants merely said with pursed lips, "Indeed?"; and Mrs. Missionary added primly: "Yes: we heard from the Chief you had stayed here, three years ago; but we prefer never to listen to gossip about white people. It is so often ill-natured."
And so onwards to the Taita Hills and the coast. A sense of flatness, a leaking-out of all romance in their adventure. They were no longer alone. Lucy went to see Mr. Thomas at the East African Mission station in Taita. He startled her by asking cheery questions about John, his old college-mate, and supposing John was with her on this safari. He had heard nothing about the disaster and made rather stupid and inquisitive inquiries as to the motives of her journey. Farther on, they had the misery of crossing the red Maungu desert, with its stretch of forty miles between water and water; but there was no "adventure" about this; and midway they met the caravan of a very rich Englishman with two companions, wearing single eye-glasses, who offered them champagne and soda-water at midday to relieve their thirst, and told Lucy he wasn't surprised at her travelling about with a stray Consul, as he always contended that missionaries out in Africa had a jolly good time and did themselves uncommonly well, and for his part he didn't blame her. "Gather ye roses, don't you know—while you can—or was it while you're young? And now I suppose you're on your way back to Hubby?"
The old Arab port of Mvita was not much altered since Roger had seen it last; though there was the beginning of a stir, for a British Chartered Company was preparing to make this their head-quarters. Meantime, the centre of rank and fashion, so to speak, was the British Consulate. Roger made his way here, with Lucy and Halima, while he left the bulk of his caravan encamped across the water.
His colleague, the Vice-Consul, was an ex-Naval Officer, who had given up the Navy for a while to serve in the East African Consulates, in the idea that they entailed little office work, good pay, and any amount of shooting, varied with agreeable safaris at the expense of the Government. This particular example of his kind had been rather sharply called back to more humdrum duties and the preparation of statistics by Roger himself, when he was acting Consul-General. So now was the time to get his own back:—
"Hullo, old chap! Who'd have thought it. Where have you sprung from? We'd all given you up for lost—thought you'd gone 'Fanti,' eloped with a missionaryess for the far interior and were founding an empire on your own...."
"I've brought here," interrupted Roger, with a set face, "Mrs. John Baines" (Lucy had retreated out of ear-shot with Halima to the verandah of the Consulate)—"Mrs. John Baines, whose husband has been killed, I fear, in the Ulunga country. I should be much obliged if you could put her up here till we can get a dau to take us over to Unguja.... As for me..."
"Aw*fully sorry old chap. *Of course, I can make room for you ... give you some sort of a shakedown.... You're a fellow man and you'll understand.... But the fact is I'm—I'm not—quite prepared—er—to entertain a white lady here. Bachelor establishment you know.... You twig? ... Dare say you're fixed up just the same at—where is it? at Medina, What?"