ead, though they
knew not why. And as the night wore on their feeling of boding
deepened, although they had shared three bottles or so of champagne
that they meant to keep for days when they killed a lion.

This is the story that each of those two men tell, and which their
porters corroborate, but then a Kikuyu will always say whatever he
thinks is expected of him.

The travelers were both in bed and trying to sleep but not able to do
so because of an ominous feeling. That mournfullest of all the cries
of the wild, the hyaena like a damned soul lamenting, strangely enough
had ceased. The night wore on to the hour when Bwona Khubla had died
three or four years ago, dreaming and raving of "his city"; and in the
hush a sound softly arose, like a wind at first, then like the roar of
beasts, then unmistakably the sound of motors--motors and motor
busses.

And then they saw, clearly and unmistakably they say, in that lonely
desolation where the equator comes up out of the forest and climbs
over jagged hills,--they say they saw London.

There could have been no moon that night, but they say there was a
multitude of stars. Mists had come rolling up at evening about the
pinnacles of unexplored red peaks that clustered round the camp. But
they say the mist must have cleared later on; at any rate they swear
they could see London, see it and hear the roar of it. Both say they
saw it not as they knew it at all, not debased by hundreds of
thousands of lying advertisements, but transfigured, all its houses
magnificent, its chimneys rising grandly into pinnacles, its vast
squares full of the most gorgeous trees, transfigured and yet London.

Its windows were warm and happy, shining at night, the lamps in their
long rows welcomed you, the public-houses were gracious jovial places;
yet it was London.

They could smell the smells of London, hear London songs, and yet it
was never the London that they knew; it was as though they had looked
on some strange woman's face with the eyes of her lover. For of all
the towns of the earth or cities of song; of all the spots there be,
unhallowed or hallowed, it seemed to those two men then that the city
they saw was of all places the most to be desired by far. They say a
barrel organ played quite near them, they say a coster was singing,
they admit that he was singing out of tune, they admit a cockney
accent, and yet they say that that song had in it something that no
earthly song had