At last the white walls were up, the verandah pillars stood square and solid, and the skeleton of the king post roof reared its symmetry across the cloudless blue sky. A string of naked black urchins herded by an objurgatory black capitao formed a chattering procession carrying tiles, two in each hand and one on each head, to the tile hangers, who crouched like black apes on the rafters.
Norah felt no elation at the thought of good work nearly done, and stared blankly across a prospect of profitless and laborious years. True, she would be heartily glad to be quit of her temporary habitation of the last thirty months. From where she sat, she could see the cluster of wattle-and-daub rondavels, where they lived while the permanent house was building. It was across a little river that ran swift as a mill race, bordered by marshy banks hidden in papyrus rushes with heads like mops. Waterfowl, black, white, and grey, rose into the air from time to time with harsh, melancholy cries. On either bank of the river lay the flats, where grew the dry season grass for Archie's cattle. The edge of the bush, as straight as if drawn with a ruler, fringed the flats. Desolation gained her when she thought how many square miles of trees lay between her and her nearest white neighbour. Beyond the tops of the trees she could see the rounded slopes of the hills, blue in the distance, as bright as a child's painting.
On the flats, which stayed green when the scanty grass of the bush had turned orange, she could see Archie's beloved herds and, going his rounds, looking out for sick and ailing beasts, Archie himself. To-day the disreputable grey double terai had for company a dirty white topee. A wandering 'stiff' had descended on the farm some evenings before with a ulendo[[1]] of two carriers. They had few visitors, a dozen or two in the year, traders, missionaries, Boma[[2]] officials, and occasionally a 'stiff,' some unfortunate with insufficient kit and carriers, his presence in the country imperfectly explained by an ostensible search for work where none was to be found. Such were usually chary of giving their names or their business. This one, a wizened little fellow with a half-hearted beard and a game leg, answered, when he remembered, to the name of Jones, and purported to have come from the Congo, over whose frontier he admitted to have been escorted by Belgian askari. He had a repertory of elephant stories and tales of tusks of incredible size, but became elusive if pressed as to locality. He was now, no doubt, giving Archie a wealth of inexpert advice on the treatment of cattle, and Norah smiled as she imagined the impenetrable silence with which it would be received.
[[1]] "Ulendo"—journey or the necessary components of a journey.
[[2]] "Boma"—lit. enclosure, hence the Government posts.
Archie had proved to have a knack with cattle. Brought up on the farm his mother had inherited, he had learnt a good deal of veterinary work in the gunners. The herd of native cattle he had collected was as good as any in the country, and for grass his farm was unrivalled. But lack of markets and the distance from rail-head, which made freight prohibitive and the amenities of civilisation rare, held him up. The only market which was not at the moment barred by the embargoes of God or man—tsetse fly belts or prohibited areas—was the Katanga, the district of the Congo copper mines, whose vast compounds of native workers consumed unlimited meat. The depreciated Belgian exchange, however, made it unprofitable for Archie to sell there. So, while his herds increased and multiplied, his bank balance, under the constant drain of working expenses, ebbed.
The cattle were already streaming to their kraals on the high ground. Amid the shouting of the herd-boys, they snatched at a last bite of grass as they shouldered their way and a little mist of dust rose from their hoofs. Norah got up with a sigh as the sun sank behind the darkened hills. Cattle attract lions and leopards, and it was not safe for man or domestic beast to be abroad after dark.
She reached the ferry and stepped into the dug-out canoe, manned by an elderly native with a withered leg, whom Archie employed from charity. He pointed the nose of the canoe up-stream and pushed off. Carried by the current, the boat swung round and bumped into the rough steps on the farther bank. She sprang out bidding good-night to the old man, who knelt down and clapped his hands in salutation.
Archie had not reached the rondavels before her; he would be seeing the cattle safely kraaled for the night. Her 'boy,' Changalilo, brought quinine and silently prepared a hip-bath for her.
Silence, discretion, and resource, were Changalilo's rare qualifications. His tribe, the Awemba, a dignified, well-mannered, and once warlike race, are as a rule too irresponsible to make good servants. Norah explained the exception that was Changalilo by attributing to him Arab blood. His lips and jaw showed no trace of negroid thickness, and it was likely enough that in passage some Arab slave trader had sired one of his parents.