Fifty yards in the rear marched the carriers. They were a straight, strong
lot, dressed according to their fancy or opportunity in the cast-off
garments of the coast; comical in the ensemble, perhaps, but worthy of
respect in that all day each had carried a seventy-pound load under a
tropical sun, and that they were coming in strong.

And finally, bringing up the rear, marched a small, lively, wizened little
fellow, dressed as nearly as possible like the white man, and carrying as
the badge of his office a bulging cotton umbrella and the _kiboko_--the
slender, limber, stinging rhinoceros-hide whip.

It was the end of a long march. This could be guessed by the hour, by the
wearied slouch of the white man, above all by the conduct of the safari.
The men were walking one on the heels of the other. Their burdens, carried
on their heads, held them erect. They stepped out freely. But against the
wooden chop boxes, the bags of cornmeal _potio_, the bundles of canvas
that made up some of the loads, the long safari sticks went _tap, tap,
tap_, in rhythm. This tapping was a steady undertone to the volume of
noise that arose from thirty throats. Every man was singing or shouting at
the full strength of his lungs. A little file of Wakamba sung in unison
one of the weird wavering minor chants peculiar to savage peoples
everywhere; some Kavirondos simply howled in staccato barks like beasts.
Between the extremes were many variations; but every man contributed to
the uproar, and tapped his load rhythmically with his long stick. By this
the experienced traveller would have known that the men were very tired,
tired to the point of exhaustion; for the more wearied the Central African
native, or the steeper the hill he, laden, must surmount, the louder he
sings or yells.