However, I was young and without much thought of anything in those days, and camp by the wells I would. We accordingly did so. And presently the camp began to fill with apparently friendly natives. They dropped in by twos and threes and stood around, each man with two spears. I thought they seemed a nice friendly, sociable crowd, and took little further heed of them. Then comes my headman, a Swahili, to me. “Bwana, there is no good brewing. These people mean trouble. Look around, do you see a single woman anywhere?” I laughed and asked him what he thought they would do. He said that at a given pre-arranged signal they would start spearing everyone. And then it dawned on me how absurdly easy it would be for them to do so. When you came to look around with this thought in your mind it became apparent that every man was being marked by several spear-men. If he moved they also lounged about until they were again close to him. I must say they appeared to me to act the indifference part very well. When I had convinced myself that something of this nature really was afoot, I naturally got close to my shooting irons, ready to take a hand when the fun started. In those days I always wore fifty rounds in my belt.

Now I thought that if I could only supply something sufficiently distracting the affair might never begin. There over the plains were plenty of game. I took my rifle and got the interpreter to tell the Karamojans to come as I was going killing meat. They came at once in fair numbers. They had already heard of my wonderful rifles, and wherever I went I always had an audience eager to see them or the Bom-bom (Mauser pistol) at work.

Hardly had we gone a few hundred yards, and while we were still in full view of the camp, when a herd of zebra came galloping across our front. They had been alarmed by some abnormal movement of natives and had somehow got mixed up and lost.

They came well spaced apart and just right for my purpose. I shot one after the other as hard as I could fire. I was using a 10 shot ·303, and when I had fired the ten shots the survivors of the herd were too far off. I was careful not to reload in the ordinary way, for I carried another charged magazine. Consequently the natives thought I might have any number of shots left in this quite new and terrifying weapon. No smoke and such a rapid fire of death—they had never seen the like. Bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! they kept saying to themselves, only much more rapidly than the actual rate of fire. And the zebras, strong brutes, knocked right down one after the other. No! this was something new. They had better be careful about fooling around with this red man. He was different from those red men among the Swahilis, who used to fire great clouds of smoke and hit nothing.

After an episode of this kind one feels somehow that a complete mental transformation has taken place. One is established right above these, in some ways, finer but less scientific people. But this knowledge comes to both at the same time. I now ordered these previously truculent, now almost servile, savages to flay, cut up and carry to camp every bit of meat and skin. When I saw anyone sneaking a bit of fat or what-not I blackguarded him soundly. I rushed the whole regiment back to camp loaded with several tons of meat, many of them forgetting their spears in their hurry. But had I ventured to bullyrag them like this before the zebra incident I would have had a spear thrust for answer and right quickly too.

I now began to push enquiries about elephant, but with no great success at first. One day a Bukora boy came to camp and while in conversation with some of my people casually told them that he had recently returned from no man’s land, where he and some friends of his had been looking for Kumamma. The Kumamma were their neighbours to the west. They had been looking for them in order to spear them, should things be right—that meaning should the enemy be in sufficiently small force for them to easily overcome. When the numbers are at all equal, both sides retire smartly to the rear. This is the normal kind of state in which these tribes live. It leads to a few deaths certainly, but it keeps the young men fit and out of other mischief. Every young man goes looking for blood frequently, and as they carry no food except a few handfuls of unground millet simply soaked in water, and as they never dare to sleep while in the neutral zone, it acts as a kind of field training.

This youth, then, had seen no Kumamma but had seen elephant. My boys told me this and I tried to get the lad to go with us to hunt. He said he would come back and let me know. He did so and brought a friend. This friend of his was a most remarkable-looking man. Strange as it may seem, he had a most intellectual head. He was a man of perhaps thirty-five years of age, most beautifully made and tattooed for men victims only, I was relieved to see. Pyjalé was his name, and now began a firm and long friendship between this distinguished savage and myself. I cannot say that I have ever had the same feelings for any man as I came to have for Pyjalé. He was, I found, a thorough man, courageous, quiet, modest, with a horror of humbug and untiring in our common pact, the pursuit of elephant. He was with me during the greater part of my time in Karamojo, and although surrounded by people who clothed themselves, never would he wear a rag even. Nor would he sleep comfortably as we did on grass and blankets. The bare hard ground out by the camp fire with a hole dug for his hip bone and his little wooden pillow had been good enough for him before and was good enough now. No one poked fun at Pyjalé for his nakedness; he was the kind who do not get fun poked at them.

