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We marched much as we had been accustomed to do with Sheikh Hamed's tribe: a strong guard of armed men brought up the rear, scouts were sent out on our flanks, and another body, with which the sheikh generally rode, went ahead, the whole covering the plain for an immense distance.
This resolution of mine had the effect of again changing the current of Hamed's thoughts, for he instantly said, "That is the best road after all, and as the Sahib is determined to go on it, and we have all travelled together through the bad land of the Wagogo, Inshallah! let us all go the same way," and Thani=-good old man not objecting, and Hamed having decided, they both joyfully went out of the tent to communicate the news.
By the time we had arrived at camp everybody had recovered his good humour and content except Hamed. Thani's men happened to set his tent too close to Hamed's tree, around which his bales were stacked.
"There is no town called Stuka; it is a district; none that I can find called Talent; there is Tilin. The Mesah flows through Stuka, in which district are twenty settlements, or rather towns, some of which are large. They are known in general by the names of the Sheikhs who inhabit them. I stopped at Sheikh Hamed's.
The next morning, after the usual form of prayer had been gone through, the scouts reported that Sheikh Hamed's people were nowhere in the neighbourhood, and the order was given to strike camp. The women immediately began to lower the tents, and to roll up the coverings in packages suitable for stowage on the camels' backs.
Hamed's camp was next visited; but here also the restlessness of the owner frustrated their attempts, for he was pacing backwards and forwards through his camp, with a loaded gun in his hand; and the thieves were obliged to relinquish the chance of stealing any of his bales. Such were our experiences of the Wakimbu of Tura.
Hamed's pagazis, and those of the Arab servants, rose in a body and declared they could not go on that march, and if Hamed insisted upon adopting it they would put their packs down and leave him to carry them himself. Hamed Kimiani, as he was styled by the Arabs, rushed up to Sheikh Thani, and declared that he must take the Kiwyeh road, otherwise his pagazis would all desert.
Still we rode on for several hours, past Sheikh Boujiman Ben Hamed's white house, while the sun blazed on the bare path, and the argans stood too far apart to cast consecutive shade. It was with much satisfaction that we saw our next camping-ground in the distance about one o'clock: we had started early, and a long lazy afternoon was a good prospect.
This was a sore disappointment, though not so great as it would have been had we not ascertained that Hamed's story was a mere fabrication. He had never been to the north end of the lake, nor had he had the fight he described with the natives; and, moreover, Bombay assured both Captain Burton and myself that Hamed really meant that the river ran into the lake.
Hamed moralised in angry mood. All the better. Neither flattery nor fear was in his words. The impatient oysters fuming in the tiny hold of his cutter merely gave to his tongue a defiant stimulus. To me they were pathetically pleading for a belated watery grave. A quaint sort of eloquence took command of Hamed's tongue, and I suffered the oysters gladly as I listened. "Ramadan! Ah! One month!"
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