“That leaves Coutlass with six cartridges,” said I, overtaking Fred.  “Let’s hope their owner asks for them back.”

The owner did ask for them.  He stood with his hand out by the door of the Greek’s compartment.

“You didn’t use those cartridges,” he said.

“But I will!” sneered Coutlass.  “Out of my way!”

He sprang for his door and slammed it in the man’s face, and the other Greek and the Goanese jeered through the window.  I caught sight of Hassan beside them looking gray, as unhappy black men usually do.  Will saw him too.

“The cannibal’s ours,” he said, “supposing we want him and play our cards kind o’ careful.”

The next thing to delay the train was an elephant, who walked the track ahead of us and when the engine whistled only put on speed.  Hypnotized by the tracks that reached in parallel lines to the horizon, with trunk outstretched, ears up, and silly tail held horizontally he set himself the impossible task of leaving us behind.  The more we cheered, the more the engine screamed, the fiercer and less dignified became his efforts; he reached a speed at times of fourteen or fifteen miles an hour, and it was not until, after many miles, he reached a culvert he dared not cross that he switched off at right angles.  Realizing then at last that the train could not follow him to one side he stood and watched us pass, red-eyed, blown and angry.  He had only one tusk, but that a big one, and the weight of it caused him to hold his head at a drunken-looking angle.

“Stop the train!” yelled Coutlass, brandishing his rifle as he climbed to the seat on the roof.  But the guard, likewise on the roof at his end of the train, gave no signal and we speeded on.  We were already in the world’s greatest game reserve, where no man might shoot elephant or any other living thing.

We began to pass herds of zebra, gnu, and lesser antelope—­more than a thousand zebra in one herd—­ostriches in ones and twos—­giraffes in scared half-dozens—­rhinoceros—­and here and there lone lions.  Scarcely an animal troubled to look up at us, and only the giraffes ran.

Watching them, counting them, distinguishing the various breeds we three grew enormously contented, even Will Yerkes banishing depression.  Obviously we were in a land of good hunting, for the strictly policed reserve had its limits beyond which undoubtedly the game would roam.  The climate seemed perfect.  There was a steady wind, not too cold or hot, and the rains were recent enough to make all the world look green and bounteous.

To right and left of us—­to north and south that is—­was wild mountain country, lonely and savage enough to arouse that unaccountable desire to go and see that lurks in the breast of younger sons and all true-blue adventurers.  We got out a map and were presently tracing on it with fingers that trembled from excitement routes marked with tiny vague dots leading toward lands marked “unexplored.”  There were vast plateaus on which not more than two or three white men had trodden, and mountain ranges almost utterly unknown—­some of them within sight of the line we traveled on.  If the map was anything to go by we could reach Mount Elgon from Nairobi by any of three wild roads.  Fred and I underscored the names of several places with a fountain pen.