"LITTLE HALF-BROTHER" 57 



was just another iron horse. But once let me have 

 engine trouble on the desert and fail to fix the car 

 instantly, and I fall in their esteem. 



They do not seem to envy us any product of our 

 civilization. I have already told how Phishie, our 

 cook, can serve cocktails and hors d'csuvres and make 

 a delicious floating island pudding which the boys 

 serve perfectly ; but when the meal is over, the three 

 squat on their hatmches, eating their posho from 

 rough bowls, though they could have anything we 

 have ourselves. Suka, our house boy, sometimes 

 wears a suit of khaki; but when he visits his father, 

 who is clad in a G-string and plowing his fields with a 

 sharpened stick, he flings off that khaki and goes 

 ninety-nine per cent naked around the manyetta. 

 None can be more hysterical than he at a native cere- 

 monial or dance. Except for wages sometimes, fresh 

 meat or a cigarette, the white man has nothing that 

 the black man desires. 



So we were not at all concerned by these armed 

 warriors that had descended like wolves upon us; 

 especially as a minute after their arrival they dis- 

 covered the little mirror at the side of one of our cars. 

 They were black statues no longer. Immediately 

 there was such a shoving and pushing as no one ever 

 saw at a subway rush or a Donnybrook fair. 



Among their herds were some camels whose looks I 

 liked ; and after each warrior had surveyed himself in 



