headmaster would have expelled him for the general 

 good and discipline of the school. 



On one long horseback journey through Swaziland 

 to the coast, where few white men and no horses had 

 yet been seen, we learned to know Snowball and 

 Tsetse well, and found out what a horse can do when 

 put to it. It was a curious experience on that trip 

 to see whole villages flee in terror at the first sight of 

 the new strange animals one brown and one white ; 

 in some places not even the grown men would ap- 

 proach, but too proud to show fear, they stood their 

 ground, their bronze faces blanching visibly and setting 

 hard as we rode up ; the women fled with half-stifled 

 cries of alarm ; and once, when we came unexpectedly 

 upon a party of naked urchins playing on the banks 

 of a stream, the whole pack set off full cry for the 

 water and, jumping in like a school of alarmed frogs, 

 disappeared. Infinitely amused by the stampede we 

 rode up to see what had become of them, but the 

 silence was absolute, and for a while they seemed to have 

 vanished altogether; then a tell-tale ripple gave the clue, 

 and under the banks among the ferns and exposed roots 

 we picked out little black faces half submerged and pairs 

 of frightened eyes staring at us from all sides. They 

 were not to be reassured, either: the only effect pro- 

 duced by our laughing comments and friendly 

 overtures being that the head which deemed 

 itself pointedly addressed would disappear 

 completely and remain so long out of 

 sight as to make us feel quite smothery 

 and criminally responsible. 



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