The Leopard Woman | Page 6

yield himself to rest until all tasks were cleared away.
"Cazi Moto!" he called.
Instantly, it seemed, the headman stood at his elbow.
"To-morrow," said Kingozi deliberately, and paused in decision so long that Cazi Moto ventured a "Yes, bwana."
"To-morrow we rest here. It will be your cazi (duty) to find news of the next water, or to find the water. See if there are people in this country. Take one man with you. Let the men rest and eat."
"Yes, bwana."
"Are there sick?"
"Two men."
"Let them come."
Cazi Moto raised his voice.
"_N'gonjwa!_" he summoned them.
Kingozi looked at them in silence for a moment.
"What is the matter with you?" he asked of the first, a hulking, stupid- looking Kavirondo with the muscles of a Hercules.
The man replied, addressing Cazi Moto, as is etiquette; and although Kingozi understood perfectly, he awaited his headman's repetition of the speech as though the Kavirondo had spoken a strange language.
"Fever, eh?" commented Kingozi aloud to himself, for the first time speaking his own tongue. "We'll soon see. Cazi Moto," he instructed in Swahili, "the medicine."
He thrust a clinical thermometer beneath the Kavirondo's tongue, glancing at a wrist watch as he did so.
"Cazi Moto," he said calmly after three minutes, "this man is a liar. He is not sick; he merely wants to get out of carrying a load."
The Kavirondo, his eyes rolling, shot forth a torrent of language.
"He says," Cazi Moto summarized all this, "that he was very sick, but that this medicine"--indicating the thermometer--"cured him."
"He lies again," said Kingozi. "This is not medicine, but magic that tells me when a man has uttered lies. This man must beware or he will get kiboko."
The Kavirondo scuttled away, and Kingozi gave his attention to the second patient. This man had an infected leg that required some minor surgery. When the job was over and Kingozi had washed his hands, he relighted his pipe and sat back in his chair with a sigh of content. The immediate foreground sank below his consciousness. He stared across the flickering fires at the velvet blackness; listened across the intimate, idle noise of the camp to the voice of the veldt.
For with the fall of darkness and the larger silence of darkness, the veldt awoke. Animals that had dozed through the hot hours and grazed through the cooler hours in somnolent content now quivered alert. There were runnings here and there, the stamp of hoofs, sharp snortings as taut nerves stretched. Zebras uttered the absurd small-dog barks peculiar to them; ostriches boomed; jackals yapped; unknown birds uttered hasty wild calls. Numerous hyenas, near and far away, moaned like lost souls. Kingozi listened as to the voice of an old acquaintance telling familiar things; the men chattered on, their whole attention within the globe of light from their fires.
But suddenly the noise stopped as though it had been cut by a knife. Total silence fell on the little encampment. The men, their various actions suspended, listened intently. From far away, apparently, a low, vibrating rumble stole out of the night's immensity. It rose and seemed to draw near, growing hollow and great, until the very ground seemed to tremble as though a heavy train were passing, or the lower notes of a great organ had been played in a little church. And then it died down, and receded to the great distance again, and was ended by three low, grunting coughs.
The veldt was silent. The zebra barkings were still; the night birds had hushed; the hyenas and jackals and all the other night creatures down--it almost seemed--to the very insects had ceased their calls and cries and chirpings. One might imagine every living creature rigid, alert, listening, as were these men about the little fires.
The tension relaxed. The men dropped more fuel on the fires, coaxing the flame brighter. A whispering comment rose from group to group.
"_Simba! simba! simba!_" they hissed one to the other.
A lion had roared!

CHAPTER III
THE RHINOCEROS
In the first gray dusk Simba and Cazi Moto slipped away on the errands appointed for them--to find people and to find water, if possible. The cook camp, too, was afoot, dark figures passing and repassing before a fire. But the rest of the men slept heavily, seizing the unwonted chance.
When the first rays of the sun struck the fly of the small green master's- tent Kingozi appeared, demanding water wherewith to wash. At the sound of his voice men stirred sleepily, sat up, poked the remains of their tiny fires. As though through an open tap the freshness of night-time drained away. The hot, searching, stifling African day took possession of the world.
After breakfast Kingozi looked about him for shelter. A gorgeous, red- flowering vine had smothered one of the flat-topped thorn trees in its luxuriance. The growths of successive years had overlaid each other. Kingozi called two