“Who’ll go?” asked Monty, and I thought he was going to volunteer himself.

“I go down!” announced Kazimoto cheerfully, and promptly proceeded to divest himself of every stitch of clothing.

We made our stoutest line fast under his arm-pits, gave him a lantern and lowered him over the edge.  For fifty or sixty feet he descended steadily, swinging the lantern and walking downward, held almost horizontally by the slowly paid-out rope.  Then he stopped, and we heard him whistling.

“What do you see?” we called down.

“Pembe!” (Ivory.)

“Much of it?”

“Teli!” (Too much!) “Oh, teli, teli!  Teli, teli, teli, teli!”

His voice ended with the very high-pitched note that natives use when they want to multiply superlatives.  Then he whistled again.  Next he called very excitedly.

“Very bad smell here, bwana!  Pull me out quickly!”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

L’ENVOI

The dry death-rattle of the streetS
Asserts a joyless goal—­
Re-echoed clang where traffic meets,
And drab monotony repeats
The hour-encumbered role. 
Tinsel and glare, twin tawdry shams
Outshine the evening star
Where puppet-show and printed lie,
Victim and trapper and trap, deny
Old truths that always are. 
So fare ye, fare ye well, old roofs! 
The syren warns the shore,
The flowing tide sings overside
Of far-off beaches where abide
The joys ye know no more! 
The salt sea spray shall kiss our lips—­
Kiss clean from the fumes that were,
And gulls shall herald waking days
With news of far-seen water-ways
All warm, and passing fair. 
They’ve cast the shore-lines loose at last
And coiled the wet hemp down—­
Cut picket-ropes of Kedar’s tents,
Of time-clock task and square-foot rents! 
Good luck to you, old town! 
Oh, Africa is calling back
Alluringly and low
And few they be who hear the voice,
But they obey—­Lot’s wife’s the choice,
And we must surely go! 
So fare ye, fare ye well, old roofs! 
The stars and clouds and trees
In place of you!  The heaped thorn fire—­
Delight for the town’s two-edged desire—­
For thrice-breathed breath the breeze! 
For rumble of wheels the lion’s roar,
Glad green for trodden brown
For potted plant and measured lawn
The view of the velvet veld at dawn! 
Good-by to you, old town!

If all is well that ends well, and only that is well, then this story fails at the finish, for we never caught the cannibals, so never taught them the lesson in housekeeping and economics that they needed.  But there is no other shortcoming to record.

It is no business of any one’s what terms we made in the end with the Protectorate Government; but thanks to Monty’s tact and influence, and to their sense of fair play, we were treated generously.  And if, when the world war at last broke out and the Germans undertook to put in practise the treachery they had so long planned, there was a secret fund of hugely welcome money at the disposal of the out-numbered defenders of British East, its source will no doubt be accounted for, as well as its expenditures, to the proper people, by the proper people, at the proper time and place.