e way along the winding foot-track leading in every imaginable
direction except toward the village, and only turning suddenly toward
it when we had grown disgusted and decided to leave it and try to find
another, Brown kept pointing out trees with suitable overhanging arms
to which we might hang Coutlass. The Greek, with eyes for nothing but
the fat, hump-backed village cattle in the distance, seemed to think
only of them, until Will commented on the fact, and Fred saw fit to
drop a hint.

"Steal as much as a young calf, Coutlass, and we'll let Brown choose
the tree! Try it on if you don't believe me!"

The villagers closed their gate against us by dragging great piles of
thorn across the gap in the rough palisade, but, as Coutlass pointed
out, they would have to open it up again to let the cattle in before
dark, so we sat down and ate the remaining fragments of the hippo
tongue--no ambrosia by that time; it had to be eaten, to save it from
utter waste!

Then Coutlass once more did a first-class devil dance backward and
forward this time before the gate, putting genius into it and fear into
the hearts of the defenders. Kazimoto helped even more than he by
discovering a native within the palisade who could speak a common
tongue.

Their villagers held a very noisy council on their side of the thorn
obstruction, under the apparent impression that it was sound- and
bullet-proof. It was beginning to be pretty obvious that a man who
advised volleying through the crevices with spears was winning the
argument when Kazimoto detected familiar accents and raised his voice.
After that the barricade was dragged aside within ten minutes and we
entered, if not in honor, at least in temporary safety.

Luxury is a question of contrast. That evening in a hut assigned to us
by the chief, squatting on the trodden cow-dung floor, leaning against
the dried-mud sides, with a little fire of sticks in the midst to give
us light and keep mosquitoes at a distance at the expense of almost
unbearable heat, we ate porridge made from mtama as they call their
kaffir corn, and washed it down with milk--good rich cows' milk, milked
by Kazimoto into our own metal pot instead of their unwashed gourds.
Lucullus never dined better.

The feast was only rather spoiled by two things: we all had chiggers
in our feet--the minute fleas that haunt the dust of native villages
and insert themselves under toe-nails to grow great and lay their eggs.
(Nea