sin for me, as an individual, not to carry forward the race, since the
Divine Will decrees that in some way the race is necessary to it.
_Therefore_ it would seem that man is in sin whichever way you look at
it--"

"But," interposes the inspector firmly but politely, "is it not possible
that sexual sin and the sin of opposing Divine Will may be of balance in
the spirit, so that in resisting one sort a man acquires virtue to
commit the other without harm--" And so on for hours.

At twelve-thirty the safari drifted in. Consider that fact and what it
meant. The plain duty of the headman was, of course, to have seen that
the men followed us in the day before. But allowing, for the sake of
argument, that this was impossible, and that the men had been forced by
the exhaustion of some of their number to stop and camp, if they had
arisen betimes they should have completed the journey in two hours at
most. That should have brought them in by half-past seven or eight
o'clock. But a noon arrival condemned them without the necessity of
argument. They had camped early, had risen very, very late, and had
dawdled on the road.

We ourselves gave the two responsible headmen twenty lashes apiece; then
turned over to them the job of thrashing the rest. Ten per man was the
allotment. They expected the punishment; took it gracefully. Some even
thanked us when it was over! The babu disappeared in his station.

About an hour later he approached us, very deprecating, and handed us a
telegram. It was from the district commissioner at Voi ordering us to
report for flogging "porters on the Tsavo Station platform."