The whole population escorted the good Msimu quite a distance, and took leave of her with tears in their eyes, at the same time earnestly begging her to condescend to visit M’Rua once again and occasionally to think of his people. Stasch considered a moment whether he should tell the negroes about the gorge where he had hidden the goods and provisions left him by Linde, which—on account of the lack of baggage-carriers—he could not take with him, but when he realized that the possession of such riches might awaken their covetousness, cause them to be jealous, disturb the tranquillity of their lives, and set them to fighting, he dismissed this idea; but he shot a large buffalo and left them its carcass for a parting feast. The sight of such a quantity of “Nyama” satisfied them.

The next three days the caravan went through a barren stretch of land. The days were hot, but the nights, on account of the altitude, were so cold that Stasch found it necessary to have Nell covered up with two rugs. They now often passed over narrow mountain passes, sometimes barren and hilly, sometimes covered with such thick vegetation that they had difficulty in winding their way through them. On the edges of these ravines they saw large monkeys, and here and there also lions and panthers, which had taken refuge in the rocky caves. At Kali’s request Stasch killed one of the animals, and then Kali put on its skin to impress the negroes with the fact that they had to reckon with a person of kingly blood.

On a tableland beyond the narrow passes negro hamlets again appeared. Sometimes they were in groups, sometimes one or two days’ journey apart. As a protection against lions all the huts were surrounded by high fences, so interwoven and overrun with vines that even at a short distance they appeared like the undergrowth of a forest. The smoke rising from the center of the huts was the only indication that they were inhabited. The caravan was as welcome everywhere as it had been in M’Rua’s village, first exciting fear and mistrust, and then surprise, admiration, and respect. Only on one occasion did the sight of the elephant, Saba, the horses and the white people cause an entire village to flee to the neighboring forest, and therefore the travelers had no chance of making themselves known. But not a single spear was raised against them, for if the hearts of the negroes are not filled by Mohammedanism with hatred and treachery against unbelievers, they are apt to be timid and peaceful. The travelers were welcomed so heartily that Kali had to eat a piece of the village king and the latter a piece of Kali, whereupon the most friendly relations were consummated. To the good Msimu they did homage and showed their reverence by offering fowls, eggs, and honey, brought from hollow blocks of wood, which had been fastened in the branches of a large tree by means of palm threads. The “Great Man,” the ruler of the elephant, the thunder, and the fiery serpent, aroused general terror, which soon gave place to gratitude when they were convinced that he was as generous as he was powerful. In places where the small villages were numerous the news of the arrival of these extraordinary guests would be communicated to the next settlement by drum signals, for the negroes announce everything by beating the drum. Sometimes the whole population advanced to meet them with friendly greetings.

In one village of nearly a thousand inhabitants the potentate, who was at the same time sorcerer and king, expressed his willingness to show them the great “fetish,” which was so much reverenced and dreaded that the people did not dare to approach the ebony chapel covered with rhinoceros hide, and so they placed their offerings fifty feet distant. The king told Stasch and Nell that this fetish had lately fallen from the moon, that it was white and had a tail. Stasch immediately explained that the moon had sent it down at the request of the good Msimu, and in thus speaking he did not deviate from the truth, for it turned out that the “great fetish” was simply one of the kites which he had sent up from Linde Mountain. He and Nell felt very happy when they thought the same wind might have carried the others still farther, and he decided to continue sending up more from the hill-tops. That evening he made a kite and let it fly, which convinced the negroes that the good Msimu and the white man had also come down from the moon and were gods to be served with humility.

Though pleased with these demonstrations of humility and adoration, Stasch was much more delighted on hearing that the Basso-Narok was a little more than ten days’ journey distant, and that the inhabitants of the village in which they now lived often received salt from that country in return for palm-wine. The village king had even heard Fumba spoken of as being the ruler of people called “Doko.” Kali said that the neighbors living a short distance away gave this name to the Wa-hima and Samburu.

The news that a great war was now raging on the banks of this vast sheet of water was not very reassuring, for in consequence of this it would be necessary to reach the Basso-Narok by marching over wild mountains and through deep ravines infested by beasts of prey. But Stasch was no longer afraid of such beasts, and he preferred the wildest mountains to the low plains, where fever lurked. So they courageously continued their journey.

