"Not if you don't go too far north. South of Kenya they're friendly enough as a rule, but there are wild tribes on the east and north. You must have two porters who can shoot; Sniders they're used to; but don't let 'em use them except in case of necessity. Do all the game shooting yourselves, and keep a firm hand on the men; they'll play you all manner of tricks if you don't. They're the queerest people God ever made, that's a fact. They'll desert at any moment and forfeit their pay, for no reason at all that we can understand. I could tell you of men who'll carry a load of ninety pounds or more every day for a month on end, and then all at once decamp, hundreds of miles away from their home, and with no earthly chance of getting there. But you'll find 'em out for yourselves."
The talk lasted far into the night, Mr. Gillespie giving advice and retailing reminiscences of his own early days as a settler, which John drank in eagerly. Next day they set about collecting porters for the journey. The news that a white man was going up country had already spread through the native quarter of the town, and Mr. Gillespie's office was besieged by a great crowd of black men, representing a score of different races, all eager to join the stranger's "safari." The experience of the coffee-planter was very useful at this juncture, and the Hallidays were quietly amused as he dismissed man after man with little ceremony and a curtness of speech which, had they understood it (he spoke in Swahili, the common vehicle of intercourse between European and native), would have amused them still more. A little M'kamba would come forward with a smile. "You're a thief; be off," said Mr. Gillespie, and the man went away, still smiling. A hulking Swahili appears, a sullen look on his face. "You're always quarrelling; be off," says Mr. Gillespie, and the Swahili retires, to join the crowd of rejected. At length half-a-dozen men were selected, three Swahilis, of whom Coja ben Selim, a big, good-tempered-looking fellow, was to be headman; and three Wakamba. Mr. Gillespie was doubtful whether so small a safari would suffice; but Mr. Halliday was bent on economy; he argued that he could not in any case afford an escort large enough to cope with a serious native attack, and further, that a party of modest dimensions was not so likely to provoke hostility as a large one. Moreover, he intended to pay only a flying visit to the site of his proposed settlement, for the purpose of a preliminary survey. If he was pleased with the country, he intended to mark out the ground and put in an application to the Land Commissioner for a lease of a thousand acres or so. With luck, a month would suffice for this prospecting journey, which incidentally, as Mr. Gillespie informed him, would absolve him from paying registration fees on his porters, such fees only being necessary when they were engaged for two months or more.
It remained to hire a cook for the expedition.
"We don't need a cook," said Mr. Halliday. "I've roughed it often enough; we can do our own cooking."
"Man, you're a tenderfoot," said Mr. Gillespie, laughing. "You must have a cook. Your men would all mutiny if you didn't. I don't mean that he would cook for them; they'll have their own cooking-pots; but they wouldn't obey you for a day if they saw you cooking for yourself. The first maxim for a white man in this country is: 'Never do a black man's work.' Order your men about as much as you please, but don't do anything."
"But that's a doctrine of the dark ages. Confound it, man, that's the kind of thing we shook off centuries ago. I'm not a duke."
"That's just exactly what you are here. The natives will regard you as their lord and master, and if you don't act up to the part--why, man, I think the Governor will expel you as an undesirable alien. In short, you must have a cook."
Here Mr. Gillespie's native servant came in to say that an Indian gentleman desired to see him.
"Send him in," said Mr. Gillespie, and there entered, suave and smiling, Said Mohammed, failed B.A. He bowed respectfully--a little too respectfully, thought John--to his acquaintances of the day before; then, addressing himself to Mr. Gillespie, he said--
"Having learnt in the bazaar, sir, that the esteemed gentleman in whose company I had the honour to travel yesterday is engaging a safari, I embrace the opportunity of submitting tender of my services in unremitting attention to the interior economy--soups, joints, sweets, et cetera, or, as one might say, hoc genus omne, as it were."