CHAPTER XV
Stasch also taught Kali how to use the Remington rifle, and this he learned much more easily than the catechism. After ten days’ practice shooting at a target and at crocodiles sleeping in the sand on the river banks, the young negro killed a large Pofir-antelope,[[25]] then several gazels, and finally a Ndiri wild boar. This hunt came near ending in an accident similar to that which had befallen Linde, for the boar,[[26]] which Kali had carelessly approached after firing the shot, sprang and flew at him with tail in the air. Kali dropped the gun, took refuge up a tree, and sat there until his screams attracted the attention of Stasch, who found that the wild boar had been slain.
Stasch did not as yet permit the boy to hunt for buffaloes, lions, and rhinoceroses. Stasch would not shoot the elephants which came to the watering-place by night, for he had promised Nell that he would never kill one of them.
But from the mountain-top he would look through the telescope morning and afternoon, and on seeing a herd of zebras, buffaloes, gazels, or deer grazing in the jungle, he would follow them, taking Kali with him. During these excursions he often questioned Kali about the Wa-hima and Samburu tribes that they were bound to meet if they wanted to go east as far as the seacoast.
“Kali, do you know,” he once said, “that a journey of twenty days, or if on horseback a journey of only ten days, would enable us to reach your country?”
“Kali not know where Wa-himas live,” answered the young negro, shaking his head sadly.
“But I know,” said Stasch; “they live where the sun rises over a large stretch of water.”
“Yes! yes!” cried the boy joyfully and greatly surprised. “Basso-Narok! (Dark Water.) That is our name for big black water. Great man knows everything!”
“No; I don’t know how the Wa-himas would welcome us should we go there.”
“Kali order them to fall on their faces before great man and good Msimu.”