Pyjalé was game to show us elephants, but said we would have to travel far. His intelligence was at once apparent by his saying that we ought to take tents as the rains might come any day. He was right, for come they did while we were hunting.

I took to Pyjalé right at the start and asked him what I should do about the main safari. He said I could leave it where it was; no one would interfere with it. If I liked I could leave the ivory in one of the villages. This I gathered was equivalent to putting one’s silver in the bank at home. And so it is, bizarre as it may seem. You may leave anything with natives—ivory, beads, which are money, trade goods, stock, anything—and not one thing will they take provided you place it in their care. But if you leave your own people to look after it they will steal it, given the chance.

Thinking that it might save trouble I put all my trade goods and ivory in a village, and leaving the safari with plenty of rations, I left for a few days’ hunting, taking a sufficient number of porters to bring home any ivory we were likely to get. This was necessary at this time as the natives did not yet follow me in hundreds wherever I went, as they did later on.

We trekked hard for three days and came once more in sight of the Debasien range, but on its other side. On the night of the third day the rains burst upon us. The light calico bush tents were hastily erected in a perfect gale and downpour. Even Pyjalé had to shelter.

In the morning Pyjalé said we were certain to see elephant if we could only cross a river which lay ahead of us. When we reached its banks it was a raging torrent, red with mud and covered with patches of white froth. There was nothing for it but to camp and wait until the spate subsided.

While this was being done I saw a snake being carried down by the swollen river. Then I saw another and another. Evidently banks were being washed away somewhere.

A boy pointed to my shorts and said that a doodoo (insect) had crawled up the inside of one of my legs. Thinking, perhaps, it was a fly, or not thinking at all, perhaps, I slapped my leg hard with open hand and got a most frightful sting, while a huge scorpion dropped half crushed to the ground. But not before he had injected quite sufficient poison into me. “Insect,” indeed! how I cursed that boy. And then, by way of helping me, he said that when people were stung by these big black scorpions—like mine—they always died. He was in a frightful state. And then another fool boy said: “Yes, no one ever recovered from that kind.” I shouted for whisky, for you certainly could feel the poison going through the circulation. I knew that what the boys said was bunkum, but still I drank a lot of whisky. My leg swelled and I could not sleep that night, but I was quite all right next day.

The river had gone down somewhat, so I proposed to cross. No one was very eager to go across with a rope. A rope was necessary, as some of the boys could not swim and the current was running too strong for them to walk across the bottom under water, carrying stones to keep them down, as they usually did.

I carried at that time a Mexican raw hide lariat and thought that this stretched across would do nicely for the boys to haul themselves over by. So I took one end to the other side and made it fast, when the safari began to come over. Once the plunge had been taken I found that more of them could swim than they had led me to believe. Then the inevitable—when raw hide gets wet—happened and the rope parted. As luck would have it there was a boy about mid-stream at the instant. The slippery end slid through his fingers and he went rapidly down-stream. His head kept going under and reappearing I noticed, but thought that, as he had a smile on his face each time he came up, he was another humbug pretending to be unable to swim. His friends, who knew perfectly well that he could not swim a yard, said, of course, not a word. And it was not until he gushed water at the mouth instead of air that I realised he was drowning. I ran down the bank while another boy plunged in at the crossing place. I reached the boy first by a second and we soon had him towing to bank. Black men are good to save, they never seem to realise their close call and do not clutch and try to climb out on you. While towing to the bank I felt something on my head and put up a hand to brush it off. Horrors, a snake! It was merely trying to save itself on anything above water level, but I did not realise this. Whenever I knocked it off it seemed to come again. Luckily we just then reached the bank or in another instant I would have abandoned my drowning porter to save myself from that beastly serpent. It was all very silly, and the snake was nearly at its last gasp, but I did not see the humour at the moment. Needless to say, the boy was perfectly all right in ten minutes after vomiting up a bucket or two of water.

