dark chocolate brown, with
the broad nose of the negro, but with a firm mouth, high cheekbones, and
a frowning intentness of brow that was very fine. When you talked to
him he looked you straight in the eye. His own eyes were shaded by
long, soft, curling lashes behind which they looked steadily and
gravely-sometimes fiercely-on the world. He rarely smiled-never merely
in understanding or for politeness' sake-and never laughed unless there
was something really amusing. Then he chuckled from deep in his chest,
the most contagious laughter you can imagine. Often we, at the other end
of the camp, have laughed in sympathy, just at the sound of that deep
and hearty ho! ho! ho! of Memba Sasa. Even at something genuinely
amusing he never laughed much, nor without a very definite restraint. In
fact, about him was no slackness, no sprawling abandon of the native
in relaxation; but always a taut efficiency and a never-failing
self-respect.

Naturally, behind such a fixed moral fibre must always be some moral
idea. When a man lives up to a real, not a pompous, dignity some ideal
must inform it. Memba Sasa's ideal was that of the Hunter.

He was a gunbearer; and he considered that a good gunbearer stood quite
a few notches above any other human being, save always the white man,
of course. And even among the latter Memba Sasa made great differences.
These differences he kept to himself, and treated all with equal
respect. Nevertheless, they existed, and Memba Sasa very well knew that
fact. In the white world were two classes of masters: those who hunted
well, and those who were considered by them as their friends and equals.
Why they should be so considered Memba Sasa did not know, but he trusted
the Hunter's judgment. These were the bwanas, or masters. All the rest
were merely mazungos, or, "white men." To their faces he called them
bwana, but in his heart he considered them not.

Observe, I say those who hunted well. Memba Sasa, in his profession as
gunbearer, had to accompany those who hunted badly. In them he took
no pride; from them he held aloof in spirit; but for them he did his
conscientious best, upheld by the dignity of his profession.

For to Mamba Sasa that profession was the proudest to which a black
man could aspire. He prided himself on mastering its every detail, in
accomplishing its every duty minutely and exactly. The major virtues of
a gunbearer are not to be despised by anybody; for they comprise great
physi