22 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
by the doctor to chuck their whisky bottles into the river and go out shooting. 
The former piece of advice they have not followed, but the latter they have 
gladly adopted, frightened at the aspect of their dying comrade, and only too 
glad to leave the responsibility of his care to the Mission doctor, who for 
two hours has tried all he knows to restore the patient to consciousness, without 
success. The woman has helped him as far as she was able, the doctor much 
too anxious about his patient to concern himself about the propriety of her 
position in the case. Outside the hut there is a cheerful noise of the awakening 
village settling down to its evening meal. Flights of spurwinged geese, black 
storks and white egrets pass in varied flocks and phalanxes across the rosy 
western sky. But inside, by the light of two candles stuck in bottles, which the 
doctor has lit to replace the daylight, it may be seen that his patient is nearing 
the end; yet as the end comes there is a momentary return to consciousness. 
The stertorous breathing has given way to a scarcely perceptible respiration, and 
as the doctor applies further means of restoration a sudden brightness and light 
of recognition come into the dull eyes. The expiring man tries to raise 
his head—cannot! and to speak—but no sound comes from his whitened 
lips, then one long drawn bubbling sigh and the end has come. 
A great, untidy, Arab town near the shores of a lake, the blue waters of 
which can be seen over the unequal ground of the village outskirts and through 
a fringe of wind-blown banana trees. On one of the little squares of blue 
water thus framed in by dark-green fronds may be seen part of a dau at anchor 
with a tall, clumsy, brown mast, thick rigging, and a hull somewhat gaudily 
painted in black and pink. We 
are sitting under the broad 
verandah of a large house, a 
house which is in reality no¬ 
thing but a structure of timber 
and lath covered with a thick 
coating of black mud; but the 
mud has been so well laid on 
and is so smooth, time-worn 
and shiny as to have the 
appearance of very dark stone. 
The roof is of thatch, descend¬ 
ing from some forty feet above 
the ground to scarcely more 
than five feet over the edge of 
the verandah. This verandah 
only occupies one side of the 
house and is large enough to 
be—what it is—an outer hall 
of audience ; 1 fifteen feet broad and with a raised dais of polished mud on 
either side of the passage which crosses the verandah to enter the main 
dwelling. As the interior rooms of this house are mostly unfurnished with 
windows and only derive their light from the central passage (which has an 
open door at either end) they are quite dark inside and even in the daytime 
little Arab lamps (earthenware saucers filled with oil and with cotton wicks) 
have to be lighted to see one’s way about. 
1 Called by Zanzibaris “baraza.” 
