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Then I went back to the saloon,

which was empty, got my coffee cup, and took it to Mr Elmore's cabin, locking the door inside. Very quickly I told him of the

per. He would at first not quite believe the truth of it. But soon I made him understand that it was death to remain on the yacht, and told him my plan.

"But,' he said, 'suppose they find out what will happen to you?'

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plot against his life-in a whis- "My friends, when I remember that night, it makes me smile. I sat on the floor of the cabin listening. After a bit I heard the boat come back, and presently the engines began to move-we had started! It seemed a very long time before I heard the handle of the cabin door move a leetle. Then I lay down on the floor and commenced to make heavy snores with my nose, as one would do if one had taken opium. There was whispering, and then, bang, bang! The door was broken open, and there stood the three officersthe big Captain Kokhovtsev with a revolver in his hand. I shut my eyes in time and made big snores, but I very nearly laughed. Splendid!

They will not find out; but you must be quick-it is your only chance.'

"As I talked I was taking my tunic off myself, and also I made him undress. So! My uniform did not fit him badly -a touch of soap on the extremities of his moustache, a leetle twist, and he looked not unlike me, with the peak of my kepi over his forehead. The coffee-cup on the seat, the leetle bottle of laudanum lying on the floor-it was arranged in a few moments. Splendid!

"Then he fastened my feet together and my hands backwards of myself. Before he tied a handkerchief over my mouth I whispered

"Leave the light burning, lock the door on the outside, go straight to the gangway. Good-night, Mr Elmore-there is no time to lose.'

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"What did they say? My friends, cannot you imagine? It was the Major who first saw the leetle bottle lying on the floor. Then, I suppose, he must have smelled the coffee in the cup, for he shouted

"The English devil has poisoned him! Quick! Cut the cords. The good saints be thanked that he is yet alive. But we must walk him up and down and not let him sleep.' Sleep! I was more wide awake than those silly fools. Splendid !

"It was Captain Kokhovtsev who carried me on deck. And oh, what a walk it was! I pretended to be quite limp at

"You want to know the end?"

Captain Ivan Koravitch lighted another cigarette, mixed himself some whisky - and water, thought for a moment, and then said

first. Presently I began to say laughed. Then they took me a few words-' Let me lie to my cabin and opened a down!'-'I want to sleep-bottle-two bottles-of chambut they kept me walking till pagne. Splendid! I was tired. Then the miserable Kokhovtsev, who had left me with the other two, came back and made me drink a big, nasty drink-and in a few minutes oh, how I was sick!"-and Captain Ivan Koravitch leaned forward and gulped realistically -"and all my dinner that I had eaten fell into the sea. I could have knocked Captain Kokhovtsev on his face-but I remembered that, all the time, I was making him a very silly fool! Splendid!

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"He will be all right now,' said my Colonel. Come, Koravitch, can you tell us about it?'

"He gave me a cup of coffee while I was waiting for him to finish his letter,' I said. 'And I began to feel silly in my head and inside myself. Then I must have slept. Where is he? I will fight him for this.'

"I do not think there is any particular end. We were a leetle delayed in our voyage back to Port Arthur-something went wrong in the machinery. And when, the next day, I inquired, Mabel Elmore had departed-she had had a telegram from her husband to leave Port Arthur and join him. Pouf! Perhaps she had forgotten she was a leetle in love with me. But there were other things to have in one's mind, for the war with Japan speedily broke out. Splendid!

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Oh, yes-years afterwards I met again Mr Elmore and his "I wish you could,' said wife-in England. She had Captain Kokhovtsev. The grown fat and had four children. damned spy! I was right, you Perhaps if her husband had see,' he went on, turning to the gone in a splash in the Gulf of others. 'And he must have Pe-chi-li and she had become a suspected something-I'd like widow, she would have wanted to know how! But we shall to marry me, and the four never get hold of him now. children would have been mine. Koravitch-he went on shore I am an older man now, and I in your uniform. I saw him like to possess the freedom of a go-and I thought it was you!' bachelor. So, perhaps, it was "And if you could have to me greatly to the best. Also heard the things I said about I made a fool of the big KokMr Elmore, you would have hovtsev. Splendid!"

HIPPOS AND HOUSING IN THE BUSH.

BY FUNDI.

Two whole moons had sailed over the camp on Siwezi River before we saw anything further of the Angoni people. We did hear that the meat they carried back with them served to feed themselves and their relations for some weeks, and that their adventure by the Southern River had become an epic; but beyond that our camp lay wrapped in the silence of the bush until late one evening, when a boy came running in from the compound to report travellers in sight across the river. We went out on to the verandah, and saw some twenty to thirty natives, all carrying loads, rapidly approaching the camp. When they arrived at the river, the headman was ferried across in one of our canoes, and reported that he had brought twenty-four loads of flour and a bunch of bananas, and wanted hippo meat in exchange. He also said that other parties were on the way down, bringing all kinds of food in exchange for the desirable meat. I told him I would go down the river the next day to shoot him his two hippos, and as his people were afraid to sleep on the opposite bank owing to lions, I allowed them to come over and sleep in my compound. Finding my boys to be a cheery crew, a dance

1 Literally, "O you lion!
O you lion!

To-morrow the Bwana

was suggested, and permission having been asked and received, they started in immediately after the evening meal, and, judging by the pandemonium, it did not take them long to warm up to it. Much has been written upon the subject of native dances, and among these the Angoni variety is generally conceded pride of place; but although I have witnessed many

from the big festival dance to the small village dance given in honour of the departed,— I have yet to see anything of interest or beauty in native methods of dancing. My impression is of a circle of stamping men and women, with the firelight playing fitfully upon their sweating black bodies. Round and round they go, a mad flurry of shrieking women, with men thrashing tom-toms and braying discordantly upon home-made horns, or anything else that will make a noise, until the crashing din begins to excite even the most sluggish native blood. This dance was of the usual order, but its particular idea was to express the delight of the Angoni at the thought of the great hippo feast on the morrow.

