[#] Strips of lean meat dried in the sun and thus preserved for a considerable time in dry weather.
"I'm glad you agree," said Ann. "I know I shall be in the right place at Hangodi--for many reasons. As it is, I've already had an idea. The Stotts seem to have been saved by the Masai. The Masai that our Walunga people call 'Wahumba' are on good terms with us. We brought about peace between them and Mbogo. They come to our station to trade and we have cured several of their wounded men from bad lion bites. We will send messengers to the Humba Masai asking for a large war party of spearmen to await down below in the plains any attack by the Arabs. I think the mere knowledge the Masai are there will keep the Arabs from coming near Ulunga."
So the next morning Ann rode off at five o'clock astride her Masai donkey, on which some makeshift arrangement of padded cloths had been tied by way of saddle. Her buxom Big-geru hoisted their light loads and struck up a Moody and Sankey hymn translated by Ann into Kagulu. The grinning Wanyamwezi gunmen brought up the rear, and the wild, unclothed Wagogo with fantastic ostrich feather or zebra-mane head-dresses dashed on ahead, whooping and leaping and shouting their determination to scare away the beasts of the field from the white woman-chief who talked like a man.
*CHAPTER XI*
*THE HAPPY VALLEY*
Roger, left alone with Lucy, resolved he would "do the right thing," clenched his teeth so to speak on the vow. He was the more fiercely determined to act honourably because he felt himself to be fighting against her own weakness of fibre, against her overpowering inclination as well as his own. Her attractiveness for him had greatly increased since the renewal of their comradeship. In the early days of the acquaintance, though her prettiness and virginal charm were appealing, she had the naivete and insipidity of an inexperienced girl which soon weary a man of the world who tires of the relation between master and pupil. Now she was a married woman; tempered, rendered more subtle by suffering and experience of mankind, who was readier to express her feelings through her eyes and her reticence than by direct speech. She talked less unreflectingly, and the things she said were more due to her own observation and reasoning than second-hand opinions picked up from other people.
Ann, in the week in which he had seen the two women together, had been just the right foil to throw up Lucy's charming femininity, her refinement in dress and appearance and in the tones of her voice. Ann by contrast was an impudent self-assertive virago with the worth at best of a good drudge. After a year and a half's absence from Europe he made this rediscovery of Lucy, set against a background of Savage Africa--coarse landscapes, jagged rocks, unwieldy trees, bush conflagrations, naked men, wild beasts just kept at bay. (On moonlight nights they could actually descry the grey-white forms of lions and hyenas padding noiselessly round the precincts of their boma.) These violent incongruities made her seem to him a being of exquisite refinement and yet of physical charm. Returning health, intense happiness, the dawning hope of a bright future were dispelling the anaemia and giving back to her face and neck the tinted white of a healthy skin, warmed in tone by a good circulation. There was a sparkle of animation in her violet eyes and a new lustre in her brown gold hair.
It would be a good thing for both, he felt, if he found the Stotts as soon as possible and induced them to join company in a march to the coast. His career--Yes, he must remember that. His career above all things. He must not be turned aside from his great ambitions by any woman. Yet he had missed fire over the Unguja appointment and wanted consolation elsewhere. It was rather weary _always_ to be at work, in an office, or in the field: never to settle down to a honeymoon and the joys of domesticity. Perhaps he should have taken another line--the Colonial Office and administrative work, not the Foreign Office and adventurous diplomacy in Savage Africa.... He wanted to explore, create, and then administer a great African Empire, tasks infinitely above the mean capacity of a Godfrey Dewburn or a Spencer Bazzard. Why could he not now--straight away--plunge into the vast unknown which lay before him to the north, to the north-west? Where had Stanley disappeared to? What had become of Emin? What was happening in Uganda since the death of Mutesa? What unsolved mysteries lay west of the Victoria Nyanza, north of Tanganyika, south of the Bahr-al-ghazal? Should he take Lucy to his heart, throw conventions and commissions to the winds, and start away with her on a wonderful journey of discovery, leaving the world and the Rev. John Baines to say what they liked, and covering his private treachery by his amazing discoveries?
