"It is Winkleman's safari," she announced sadly. "I have been able to see. It is a very large safari with many loads," she added.
Kingozi's face turned gray. He dropped his face into his hands. Gently she laid her hand on his bowed head. Thus they waited, while the safari, evidently under local guidance, plunged into some hidden path through the papyrus, and so disappeared.
[CHAPTER XXVII]
THE MAGIC BONE
Let us now follow Simba, Mali-ya-bwana, and their six men and the two strange shenzis who were to act as guides.
They started off across the veldt at about four o'clock of the afternoon and travelled rapidly until dark. The gait they took was not a run, but it got them over the ground at four and a half to five miles an hour. Shortly after sundown they stopped for an hour, ate, drank, and lay flat on their backs. Then they arose, lighted a candle end in the mica lantern, and resumed their journey. Thus they travelled day and night for three days. There seemed to be neither plan nor regularity to their journeying. Whenever they became tired enough to sleep, they lay down and slept for a little while; whenever they became hungry, they ate; and whenever they thirsted, they drank, paying no attention whatever to the time of day, the state of their larder, or the distance to more water. No ideas of conservation hampered them in the least. If the water gave out, they argued, they would be thirsty; but it was as well to be thirsty later from lack of water than to be thirsty now from some silly idea of abstention. No white man could have travelled successfully under that system. Nevertheless, the little band held together and arrived in the fringe of hills fit and comparatively fresh.
Here they encountered people belonging to M'tela's tribes; but their guides seemed to vouch for them, and they passed without trouble. Indeed they were here enabled to get more food, and to waste no time hunting. At noon of another day, surmounting a ridge, they looked down on a marching safari. The two shenzi guides pointed and grinned, much pleased with themselves. Their pleasure was short lived; for they were promptly seized, disarmed, and tied together. The grieved astonishment of their expressions almost immediately faded into fatalistic stolidity. So many things happen in Africa!
Mali-ya-bwana and one of the other men proceeded rapidly ahead on the general line of march. The rest paralleled the safari below. After an hour the scouts returned with news of a water-hole where, undoubtedly, the strange safari would camp. All then hurried on.
Concealed in a thicket Simba proceeded with great zest to make himself over into a shenzi. In every savage is a good deal of the small boy; so this disguising himself pleased him immensely. Taking the spear in one hand and the "sacred bone" reverently in the other, he set out to intercept the safari.
It came within the hour. Simba almost unremarked regarded it curiously. There were over a hundred men, all of tribes unknown to him with the exception of a dozen who evidently performed the higher offices. The common porters were indeed shenzis--wild men--picked up from jungle and veldt as they were needed; and not at all of the professional porter class to be had at Mombasa; Nairobi, Dar-es-salaam, or Zanzibar. Simba's eyes passed over them contemptuously, but rested with more interest on the smaller body of askaris, headmen, and gun bearers. These also were of tribes strange to him; but of East African types with which he was familiar. They were all dressed in a sort of uniform of khaki, wore caps with a curtain hanging behind, and arm bands gayly emblazoned with imperial eagles. All this was very impressive. Simba conceived a respect for this white man's importance. Evidently he was a bwana m'kubwa. The supposed savage experienced a growing excitement over the task he had undertaken. All his training had taught him to respect the white man, as such; and now he was called upon to abduct forcibly one of the sacred breed--and such a specimen! Only Simba's undoubted force of character, and the veneration his long association with Kingozi had inculcated, sustained him.