A little further on, just by the edge of the reeds, I caught sight of a narrow, oblong trench dug in a patch of stony soil, and of a rusted mustard tin half-hidden by some scanty vegetation.

“What is that?” I asked, in seeming astonishment, though I knew well what it must be.

“Oh!” replied Komba, who evidently was not yet quite himself, “that is where the white lord Dogeetah, Bausi’s blood-brother, set his little canvas house when he was here over twelve moons ago.”

“Really!” I exclaimed, “he never told me he was here.” (This was a lie, but somehow I was not afraid of lying to Komba.) “How do you know that he was here?”

“One of our people who was fishing in the reeds saw him.”

“Oh! that explains it, Komba.  But what an odd place for him to fish in; so far from home; and I wonder what he was fishing for.  When you have time, Komba, you must explain to me what it is that you catch amidst the roots of thick reeds in such shallow water.”

Komba replied that he would do so with pleasure—­when he had time.  Then, as though to avoid further conversation he ran forward, and thrusting the reeds apart, showed me a great canoe, big enough to hold thirty or forty men, which with infinite labour had been hollowed out of the trunk of a single, huge tree.  This canoe differed from the majority of those that personally I have seen used on African lakes and rivers, in that it was fitted for a mast, now unshipped.  I looked at it and said it was a fine boat, whereon Komba replied that there were a hundred such at Rica Town, though not all of them were so large.

Ah! thought I to myself as we walked back to the camp.  Then, allowing an average of twenty to a canoe, the Pongo tribe number about two thousand males old enough to paddle, an estimate which turned out to be singularly correct.

Next morning at dawn we started, with some difficulty.  To begin with, in the middle of the night old Babemba came to the canvas shelter under which I was sleeping, woke me up and in a long speech implored me not to go.  He said he was convinced that the Pongo intended foul play of some sort and that all this talk of peace was a mere trick to entrap us white men into the country, probably in order to sacrifice us to its gods for a religious reason.

I answered that I quite agreed with him, but that as my companions insisted upon making this journey, I could not desert them.  All that I could do was to beg him to keep a sharp look-out so that he might be able to help us in case we got into trouble.

“Here I will stay and watch for you, lord Macumazana,” he answered, “but if you fall into a snare, am I able to swim through the water like a fish, or to fly through the air like a bird to free you?”

After he had gone one of the Zulu hunters arrived, a man named Ganza, a sort of lieutenant to Mavovo, and sang the same song.  He said that it was not right that I should go without guns to die among devils and leave him and his companions wandering alone in a strange land.