MEN OF THE TREES 



and beckoned my followers to keep still. We looked 

 about us, yet there was nothing visible but the dense vege- 

 tation. There were no fresh game tracks, nor were there 

 signs of any human being having passed along the old 

 game track upon which I was walking. 



Still looking in the direction from which the sound had 

 come I listened intently, but all was now quiet. It was 

 that time in the morning when the sun begins to make it- 

 self felt. The birds and animals that had been foraging 

 during the early morning, had already retired before the 

 heat of the day. My forest guard recruited on the coast 

 was never quite at ease in the bush; he was anxious to get 

 on and, vainly endeavouring to disguise his fear, re- 

 marked, "Si kitu Bwana — it's nothing." 



It was evident that he wanted to get away from this 

 spot as quickly as possible. Only the night before, when 

 I was giving him his orders, informing him that I in- 

 tended to come in this direction, he had suddenly asked me 

 for a day ofif so that he might go and see his sick brother 

 forty miles away. He informed me that a messenger had 

 arrived that very evening urging him to return home; 

 and, as if to add emphasis to the urgency of the call, he 

 informed me that he had heard that there was another 

 messenger on the road bringing him the sad tidings of his 

 brother's decease. This was so obviously a made-up story 

 that I began to question him about his brother, and it was 

 not many minutes before he admitted that no messenger 

 had really arrived, that he had no brother in the village 

 named, and that his only reason for longing to get away 



54 



