CHAPTER IX 



THE COLONEL READS MACAULAY's "ESSAYS," DIS- 

 COURSES ON MANY SUBJECTS WITH GREAT 

 FRANKNESS, DECLINES A DRINK OF SCOTCH 

 WHISKY, AND KILLS THREE ELE- 

 PHANTS 



ON the afternoon of November fourteenth, a little 

 cavalcade of horsemen might have been seen riding 

 slowly away from our camp on the Nzoia River. 

 One of them, evidently the leader, was a well-built 

 man of about fifty-one years, tanned by many 

 months of African hunting and wearing a pair of 

 large spectacles. His teeth flashed in the warm 

 sunlight. A rough hunting shirt encased his well- 

 knit body and a pair of rougher trousers, reinforced 

 with leather knee caps and jointly sustained by 

 suspenders and a belt, fitted in loose folds around 

 his stocky legs. On his head was a big sun helmet, 

 and around his waist, less generous in amplitude 

 than formerly, was a partly filled belt of Winches- 

 ter cartridges. His horse was a stout little Abys- 

 sinian shooting pony, gray of color and lean in 

 build, and in the blood-stained saddle-bag was a 

 well-worn copy of Macaulay's Essays, bound in 

 pigskin. Our hero for it was he was none other 

 than Bwana Tumbo, the hunter-naturalist, expo- 



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