ay the rifle, sought refuge in a tree, where he sat
until his cries brought Stas, who, however, found the wild boar already
dead. Stas did not yet permit the boy to hunt for buffaloes, lions, and
rhinoceroses. He himself did not shoot at the elephants which came to
the watering place, because he had promised Nell that he would never
kill one.

When, however, in the morning or during the afternoon hours, from above
he espied, through the field-glass, herds of zebras, hartbeests,
ariels, or springboks grazing in the jungle, he took Kali with him.
During these excursions he often questioned the boy about the Wahima
and Samburu nations, with which, desiring to go eastward, to the ocean
coast, they necessarily must come in contact.

"Do you know, Kali," he asked a certain day, "that after twenty days on
horseback we could reach your country?"

"Kali does not know where the Wahimas live," the young negro answered,
sadly shaking his head.

"But I know that they live in the direction in which the sun rises in
the morning, near some great water."

"Yes! Yes!" exclaimed the boy with amazement and joy; "Basso-Narok!
That in our language means, great and black water. The great master
knows everything."

"No, for I do not know how the Wahimas would receive us if we came to
them."

"Kali would command them to fall on their faces before the great master
and before the 'Good Mzimu.'"

"And would they obey?"

"Kali's father wears a leopard's hide--and Kali, too." Stas understood
this to mean that Kali's father was a king, and that Kali was his
oldest son and the future ruler of the Wahimas.

So he continued to ask further:

"You told me that white travelers visited you and that the older people
remember them."

"Yes, and Kali has heard that they had a great deal of percale on their
heads."

"Ah!" thought Stas, "so those were not Europeans, but Arabs, whom the
negroes on account of their lighter complexion and white dress mistook
for white men."

Inasmuch, however, as Kali did not remember them and could not give any
more specific details about them, Stas propounded to him other
questions.

"Have not the Wahimas killed any of these men dressed in white?"

"No! Neither the Wahimas nor the Samburus can do that."

"Why?"

"For they said that if their blood should soak into the ground the rain
would cease to fall."

"I am glad to hear that they believe so."

Stas thought for a while, after which he asked:

"Wou