“Poor fellow!” said Selim. “See Simba, the leg is stripped to the bone. What a savage reptile the crocodile is! Do you think Mombo will live, Simba? For after this I should not like to see him die; it would seem as if my big bullet had done no good after all.”
“He will live, Inshallah! Inshallah! (Please God! Please God!) Mombo will live to tell the story to his children on the island when he is an old man and past work. You know the hakim (doctor) with us is wise and learned, and, Inshallah! Mombo, after a few days, will be all right. Sho! Mombo die? No, master; Mombo will live to laugh at this. But we must carry him to the camp that the hakim may dress his wounds. Come, Baruti, man—cease your cries. Take your hatchet and cut young straight trees down while I prepare some rope whereon Mombo may be carried. You, young master, may cut a piece of the crocodile’s tail to show your father Amer, who will be proud of what you have done.”
They all three set to work. Baruti cut two young trees, which he barked. Simba made use of the bark as rope, and in a short time a comfortable bed had been made, on which Mombo was carefully lifted, and, in a few moments, Selim having secured his trophy, the three friends set out briskly on their return to camp.
Young Selim, who had “bagged” his first game, was highly gratified by the praise bestowed on him by his father and his father’s people, and the braggart Isa was the only one of his boy-fellows who refused to say a kind word in commendation of the feat. Noble young Khamis, on the other hand, did not stint his appreciation of it, and youthful Abdullah and Mussoud hung about Selim as though he were some suddenly-discovered hero. The chieftain Khamis bin Abdullah, the noble leader of the united caravans, took from his waist a gold-hafted curved dagger as a token of his esteem, and Sheikh Mohammed presented him with a crimson silk sash to put around his waist. Sultan bin Ali, the patriarch of the expedition, who was the very type of a venerable Arab chief, gave him out of his treasure a red fez-cap with a golden tassel, and Sheikh Mussoud gave him a Muscat turban of a rich cherry pattern, so that Selim, before night, was arrayed in costly garments.
The slaves among themselves did Selim honour by praising him around the camp-fires, and Halimah, the black woman-cook of Amer bin Osman, as she turned her ugali (porridge), declared, by this and by that, that Selim was the noblest, sweetest lad she had ever seen.
Selim would have slept that night the sleep of those who do praiseworthy actions, had he not been awakened at midnight by a loud shriek from one of his father’s slaves, whose right cheek was completely ripped off by a prowling hyaena. The disturbance in the dead hour of night alarmed some of the younger slaves, but they were calmed by the wise and experienced Moto, who said sententiously that “the hyaena is a cowardly brute, who would run away at the sight of a child in the daytime, and who could only fight sleeping or dead men.”
After these incidents, which occurred at the stagnant pools of the Lofu, the caravans continued, their march uninterruptedly until they arrived among the Wahehe, a tribe of predatory people who live south of the great arid plain country of Ugogo.
The first night, before going to sleep after their arrival in Uhehe, the kirangozi of Khamis bin Abdullah rose up at the command of his master—and spoke out in a loud voice to the united caravans:
“Words, words, words! Listen, ye children of the Arabs, sons of the great chiefs, Khamis bin Abdullah, Amer bin Osman, Sultan bin Ali, the Sheikhs Mussoud, Abdullah, Bashid, Hamdan, Thani, and Nasib! Open your ears, ye people of Zanzibar! Ye are among the Wahehe. Ye are in the land of thieves, and night-prowlers. Be wary and alert, my friends; sleep with one eye open; let not your hands forget your guns. When ye meet the prowling Wahehe in your camps at night, shoot and kill all such. Do ye hear?”
“We do,” was answered by six hundred voices.