Next Day Baraka Told Me His Heart Shrank To The Dimensions Of A Very Small Berry When He Saw Whom I Had Brought With Me Yesterday - Meaning Bombay, And The Same Porters Whom He Had Prevented Going On With Me Before.

I said, "Pooh, nonsense; have done with such excuses, and let us get away out of this as fast as we can.

Now, like a good man, just use your influence with the chief of the village, and try and get from him five or six men to complete the number we want, and then we will work round the east of Sorombo up to Usui, for Suwarora has invited us to him." This, however, was not so easy; for Lumeresi, having heard of my arrival, sent his Wanyapara, or grey-beards, to beg I would visit him. He had never seen a white man in all his life, neither had his father, nor any of his forefathers, although he had often been down to the coast; I must come and see him, as I had seen his mtoto Ruhe. He did not want property; it was only the pleasure of my company that he wanted, to enable him to tell all his friends what a great man had lived in his house.

This was terrible: I saw at once that all my difficulties in Sorombo would have to be gone through again if I went there, and groaned when I thought what a trick the Pig had played me when I first of all came to this place; for if I had gone on then, as I wished, I should have slipped past Lumeresi without his knowing it.

I had to get up a storm at the grey-beards, and said I could not stand going out of my road to see any one now, for I had already lost so much time by Makaka's trickery in Sorombo. Bui then, quaking with fright at my obstinacy, said, "You must - indeed you must - give in and do with these savage chiefs as the Arabs when they travel, for I will not be a party to riding rough-shod over them." Still I stuck out, and the grey-beards departed to tell their chief of it. Next morning he sent them back to say he would not be cheated out of his rights as the chief of the district. Still I would not give in, and the whole day kept "jawing" without effect, for I could get no man to go with me until the chief gave his sanction. I then tried to send Bombay off with Bui, Nasib, and their guide, by night; but though Bombay was willing, the other two hung back on the old plea. In this state of perplexity, Bui begged I would allow him to go over to Lumeresi and see what he could do with a present. Bui really now was my only stand-by, so I sent him off, and next had the mortification to find that he had been humbugged by honeyed words, as Baraka had been with Makaka, into believing that Lumeresi was a good man, who really had no other desire at heart than the love of seeing me.

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