"Perhaps you're right, Barney. Doesn't it seem to you odd that Uncle says nothing about the rubber question? His first letter, you remember, was full of it."
"Master's a wise man, sorr. What he does not say says more than what he does. He wouldn't be sure, you see, that his letter would iver reach you. And bedad, if he'd had good things to say uv the State officers, wouldn't he have said 'em? He's found 'em out, sorr, 'tis my belief."
"I shall be jolly glad to see him, dear old boy."
"And so will I, sorr, an' to see some things fit for a Christian to ate. Master's stomach won't take niggers' food, an' mine wouldn't if I could help it."
"But you're getting fat, man!"
"Sure that's the terrible pity uv it. Wid dacent food I kept as lean as a rake, and I'd niver have believed that the only way to get fat was to ate pig's food; for that's what it is, sorr, this maniac and other stuff. I'll now be wanting to get thin again, sorr."
The white men's stores had long since given out. For weeks they had had no sugar, no coffee, tea, or cocoa. Jack as well as Barney had to share the natives' food. Jack did not mind the change, and he believed that Barney's objection was more than half feigned, for the Irishman ate with unfailing appetite. The native diet was indeed nutritious and not unappetising. It included fish from the streams, which they ate both fresh and smoked; bananas, pine-apples, plantains, Indian corn, manioc, ground-nuts, and sweet potatoes. Manioc was their most important food, and Jack after a time began to like it, as made into kwanga. The root of the plant is pounded to a pulp, soaked for twenty-four hours in running water, and when it ferments, is worked up into a stiff dough. Cut into slices and fried in ground-nut oil it is very palatable. Jack also found the groundnuts delicious when roasted. A few goats kept in the settlement provided milk, and they had a regular supply of eggs from their fowls, so that Jack at least considered himself very well off.
The crops around the settlement ripened and were gathered: fine fields of Indian corn, amazing quantities of manioc and ground-nuts, that ripen beneath the soil. Yet Jack began to wonder whether his plantations would meet the needs of the population. It was still growing. The renown of Lokolobolo and Ilombekabasi had evidently spread far and wide, for every week more refugees came in from villages far apart. Besides the men of Jack's original party, there were now nearly two hundred people in the settlement, and Jack always had to remember that these might any day be increased by the four hundred from Imbono's villages, if Elbel returned to avenge Boloko's expulsion, as he certainly would do. Further, Mr. Martindale would no doubt bring back with him a certain number of trained workmen—carpenters, engine-men, and so forth; all these must be provided with house room and food. Jack was glad that he had planned the settlement on generous lines, though as he looked around he asked himself somewhat anxiously whether it would suffice to accommodate all. And what would his uncle say to it? Would he endorse what Jack had done, and take upon himself the protection of these outcasts against their own lawfully constituted, however unlawfully administered, government? Only time could decide that, and Jack awaited with growing impatience his uncle's return.
One morning a messenger came in from Ilola to say that news had reached Imbono of a herd of buffaloes which were feeding about five miles off in the open country to the west. Hitherto Jack had not had leisure to indulge his tastes for sport; but the knowledge that big game was now so near at hand prompted him to try his luck. Leaving Barney in charge of the settlement, he set off the same morning with Imbono and Mboyo, who had both become very fair marksmen, the former with an Albini rifle that had been Boloko's, the latter with a Mauser presented to him by Jack.
Samba and Lepoko were in attendance, carrying lunch for the party. Though Jack had picked up a good deal of the language, he found it in some respects so extraordinarily difficult that he was always glad of Lepoko as a stand-by.