As Kigondo Had Promised To Deliver Kingaru Up, There Remained Nothing Further To Do For Uledi And Sarmean But To Take Charge Of Their Prisoner, And Bring Him And His Captors To My Camp On The Western Bank Of The Makata.

Kingaru received two dozen lashes, and was chained; his captor a doti, besides five khete of red coral beads for his wife.

That down-pour of rain which visited us the day we crossed the Makata proved the last of the Masika season. As the first rainfall which we had experienced occurred on the 23rd March, and the last on the 30th April, its duration was thirty-nine days. The seers of Bagamoyo had delivered their vaticinations concerning this same Masika with solemnity. "For forty days," said they, "rain would fall incessantly;" whereas we had but experienced eighteen days' rain. Nevertheless, we were glad that it was over, for we were tired of stopping day after day to dry the bales and grease the tools and ironware, and of seeing all things of cloth and leather rot visibly before our eyes.

The 1st of May found us struggling through the mire and water of the Makata with a caravan bodily sick, from the exertion and fatigue of crossing so many rivers and wading through marshes. Shaw was still suffering from his first mukunguru; Zaidi, a soldier, was critically ill with the small-pox; the kichuma-chuma, "little irons," had hold of Bombay across the chest, rendering him the most useless of the unserviceables; Mabruk Saleem, a youth of lusty frame, following the example of Bombay, laid himself down on the marshy ground, professing his total inability to breast the Makata swamp; Abdul Kader, the Hindi tailor and adventurer - the weakliest of mortal bodies - was ever ailing for lack of "force," as he expressed it in French, i.e. "strength," ever indisposed to work, shiftless, mock-sick, but ever hungry. "Oh!

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 125 of 595
Words from 34149 to 34469 of 163520