In the first gray dusk Simba and Cazi Moto slipped away on the errands
appointed for them--to find people and to find water, if possible. The
cook camp, too, was afoot, dark figures passing and repassing before a
fire. But the rest of the men slept heavily, seizing the unwonted chance.

When the first rays of the sun struck the fly of the small green master's-
tent Kingozi appeared, demanding water wherewith to wash. At the sound of
his voice men stirred sleepily, sat up, poked the remains of their tiny
fires. As though through an open tap the freshness of night-time drained
away. The hot, searching, stifling African day took possession of the
world.

After breakfast Kingozi looked about him for shelter. A gorgeous, red-
flowering vine had smothered one of the flat-topped thorn trees in its
luxuriance. The growths of successive years had overlaid each other.
Kingozi called two men with _pangas_ who speedily cut out the centre,
leaving a little round green room in the heart of the shadow. Thither
Kingozi caused to be conveyed his chop-box table, his canvas chair, and
his tin box; and there he spent the entire morning writing in a blank book
and carefully drawing from field notes in a pocketbook a sketch map of the
country he had traversed. At noon he ate a light meal of bread, plain rice
with sugar, and a _balauri_ of tea. Then for a time he slept beneath the
mosquito bar in his tent.

At this hour of fiercest sun the whole world slept with him. From the
baked earth rose heat waves almost as tangible as gauze veils. Objects at
a greater distance than a hundred yards took on strange distortions. The
thorn trees shot up to great heights; animals stood on stilts; the tops of
the hills were flattened, and from their summits often reached out into
space long streamers. Sometimes these latter joined across wide intervals,