a mule, and the
rest were for native servants and porters. The camp was tidy and
clean--obviously belonging to some one of importance. Fires were
alight. Breakfast was being cooked, and smelled most uncommonly
appetizing in that chill morning air. Boys were already cleaning
boots, and a saddle, and other things. There was an air of discipline
and trained activity, and from the central tent came the sound of
voices.

I don't know why, but I certainly did not expect to hear English. So
the sound of English spoken with a foreign accent brought me to a
standstill. I listened to a few words, and made no further bones about
eavesdropping. Circumstances favored me. The boys had seen I was
carrying a rifle and was therefore a white man of importance, so they
did not question my right to approach. The tent with the mule in it
and the two store tents were on the right, pitched in a triangle. I
passed between them up to the very pegs of the central tent from which
the voices came, and discovered I was invisible, unless some one should
happen to come around a corner. I decided to take my chance of that.

The first thing that puzzled me was why a German (for it was a
perfectly unmistakable German accent) should need to talk English to a
native who was certainly familiar with both Arabic and Kiswahili. When
I heard the German addressed as Bwana Schillingschen I wondered still
more, for from all accounts that individual could speak more native
tongues than most people knew existed. It did not occur to me at the
time that if he wished not to be understood by his own crowd of boys he
must either speak German or English, and that Hassan would almost
certainly know no German.

"A good thing you came to me!" I heard. The accent was clumsy for a
man so well versed in tongues. "Yes, I will give you money at the
right time. Tell me no lies now! There will be letters coming from
people you never saw, and I shall know whether or not you lie to me!
You say there are three of the fools?"

"Yes, bwana. There were four, but one going home--big lord gentleman,
him having black m'stache, gone home."

There was no mistaking Hassan's voice. No doubt he could speak his
mother tongue softly enough, but in common with a host of other people
he seemed to imagine that to make himself understood in English he must
shout.

"Why did he go home?"

"I don't know, bwana."

"Did they quarrel?"

"Sijui."* [* Sijui, I don't know: