XV
Stas instructed Kali also how to shoot from a Remington rifle, and this instruction proceeded more easily than the teaching of the catechism. After ten days' shooting at a mark and at crocodiles which slept on the sandy river banks, the young negro killed a big antelope cob; after that a few ariels and finally a wart-hog. The encounter with the latter, however, almost resulted in the same kind of accident which befell Linde, for the wart-hog, which Kali approached carelessly after the shot, started up suddenly and charged at him with tail upraised. Kali, flinging away the rifle, sought refuge in a tree, where he sat until his cries brought Stas, who, however, found the wild boar already dead. Stas did not yet permit the boy to hunt for buffaloes, lions, and rhinoceroses. He himself did not shoot at the elephants which came to the watering place, because he had promised Nell that he would never kill one.
When, however, in the morning or during the afternoon hours, from above he espied, through the field-glass, herds of zebras, hartbeests, ariels, or springboks grazing in the jungle, he took Kali with him. During these excursions he often questioned the boy about the Wahima and Samburu nations, with which, desiring to go eastward, to the ocean coast, they necessarily must come in contact.
"Do you know, Kali," he asked a certain day, "that after twenty days on horseback we could reach your country?"
"Kali does not know where the Wahimas live," the young negro answered, sadly shaking his head.
"But I know that they live in the direction in which the sun rises in the morning, near some great water."
"Yes! Yes!" exclaimed the boy with amazement and joy; "Basso-Narok! That in our language means, great and black water. The great master knows everything."
"No, for I do not know how the Wahimas would receive us if we came to them."
"Kali would command them to fall on their faces before the great master and before the 'Good Mzimu.'"
"And would they obey?"