Kingozi smiled.
"Two days of visit. Then perhaps a week to get potio and guides."
"Impossible! I could not endure it!"
"I am afraid you will have to. I know the untamed savage. He is inclined to be friendly, always. If you hurry the process, you must fight. That's the trouble with a big mob like yours. It is difficult to feed so many peacefully. Even in a rich country they bring in potio slowly--a cupful at a time. With the best intentions in the world you may have to use coercion to keep from starving. And coercion means trouble. Look at Stanley--he left hostilities everywhere, that have lasted up to now. The people were well enough disposed when he came among them with his six or eight hundred men. But he had to have food and he had to have it quickly. He could not wait for slow, diplomatic methods. He had to take it. Even when you pay for a thing, that doesn't work. The news travelled ahead of him, and the result was he had to fight. And everybody else has had to fight ever since."
"That is interesting. I did not know that."
"A small party can negotiate. That's why I say you have too many men."
"But the time wasted!" she cried aghast.
"Time is nothing in Africa." He went on to tell her of the two travellers in Rhodesia who came upon a river so wide that they could but just see from one bank to the other; and so swift that rafts were of little avail. So one man went back for a folding boat while the other camped by the stream. Four months later the first man returned with the boat. The "river" had dried up completely!
"They didn't mind," said Kingozi, "they thought it a huge joke."
An hour before sundown signs of activity manifested themselves from the direction of the invisible village. A thin, high, wailing chant in female voices came fitfully to their ears. A compact little group of men rounded the bend and approached. Their gait was slow and stately.