“Yes, as long as we stay near a stream. We must stay here and wait until the rainy season is over, for these continual showers are sure to give you the fever. Remember that we must continue our journey later, and we may possibly strike a desert.”
“Like the Sahara?” asked Nell, much alarmed.
“No; but one without streams and fruit-trees and acacias and mimosas. In a place like that one can only live on game. King would find grass, and I antelopes, but if I have nothing to shoot them with King could not capture them.”
Stasch certainly had reason to be worried, for now that the elephant was tame and had become so well acquainted with them, it would not be right to desert him and leave him to starve; on the other hand, releasing him meant losing most of the ammunition and certainly risking death.
And so Stasch put the work off from day to day, every evening repeating to himself: “Perhaps I may think of some other way to-morrow.”
Meanwhile other troubles came upon them.
In the first place Kali had been terribly tortured by bees when he went far down the stream after a rather small gray-green bird, a so-called bee-hawk, well known in Africa. The black boy had been too lazy to smoke the bees out, and although he returned with some honey, he was so stung and swollen that an hour later he became unconscious. The “good Msimu,” with Mea’s assistance, drew out the poisonous stings, and then quickly made him poultices of wet mud. But toward morning it seemed as though the poor negro would die. Fortunately, good care and a strong constitution triumphed, but it was ten days before he regained his usual health.
In the second place, something had gone wrong with the horses. Stasch, who was obliged to tie them up and lead them to water during Kali’s illness, discovered that they were beginning to get very lean. This certainly was not caused by insufficient food, for the grass was very luxuriant after the rain, making very good pasture. And yet the horses dwindled before his eyes. A few days later their hair began to fall out, their eyes had lost their brilliancy, and a thick slime ran from their nostrils. Finally they refused to graze, and drank a great deal, as though consumed by fever. When Kali saw them they were nothing but skin and bones, and he knew at once what was the matter.
“Tsetse!” said he, turning to Stasch. “They must die!”
Stasch knew what this meant, for in Port Said he had often heard of an African fly called “tsetse,” which is such a terrible plague in certain places that in districts permanently infected with it the negroes own no cattle, for where circumstances favor its multiplying it destroys animals in no time. Horses, cattle, and donkeys which have been bitten by the tsetse-fly pine and die in a few days. Animals inhabiting these districts know the danger that threatens them, for entire herds of cattle, on hearing the buzzing near their watering-places, are so frightened that they stampede in every direction.