was on this account he had been obliged to open my loads. And
now he had told me the case, he hoped I would forgive him if he had done
wrong. Now, the real facts of the case were these--though I did not find
them out at the time:--Baraka had bought some slaves with my effects,
and he had had a fight with some of my men because they tampered with
his temporary wife--a princess he had picked up in Phunze. To obtain
her hand he had given ten necklaces of MY beads to her mother, and had
agreed to the condition that he should keep the girl during the journey;
and after it was over, and he took her home, he would, if his wife
pleased him, give her mother ten necklaces more.

Next day Baraka told me his heart shrank to the dimensions of a very
small berry when he saw whom I had brought with me yesterday--meaning
Bombay, and the same porters whom he had prevented going on with me
before. I said, "Pooh, nonsense; have done with such excuses, and let us
get away out of this as fast as we can. Now, like a good man, just use
your influence with the chief of the village, and try and get from him
five or six men to complete the number we want, and then we will work
round the east of Sorombo up to Usui, for Suwarora has invited us to
him." This, however, was not so easy; for Lumeresi, having heard of my
arrival, sent his Wanyapara, or grey-beards, to beg I would visit him.
He had never seen a white man in all his life, neither had his father,
nor any of his forefathers, although he had often been down to the
coast; I must come and see him, as I had seen his mtoto Ruhe. He did not
want property; it was only the pleasure of my company that he wanted,
to enable him to tell all his friends what a great man had lived in his
house.

This was terrible: I saw at once that all my difficulties in Sorombo
would have to be gone through again if I went there, and groaned when I
thought what a trick the Pig had played me when I first of all came
to this place; for if I had gone on then, as I wished, I should have
slipped past Lumeresi without his knowing it.

I had to get up a storm at the grey-beards, and said I could not stand
going out of my road to see any one now, for I had already lost so much
time by Makaka's trickery in Sorombo. Bui then, quaking with fright
at my obstinacy, said, "You must--indeed you must--give in and do with
these savage chiefs as the Arabs when they travel, for I will not be
a party to riding rough-shod over them." St