A FRESH START 217 



food. When we picked up our little mob of 

 porters, whom we had placed in some thick bush 

 a few hundred yards off, I found that two of them 

 had bolted on hearing the firing ; the very fact 

 of hearing shots had been quite sufficient for 

 them to imagine the worst, and they evidently 

 were taking no chances. 



Next day we reached Meja, where the column 

 had just arrived, the advance guard having had 

 a little opposition here and there along the road 

 from some four whites and forty askaris with a 

 couple of machine guns. We had a spell of some 

 days with the column at Meja, during which time 

 my two runaways found their way back to camp. 

 As I always disliked very much the flogging of 

 my own natives, especially porters, for anything 

 except stealing (an offence, by the way, which 

 they never committed), it was a case of how to 

 make the punishment fit the crime. Eventually 

 I ordered the two delinquents to stand on boxes in 

 a prominent position for half an hour, each with 

 a large pumpkin on his head ; a performance 

 which naturally entailed no small amount of 

 ridicule. 



At this time the main force of the enemy con- 

 fronting our " Pamforce " column was six com- 

 panies under Kohl, that fine soldier, each 

 company having two maxims. Of these com- 

 panies, four were in and around Mweri boma some 

 forty-five miles away. (This place was wrongly 

 called Medo by us, Medo being the name of the 



