We gave it up; we were up against Revealed Religion.

So that night we took a freight train southward to Voi, leaving the babu
and his prayer-bell, and his green battle-axe and his conscience alone
in the wilderness. We had quite a respect for that babu.

The district commissioner listened appreciatively to our tale.

"Of course I shall not carry the matter further," he told us, "but
having known the babu, you must see that once he had reported to me I
was compelled to order you down here. I am sorry for the inconvenience."

And when we reflected on the cataclysmic upheaval that babu would have
undergone had we not been summoned after breaking one of The Laws in the
Book, we had to admit the district commissioner was right.

PART VI.

IN MASAILAND.

XXXIII.

OVER THE LIKIPIA ESCARPMENT.

Owing to an outbreak of bubonic plague, and consequent quarantine, we
had recruited our men outside Nairobi, and had sent them, in charge of
C., to a little station up the line.

Billy and I saw to the loading of our equipment on the train, and at two
o'clock, in solitary state, set forth. Our only attendants were Mohammed
and Memba Sasa, who had been fumigated and inoculated and generally
Red-Crossed for the purpose.

The little narrow-gauge train doubled and twisted in its climb up the
range overlooking Nairobi and the Athi Plains. Fields of corn grew so
tall as partially to conceal villages of round, grass-thatched huts with
conical roofs; we looked down into deep ravines where grew the
broad-leaved bananas; the steep hillsides had all been carefully
cultivated. Savages leaning on spears watched us puff heavily by.
Women, richly ornamented with copper wire or beads, toiled along bent
under loads carried by means of a band across the top of the head.[16]
Naked children rushed out to wave at us. We were steaming quite
comfortably through Africa as it had been for thousands of years before
the white man came.

At Kikuyu Station we came to a halt. Kikuyu Station ordinarily embarks
about two passengers a month, I suppose. Now it was utterly swamped with
business, for on it had descended all our safari of thirty-nine men and
three mules. Thirty of the thirty-nine yelled and shrieked and got in
the wrong place, as usual. C. and the train men and the stationmaster
and our responsible boys heaved and tugged and directed, ordered,
commanded. At length the human element was loaded to its places and
locked i