“Forty cloths for what brought him three hundred at Zanzibar! Do you call forty cloths a great deal?” asked the offended Moto.
“But you forget, Moto,” said Selim, “that you were a slave in the employ of Kisesa; that the gun you carried was his, that the powder and shot you used to shoot the elephant with were his, that the clothes you then wore were given you by him, that the food which gave you strength was purchased with his money, that the men who carried you from the forest to the camp were his slaves, that the men who looked after you when you were sick and wounded were his men, that the man who found the elephant dead belonged to Kisesa, and that without Kisesa’s aid you would have died in the jungle, perhaps, and never have seen the elephant again. What do you say now, Moto?” asked Selim.
“You are right, young master, as you are always,” said the humiliated Moto, which remark was echoed and applauded by everybody around the camp-fire.
“But, now,” said the hitherto quiet Simba, “tell us about that battle Kisesa had with the Warori—your own people—and how you saved the king’s son.”
“Ay, do tell us that. It must be an interesting story,” said Selim. “I shall sleep all the better for it this first night of my life in Africa.”
“Well, when my friend Simba asks and my young master commands me, Moto is always ready,” said Moto, adding a huge log to the already cheerful fire-pile. “It is not such a long time ago but what I can remember every detail of it. It may have happened three or four years ago; Kisesa was then in Unyanyembe. He was mortally offended with the Arab chief Sayd bin Salim, the Wali of the Sultan of Zanzibar at Unyanyembe, and most of the Arabs took sides with Kisesa, as they knew he was a brave, powerful, and rich chief, who might defy even the Sultan of Zanzibar if he chose to do so.
“When Sayd bin Salim requested the Arabs to assist him in fighting the black chief of Kahama in Ugolo, Kisesa refused to go, and most of the other Arabs did the same, as they said that Kahama was but a small village and that the son of Salim had soldiers enough paid by the Sultan of Zanzibar to do that kind of fighting. Now the son of Salim, though he knows how to govern Arabs and keep the peace with peaceful merchants, has neither head nor heart for fighting. (It takes Kisesa to do that work.) So two or three weeks after Sayd bin Salim had gone to the war we were not at all astonished to see the Wali come back well beaten by Kahama; and Kisesa and the other Arabs had a good laugh at him.
“When soon after the war with Urori broke out, and Sayd bin Salim was requested to call every Arab to the war, Sayd bin Salim refused; but said that if Kisesa desired to go, he, as king’s governor of Unyanyembe, would empower Kisesa to lead the Arabs to war, and make him chief of the army. Kisesa accepted at once, and the principal Arabs at once volunteered to go with him. Within a very few days Kisesa left Unyanyembe with nearly a thousand men for Urori, so that Unyanyembe looked like a deserted place.
“I think it was on the twentieth day—I am not sure—of the march, that after travelling through Unyangwira and Kokoro we came near Kwikuru, the capital of Urori. We slept on our arms that night until about the eighth hour, when at a given signal we all crept through the bushes for about an hour, and by the moonlight we saw just ahead of us the boma (palisade) of the king’s village. I assure you we did not stop long to look at it, for our horns gave the signal and we all ran for the boma. Quick as a flash of powder in the musket-pan, as you may say, the men of Kisesa were at the palisade, and had their guns pointed at the village through the bare; but not a gun was fired, as Kisesa knew how to make war.
“Kisesa blew his horn, and a voice from the village shouted out to ask who we were, and what we wanted.