DOWN THE NILE; THE GIANT ELAND 441 
He crooned to himself as he crouched by the tiller, steering 
the boat, and gradually, as the moon shone on the swift, 
quiet water of the river, his crooning turned into a regu¬ 
lar song. His voice was beautiful, and there was a wild 
meaningless refrain to each verse; the verses reciting how 
he intended to write this letter to those whom he had not 
seen for two years; how a friend would take it to them, so 
that the letter would be in Mombasa; but he, the man who 
wrote it, would for two years more be in the far-off wil¬ 
derness. 
On February 17 th the long line of our laden safari left 
Nimule on its ten days’ march to Gondokoro. We went 
through a barren and thirsty land. Our first camp was 
by a shallow, running river, with a shaded pool in which 
we bathed. After that we never came on running water, 
merely on dry watercourses with pools here and there, 
some of the pools being crowded with fish. Tall half- 
burnt grass, and scattered, well-nigh leafless thorn scrub 
covered the monotonous landscape, although we could 
generally find some fairly leafy tree near which to pitch 
the tents. The heat was great; more than once the ther¬ 
mometer at noon rose to 112 ^ in the shade—not real shade, 
however, but in a stifling tent, or beneath a tree the foliage 
of which let through at least a third of the sun rays. The 
fiery heat of the ground so burnt and crippled the feet of 
the porters that we had to start each day’s march very 
early. 
At quarter of thre^ in the morning the whistle blew; 
we dressed and breakfasted while the tents were taken 
down and the loads adjusted. Then off we strode, through 
the hot starlit night, our backs to the Southern Cross 
