paper from the babu's hand and turned to face
the impatient crowd.

"This hell-cat--" (the unhappy babu looked less like a hell-cat than
any vision of the animal I ever imagined) "wants to make out that
seventy-one times seven annas and three pice is forty-nine rupees,
eleven annae! Oh, you charlatan! You mountebank! You black-blooded
robber! You miscreant! Cut your throat, I order you!"

The babu expostulated, stammered, quailed. Coutlass drew in his breath
for the gods of Greece alone knew what heights of fury next. But
interruption entered.

"There, that's enough of you! Get to the back of the line!"

The man who had promised us berths came abruptly through the barrier,
and unlike the babu did not appear afraid of any one. The Greek let
out his gathered breath with a bark of fury, like a seal coming up to
breathe. Taking that for a symptom of opposition the newcomer, very
cool in snow-white uniform and helmet, seized Coutlass by the neck and
hustled him, arguing like a boiler under pressure, through the crowd.
The Greek was three inches taller, and six or eight inches bigger round
the chest, but too astonished to fight back, and perhaps, too, aware of
the neighborhood of old da Gama's fort, where more than one Greek was
pining for the grape and olive fields of Hellas. With a final shove
the railway official thrust him well out into the road.

"If you miss the train, serve you right!" he said. "Babus are willing
servants, to be treated gently!"

Then he saw us.

"You're late! Where's your luggage? These your porters? All
right--put you on your honor. Go on through. Save time. Have your
stuff weighed, and settle the bill at Nairobi. All of it, mind! Babu,
let these people through!"

Followed by Courtney, who seemed to have right of way wherever it
suited him to wander, we filed through the gate, crossed the blazing
hot platform, and boarded a compartment labeled "Reserved." The
railway man nodded and left us, to hurry and help sell tickets.

It was an Indian type railway carriage be left us in, a contraption not
ill-suited to Africa--nor yet so comfortable as to diminish the
sensation of travel toward new frontiers.

Each car was divided into two compartments, entirely separate and
entered from opposite ends; facing ours was the rear end of a
second-class car, into which we could look if the doors were open and
we lay feet-foremost on the berths. The berths were arranged
lengthwise, t