136 AFRICA SPEAKS 



wound with professional mien, I felt rather proud of 

 my efforts. It is true, I had not allowed the case to 

 give me any uneasiness, for a scorpion's bite is almost 

 never fatal and, while there are probably better methods 

 of treatment than that I employed, I did the best I 

 knew how and felt confident of the results. Usually 

 the effect of this insect's sting is to nauseate the vic- 

 tim and to cause him a good deal of pain for the first 

 two hours or so. Even with the primitive methods of 

 the native medicine man, as a rule he is fully recovered 

 after about twelve hours. 



We had just completed lunch when off in the dis- 

 tance we heard the roar of our other truck. Soon Bud 

 and Ted came into camp covered with mud and with- 

 out the spearmen. They had found the village all 

 right, but the chief would not allow his warriors to 

 leave the country, asserting that the Masai had made 

 war against them and all the warriors were needed to 

 fight. Then again they did not want to go through 

 the tsetse-fly belt that lay between them and our camp, 

 saying they were afraid of the sleeping sickness. Both 

 of these excuses were good ones, but my personal 

 opinion was that when the bargain was made they 

 were full of native beer, and now that its effects had 

 passed away they had begun to look at the thing in 

 the cold light of the possible results, and decided that 

 they had no business fooHng around the king of beasts 

 with a spear. The fact that they would not come, 

 however, put me up against a real problem. The 

 spearmen were needed to furnish the chmax to the 

 sequences we were making around the hons, and their 

 nonappearance made it necessary that I make arrange- 

 ments ^vith some other tribesmen. 



