“He would never have come without them” Coutlass insisted.  “He made them lie below the water-line out of reach of bullets at the only time when you might have seen them!  He wouldn’t trust himself to British porters.  My word, no!  That devil knows natives!  He knows some of them might be British government spies!  He’ll have his own boys,—­if they can’t carry all his loads he’ll buy donkeys at Mumias; there are always donkeys to be bought at that place, brought down from Turkana by the Arab ivory traders.  Do donkeys talk?”

At any rate, we talked, and made no bones at all about including Georges Coutlass in the conversation.  It was his suggestion that we should send natives to look out for Schillingschen, and Fred’s amendment that reduced the messengers to one, and that one Kazimoto.  Any of the others might decide to desert, once out of sight, and we could scarcely have blamed them, for their path had not lain among roses in our company.

Kazimoto had a million objections to offer against going alone on that errand, as, for instance, that the chigger fleas would invade our toe-nails disastrously without his cunning fingers to hunt them out again.  He also prophesied that without him to interpret there would swiftly be trouble between us and the chief; but we saw the other side of that medal and rather looked forward to an interval when the chief should not be able to talk to us at all.

At last, on the second morning after our arrival at the village, Kazimoto wrapped an enormous mound of cold mtama pudding in a cloth and went his way, prophesying darkly of murder and sudden death lurking behind rocks and trees, as unwishful to be alone as a terrier without a master, but much too faithful to refuse duty.

The chief saw a side of the medal that we had not guessed existed.  He came and sat beside us like an evil-smelling shadow, satisfied that now we could not dismiss him, he being under no obligation to understand gestures.  Curiosity was the impelling motive, but he was not without suspicion.  Fred said he reminded him of a Bloomsbury landlady whose lodgers had not paid their board and rooming in advance.

Will solved that problem by taking the rifle, and one cartridge that Fred doled out grudgingly, and after a long day’s stalking among mosquitoes in the papyrus at the edge of the lake five miles away, at imminent risk of crocodiles and an even worse horror we had not yet suspected, shooting a hippopotamus.  Forthwith the whole village, chief included, went to cut up and carry off the meat, and there followed revelry by night, the chiefs wives brewing beer from the mtama, and all getting drunk as well as gorged.  Coutlass and Brown got more drunk than any one.

Will came back with flies on his coat—­three large things like horse-flies, that crossed their wings in repose, resembling in all other respects the common tetse fly.  He said the reeds by the lake-side were full of them.