CHAPTER X 



WE MEET "THE OPPOSITION" 



Therefore be merry, coz ; since sudden sorrow 

 Serves to say thus — some good thing comes to-morrow 



King Henry VI 



It was impossible to feel down-hearted for long, and 

 my spirits began to rise again. Even the heat did not 

 affect us as much as one might have thought. Of 

 course we were burnt as mahogany brown as it is 

 possible for a white woman to be, and I think very 

 little marked us out from our Somalis in point of 

 colour. Our very fair hair looked quite odd in 

 contrast. 



Our hunters reported one morning that in spooring 

 for leopard they had come on the tracks of a large 

 caravan, and overtaking some part of it gathered that 

 the outfit belonged to some English officer on sport 

 bent. Every Englishman is an officer to the Somalis. 

 It is really rather funny. It is quite like the way every 

 American is — to the Englishman — a martial colonel. I 

 was intensely sorry to know we were so near to other 

 hunters. It was very selfish too, for the country was 

 big enough, in all conscience, to hold us all. But I 

 was sorry, and there's an end of it. Cecily said 

 perhaps it was all a mistake, because how could any- 

 one be hunting in the forbidden ground of the Ogaden 



