it from the memories
of all the other dead but "Bwona Khubla," the name the Kikuyus gave
him.

There is not doubt that he was a fearful man, a man that was dreaded
still for his personal force when his arm was no longer able to lift
the kiboko, when all his men knew he was dying, and to this day though
he is dead.

Though his temper was embittered by malaria and the equatorial sun,
nothing impaired his will, which remained a compulsive force to the
very last, impressing itself upon all, and after the last, from what
the Kikuyus say. The country must have had powerful laws that drove
Bwona Khubla out, whatever country it was.

On the morning of the day that they were to come to the camp of Bwona
Khubla all the porters came to the travelers' tents asking for dow.
Dow is the white man's medicine, that cures all evils; the nastier it
tastes, the better it is. They wanted down this morning to keep away
devils, for they were near the place where Bwona Khubla died.

The travelers gave them quinine.

By sunset the came to Campini Bwona Khubla and found water there. Had
they not found water many of them must have died, yet none felt any
gratitude to the place, it seemed too ominous, too full of doom, too
much harassed almost by unseen, irresistible things.

And all the natives came again for dow as soon as the tents were
pitched, to protect them from the last dreams of Bwona Khubla, which
they say had stayed behind when the last safari left taking Bwona
Khubla's body back to the edge of civilization to show to the white
men there that they had not killed him, for the white men might not
know that they durst not kill Bwona Khubla.

And the travelers gave them more quinine, so much being bad for the
nerves, and that night by the camp-fires there was no pleasant talk;
all talking at once of meat they had eaten and cattle that each one
owned, but a gloomy silence hung by every fire and the little canvas
shelters. They told the white men that Bwona Khubla's city, of which
he had thought at the last (and where the natives believed he was once
a king), of which he had raved till the loneliness rang with his
raving, had settled down all about them; and they were afraid, for it
was so strange a city, and wanted more dow. And the two travelers
gave them more quinine, for they saw real fear in their faces, and
knew they might run away and leave them alone in that place, that
they, too, had come to fear with an almost equal dr