22 SAFARI 



gamble. The accomplishment of our main purpose 

 was by no means so sure no matter how perfect our 

 equipment nor how high our hopes. We had come 

 twelve thousand miles, and were spending a fortune 

 to take pictures, make a real screen story of African 

 wild animal life, free and unmolested — all without 

 directors, sets, and the trick and captured animals 

 which are common to the usual commercial film. 



I do not often worry, just do my best, and let fate 

 take its course ; but I did think of these hazards as 

 we listened to the tinkling of the waterfalls that first 

 night on the trail. And in the morning, when I 

 awoke, Osa was not by my side. 



I had, however, no sooner thrown on my clothes 

 than she came bursting in, with a string of fat catfish 

 which she had caught by the waterfall. 



At breakfast where we had a bottle of beer apiece, 

 as a last toast to Civilization, and three each of Osa's 

 sweet-fleshed fish, we made up. Osa found a weigh- 

 ing machine in the hut that served as office for the 

 hotel and weighed herself and me, finding that we 

 had already lost several pounds. That is always the 

 way. In New York we get stout and soft, eat too 

 much rich food; I smoke too much and after a week 

 or two we are both thoroughly discontented. But 

 out here "in the blue" — a name that comes I suppose 

 from the blues and violets of the ever vanishing hori- 

 zon — we quickly harden, lose flesh, and can endure 



