Under the star-spangled tropic sky my brave fellows fall in for the last time, and for the last time the noise of the caravan getting under way disturbs the silence of the bush on the other side of the deep ravine in which the Lukuledi flows. In the Indian quarter of Mrweka, sleepy men, women with nose-rings, and gaudily dressed babies start up in affright, when the discordant sounds of the horns blown by my expedition reach their ears. It is quickly growing lighter, when a khaki-clad figure seizes my mule’s bridle: it is Herr Linder, the excellent agricultural inspector, who was the last European to say good-bye to me at Ruaha, and is now the first to welcome me back. His presence here is a consequence of the boom at Lindi, as he is engaged in surveying some new plantation or other. We are off again at a rapid pace, down a slightly inclined slope to the left; the head of the line stops, those coming up behind him crowd on each other’s heels; and, on riding up to see what is the matter, I find that a broad creek bars the way. Being a stranger to the country, I must in this case be guided by my men. These, lifting their clothes as high as their shoulders, have waded slowly into the water. My mule resists a little out of sheer affectation, but soon jogs on bravely after the rest. All reach the other side without mishap, and, after a short pause to get the whole party together again, we start in double-quick time for Ngurumahamba, which is flooded by the springtide, the water having almost penetrated into the houses.
We have done with the wilderness. The road, still unfinished in July, is now in its complete state a masterpiece of engineering: it only wants a few motor cars to be a perfect picture of twentieth-century civilization. The last halt of any length is at the foot of Kitulo, where Knudsen insists on taking a photograph of me with a huge baobab as background, on the ground that I ought to be handed down to posterity in the garb of an African explorer. My men in the meantime have been smartening themselves up; and, very picturesquely grouped among the bales and boxes, they are scrubbing away at their teeth, which, as it is, could scarcely be whiter, with a zeal which one would be only too glad to see among some of our own compatriots. The tooth-brush (mswaki) used by these natives, is a piece of very fibrous wood, about eight inches long, and as thick as one’s thumb, which penetrates into every cranny of the teeth without injuring the enamel, and looks, when in use, like an enormous cigar. It performs its work well and is free from objection on the score of hygiene, especially as, a new one being always easily procurable, it need never remain in use too long.
I have just reached the top of Kitulo, and am looking back for the last time on that part of interior Africa in which I, too, have now by hard work won the right to be called an explorer, when Omari, the cook, comes panting and puffing up the hill, and roars at me as soon as he comes in sight, “Ndege amekwenda!” (“The bird has got away!”). In fact, the cage which for some weeks past had contained a brightly-coloured little bird—a kind of siskin—is now empty; a loose bar shows how he gained his freedom. How pleasantly, all these weeks, his song has enlivened the hot, dusty rest-houses in which we have been living, and made them a little more home-like; and how grateful he always was for the few heads of millet which sufficed for his keep. Now, he is off, just at the moment when I was wondering what to do with my little friend, knowing that he was not likely to thrive in the cold northern winter, and doubting whether I could safely entrust him to the first European I came across. His escape at this moment has cut the knot.
MY ESCORT CLEANING THEIR TEETH
In close order, the soldiers in section-column, the Imperial Service flag unfurled to the fresh sea-breeze, we march into Lindi. My carriers are strangers to the place, and therefore the cries of the women, which usually greet every caravan making its entry, are few and far between. Smartly my soldiers wheel into the boma square, and there, as I am dismounting, stiff with the long ride, I see the first white man approach; he greets me pleasantly and seems honestly pleased to see me. A second comes up. “Good gracious! how ill you look! And as for that mule of yours, if it doesn’t croak before the day is out I’ll be shot, but you’ll have to pay for it all the same!” My illusions are rudely shattered. I turn away and beckon to the corporal, who has been standing a little apart, in correct military attitude, to come nearer. “You have been good soldiers, and you, Hemedi Maranga, the best of all. I am going to make a big feast for you. But now you can go home to your wives.” I shook hands with him, he gave the word of command, and the next moment the twelve had disappeared into the barrack-yard, while I went on to my old quarters. Knudsen is right; after all, it is better among the Washenzi.
I did not see much of my carriers in their few remaining days at Lindi, but I heard the more. Now their hour has come: the Kaiser Wilhelm is swinging at anchor out yonder on the river, and will start to-morrow at daybreak. My men are to go on board this evening at sunset. I have ordered them to be in front of the post-office (where I am living in a modest room on the upper floor) at half-past five, thinking it best to see them as far as the harbour myself. The appointed time has come, but not a carrier is to be seen. I wait till a quarter to six, and am becoming somewhat uneasy, when I am aware of the gradual approach of so frightful a din that there cannot be the slightest doubt as to who is causing it. But have the twenty-four been suddenly multiplied by three? A closely-packed crowd roars and surges in the square beneath me; the bass voices of the men, the shrill, vibrating cries of the women make up a pandemonium of sound; but no disorderly actions take place—in fact I had not expected any. The crowd follows me in a confused mass for the few hundred paces down to the harbour, where the ferry-boat is waiting. “Bwana, I would rather stay here,” says Kazi Ulaya, the handsome, with a tender look at the fair one beside him. “Do what thy heart prompts, my son,” I reply mildly. “And this is my boy, sir,” says Pesa mbili II, of Manyema, who has by this time recovered his plumpness. But he refrains from introducing to me the bibi, who, in some embarrassment, is hiding behind his broad back.
“Now sing those fine songs of yours once more.”
The men are standing round me in a serried circle. “Kuya mapunda” goes very well; the pleasing melody rises in full volume of sound above the voice of the rushing Lukuledi. In “Dasige Murumba” too, the singers acquit themselves fairly well; but when the standard song, “Yooh nderule” begins, the circle seems full of gaps, and my eye can distinguish in the twilight various couples scattered here and there among the bushes by the bank. “Ah! farewell scenes,” I think to myself, but soon perceive that I am mistaken; no tender sentiments are being discussed, but my matter-of-fact fellows are throwing themselves like wolves on the last repast prepared for them by loving hands before the voyage. I wish them, sotto voce, a good appetite, and make a note of the fact that the heart of the native, like that of the European, can be reached through his stomach.
The ferryman shouts impatiently to hurry them up, and I drive the unattached contingent of the singers down into the shallow water. Splashing and laughing they wade towards the boat; the darkness has come on rapidly, and I can only just distinguish the white figures as they clamber on board. “Yooh nderule, yooh nderule, bwana mkubwa nderule”—the familiar sounds, long drawn out, ring over the water in Pesa mbili’s voice—“kuba sumba na wogi nderulewa, yooh nderule”—the chorus dies away. The boat has disappeared in the darkness, and I turn my steps towards the mess-room, and the principal meal of the day, where I am once more claimed by civilization. The Weule Expedition is at an end.