ground and wept like a spoiled child.

"I will tell you" he said at last, deciding he might as well be hanged
for mutton as for lamb, "what Bwana Schillingschen is searching for! I
will tell you who knows where to find it! I will tell you where to
find the man who knows! Only let me run away then to my own home in
Uganda, and I will never again leave it! I am afraid! I am afraid!"

But that was only one more reason for keeping him with us, and no
ground at all for delay. He would not tell unless we loosed his hands
first, so we pressed on, camping late and starting early, until about
noon of the fourth day we caught sight of Schillingschen's tents in the
distance, and gathered our party at once into a little rocky hollow to
discuss the situation.

Behind us the land sloped gradually for thirty or forty miles toward a
sharp escarpment that overlooked the level land beside the lake. At
times between the hills and trees we could glimpse Nyanza itself,
looking like the vast rim of forever, mysterious and calm. In front of
us the rolling hills, broken out here and there into rocky knolls,
piled up on one another toward the hump of Elgon, on which the blue sky
rested. In every direction were villages of folk who knew so little of
white men that they paid no taxes yet and did no work--marrying and
giving in marriage--fighting and running away--eating and drinking and
watching their women cultivate the corn and beans and sweet
potatoes--without as much as foreboding of the taxes, work for wages,
missionaries, law and commerce soon to come.

Schillingschen was more than taking his time, he was dawdling, keeping
his donkeys fat, and letting his men wander at pleasure to right and
left gathering reports for him of unusual folk or things. We came very
close to being seen by one of them, who emerged from a village near us
with a pair of chickens he had foraged, followed by the owner of the
luckless birds in a great hurry and fury to get paid for them.

Schillingschen's tent could fairly easily be stalked from the far side
in broad daylight, and I was for making the attempt. There was the
risk that one of our porters might grow restless and break bounds if we
waited, or that the Baganda might take to yelling. We gagged him as
soon as I talked of the danger of that.

Coutlass and Brown, however, were the only two who would agree with me.
Like me, they were weary to death of mtama porridge, with or without
milk, and