of
normal activity was the big black earthen jars that witnessed that the
women performed part at least of their daily round by bringing water
from the lake.

I returned late that afternoon, walking, as it were, out of a belt of
tetse flies. On one side of a narrow stream they were thick together;
to the west of it there were scarcely any, although the wind blew from
east to west.

"There's no fear of news about us reaching any government official," I
announced. "There's a curtain of death between us and the government
that even suspicion couldn't penetrate!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE SLEEP THAT IS NO SLEEP*

Ten were the plagues that Israel fled, and leaving left no cure,
Whose progeny self-multiplied a million-fold remain,
The cloak of each one ignorance, idolatry its lure,
And death the goal till, clarion-called, lost Israel come again.
Till then that loaded lash that bade the tale of bricks increase
(Eye for an eye, and limb for limb!) shall fail not though
ye weep;
The conqueror's heel for Africa!--The fear that shall not cease!--
Desire, distrust, the alien law!--The sleep that is no sleep!

------------------
* It is a characteristic of the so-called Sleeping Sickness that is
decimating the tribes around Victoria Nyanza that the victim, although
he goes into a coma, never actually sleeps from the time of taking the
disease until the end, usually more than a year later. The natives, a
tribe that came originally down from Egypt, themselves say that the
dreaded sickness is a "visitation" by way of revenge on them for former
sins, although what sins, and whose vengeance, they are at a total loss
to explain.
------------------

Kazimoto was gone five days, and then came preceded by proof of the
news he brought. He came in the evening. In the morning,
unaccountably from the northward, instead of from the westward where
Uganda lay,--avoiding the regular safari route and the belt of sleeping
sickness villages, came a genial, sleek, shiny Baganda, arrayed in
khaki coat, red fez, and bordered loin-cloth, gifted with tongues, and
self-confident beyond belief.

He knew nothing of us at first, for we sat in our hut with a smudge
going, nervous about flies, even Coutlass, reckless as a rule of
anything he could not see, and perfectly indifferent to death for
others, now fidgety and afraid to swagger forth.

One of our Nyamwezi porters suddenly made a