[CHAPTER XXI]
THE MESSENGERS
The return trip began promptly the following morning, and progressed uninterruptedly for two weeks. One by one they picked up the water-holes found on the journey out.
A few details had to be adjusted to compensate for Kingozi's lack of eyes. The matter of meat supplies, for example.
"Good luck I gave some attention to your shooting, old sportsman," he remarked to Simba in English, then in Swahili: "Here are five cartridges. Go get me a zebra and a kongoni." Simba was no shot, but Kingozi knew he would stalk, with infinite patience and skill, fairly atop his quarry before letting off one of the precious cartridges.
In the matter of rhinoceros and similar dangers, they simply took a chance.
Kingozi marched at the end of a stick held by Simba. He gave his whole energies to getting over the day's difficulties of all sorts. His relations with the Leopard Woman swung back. Perhaps vaguely, in the back of his mind, he looked forward to the interpretation of that unpremeditated kiss; but just now a mixed feeling of responsibility and delicacy prevented his going forward from the point attained. During the march they walked apart most of the time. The weariness of forced travel abridged their evenings.
Chaké walked guarded, and slept in chains.
Whenever the location of water-holes permitted, the safari made long jumps. The two messengers sent out with a scrawled letter to Doctor McCloud--whom they knew as Bwana Marefu--were of course far ahead. With any luck Kingozi hoped to meet the surgeon not far from the mountains where dwelt the sultani of the ivory stockade.
Thus the march went through a fortnight. The close of the fourteenth day found them camped near water in a donga. The dim blue of mountains had raised itself above the horizon ahead. This rejoiced the men. They were running low of potio, and they knew that from the sultani's subjects in these mountains a further supply could be had. As a consequence, an unwonted kalele was smiting the air. Each man chatted to his next-door neighbour at the top of his lungs, laughing loudly, squealing with delight. Kingozi sat enjoying it. He had been so long in Africa that this happy rumpus always pleased him. Suddenly it fell to silence. He cocked his ear, trying to understand the reason.