"Farther? Why not?" he asked rather blankly.
"You told me you were an ivory hunter," she pointed out.
"Ah--yes. But I have hardly the goods to trade--come back later," he stumbled, for once caught off his guard. "I'm really looking for new hunting grounds."
She did not pursue the subject; but the enigmatic smile lurked for a moment in the depths of her eyes.
Every night after supper Kingozi caused his medicine chest to be brought out and opened, and for a half-hour he doctored the sick. On this subject he manifested an approach to enthusiasm.
"I know I can't doctor them all," he answered her objection, "and that it's foolish to pick out one here and there; but it interests me. I told you I was a medical student by training." He fingered over the square bottles, each in its socket. "This is not the usual safari drug list," he said. "I like to take these queer cases and see what I can do with them. I may learn something; at any rate, it interests me. McCloud at Nairobi fitted me out; and told me what it would be valuable to observe."
She appeared interested, and shortly he became enough convinced of this to show and explain each drug separately. The quinine he carried in the hydrochlorate instead of the sulphate, and he waxed eloquent telling her why. Crystals of iodine as opposed to permanganate of potash for antiseptic he discussed. From that he branched into antisepsis as opposed to asepsis as a practical method in the field.
"Theory has nothing to do with it," said he. "It's a matter of which will work!"
It was all technical; but it interested her for the simple reason that Kingozi was really enthusiastic. True enthusiasm, without pose or self-consciousness, invariably arouses interest.
"Now here's something you'll never see in another safari kit," said he, holding up one of the square bottles filled with small white crystals, "and that wouldn't be found in this one except for an accident. It's pilocarpin."