'You will do nothing of the sort. If the Masai come, they come,
and there is an end on it; and I think we can give them a pretty
warm greeting. I would not show any man the door for all the
Masai in the world.'

'That reminds me,' I said, 'the Consul at Lamu told me that he
had had a letter from you, in which you said that a man had arrived
here who reported that he had come across a white people in the
interior. Do you think that there was any truth in his story?
I ask, because I have once or twice in my life heard rumours
from natives who have come down from the far north of the existence
of such a race.'

Mr Mackenzie, by way of answer, went out of the room and returned,
bringing with him a most curious sword. It was long, and all
the blade, which was very thick and heavy, was to within a quarter
of an inch of the cutting edge worked into an ornamental pattern
exactly as we work soft wood with a fret-saw, the steel, however,
being invariably pierced in such a way as not to interfere with
the strength of the sword. This in itself was sufficiently curious,
but what was still more so was that all the edges of the hollow
spaces cut through the substance of the blade were most beautifully
inlaid with gold, which was in some way that I cannot understand
welded on to the steel {Endnote 5}.

'There,' said Mr Mackenzie, 'did you ever see a sword like that?'

We all examined it and shook our heads.