“It is all true,” said Babemba when I had finished, “for that old woman of whom Light-in-the-Darkness speaks, was one of the wives of my uncle and I knew her well.  Hearken!  These Kendah are a terrible nation and countless in number and of all the people the fiercest.  Their king is called Simba, which means Lion.  He who rules is always called Simba, and has been so called for hundreds of years.  He is of the Black Kendah whose god is the elephant Jana, but as Light-in-Darkness has said, there are also the White Kendah who are Arab men, the priests and traders of the people.  The Kendah will allow no stranger within their doors; if one comes they kill him by torment, or blind him and turn him out into the desert which surrounds their country, there to die.  These things the old woman who married my uncle told me, as she told them to Light-in-Darkness, also I have heard them from others, and what she did not tell me, that the White Kendah are great breeders of the beasts called camels which they sell to the Arabs of the north.  Go not near them, for if you pass the desert the Black Kendah will kill you; and if you escape these, then their king, Simba, will kill you; and if you escape him, then their god Jana will kill you; and if you escape him, then their white priests will kill you with their magic.  Oh! long before you look upon the faces of those priests you will be dead many times over.”

“Then why did they ask me to visit them, Babemba?”

“I know not, Macumazana, but perhaps because they wished to make an offering of you to the god Jana, whom no spear can harm; no, nor even your bullets that pierce a tree.”

“I am willing to make trial of that matter,” I answered confidently, “and any way we must go to see these things for ourselves.”

“Yes,” echoed Ragnall, “we must certainly go,” while even Savage, for I had been translating to them all this while, nodded his head although he looked as though he would much rather stay behind.

“Ask him if there are any snakes there, sir,” he said, and foolishly enough I put the question to give me time to think of other things.

“Yes, O Bena.  Yes, O Cock of the Ashpit,” replied Babemba.  “My uncle’s Kendar wife told me that one of the guardians of the shrine of the White Kendah is such a snake as was never seen elsewhere in the world.”

“Then say to him, sir,” said Savage, when I had translated almost automatically, “that shrine ain’t a church where I shall go to say my prayers.”

Alas! poor Savage little knew the future and its gifts.

Then we came to the question of bearers.  The end of it was that after some hesitation Bausi II, because of his great affection for us, promised to provide us with these upon our solemnly undertaking to dismiss them at the borders of the desert, “so that they might escape our doom,” as he remarked cheerfully.