tever risks we despised. But we took a long bend back and
crossed the stream again higher up as soon as the chief and his beggars
were out of sight. It was a pity not to keep exact faith and give them
the promised beads, if only for the sake of other white men who might
camp there in the future; but more than two tons of hippo meat was not
bad pay for their hospitality.

We wished we had as good price to offer at the villages on our way, for
sleep under cover we must, if we hoped to escape the ravages of fever;
and the primitive savage, at least in those parts, had the principle
down fine of nothing whatever for nothing. Yet as it turned out, the
very man whose company we looked on as a nuisance proved to be a key to
all gates. We marched along the track the Baganda had taken. The
chiefs of all villages knew him again; and the men who dared take such
a prophet of evil prisoner were looked upon as high government
officials at least.

We accepted that description of ourselves, letting it go by silent
assent, and explained our lack of tents and almost every other thing
the white man generally travels with as due to haste. Heaven only knew
what lies Kazimoto told those credulous folk, to the perfectly worthy
end of making our lot bearable, but we were fed after a fashion, and
lodged after a worse one all along our road. And who should send in
reports about us--and to whom? Obviously white men with a prisoner,
marching in such a hurry toward the north, were government officials.
Who should report officials to their government? As for the tale about
our having left our loads behind--are not all white people crazy? Who
shall explain their craziness?

From being a nuisance the Baganda became a joke. When it dawned on
his fat intellect that we were hurrying toward Schillingschen with only
one rifle among us and no baggage at all, he jumped at once to the
conclusion we must be Schillingschen's friends; and his fear that we
intended to hand him over to that ruthless brute for summary punishment
was more melting to his backbone than the dread of our imaginary whip,
that had caused him to give Schillingschen away.

He tried to bite through the thongs that held him, but Will twisted for
him handcuffs out of thick iron wire that we begged from a chief, who
had intended to make ornaments with it for his own legs. We did not
dare let the man escape, nor care to prevent our men from using force
when he threw himself on the