VOYAGE UP WHITE NILE 
75 
fellows! 1 The infuriated swarms followed all the way, 
actually penetrating- right into my bunk aboard ship. 
Never have I suffered a more agonised hour. 
At once my faithful Arabs set to work with pliers, 
extracting the thousands of “stings” from my flesh—■ 
eyes, ears, hair, everywhere. Even from inside the 
cavities of ears and nostrils were bees in person hauled 
out. They seemed smaller than our British honey-bee 
and had yellowish bodies, but I admit I gave them scant 
attention. 
The first extraneous effect was an attack of violent 
nausea, like sea-sickness, followed by colic. These, I 
imagine, were kindly Nature’s own remedies for the 
expulsion of the terrible dose of blood-poisoning that had 
filled my system; but the first relief from actual pain I 
owed to a bath of ammonia . . . but I leave those 
sufferings unwritten. 
It was three hours ere Mahomed Maghazi returned, 
badly stung, poor fellow. He had got his fire to burn 
and lay behind its smoke in all that blazing, blistering 
heat; but he had rescued my rifle and helmet. 
Having faced elephants, lions, and all the dangerous 
game, it seemed humiliating to be thus routed and put 
clean out of action by humble honey-bees! 
The primary cause of all the trouble was doubtless 
that those monkeys had been raiding the honey, and the 
exasperated bees had wreaked a vicarious vengeance on an 
innocent passer-by. A dear young friend (Freddy Selous) 
suggested that the bees may have mistaken me for a 
monkey! but that was distinctly unkind. 
I quote from my diary of the next day:—“Thank 
1 I find the following note in my diary :—“ Such was the true kindness, 
sympathy, and almost loving attention of my wild Arabs that I felt truly 
sorry that I had lectured them somewhat mercilessly for their night’s 
truancy at El Duem a week or so before. They had, however, grossly 
deceived me on that occasion. There is a strong strain of Ishmaelitish 
guile in the Arab, and after all it is a duty to keep such tendencies 
in check.” 