While we were getting ready again for the march we heard elephant. To my inexperienced ear the sound seemed to come from some bush 400 yds. or 500 yds. away. But Pyjalé said, to my astonishment, that they were a long way off and that unless we hurried we should not see them before sundown. As the sun then indicated about one o’clock, I thought he was wrong. But he was not; for it was half an hour from sunset when we saw them, still far away. I remember looking industriously about all those miles expecting momentarily to see elephant, while Pyjalé soaked along ahead of me without a glance aside. The only explanation of this extraordinary sound-carrying that has ever occurred to me is humidity of atmosphere. During the dry season the earth becomes so hot that when the first rains fall much is evaporated in steam and the humidity is remarkable.

Here we were face to face with such a gathering of elephant as I had never dared to dream of even. The whole country was black with them, and what lay beyond them one could not see as the country was dead flat. Some of them were up to their knees in water, and when we reached their tracks the going became very bad. The water was so opaque with mud as to quite hide the huge pot-holes made by the heavy animals. You were in and out the whole time. As we drew nearer I thought that we ought to go decently and quietly, at any rate make some pretence of stalking them, if only out of respect to them. But no, that awful Pyjalé rushed me, splashing and squelching right up to them. He was awfully good, and I began to learn a lot from him. He treated elephant with complete indifference. If he were moved at all, and that was seldom, he would smile.

I was for treating them as dangerous animals, especially when we trod on the heels of small bogged-down calves and their mothers came rushing back at us in the most alarming fashion, but Pyjalé would have none of it. Up to the big bulls would he have me go, even if we had to go under infuriated cows. He made me kill seven before sundown stopped the bloodshed.

With great difficulty we found a spot a little higher than the surrounding country and fairly dry. As usual at these flood times the little island was crawling with ants of every description. How comes it that ants do not drown, although they cannot swim? They appear to be covered with something which repels water.

Scorpions and all kinds of other horrors were there also. One of the boys was bitten and made a fearful fuss all night about it.

I expected to do well on the morrow, but when it came, behold, not an elephant in sight. Such are the surprises of elephant hunting. Yesterday when light failed hundreds upon hundreds in sight and now an empty wilderness.

We had not alarmed them, as I noticed that when a shot was fired only the animals in the vicinity ran and that for a short distance only. There were too many to stampede even had they been familiar with firearms. And the noise was such as to drown the crack of a ·303 almost immediately.

I asked Pyjalé what he thought about it. He said that at the beginning of the rains elephant wandered all over the country. You could never tell where they might be. With water and mud and green food springing up everywhere they were under no necessity to frequent any one district more than another. Pyjalé’s advice was to get the ivory out and take it home, and then he would show me a country where we were certain to get big bulls. Accordingly the boys set about chopping out while I went for a cruise around to make certain there was nothing about.

I saw nothing but ostrich, giraffe and great herds of common and Topi haartebeeste. On crossing some black-cotton soil I noticed that it clung to the boots in a very tiresome way. Each time you lifted a foot, 10 lb. or 15 lb. of sticky mud came with it. At this stage the ground was still dry underneath, only the top few inches being wet. From the big lumps lying about where antelope had passed it was obvious that they had, too, the same trouble as I was having, i.e., mud clinging to the feet.

But on watching Pyjalé it appeared that it did not stick to naked human feet to anything like the same extent. Pyjalé told me, and I afterwards saw it actually done, that it was possible to run down ostrich and the heavy antelope, such as eland, when the ground was in this state.

Returning we found the boys well on with their chopping out. Towards evening we started for home, being much troubled with swollen rivers. Most of the boys walked through the rivers when we could find a place where the current was not too strong. The heavy tusks, of course, kept them on the bottom. But it was a curious sight to see them calmly marching in deeper and deeper until their heads went right under, reappearing again close to the other bank. Of course, the distance they thus traversed was only a few yards, but for fellows who cannot swim it was not bad.

One camp from home (the safari) we slept near some flooded wells. The boys took their tusks to scrub them with sand and water, the better to make an appearance on the morrow when we should rejoin the safari. This is always a source of joy to Wanyamwezi, to carry ivory to the base. When allowed to do so they will spend hours dancing and singing their way into the camp. The women turn out, everybody makes a noise of some kind, from blowing a reed pipe, to trumpeting on a water buck horn or beating a drum or a tin, in fact anything so that it produces noise.

