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Kingozi sent Cazi Moto out to kill an abundance of game. They were immensely excited, not at all awestricken, entirely friendly. There was no indication of any desire to rob the hunters. Evidently, Kingozi reflected, they were familiar with firearms by hearsay, and were deeply interested at this first hand experience.
He lived in the edge of a forest; his people were many; he had forty wives, and the like. Still it was far, very far. Kingozi concluded that none of these people had in person visited the Kabilagani, but were talking at second hand. And finally direct information came to him in the form of fear.
But whatever seemed to lack either in the cordiality or curiosity of the inhabitants was more than made up for by the escort. With admirable military precision, a precision that Kingozi would have appreciated could he have seen it, they deployed across the wide open space at the front of the plateau. The drums lined up before them.
"All night I sat by my fire cooking potio and meat," he protested. "This the askaris will tell you. And my spear lay in the tent with the askaris," he went on at great length, repeating these two points, babbling, protesting, pleading. Kingozi listened to him in dead silence until he had quite run down. "Listen," said he impressively, "all these words are lies.
At the edge of his own camp he looked back. She was still standing as he had left her. The moonlight, striking through the opening in the branches, fell across her. At this distance she was merely a white figure; but Kingozi saw her again as she had stood in invocation to the moon. As though she had only awaited his turning, she raised her hand in grave salutation and disappeared.
They were drinking eagerly from water bottles. Simba, lantern in hand, stood nearby. A number of savages carrying crude torches hovered around the outskirts. Kingozi could not make out the details of their appearance: only their eyeballs shining. He drew Simba to one side. "There are many shenzis?" "Many, like the leaves of the grass, bwana." "The huts are far?" "One hour, bwana, in the hills."
She turned to Walsh with an engaging smile. "And you, where you came, did you pass the people who live in the mountains back there, with a sultani who dressed in black " "I know," supplemented Captain Walsh, "very well." "The sultani whose place has a fortified gate." "Really? We did not get to his village; too much of a hurry." The Leopard Woman shot a glance at Kingozi.
For a time she sat alone under her own tree; but, as Kingozi showed no symptoms of coming to her, and as she was bored and growing impatient, she trailed over to him, the Nubian following with her chair. Kingozi was absorbed in establishing points on his map. He looked up at her and nodded pleasantly, then moved his protractor a few inches. "Just a moment," he murmured absorbedly.
Vainly did Kingozi sweep his glasses over the landscape in hope of another line of green. No watercourse was visible. On the other hand, the scattered growth of thorn trees showed no signs of thickening to the dense spiky jungle that is one of the terrors of African travel.
When in the fever country I have my 'rig'" subtly she shaded the word "just the same. But I have a net a big net like a tent beneath which I sit. Does that satisfy you?" She spoke with the obvious painstaking patience that one uses to instruct a child, but with a veiled irony meant for an older intelligence. Kingozi laughed. "I do appear to catechize you, don't I? But I am interested.
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