e, his
silence sparkling with honest indignation.

"Just look at THAT!" his attitude seemed to say, "Could you believe such
human depravity possible? And against OUR authority?"

He always stood, quite rigid, waiting for me to speak.

"Well, Memba Sasa?" I would inquire, after I had enjoyed the show a
little.

In a few restrained words he put the case before me, always briefly,
always with a scornful dignity. This shenzi has done so-and-so.

We will suppose the case fairly serious. I listened to the man's story,
if necessary called a few witnesses, delivered judgment. All the while
Memba Sasa stood at rigid attention, fairly bristling virtue, like
the good dog standing by at the punishment of the bad dogs. And in his
attitude was a subtle triumph, as one would say: "You see! Fool with my
bwana, will you! Just let anybody try to get funny with US!" Judgment
pronounced-we have supposed the case serious, you remember-Memba Sasa
himself applied the lash. I think he really enjoyed that; but it was a
restrained joy. The whip descended deliberately, without excitement.

The man's devotion in unusual circumstances was beyond praise. Danger
or excitement incite a sort of loyalty in any good man; but humdrum,
disagreeable difficulty is a different matter.

One day we marched over a country of thorn-scrub desert. Since two days
we had been cut loose from water, and had been depending on a small
amount carried in zinc drums. Now our only reasons for faring were a
conical hill, over the horizon, and the knowledge of a river somewhere
beyond. How far beyond, or in what direction, we did not know. We had
thirty men with us, a more or less ragtag lot, picked up anyhow in the
bazaars. They were soft, ill-disciplined and uncertain. For five or six
hours they marched well enough. Then the sun began to get very hot, and
some of them began to straggle. They had, of course, no intention of
deserting, for their only hope of surviving lay in staying with us; but
their loads had become heavy, and they took too many rests. We put a
good man behind, but without much avail. In open country a safari can
be permitted to straggle over miles, for always it can keep in touch by
sight; but in this thorn-scrub desert, that looks all alike, a man fifty
yards out of sight is fifty yards lost. We would march fifteen or twenty
minutes, then sit down to wait until the rearmost men had straggled in,
perhaps a half hour later. And we did not dare move on