CHAP. VIII THE PORTERS ON STRIKE 129 



should be perfectly safe. I taunted them with their cowardice 

 in leaving me for some time alone and unwarned, on the very 

 hill where they said the Wasuk were in ambush. The men 

 were as insolent as they could be, except Fundi and the 

 Askari, who were a picture of despair and grief. The shauri 

 was throughout a stormy one ; Wadi Hamis at last pushed a 

 cartridge into his Snider, seized his sleeping mat, kicked over 

 his load, and said that I might go where I liked, but that he 

 was going back to Mombasa to appeal to Judge Jenner. 

 "Then as you have appealed to Judge Jenner, to Judge Jenner 

 you shall go," I replied, as I angrily swung round on my heel ; 

 " but to-night you shall all stop here, and to-morrow I will go 

 on alone." 



The poor guide had been sitting through the shauri open- 

 eyed and open-mouthed, intensely puzzled by the whole per- 

 formance. By the aid of signs and gestures I explained that 

 I was going on alone, but he could come with me or go back 

 with the men, whichever he pleased. He replied at once that 

 he must keep with me. After our return to Njemps, when I 

 had the assistance of an interpreter, I asked him why he did 

 not go back with the others, as they had tried to make him 

 do. " I hoped you would go back," he replied, " for if the 

 Wasuk had caught us, they would have killed us ; but if you 

 went on, I had to go on too, for what should I have said when 

 Kizizi asked me, ' Where is the White Man I sent you with, 

 to show him the way with the fewest thorns, to wherever he 

 wanted to go ? ' If I had told him, ' The White Man has gone 

 on and I have come back,' then Kizizi would have killed not 

 only me, but my wives and children, and wiped my family out 

 of the tribe." 



My own course of action was perfectly clear ; to have re- 

 turned to Njemps would have been a sheer waste of time, as 

 I could do nothing until Omari had come back from Elgeyo. 

 I was, moreover, extremely anxious to examine the passes 

 leading north from Baringo, especially since I had discovered 

 how much higher the level of the lake had formerly been ; for 

 I now wished to determine whether the lake had ever had an 

 outlet to the north. It had been believed that Baringo was 

 one of the sources of the Nile, and though Thomson had 

 shown this is not so at present, it seemed quite possible that 



K 



