“Hapa, [66] Bwana!” they yelled. “Trolley hapa,” and, for a moment, Bertram thought they would actually seize him and struggle for possession of his body. He determined that if one of the shrieking fiends laid a hand upon him, he would smite him with what violence he might. The heat was certainly affecting his temper. He wondered what it would feel like to strike a man—a thing he had never done in his life. But, on reaching him, the men merely pointed to their respective trolleys and skipped back to them, still pointing, and apparently calling Heaven to witness their subtle excellences and charms.
As Bertram was about to step on to the foremost trolley, the men in charge of the other sprang forward with yelps of anguish, only to receive cause for louder yelps of deeper anguish at the hands of Ali, who, with blows and buffets, drove them before him. Bertram wondered why the pair of them, each as big as their assailant, should flee before him thus. Was it by reason of Ali’s greater moral force, juster cause, superior social standing as the follower of a white man, or merely the fact that he took it upon him to be the aggressor. Probably the last. Anyhow—thank Heaven for the gloriously cool and refreshing breeze, caused by the rapid rush of the trolley through the heavy air, as the trolley-“boys” ran it down the decline from the hill-top whence they had started.
As soon as the trolley had gained sufficient momentum, they leapt on to the back of the vehicle, and there clung until it began to slow down again. Up-hill they slowly pushed with terrific grunts, on the level they maintained a good speed, and down-hill the thing rattled, bumped and bounded at a terrific pace, the while Bertram wondered how long it would keep the rails, and precisely what would happen if it jumped them. Had he but known it, there was a foot-brake beneath the seat, which he should have used when going down-hill. ’Twas not for the two specimens of Afric’s ebon sons, who perched and clung behind him, to draw his attention to it. Was he not a Bwana, a white man, and therefore one who knew all things? And if he wanted to break his neck had he not a right so to do? And if they, too, should be involved in the mighty smash, would not that fact prove quite conclusively that it was their kismet to be involved in the smash, and therefore inevitable? Who shall avoid his fate? . . . And so, in blissful ignorance, Bertram swooped down-hill in joyous, mad career. He wished the pace were slower at times, for everything was new and strange and most interesting. Native huts, such as he had seen in pictures (labelled “kaffir-kraals”) in his early geography book, alternated with official-looking buildings, patches of jungle; gardens of custard-apple, mango, paw-paw, banana, and papai trees; neat and clean police-posts, bungalows, cultivated fields, dense woods and occasional mosques, Arab houses, go-downs, [67] temples, and native infantry “lines.”
On the dazzlingly white road (which is made of coral and nothing else) were few people. An occasional Indian Sepoy, a British soldier, an askari of the King’s African Rifles, an official peon with a belt-plate as big as a saucer (and bearing some such legend as Harbour Police or Civil Hospital), a tall Swahili in the inevitable long night-dress and tarboosh, or a beautifully worked skull cap, a file of native women clad each in a single garment of figured cotton which extended from arm-pit to ankle, leaving the arms and shoulders bare. The hairdressing of these ladies interested Bertram, for each head displayed not one, but a dozen, partings, running from the forehead to the neck, and suggesting the seams on a football. At the end of each parting was a brief pigtail bound with wire. Bertram wondered why these women always walked one behind the other in single file, and decided that it was an inherited and unconscious instinct implanted by a few thousand years of use of narrow jungle-paths from which they dared not stray as the armed men-folk did. . . .
After half an hour or so of travelling this thrillingly interesting road, Bertram perceived that they were drawing near to the busy haunts of men. From a church, a congregation of Goanese or else African-Portuguese was pouring. The scene was a very Indian one—the women, with their dusky faces and long muslin veils worn sari-fashion over their European dresses of cotton or satin; the men, with their rusty black suits or cotton coats and trousers and European hats or solar topis. One very venerable gentleman, whose ancestors certainly numbered more Africans than Portuguese, wore a golfing suit (complete, except for the stockings), huge hob-nailed boots, and an over-small straw-yard with a gay ribbon. A fine upstanding specimen of the race, obviously the idol of his young wife, who walked beside him with her adoring gaze fixed upon his shining face, began well with an authentic silk hat, continued excellently with a swallow-tailed morning-coat, white waistcoat, high collar and black satin tie, but fell away from these high achievements with a pair of tight short flannel tennis-trousers, grey Army socks, and white canvas shoes.
“An idol with feet of pipe-clay,” smiled Bertram to himself, as his chariot drove heavily through the throng, and his charioteers howled “Semeele! Semeele!” at the tops of their voices.
Soon the tram-line branched and bifurcated, and tributary lines joined it from garden-enclosed bungalows and side turnings. Later he discovered that every private house has its own private tram-line running from its front door down its drive out to the main line in the street, and that, in Mombasa, one keeps one’s own trolley for use on the public line, as elsewhere one keeps one’s own carriage or motor-car.
On, past the Grand Hotel, a stucco building of two storeys, went the rumbling, rattling vehicle, past a fine public garden and blindingly white stucco houses that lined the blindingly white coral road, across a public square adorned with flowering shrubs and trees, to where arose a vast grey pile, the ancient blood-drenched Portuguese fort, and a narrow-streeted, whitewashed town of tall houses and low shops began.
Here the trolley-boys halted, and Bertram found himself at the entrance of the garden of the Mombasa Club, which nestles in the shadow of its mighty neighbour, the Fort—where once resided the Portuguese Governor and the garrison that defied the Arab and kept “the Island of Blood” for Portugal, and where now reside the Prison Governor and the convicts that include the Arab, and keep the public gardens for the public.
Boldly entering the Club, Bertram left his card on the Secretary and Members (otherwise stuck it on a green-baize board devoted to that purpose), and commenced a tour of inspection of the almost empty building. Evidently Society did not focus itself until the cool of the evening, in Africa as in India, and evidently this club very closely resembled a thousand others across the Indian Ocean from Bombay to Hong Kong, where the Briton congregates in exile. The only difference between this and any “station” club in India appeared to be in the facts that the servants were negroes and the trophies on the walls were different and finer. Magnificent horns, such as India does not produce, alternated with heads of lion and other feral beasts. Later Bertram discovered another difference in that the cheery and hospitable denizens of the Mombasa Club were, on the whole, a thirstier race than those of the average Indian club, and prone to expect and desire an equal thirst in one their guest. He decided that it was merely a matter of climate—a question of greater humidity.