While they were scrubbing the tusks one of these slipped from the boy’s hands into a well. I heard of it and went to see what could be done. To test the depth I tried one of Pyjalé’s 9 ft. spears. No good. Then I tied another to it, but even then I could not touch bottom. Pyjalé said the bottom was very far. Then I looked at one of my boys squatting on the edge of the well. He had been a coast canoe-man shark-fisher—than whom no finer watermen exist—and knew what I meant without a word passing. He tied his cloth between his legs and stripped his upper body. Then jumping into the air he twisted half round and went down head first into the very middle of the well. It seemed ages before his head reappeared. At last it did so, but only for an instant. Down again; apparently he had not found it the first time. After another long wait he came up with the tusk and swimming or treading water. Eager hands clutched the tusk and drew it out, the boy crawled out himself. This particular tusk weighed 65 lb., the length being almost the diameter of the well, so it had to be brought up end on. How he did it I cannot imagine. The water was the colour of pea-soup, and a scrubbed tusk is like a greasy pole to hold. Of course, it would not weigh 65 lb. when submerged, but it was a pretty good effort I thought. I know I would not have gone 20 ft. or 30 ft. down that well for any number of tusks.

These boys have the most extraordinary lungs. I once sent one of them down to disentangle the anchor of a motor launch, which had got foul of something. There were about four fathoms of chain and the boy went down this hand over hand. I only wanted him to clear the anchor, when we would heave it up in the ordinary way. But presently up the chain came the boy and the anchor.

On the morrow we entered Bukora again, with fourteen fine white tusks. We had a great reception at our camp. The natives, too, were rather astonished at our rapid success. Pyjalé stalked along without any show of feeling.

The boys who had stayed behind had nothing to report except the loss of three of our sheep by theft. Now it was essential to nip this kind of thing in the bud. I did nothing that day, merely sending Pyjalé to his home with a handsome present. I knew he would put it round as to the kind of people we were. Natives always exaggerate enormously when back from a scurry in the bush, and his account of our doings would probably have made me blush had I heard it.

Next day when Pyjalé came with a pot of fresh cow’s milk as a present, I asked him if he had heard anything about our sheep. He said no. I asked him to point me out the village which had stolen them. He said they would kill him if he did so. Therefore he knew. I then said that he need not go with me, if only he would indicate it. He said the village with the three tamarind trees was where the thieves lived.

I went over quietly, as if looking for guinea-fowl, in the evening. The village was quite close to our camp. When their stock began to come in I signalled up some boys. We walked up deliberately to the herds, no one taking any great notice of us. I separated out a mob of sheep and goats and we started driving them towards camp, but very quietly and calmly. It is wonderful how imitative Africans are. If you are excited they at once become so. If you are calm and deliberate, so are they.

A more dramatic thing would have been to take the cattle. But these native cattle are not used to boys wearing clothes, as mine did, and we found at Mani-Mani that they became excited and difficult to handle unless they see their black naked owners about. Pyjalé I had carefully left out of this business.

As soon as our object dawned upon the Karamojans there was the usual commotion. Women wha! wha! wha-ed while rushing from the huts with shields; warriors seized these and rushed with prodigious speed directly away from us; while we pushed our two or three hundred hostages slowly along.

Arrived at camp we just managed to squeeze them all into the bullock boma. There were noises all round us now. The boys were uneasy; there is always something in the alarm note when issued by hundreds of human throats. Dark was soon on us and we sat up by the camp fires till fairly late. Nothing happened, as I anticipated. Discretion had won. They hated that little bom-bom so.

What I wanted now was that they should come. I wanted to tell them why I had taken their sheep. No one appeared, but I consoled myself with the thought that they jolly well knew why I had taken them.

Presently there appeared to be great signs of activity in one of the nearer villages. Native men kept coming from all directions. My boys were all eyes for this, to them, impending attack. I thought they must be born fools to try anything of that sort in broad daylight. Night was their best chance.

Pyjalé had been absent, so I hoped that he was at the meeting. Presently he appeared. He said they had had a discussion and had concluded not to attack us. I told him to go straight back and invite them all to come; I wanted to be attacked. And moreover, if my sheep were not instantly brought I would proceed to kill the hostage sheep we held, and that then I would proceed to hunt the thieves.

This acted like magic; I suppose they thought that as I had known the village of the thieves, I also probably knew the actual men themselves. Our sheep were very soon brought and the hostages released.