"Ho! Che Simba we,
Ho! Che Simba wewe;
Kesho Bwana

Atapiga kiboko,

Ho! Che Simba we,'

Will shoot a hippo,

O you lion!"

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(Che Simba being a man's name.)

appeared, as far as I could hear, to be the sole burden of their song, and this same tune and these same words were doubtless repeated over and over again, without stopping, until sunrise next day. There is a vast amount of stamping and shuffling in all native dances, and it is quite a common thing to have half the performers dead lame after a long night's dancing. We listened to the singing for a while, and asked who this "Che Simba" might be, when the headman stepped forward and proudly claimed the name as his own. Anything less like a lion I have never seen; in fact, with the bits of grass he had stuck in his hair by way of decoration, he looked a very degenerate specimen of the American "hay-seed."

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Tiring of the dance, and the usual politenesses having been observed, we had turned to go back to our house, when a very old man stepped up, and giving us a sonorous Jambo Bwana n'kubwa," 1 begged for a gift of tobacco. He followed us up to the house to fetch his prize, and in the lamplight we noticed that he was wearing several very fine elephant hairs round his neck. In reply to our question as to where he had got them, he told us that he was an old elephant fundi, and used to shoot elephant in the old days with a muzzle-loader. He told us how the Arabs used to come down through his

village collecting the ivory, and giving the villagers cotton stuff and brass rings in exchange, and of one epic adventure when he himself had gone down to the coast with the great ivory caravan. He told us that he was so great a hunter that he dared to pluck hairs from an elephant's tail while it was walking along in the bush, and pointed to the hairs he wore around his neck as evidence of the fact ! He further offered to go out and do it now if the Bwanas would like to see the trick done; but as the old fellow must have been about eighty, I very much doubt if he could have even gone through the bush at all, excepting by the trail, let alone have followed and caught up with an elephant ! R. solemnly translated into Swahili the fairy story of the little barber who was so expert a shaver that he could shave a hare as it galloped past him, and warming up to the spirit of the thing, mentioned that he himself did this every morning when in his own country! (I have often wondered how this particular story was retailed by the old man to his wives and children when he returned to his village!) I asked the old fellow what he thought of the new order of things, and his reply would not have pleased the heavenborns," for he was most emphatic in his opinion that the country had fallen upon evil times, and had, in fact, gone

1 46 'Greetings, great Master!"

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old fundis were no longer allowed to shoot elephants, nor even game!

absolutely to the dogs since the announced, "Brains, my lad, brains!" But after waiting in a disgusted silence for the applause which was not forthcoming, he was compelled to go on with his story. It appeared that the day after I moved out down the river another Jumbe had arrived bringing twenty loads of meal, some eggs and bananas, and as R. did not want to follow me down the river, he had evolved the idea of getting the Angoni to work in the camp until my return.

The next day I set off down the river, and as the old Fundi evinced such a lively interest in my armoury, I gave him my heavy 450 Express to carry. He was delighted, and it is impossible to describe the tremendous "side he exhibited towards his his fellowvillagers on the march. One could almost hear him saying,

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There you are, you wretched little cultivators, you see what the Bwana thinks of the old Fundi!" and although the weight of the rifle was a sore trial to him before we arrived in camp, nothing on earth would persuade him to give it up. I got the hippos with but little trouble, and by the afternoon of the fourth day was back again in camp. To my surprise, the place was a veritable hive of activity. Men and women were hurrying past with loads of grass and loads of bamboos, and the bush was resounding with the dull thud of axes upon trees. I was dumfounded, and stopping a piccaninny, I sent him off to look for R., who was out somewhere in the bush, and did not know of my arrival. He came in a few minutes later, his face wreathed in smiles, and after calling for tea, sat down while he explained the raison d'être of all this bustle. His first effort was somewhat cryptic, for with an all-embracing wave of his none too clean hand, he

They had asked for a "prizey" of extra hippo meat, and R. had suggested that they should do three days' work and receive an extra hippo by way of a present. Now a day's work to a native is nothing, but hippo meat is a great deal, and they had fairly leapt at the offer. Each man was thereupon detailed to a job, either to fetch so many loads of grass, or so many loads of bamboos, or so many straight lengths of wood, and with these materials R. intended to build a new compound. It was a great idea, and would save us the trouble of getting in a lot of extra boys for building purposes. By the time I arrived these boys had already finished two days' work, so that after a day's rest in camp I should have to be ready to take them down the river again for their hippos. The next day I rested, and had the pleasure of seeing R. very busy indeed bossing up" the various gangs of boys on the different jobs,

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