Part 67 (1/2)
THE SONG OF THE DARK-LORDS
Turn in! Turn in! The jungle lords co-eyed--the owners of the dark, What though ye steal the day! We know the worth Of vain tubes spitting at a phantouide the fire!
Treht is ours! Who challenges our ire?
Urruh! Turn in there! Way!
Ye come with iron lines and dare to camp Where ere lords when Daniel stood a test!
Where once the tired safaris used to tra at rest!
Tree lovers of the day, 'Tho shook the circus walls of ancient Rome!
The dark is ours! Take cover! Way there! Way!
Urh! Take cover! Home!
The man who tries to explain away coincidences to men ere the victiet The dictionary defines the, apparently accidental, but which suggest a casual connection
Lions paid us a visit that first night after Schillingschen's escape--the first lions we had seen or heard since landing on the north shore of the lake We prayed they schen, yet they and he persisted until h for theto his ten e to the second tent under guard of Kazimoto and our own ed, but not his He called to thee that even Kazi at intervals Once, when I was listening to locate Schillingschen if I could, the lions ca to the back side of the tent I tried to stalk them--a rash, reprehensible, tenderfoot trick
Luck ith me; they slunk away in the shadows, and I lived to summon Fred and Will We tried to save the donkeys, but the lions took three of them at their leisure, and scared the rest so that they broke out of the thorn-bush boainst leopards, not lions) Nextout of forty we recovered twenty-five, and wondered howhoe ourselves had ed, without ammunition or supplies, we did not fool ourselves with the belief that Schillingschen, with his brutal personal e of natives, would not do better The probability was he would stir up the countryside against us
He had been doing ht be the natives of that part were already sufficiently schooled to do
We decided to leave at once for a district where he had not yet done any of his infernal preaching
”You should set a trap and shoot the swine!” Coutlass insisted Will was inclined to agree with him, but Fred and I demurred The British writ had never really run as far as the slopes of Elgon, and we could see theschen intended to dog us and watch chances we preferred to have him do that in a re natives would likely be as good as his, that was all
Part of our strategy was to e of his physical weariness after a night in the open on the prowl; but after a few days in caet a crowd of porters started on the march It was more particularly difficult on that occasion because none of our schen's loads, and the captured ten, even e loosed their hands and treated theave then two of our own as guards, so that, ith having lost the fifteen donkeys, we had not a ot off at last We had not left the camp more than half a schen where his great tent had stood, cavorting on hands and feet like an enorround for anything we ht have left We three stood and watched hi with fear lest he chance on the place where his diary lay buried in the tin box We began to e had brought it with us I said we had done foolishly to leave it, although I had approved of Fred's burying it at the tiued, ”he sets the natives of that village to searching!
What's to prevent him? You know the kind of job they'd rass--pebble by pebble Where they found a trace of loosened dirt they'd dig”
”Did you bury so, then?” inquired a voice we knew too well ”By the ace of stinks, those natives can s a white man ever touched!”
We turned and faced Coutlass, e had iined on ahead with the safari If he noticed our sour looks, he saw fit to ignore them; but he took an upperhanded, new, insolent ith us, no doubt due to our refusal to shoot Schillingschen He ascribed that to a yellow streak
”I was right Gassharamminy! I could have sworn I sao of you on watch while the thirdthe stones! What did you bury? I came back to talk about Brown The poor drunkard wants to head ht on What do you say?”
We told hio forward Then we looked in one another's eyes, and said nothing Whether or not the original decision had been wise, there was no question noas the proper course
Instead of tiring out Schillingschen weprotection for the donkeys against lions--a high thorn enclosure, and an outer one not so high, with a space between the fires Before dark we had enough fuel stacked up to keep the fires blazing well all night long
Neither Coutlass nor Brown had had a drink of whisky that day, so it was all the more remarkable that Coutlass lay down early in a corner of the tent and fell into a sound sleep allad of it Our plan was for two of us to creep out of cah, and recover the contents of that tin box before Schillingschen or the blacks could forestall us