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His fine constitution seemed to break at last, and he himself thought that the end was come. Condamine, one of the company's agents, took command of the party and received Alec's final instructions. Alec lay in his camp bed, with his faithful Swahili boy by his side to brush away the flies, waiting for the end.
Many a time have I watched them trudging along the old caravan road which crossed the Tsavo at a ford about half a mile from the railway station: here a halt was always called, so that they might wash and bathe in the cool waters of the river. Nothing ever seems to damp the spirits of the Swahili porter. Such was my cook, Mabruki, and his merry laugh was quite infectious.
The white man, too, dropped to the ground, throwing his rifle forward. "Nyama, bwana!" he whispered fiercely, "karibu sana!" He pointed cautiously over the white man's shoulder. The safari, at the sight of the two dropping to a crouch, had stopped as though petrified, and stood waiting in silence. "We have no meat," Simba reminded his master in Swahili.
One porter had the eyes and expression of a young north-side girl; another had the walk and features of a prominent young Chicago man; and so on. Saa Sitaa was one of our brightest porters. His name means "Six O'clock" in Swahili, six o'clock in the native reckoning being our noon and our midnight. Just why he was given this significant name I never discovered. Perhaps he was born at that hour.
"No: I'll alter my diplomacy. There's a vast difference between mere unfriendliness and hostility. I think I can handle the former all right. I wish I knew a little more of their language. Swahili hardly fills the bill. I'll see what I can do with it in the next few days." "You cannot learn a language in a few days!" she objected incredulously. "Of course not.
Perhaps it was for this reason that Thomas Bull never really came to understand or enter into the heart of a Zulu, or a Basuto, or a Swahili, or indeed of any dark-skinned man, woman, or child. To him they were but brands to be snatched from the burning, desperate and disagreeable sinners who must be saved, and he set to work to save them with fearful vigour.
The confused noise of many people became audible and the tapping of safari sticks against the loads. At the edge of a tiny opening Kingozi, concealed behind a bush, reviewed the new arrivals at close range, estimating each element on which a judgment could be based. As usual, he thought aloud, muttering his speculations sometimes in his own language, sometimes in the equally familiar Swahili.
He could see the line of porters, bales on heads, the Arabs on horseback, the white man in a litter swinging from a long bamboo pole beneath which half a dozen Swahili loped along.
We were met by Sabaki, who was in a great state of excitement, and who started to explain in very bad Swahili how he had come across the dead eland. Misunderstanding what he said, I told my friend that Sabaki had found the eland which he had shot in the morning, and rejoiced heartily with him at this piece of good luck.
One of our porters spoke Kavirondo, so he held converse with the far from handsome stranger, translated it into Swahili, and this was retranslated into English for our benefit. The stranger was a Ketosh. We didn't know what a Ketosh was, but it sounded more like something in the imperative mood than anything ethnological.
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