At length when the course of the rains, the prospect of the crops and the abundance of game had been passed in review, there came a pause. Was there anything, asked Archie, that he could do for his visitor? The headman appeared pained at the idea. He had come, he repeated, to announce his satisfaction at the chief's recovery from grave sickness.... But since the chief suggested it, if it so happened that one day he saw Bwana La-va-ta...
'Is Bwana Lavater back at M'pala?'[[1]] asked Archie quickly.
[[1]] M'pala is the native name for Abercorn.
Ntula replied that his eldest son had seen Bwana La-va-ta bicycling into Abercorn as it grew dark. Now should the chief happen to speak to...
'How long ago was that?' said Archie.
It was the evening of the day that the zebra had eaten the young mealies in his nephew Chisulo's garden ... well, that was five days ago.
'The evening I got better,' calculated Archie. 'Are you sure?' he asked, and the old man became courteously emphatic.
'Well,' said Archie, anxious for the visit to end, 'if I see Bwana Lavater...?'
We came circuitously to the point. It appeared that Ntula owed tax for himself and three wives, ten shillings a head, not only for the current year, but also for the last. And the Boma was putting men who did not pay their taxes in chains. If the chief would one day condescend to look at his gardens and his village, and see how poor the soil and how few the men, perhaps he could persuade Bwana Lavater....
Archie for all his stoicism winced. He leant forward and spoke to me in English. 'It wouldn't be much use my speaking to the Boma. May I tell the old man you'll try?'