think and eat that stuff
simultaneously. The railway man looked up for a moment, saw my face,
and explained in a moment of expansiveness that meat would not keep in
that climate but was "perfectly good" when cooked.

"Besides," he added, "you'll get nothing more until you reach Nairobi
tomorrow noon!"

That turned out to be not quite true, but as an argument it worked. We
swallowed, like the lined-up merchant seamen taking lime-juice under
the skipper's eye.

The guard grew impatient and went into the kitchen, but had scarcely
got through the door when a scream came from the direction of the train
that brought him back on the run. No black woman ever screams in just
that way, and in a land of black and worse-than-black men imagination
leaps at a white woman's call for help.

There was a stampede for the door by every one except the Greeks and
Goanese and the railway man. (He had to guard the money.) We poured
through the screen doors, the guard fighting to burst between us, and,
because with a self-preserving instinct that I have never thought quite
creditable to the human race, everybody ran toward his own compartment,
it happened that we three and the two officials and the guard came
first on the scene of trouble.

Brown of Lumbwa was still drunk-affectionate, it seemed, by that time.

"You've no call to be 'fraid of me, li'l sweetheart!" The door was
open. Within the compartment all was dark, but every sound emerged.
There came a stifled scream.

"Li'l stoopid! What d'you come in for, if you're 'fraid o' poor ole
Brown? I won't hurt you."

The guard passed between us and went up the step. He listened, looked,
disappeared through the open door, and there came a sound of struggling.

"Whassis?" shouted Brown. "An interloper? No you don't! This is my
li'l sweetheart! She came in to see me--didn't you, Matilda Ann?"

The woman apparently broke free. The guard yelled for help. Fred and
one of the government officials were nearest and as they entered they
passed the woman coming out. I recognized Lady Saffren Waldon's Syrian
maid, with the big railway key in her fist that the guard had left with
her. By that time there was a considerable crowd about our car, unable
to see much because it stood in the way of the station lamp-light. She
slipped through--to the right--not toward Lady Isobel's compartment,
and I lost sight of her behind some men. I ran after her, but she was
gone among the shadow