Nonsense! Why, Queen Victoria would never overlook this act of adultery. He might discover twenty lakes and name them all after princes of her family or annex gold mines and pipes of diamonds and she would refuse the accolade, and Society at her bidding would close its ranks against the dishonoured missionary's wife. Besides, he had barely enough trade goods with which to pay his way back to the coast, especially by a round-about route. The African soon looks coldly on the god-like white man if he has no more beads, cloth, copper wire, knives, and gun-caps with which to pay road dues, "customs" or good-will presents.
And his armed porters? They were only engaged for a six-months' _safari_. They must be fed and paid or they would desert.... He must put all this nonsense out of his head--take a few pills, a little bromide--tire himself out every day big game shooting or scouting till the men sent with Ann Jamblin returned with their news.
If he took all this exercise, he would not lie awake at night in his hot tent, under his mosquito curtain longing, aching to go to Lucy's quarters and say, "I love you: let us fight against it no longer. We may all be dead a month hence."
To guard against such impulses he had insisted on Halima's sleeping on an Unguja mat in her mistress's tent, and had surrounded the tent with a square of reed fence which gave her a greater degree of privacy than the wretched tent afforded. Within this there was space for a bathroom and a "sitting-room," a shaded retreat to which she could retire for a siesta or a confabulation with Halima who was still giving instruction in Swahili. Outside this "harim"--as his men who constructed it certainly took it to be--there was a "baraza" common to them both: a thatched shelter open all round. Here the camp table was placed for meals.
Roger determined to shut Lucy out of his thoughts as much as possible, to think only for the day, for the dangers by which they were surrounded, the hundred risks which attended their ever getting back to civilization.... As soon as they could reach the coast he would send Lucy to England and return to his Consulate at Medinat-al-barkah.... Of course, should John Baines die of fever--missionaries often did--or--if--he were killed? ... Suppose his station really was attacked...? But then, again, such thoughts as these were of the order of David's when he hankered after Bathsheba....
And then Lucy, again, Lucy might die of fever--she scarcely seemed cut out for an African life, which is why he had begun pitying her.....
"I've had perfectly splendid sport to-day," said Roger, standing before Lucy's "baraza" where the camp table was laid for tea. "I've shot a rhino--they're cutting it up now--two hartebeests, and two impala. That'll give us all the 'biltong' we can carry. I'm filthily dirty, as you can see--ash and charcoal from the burnt bush, and sweat--God! It _has_ been sweltering!--and the run after that--and _from_ that--rhino! No. I'm not wounded--there's no need for emotion--but the rhino as he charged--and _I_ doubled--squirted blood over me from his nostrils--I must look like a fighting chimney sweep--I'll go and have a bath and then you shall give me tea."
"Don't be long," said Lucy. "There's _such_ lots to talk about. Your men have come back from Hangodi with a note to me from John! He says so far 'all's well.' And two Masai, Halima says, are waiting to see you. They keep saying 'Sitoto,' which means, I suppose, some news about the Stotts' whereabouts. _How_ exciting it's all getting. I _am_ enjoying it!"
"Halima" (to her maid): "Waambia watu wa mpishi tunataka chai, _marra_ moja!"
Four days afterwards, everything being ready for the fresh venture into the unknown, loads lightened and tightened, and the biltong sufficiently dry to be tied on top of the loads (imparting a disagreeable smell of a butcher's shop to the caravan as it passed in single file), they set out with Masai guides to find the Stotts. They travelled over the water-parting from the rivers flowing to the Indian Ocean to those that ended in vague marshes and bitter lakes. They climbed great escarpments and descended into broad valleys between high cliffs and found themselves amongst strange peoples, chiefly pastoral, keepers of great herds of sleek, humped cattle, of dwarf African goats and fat-tailed sheep.