It now became my turn to take precautions.  There was no chance of concealment where I was—­nothing but open level ground between me and the tents.  But now that I knew Hassan’s destination, I could afford to let him out of sight for a minute; so I turned my back on him, walked to where a sort of fold in the ground enabled me to get down unseen into a shallow nullah, and went along that at right angles to Hassan’s course until I reached the edge of some open jungle, about half a mile from the tents.  I noticed that it came to an end at a spot about three hundred yards to the rear of the tents, so I worked my way along its outer edge, and so approached the encampment from behind.

I had brought a rifle with me, not that I expected to shoot anything, but because the lion incident of the previous afternoon had taught me caution.  It had not entered my head that in that country a strange white man without a rifle might have been regarded as a member of the mean white class; nor that anybody would question my right to carry a rifle, for that matter.

The camp was awake now.  There were ten tents, all facing one way.  Two of them contained stores.  The central round tent with an awning in front was obviously a white man’s.  One tent housed a mule, and the rest were for native servants and porters.  The camp was tidy and clean—­obviously belonging to some one of importance.  Fires were alight.  Breakfast was being cooked, and smelled most uncommonly appetizing in that chill morning air.  Boys were already cleaning boots, and a saddle, and other things.  There was an air of discipline and trained activity, and from the central tent came the sound of voices.

I don’t know why, but I certainly did not expect to hear English.  So the sound of English spoken with a foreign accent brought me to a standstill.  I listened to a few words, and made no further bones about eavesdropping.  Circumstances favored me.  The boys had seen I was carrying a rifle and was therefore a white man of importance, so they did not question my right to approach.  The tent with the mule in it and the two store tents were on the right, pitched in a triangle.  I passed between them up to the very pegs of the central tent from which the voices came, and discovered I was invisible, unless some one should happen to come around a corner.  I decided to take my chance of that.

The first thing that puzzled me was why a German (for it was a perfectly unmistakable German accent) should need to talk English to a native who was certainly familiar with both Arabic and Kiswahili.  When I heard the German addressed as Bwana Schillingschen I wondered still more, for from all accounts that individual could speak more native tongues than most people knew existed.  It did not occur to me at the time that if he wished not to be understood by his own crowd of boys he must either speak German or English, and that Hassan would almost certainly know no German.