I took the opportunity when the natives were there to impress upon them that we did not want anything from them. All we wanted was to hunt elephant in peace, but at the same time I hinted that we could be very terrible indeed. I got some of the older men to dry up and sit down, in a friendly way, and we had a good talk together. I now brought out the card to which I owed all my success in killing elephant in Karamojo. I offered a cow as reward for information leading to my killing five or more bull elephant. This was an unheard of reward. There a cow of breeding age is simply priceless. Normally natives never kill or sell she-stock of any kind and cows could only be obtained by successful raiding. Now among Africans there are numbers of young men who just lack the quality which brings success to its lucky owner, just as there are in every community, and to these young men my offer appealed tremendously. That they believed in my promise from the very start was, I thought, a great compliment, not only to me, but to their astuteness in perceiving that there was a difference between white men and Swahilis.

When my offer had gone the rounds the whole country for many miles round was scoured for elephant, with the result that I never could have a day’s rest. Everyone was looking for elephant. But had the reward been trade goods scarcely a soul would have bothered about it.

The first man to come was remarkable looking enough to satisfy anybody. A terrible looking man. A grotesquely hideous face above a very broad and deep chest, all mounted on the spindliest of knock-kneed legs. Chest, arms, shoulders, stomach and back heavily tattooed, denoting much killing. By reputation a terrific fighter, and very wealthy.

At first I thought that he was come to show me elephant. That was his intention, he said, but first he wanted to become my blood-brother. He said he could see that I was a kindred spirit and that we two should be friends. He said he had no friends. How was that? I asked. Pyjalé answered in a whisper that the lion never made friends of jackals and hyenas. And so we became friends. I was not going through the blood-brotherhood business, with its eating of bits of toasted meat smeared with each other’s blood, sawing in two of living dogs or nonsense of that kind. I took his hand and wrung it hard, and had it explained to him that among us that was an extraordinarily potent way of doing it. That seemed to satisfy the old boy, for the act of shaking hands was as strange to him as the act of eating each other’s blood is to us.

He started off then and I said: “What about those elephant?” “Wait,” was the answer, and off he went, to return shortly with a fat bullock. And then I found that my friend was the wealthiest cattle owner anywhere about—a kind of multi-millionaire. I thought to myself, well, he will not look for elephant. Nor did he; but he had sons without number, being much married, whom he scattered far and wide to look for them. He had arranged the thing most perfectly. We went with food for a few days and returned laden with ivory. Besides which we had some of the jolliest nights in the bush.

This great man being now my friend, our troubles were at an end. Wherever we went we were followed by scores of the young unmarried girls and one old maid—the only one I have come across in Karamojo. She was so outstandingly above the average in good looks, so beautifully made and so obviously still quite young, that I often asked why she should remain a spinster. They told me that no man would marry her because she was so beautiful. But why should that be a bar? we white men like our wives to be beautiful. They thought this strange, even for white men. They said they never married very beautiful women as all men wanted them. They also gave as another reason that these very attractive women wanted all men. And I must say that our camp beauty gave decided colour to this latter statement.

No sooner were we arrived back with our imposing line of beautiful tusks than other natives clamoured to take us to elephant. They wanted me to go there and then, but I needed a rest.

In the evening I presented my friend with a heifer, when to my astonishment he refused it. He said he wanted nothing from his friend. I was rather suspicious about this at first, but I need not have been, as I subsequently found this man to be thoroughly genuine. I am convinced that he would have given me anything. It is a big affair in their lives, this blood-brotherhood. Apparently we now owned everything in common. He offered me any of his daughters in marriage, and, thank goodness, never asked me for my rifle. From now on he followed me about like a faithful dog, some of his young wives attending to his commissariat arrangements wherever he was. He even took my name, which was Longelly-nymung or Red Man. And he began now to call his young male children, of whom he was very fond, by the same name. He was a delightfully simple fellow at heart and as courageous as a lion, as I had proof later.

After a few more journeys to the bush lasting from four to ten days, I found suddenly that I had as much ivory as I could possibly move. And this, while still on the fringe of Karamojo. I decided to return to Mumias, sell my ivory, fit out a real good expedition capable of moving several tons of ivory, and return to Karamojo fitted out for several years in the bush.