AT KILEMBONGA
Before nightfall Colin, Sinclair and Tiny Desmond were safely installed at Kilembonga. They were almost too dead-beat to take stock of their new abode that night. The reaction of their adventurous journey by train, car and on foot, ending with thirty odd miles on horseback had told heavily.
They were barely conscious of sitting down to a good square meal and of being shown into a spacious bedroom. After that everything became a blank until close on noon on the following day.
"Tiny, old son," exclaimed Colin, "we've slept the clock round."
"Might have slept the clock square, for all I know," replied Desmond, stretching his aching limbs. "Hullo! Where are we? Honest Injun, I thought we were back at Stockmere."
The two chums sat up and gazed at one another from opposite corners of a large palm-thatched room. The windows were shaded by "jalousies" or open louvres, from the almost vertical rays of the sun.
The interior of the room was simplicity itself, or, as Desmond remarked, "And everything within that cot was wondrous neat and clean." The furniture was almost entirely constructed of African teak, while to render the woodwork immune from the onslaughts of ants the legs of the beds, chairs, and wash-stands stood in shallow tin bowls of water.
"Where are our clothes, I wonder?" enquired Tiny.
"They can't have arrived yet," replied his chum. "The bullock waggon——"
"Yes, I know," interrupted Desmond. "But the things we wore yesterday. I have some idea that I left mine on that chair."