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 
