Sweetly I call, the captains come.  The home ties draw at
        hearts in vain. 
Potent the spell of Africa!  Who East and South the course
        has ta’en
By Guardafui to Zanzibar may go, but he, shall come again.

Courtney proved better than his word.  Our Big Game Licenses arrived after breakfast, and permits for five hundred rounds of rifle ammunition each.  In an envelope in addition was Fred’s check with the collector’s compliments and the request that we kindly call and pay for the licenses.  In other words we now had absolution.

We called, and were received as fellow men, such was the genius of Courtney’s friendship.  A railway man looked in.  The collector’s dim office became awake with jokes and laughter.

“Going up today?” he asked.  “I’ll see you get berths on the train.”

We little realized at the moment the extent of that consideration; but understanding dawned fifteen minutes before high noon when we strolled to the station behind a string of porters carrying our luggage.  Courtney was there to see us off, and he looked worried.

“I’m wondering whether you’ll ever get your luggage through,” he said with a sort of feminine solicitude.  It was strange to hear the hero of one’s school-days, mighty hunter and fearless leader of forlorn campaigns, actually troubled about whether we could catch our train.  But so the man was, gentle always and considerate of everybody but himself.

There was law in this new land, at all events along the railway line.  Not even handbags or rifles could pass by the barrier until weighed and paid for.  Crammed in the vestibule in front of us were fifty people fretfully marshalling in line their strings of porters lest any later comer get by ahead of them; foremost, with his breast against the ticket window, was Georges Coutlass.  Things seemed not to be proceeding as he wished.

There was one babu behind the window—­a mild, unhappy-looking Punjabi, or Dekkani Mussulman.  There was another at the scales, who knew almost no English:  his duty was to weigh—­do sums—­write the result on a slip, and then justify his arithmetic to office babu and passenger, before any sort of progress could be made.  The fact that all passengers shouted at him to hurry or be reported to big superiors complicated the process enormously; and the equally discordant fact that no passenger—­and especially not Georges Coutlass—­desired or intended to pay one anna more than he could avoid by hook, crook, or argument, made the game amusing to the casual looker-on, but hastened nothing (except tempers).  The temperature within the vestibule was 112’ by the official thermometer.

“You pair of black murderers!” yelled Coutlass as we took our place in line.  “You bloody robbers!  You pickpockets!  You train-thieves!  Go out and dig your graves!  I will make an end of you!”

“You should not use abusive language” the babu retorted mildly, stopping to speak, and then again to wipe his spectacles, and his forehead, and his hands, and to glance at the clock, and to mutter what may or may not have been a prayer.