3 86 
ELEPHANT-HUNTING IN EAST AFRICA 
CHAP. 
and finally—somewhat to my confusion—insisted on my 
stripping to the waist and showing my wounds, which they 
examined with evident sympathy. They then ran off to carry 
word of my return to their people. 
I was a good deal dismayed on reaching our little stream 
to find its bed dry, as I feared we should be compelled to go 
and camp higher up its course in a less convenient spot, nearer 
the mountains, where I knew it never ceased to flow; but we 
found a little trickling rill still running on the surface for a 
few yards, a little below where we crossed and close to my 
favourite camp, just sufficient to supply the donkeys as well 
as ourselves with water. We were soon comfortably installed 
in the old spot; and it was a source of no small satisfaction 
that we had reached here once more safely, and if myself not 
altogether sound, all the rest—both man and beast—well, not 
a porter lame nor a donkey with a sore back. Of those who 
o 
went up with me, Shebane alone was missing; and his sad 
loss was brought vividly to my memory here by the absence 
of flowers from the table, when spread in my favourite 
“bower” dining-room. 
Soon more of our Ndorobo neighbours, including Lesiat 
himself, turned up, some bringing me little presents of their 
delicious honey, and all welcomed me as an old friend, and 
seemed as pleased to see me as I was to see them. Then I 
was importuned to exhibit my scars again, and received many 
kindly condolences. Lesiat at first told me that he had been 
compelled by hunger to eat two loads of beans of mine, which 
had been left in his charge, owing to one of the donkeys that 
had been sent back for them from Nyiro, when we were on our 
way up, having been killed by a lion. I told him that it was 
of no consequence, he being my friend, and that I could not 
quarrel with him on such an account. Fortunately, we were in 
no straits for food ; although in such a place, so far from any 
source of supply, it is, of course, very valuable. Having been 
assured of my forgiveness, he forthwith declared that he had 
