And the travelers gave them more quinine, so much being bad for the nerves, and that night by the camp-fires there was no pleasant talk; all talking at once of meat they had eaten and cattle that each one owned, but a gloomy silence hung by every fire and the little canvas shelters.  They told the white men that Bwona Khubla’s city, of which he had thought at the last (and where the natives believed he was once a king), of which he had raved till the loneliness rang with his raving, had settled down all about them; and they were afraid, for it was so strange a city, and wanted more dow.  And the two travelers gave them more quinine, for they saw real fear in their faces, and knew they might run away and leave them alone in that place, that they, too, had come to fear with an almost equal dread, though they knew not why.  And as the night wore on their feeling of boding deepened, although they had shared three bottles or so of champagne that they meant to keep for days when they killed a lion.

This is the story that each of those two men tell, and which their porters corroborate, but then a Kikuyu will always say whatever he thinks is expected of him.

The travelers were both in bed and trying to sleep but not able to do so because of an ominous feeling.  That mournfullest of all the cries of the wild, the hyaena like a damned soul lamenting, strangely enough had ceased.  The night wore on to the hour when Bwona Khubla had died three or four years ago, dreaming and raving of “his city”; and in the hush a sound softly arose, like a wind at first, then like the roar of beasts, then unmistakably the sound of motors—­motors and motor busses.

And then they saw, clearly and unmistakably they say, in that lonely desolation where the equator comes up out of the forest and climbs over jagged hills,—­they say they saw London.

There could have been no moon that night, but they say there was a multitude of stars.  Mists had come rolling up at evening about the pinnacles of unexplored red peaks that clustered round the camp.  But they say the mist must have cleared later on; at any rate they swear they could see London, see it and hear the roar of it.  Both say they saw it not as they knew it at all, not debased by hundreds of thousands of lying advertisements, but transfigured, all its houses magnificent, its chimneys rising grandly into pinnacles, its vast squares full of the most gorgeous trees, transfigured and yet London.

Its windows were warm and happy, shining at night, the lamps in their long rows welcomed you, the public-houses were gracious jovial places; yet it was London.