THE SEFARI 53 
their porridge the men gather in groups round the fires 
of the most popular. Songs begin to rise first from one 
quarter, then from several. The Somalis produce from 
somewhere a snowy white cotton robe and kneeling on their 
mats, chant loudly their evening prayer. Within ten feet 
of these stoical Mohammedans, a Wakamba dance is most 
probably in full swing, or Kikuyus are chatting loudly 
one of their endless minor songs, with leader and chorus. 
The clatter of laughing and story telling in four or five 
languages rattles on ceaselessly till eight or nine o’clock, 
when the askari on guard shouts Kalale! (shut up), 
and obedient silence falls on the sefari. 
As you lie awake, you wonder at the stillness of the 
African night. Often there are no sounds but the soft 
treading of the watch as he replenishes the fire before 
your tent, and, perhaps, the tinkling* of innumerable 
frogs refreshed by copious dew. You may hear the rasping 
cry of the leopard, such a sound as a saw, badly set, makes 
when drawn through green wood. Or the quite indescrib- 
able howl of the ubiquitous hyena uttered in any and all 
cadences, and, perhaps, a distant lion roaring a signal 
to his mate. 
* When the rainy season begins, quite a number of different frogs join in the night’s chorus, and never 
cease their croaking till day breaks. But one tiny little fellow does not wait for the rains, and seems 
to need no other encouragement than that afforded him by a plentiful dew. Soon as it begins to fall, he 
takes up his chanting and it is as though a thousand elfin silver triangles were touched by minute 
bars of steel. A silvery tinkling sound. 
