MEMBA SASA 



faring were a conical hill, over the horizon, and the 

 knowledge of a river somewhere beyond. How far 

 beyond, or in what direction, we did not know. We 

 had thirty men with us, a more or less ragtag lot, 

 picked up anyhow in the bazaars. They were soft, 

 ill-disciplined and uncertain. For five or six hours 

 they marched well enough. Then the sun began to 

 get very hot, and some of them began to straggle. 

 They had, of course, no intention of deserting, for 

 their only hope of surviving lay in staying with us; 

 but their loads had become heavy, and they took too 

 many rests. We put a good man behind, but with- 

 out much avail. In open country a safari can be 

 permitted to straggle over miles, for always it can 

 keep in touch by sight; but in this thorn-scrub des- 

 ert, that looks all alike, a man fifty yards out of 

 sight is fifty yards lost. We would march fifteen 

 or twenty minutes, then sit down to wait until the 

 rearmost men had straggled in, perhaps a half hour 

 later. And we did not dare move on until the tale 

 of our thirty was complete. At this rate progress 

 was very slow, and as the fierce equatorial sun in- 

 creased in strength, became always slower still. The 

 situation became alarming. We were quite out of 

 water, and we had no idea where water was to be 

 found. To complicate matters, the thornbrush 

 thickened to a jungle. 



57 



