We marched eighteen miles that morning, the longest stage we had done so far, then halted for breakfast.
"Sardines and crackers!" sneered Schomburgk.
"For gracious sake go away somewhere for half an hour," I retorted hotly. "I'm going to run this chop."
He picked up his gun, and strolled off into the bush—grumbling. I set to work to prepare breakfast. It was hard work to bring my self-imposed task to a successful issue, for I had only the most rudimentary cooking utensils, and an open fire.
By dint of much labour and perseverance, however, I managed in the end to prepare a very decent dish of eggs and bacon, with hot rolls, and strong steaming coffee. Schomburgk grunted approval when he came to partake of it, and afterwards was quite genial, despite the affair of the missing Messa. "Feed the brute!" I forget the name of the tactful woman who first gave our sex that very excellent piece of advice, but she knew what she was talking about. She had studied men, and to some purpose.
An hour later our truant cook turned up. He explained that just prior to starting on trek with us he had married a young wife, and having regard to her attractiveness and inexperience he had, on mature reflection, deemed it inadvisable to leave her behind. He had therefore gone back to fetch her, borrowing the bicycle and the sovereign for that purpose.
By dint of cross-examination I elicited that he had not left our previous camp until midnight. He had therefore cycled twenty-five miles to Kamina, and the same distance back again, plus the eighteen miles we had marched that morning, or nearly seventy miles in all in rather less than nine hours, a wonderful performance for a native, and on a native road.
I asked him about his wife. "Oh," he replied, "she come presently. She walking."
Sure enough she turned up that afternoon, having trudged the whole distance from Kamina, forty-three miles. When I saw her I did not blame Messa for not caring to leave her behind. She was as pretty a girl, for a native, as I ever wish to see. Fourteen or fifteen years old, probably, but quite fully developed and beautifully proportioned, with a pair of roguish alluring eyes, and a face all smiles. She accompanied us throughout the trip, and proved herself quite an acquisition.
As for Messa, we ought of course to have chided him severely. But, as a matter of fact, we were so exceedingly glad to get him back again that but little was said to him at the time. Later on, however, he was taken pretty sternly to task, and warned that any similar breach of discipline would in future be very seriously dealt with.