ll, Sammy my boy," I said. "But I hope, although
things look queer, that none of us will be called upon to die just yet."

The morning came at last, and the six of us marched down to the canoe
which had been brought round to the open waterway. Here we had to
undergo a kind of customs-house examination at the hands of Komba
and his companions, who seemed terrified lest we should be smuggling
firearms.

"You know what rifles are like," I said indignantly. "Can you see any in
our hands? Moreover, I give you my word that we have none."

Komba bowed politely, but suggested that perhaps some "little guns," by
which he meant pistols, remained in our baggage--by accident. Komba was
a most suspicious person.

"Undo all the loads," I said to Hans, who obeyed with an enthusiasm
which I confess struck me as suspicious.

Knowing his secretive and tortuous nature, this sudden zeal for openness
seemed almost unnatural. He began by unrolling his own blanket, inside
of which appeared a miscellaneous collection of articles. I remember
among them a spare pair of very dirty trousers, a battered tin cup, a
wooden spoon such as Kaffirs use to eat their _scoff_ with, a bottle
full of some doubtful compound, sundry roots and other native medicines,
an old pipe I had given him, and last but not least, a huge head of
yellow tobacco in the leaf, of a kind that the Mazitu, like the Pongos,
cultivate to some extent.

"What on earth do you want so much tobacco for, Hans?" I asked.

"For us three black people to smoke, Baas, or to take as snuff, or to
chew. Perhaps where we are going we may find little to eat, and then
tobacco is a food on which one can live for days. Also it brings sleep
at nights."

"Oh! that will do," I said, fearing lest Hans, like a second Walter
Raleigh, was about to deliver a long lecture upon the virtue of tobacco.

"There is no need for the yellow man to take this weed to our land,"
interrupted Komba, "for there we have plenty. Why does he cumber himself
with the stuff?" and he stretched out his hand idly as though to take
hold of and examine it closely.

At this moment, however, Mavovo called attention to his bundle which
he had undone, whether on purpose or by accident, I do not know, and
forgetting the tobacco, Komba turned to attend to him. With a marvellous
celerity Hans rolled up his blanket again. In less than a minute the
lashings were fast and it was hanging on his back. Again suspicion took
me, but