n
baggage go, and occupied ourselves only with getting through our smaller
effects. This accomplished, we stepped out past the Sikh into the
grateful night.

We had as guide a slender and wiry individual clad in tarboush and long
white robe. In a vague, general way we knew that the town of Mombasa was
across the island and about four miles distant. In what direction or how
we got there we had not the remotest idea.

The guide set off at a brisk pace with which we tried in vain to keep
step. He knew the ground, and we did not; and the night was black dark.
Commands to stop were of no avail whatever; nor could we get hold of him
to restrain him by force. When we put on speed he put on speed too. His
white robe glimmered ahead of us just in sight; and in the darkness
other white robes, passing and crossing, glimmered also. At first the
ground was rough, so that we stumbled outrageously. Billy and B. soon
fell behind, and I heard their voices calling plaintively for us to slow
down a bit.

"If I ever lose this nigger, I'll never find him again," I shouted back,
"but I can find you. Do the best you can!"

We struck a smoother road that led up a hill on a long slant.
Apparently for miles we followed thus, the white-robed individual ahead
still deaf to all commands and the blood-curdling threats I had now come
to uttering. All our personal baggage had long since mysteriously
disappeared, ravished away from us at the customs house by a ragged
horde of blacks. It began to look as though we were stranded in Africa
without baggage or effects. Billy and B. were all the time growing
fainter in the distance, though evidently they too had struck the long,
slanting road.

Then we came to a dim, solitary lantern glowing feebly beside a bench at
what appeared to be the top of the hill. Here our guide at last came to
a halt and turned to me a grinning face.

"Samama hapa," he observed.

There! That was the word I had been frantically searching my memory for!
Samama--stop!

The others struggled in. We were very warm. Up to the bench led a tiny
car track, the rails not over two feet apart, like the toy railroads
children use. This did not look much like grownup transportation, but it
and the bench and the dim lantern represented all the visible world.

We sat philosophically on the bench and enjoyed the soft tropical
night. The air was tepid, heavy with unknown perfume, black as a band of
velvet across the eyes, musical with the