II.] DESERTERS. 39 



even wear slippers on arriving at the river. Here we and our March, 

 stores were ferried over without delay, but it was too late to i^*^^- 

 get the donkeys across that night. 



Neither our tent nor cook had arrived, so we had no alterna- 

 tive but to sleep out on the river-bank, and make our supper 

 off roasted Indian corn which we obtained from the garden of 

 a Belooch who was supposed to guard the ferry. Luckily the 

 night was fine, and we slept comfortably along-side a large fire. 



We were astir by break of day, and, before the ferry-man was 

 ready to tow the donkeys across, amused ourselves by popping 

 at the numerous hippopotami. A huge crocodile floating down 

 stream toward the ferry varied our sport, and I succeeded in 

 lodging a bullet and a shell in the middle of his back. He gave 

 a convulsive plunge, throwing his whole length at least six feet 

 into the air, and then sunk to be no more seen. 



The donkeys being landed on the northern bank without ac- 

 cident, and the tent and cook having turned up, we started for 

 Kikoka, arriving there at eleven o'clock. 



Moffat, who had accompanied me thus far, I now sent back 

 to Bagamoyo with my parting orders to Murphy, and then with 

 Dillon endeavored to collect our men for the road. This was 

 not an easy matter, for notwithstanding our distance from Ba- 

 gamoyo, its Circean charms proved so strong that there were 

 always thirty or forty absentees at the morning muster. 



I offered the guard at the ferry a reward if they would not 

 allow any of my men to cross without a pass from me ; but this 

 proving ineffectual, I sent Bombay with a party of askari back 

 to Bagamoyo, to hunt up the absentees, and bring them out 

 loaded with food. 



At the end of four days — which I afterward heard he had 

 spent loafing about Abdullah Dina's — he returned without 

 bringing in any of the deserters. 



"While Bombay was away, a Comoro man, called Issa, who 

 had acted as interpreter on board the Glasgoio, and held very 

 good certificates, volunteered to join the expedition ; and, as I 

 required a native leader for Murphy's portion of the caravan, I 

 engaged him. His duties were eventually to be those of store- 

 keeper and interpreter of the main body, being the only man 

 who could read and write, and, on account of his having trav- 



