To the Greek's disgust we decided to trust the prisoner with our own men, and to keep very careful watch on them, threatening them with loss of all their pay if they dared get drunk and lose him—a threat they accepted at its full face value, but resented because of Brown's and the Greek's behavior the night before. They begged to get a little drunk—to get half as drunk as Brown had been—half as drunk as Coutlass had been—not drunk at all, but just to drink a little. We were adamant, and Brown added to their resentment by preaching them a sermon in their own tongue on the importance of being respectful toward white folk.
Kazimoto came in toward dark, foot-weary, but primed with news, and most of what he had to say confirmed the Baganda's story. Schillingschen, he said, was making for Mount Elgon in very leisurely stages, letting his loaded donkeys graze their way along, and spending hours of his time in questioning natives along the way on every subject under the sun.
Besides the fact of his leisurely progress, which was sufficiently important in itself, we learned from Kazimoto that Schillingschen's own ten boys were unable to speak the language of the country beyond a few of the commonest words—that they all slept in a tent together at night, usually quite a little distance apart from Schillingschen's—and that the donkeys were usually picketed between the two tents in a long line. He also told us the ten men had five Mauser rifles between them, in addition to the German's own battery of three guns, one of which he carried all day and kept beside his bed at night; the other two were carried behind him in the daytime by a gun-bearer.
That was good news on the whole. Coutlass went out on the strength of it and began to drink beer from the big earthenware crock in which the women had just brewed a fresh supply. Brown joined him within five minutes, and at the end of an hour, they were swearing everlasting friendship, Coutlass promising Brown his cattle back, and Brown assuring him that Greece and the Greeks had always held his warmest possible regards.
"Thermopylae, y'know, old boy, an' Marathon, an' all that kind o' thing! How many miles in a day could a Greek run in them days? Gosh!"
They two drank themselves to sleep among the gentle cattle in the circular enclosure in the midst of the village, and we—going out in turns at intervals to make sure our own boys were not drinking—matured our plans in peace.
We were too few to dare undertake the task in front of us without the aid of Brown and the Greek. It was a case of who was not against us must be for us, and the end must justify both men and means. We tried to work out ways of managing without them, but when we thought of our Baganda prisoner, and the almost certainty that both he and Coutlass would race to give our game away to Schillingschen if let out of sight for a minute, the necessity of making the best, not the worst, of the Greek seemed overwhelming.
Early next morning, before the village had awakened from its glut of beer and hippo meat, we shook Coutlass and Brown to their feet none too gently, and, with the Baganda firmly secured by the wrists between two of our men, started off, Fred leading.
The village awoke as if by magic before we had dragged away the thorns from the gate, and the chief leaped to the realization that the beads he had promised his women were about as concrete as his drunken dreams. He and a swarm of his younger men followed us, begging and arguing—mile after mile—growing angrier and more importunate. It was by my advice that we crossed the stream into the sleeping sickness zone and left them shuddering on their own side. Our own men did not know so much about the ravages of that plague, and in any case were willing to dare whatever risks we despised. But we took a long bend back and crossed the stream again higher up as soon as the chief and his beggars were out of sight. It was a pity not to keep exact faith and give them the promised beads, if only for the sake of other white men who might camp there in the future; but more than two tons of hippo meat was not bad pay for their hospitality.
We wished we had as good price to offer at the villages on our way, for sleep under cover we must, if we hoped to escape the ravages of fever; and the primitive savage, at least in those parts, had the principle down fine of nothing whatever for nothing. Yet as it turned out, the very man whose company we looked on as a nuisance proved to be a key to all gates. We marched along the track the Baganda had taken. The chiefs of all villages knew him again; and the men who dared take such a prophet of evil prisoner were looked upon as high government officials at least.