VIII 
JOURNEY TO WEB BE SHABELEH RIVER 
209 
While we were waiting in suspense watching the long dark 
masses of beehive huts, the smoke of wood -fires curling up 
among the palm-trees, and wondering what reception the first 
Englishman would meet at the hands of the Adone, a Soemm er- 
ring’s gazelle came along cropping at the short grass till within 
range of our tree. Unable to resist the tempting shot, resting 
my elbows on my knees, I fired, and dropped him dead. I had 
now given the alarm ! We knew that all the villages had heard 
the shot, and so we caught all the animals, and tethering them 
to our tree, sat in a semicircle round them, knowing that if the 
Ime people should prove hostile we were in for it, and half ex- 
pecting to see J4ma and his son come galloping to us in a cloud 
of dust followed by an excited, spear-throwing mob, which we 
might have to stop with our four rifles ! 
At the end of a cjuarter of an hour of suspense, Jama Deria 
and his son appeared as two dots issuing from the forest and 
galloped up to us ; and after circling their ponies a few times in 
triumph, and crying “ Mot !” they dismounted, and shook hands 
with us all round delightedly, in the good old Som&li way, and 
the suspense w r as over. Two goodnaturecl- looking, flat -nosed 
negroes, who had followed behind, then ran up, laughing, 
and shook hands. They were naked save a piece of dirty 
tobe thrown carelessly across the shoulders. They explained, 
through an interpreter, that Gabba Oboho had told them to 
bid me welcome to Ime ; we were to drink first at the river, 
and then come to his village, where he was waiting with his 
counsellors to receive us. 
J&ma Deria said that he and his son had suddenly come on 
the two Adone just inside the forest, and they, recognising the 
Am&den saddlery, had run at him spear in hand ; but circling 
his horse round the bushes, he avoided them, and shouted out 
in Somali the purport of Abdul Kader’s letter to Gabba Oboho. 
He had then left the letter on the ground, and retired a little way. 
The Adone picked up the letter, and were arguing whether this 
was a ruse or not, when they heard my shot at the gazelle, and 
knew that J&ma Deria had spoken the truth, and that an 
Englishman had really come. And so they had run off to tell 
Gabba Oboho, at his hut in the nearest village. The shot had 
had a very different effect in the other Ime villages, for the 
inhabitants ferried the women and children across the river on 
rafts, to a place of refuge, believing the gun to have been fired 
by an Abyssinian force ; and when w r e advanced into Ime we 
p 
