CHAPTER IV


THE STRANGER

By the time the two men had gained the top of the hill the worst heat of
the day had passed. Kingozi seated himself on a flat rock and at once
began to take sights through a prismatic compass, entering the
observations in a pocketbook. Mali-ya-bwana, bolt upright, stared out over
the thinly wooded plain below. He reported the result of his scouting in a
low voice, to which the white man paid no attention whatever.

"_Twiga[2] bwana_," he said, and then, as his eye caught the flash of many
sing-sing horns, "_kuru, mingi_." Thus he named over the different
animals--the topi, the red hartebeeste, the eland, zebra, some warthogs,
and many others. The beasts were anticipating the cool of the afternoon,
and were grazing slowly out from beneath the trees, scattering abroad over
the landscape.

[Footnote 2: Giraffe.]

From even this slight elevation the outlook extended. Isolated mountain
ranges showed loftier; the tops of unguessed hills peeped above the curve
of the earth; the clear line of the horizon had receded to the outer
confines of terrestrial space, but even then not far enough to touch the
cup of the sky. Elsewhere the heavens meet the horizon: in Africa they lie
beyond it, so that when the round, fleecy clouds of the Little Rains sail
down the wind there is always a fleet of them beyond the earth