g day and walked many miles east-ward, taking with me the only
two sober villagers I could find. They came willingly enough for five
miles, thinking, I suppose, that I intended to follow Will's example
and kill some more meat (although, as I did not take the rifle with me,
they were not guilty of much dead-weight reasoning).

At the bank of the fifth stream we came to they stopped, and refused to
go another yard. Thinking they were merely lusting after the meat and
beer in the village, I took a stick to drive them across the stream in
front of me, but they dodged in terror and ran back home as if the
devil had been after them.

I crossed the stream and continued forward alone about another mile
toward a fairly large village visible between great blue boulders with
cactus dotted all about. There was the usual herd of cattle grazing
near at hand, but the place had an unaccountable forlorn look, and the
small boy standing on an ant-hill to watch the cattle seemed too
listless to be curious, and too indifferent to run away. The big brown
tetse flies, that crossed their wings when resting, were everywhere,
making no noise at all, but announcing themselves every once in a while
by a bite on the back of the hand that stung like a whip-lash. They
seemed to have special liking for coat-sleeves, and a dozen of them
were generally riding on each side of me. One could drive them off,
but they came back at once, as horse-flies do when poked off with a
whip.

When I drew near the village nobody came out to look at me, which was
suspicious in itself. Nobody shouted. Nobody blocked the way, or
dragged thorn-bushes across the gateway. There were black men and
women there, sitting in the shadows of the eaves, who looked up and
stared at me--men and women too intent on sitting still to care whether
their skins were glossy--unoiled, unwashed, unfed, by the look of
them--skeletons clothed in leather and dust, desiring death, but
cruelly denied it.

One man, thin as a wisp of smoke, rushed at me from the shadow of a hut
door and tried to bite my leg. The merest push sent him rolling over,
and there he lay, too overcome by inertia to move another inch, his arm
uplifted in the act of self-defense. Nobody else in the village
stirred. There were more huts than people, more kites on the roofs
than huts. Some of the littlest children played in the hut doors, but
nearly all of them were listless like the grown folk. The only sign