Aside From These Two Men We Travelled Through An Apparently
Deserted Jungle.
I suspect, however, that we were probably well
watched; for when we stopped for noon we heard the gunbearers
beyond the screen of leaves talking to some one.
On learning from
our boys that these were some of the shenzis, we told them to
bring the savages in for a shauri; but in this our men failed,
nor could they themselves get nearer than fifty yards or so to
the wild people. So until evening our impression remained that of
two distant men, and the indistinct sound of voices behind a
leafy screen.
We made camp comparatively early in a wide open space surrounded
by low forest. Almost immediately then the savages commenced to
drift in, very haughty and arrogant. They were fully armed.
Besides the spear and decorated shield, some of them carried the
curious small grass spears. These are used to stab upward from
below, the wielder lying flat in the grass. Some of these men
were fantastically painted with a groundwork ochre, on which had
been drawn intricate wavy designs on the legs, like stockings,
and varied stripes across the face. One particularly ingenious
individual, stark naked, had outlined a roughly entire skeleton! He
was a gruesome object! They stalked here and there through the
camp, looking at our men and their activities with a lofty and
silent contempt.
You may be sure we had our arrangements, though they did not
appear on the surface.
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