After leaving that large village they passed but one other, a small settlement, that hung like a nest on the edge of a precipice. Then the country became mountainous, the hills in places being separated by deep ravines. To the east rose a dark chain of mountain-peaks, which, seen from a distance, looked quite black. They were now traveling through an unexplored stretch of country, and so they could not tell what might happen to them before they reached Fumba’s land. On the mountain slopes there were plenty of bananas, but with the exception of the dragon-tree and acacias, which stood out by themselves, the trees grew in groups, forming small groves. The travelers often halted in these groves to rest and renew their strength, as well as to enjoy the abundant shade.

The trees swarmed with birds. Many different species—large rhinoceros birds (which Stasch called pepper-eaters), roller, starling, laughing-dove, and countless beautiful “bengalis”—fluttered in the thick foliage or flew from one grove to another, singly or in groups, glittering in every color of the rainbow. Many trees, seen from a distance, appeared to be covered with colored flowers. Nell was particularly delighted on seeing flycatchers^[30] and large black birds with bright red feathers on their breasts, whose voices sounded like a shepherd’s flute.^[31] Beautiful bee-eaters, pink on top and pale-blue underneath, glistened in the sunlight, catching bees and dragonflies while on the wing. The screams of green parrots could be heard from the tree-tops, as could a sound of silver bells, the mutual greetings of small, gray-green birds hidden in the foliage.

Between sunset and dawn such large flocks of native sparrows^[32] flew past that but for their chirping and the flapping of their wings they might have been mistaken for clouds, and Stasch would have thought that the songsters who made the trees vocal during the day were humming throughout the night.

But the children were still more surprised and delighted with some other birds which flew in flocks and sang delightfully. Each group consisted of five or six females and one male, with glittering, metal-like feathers. They alighted on acacias—the male perching on the top of the tree, while the females sat on the lower branches—and after the first notes, which sounded as though he were tuning his voice, the male began to sing, while the females listened in silence. When he had finished they repeated in unison the last refrain of his song. After a brief pause he would begin again, and when he had ended they would again repeat the refrain; then the flock would fly in an airy, wave-like line to the next acacia, and the concert of soloist and chorus would ring out once more through the silence of noon. The children never grew tired of listening. Nell would catch the notes and join the chorus, twittering the last tones in her little thin voice, which sounded like a quick repetition of the sounds, “tui, tui, tui, tui, twi-ling-ting, ting!” Once, when they were following the winged songsters from one tree to another, the children found that they were alone and nearly a kilometer away from their camping-place, for they had left the three negroes and King and Saba behind. Stasch, who had planned to go hunting, had not wanted to take Saba for fear he might bark and frighten the game. When the flock of birds had flown from the last acacia to the other side of the broad ravine, the young boy stood still and said:

“Now I shall take you back to King, and then I shall see if there are any antelopes or zebras in the high jungle, for Kali says we have only enough smoked meat to last two days.”

“But I am a big girl now,” answered Nell, who was always desirous of showing that she was no longer a little girl, “and therefore I will return by myself. The camp and the smoke can easily be seen from here.”

“I am afraid you might get lost.”

“I shall not get lost. In the high jungle I might, but here—look how low the grass is.”

“Something might attack you!”

“You said that lions and panthers do not hunt their prey in the daytime. Besides, do you hear how King is trumpeting because he is lonesome for us? What lion would dare to hunt where King’s voice is heard?”

And she began to coax and in fact to be quite insistent on going.

“No, Stasch, I shall go alone. Remember, I am grown up!”

Stasch at first hesitated, but in the end let her have her own way. The camp and the smoke of the campfire could be distinctly seen, and King, who was lonesome without Nell, trumpeted continually. As Nell had said, there was no fear of getting lost in the low grass, and as far as lions, panthers, and hyenas were concerned, they need not be taken into consideration, for these beasts hunt their prey only at night. Besides, he knew he could do nothing to please the girl more than to show her that he no longer considered her a child.

“Well, all right,” he said; “go alone, but walk straight ahead and do not stop on the way.”

“But may I pick these flowers myself?” she asked, pointing to a bush of kousso,^[33] which was covered with a heavy mass of pink flowers.

“Yes, you may!”

With these words he turned around, and after taking the precaution of showing her the group of trees from which the smoke issued and from which King’s trumpeting was heard, he disappeared into the high jungle at the edge of the ravine.

He had taken scarcely a hundred steps when he felt exceedingly anxious. “It was very stupid of me,” he thought, “to let Nell go alone in the heart of Africa—how foolish, foolish! She is still a child! I should not have left her side even for an instant unless King had been with her. Who knows what may happen? Who knows whether there is not a snake under that pinkish shrubbery, or large monkeys might come from this narrow pass and carry her off or bite her. Heaven help me! I have done a most foolish thing!”

Instead of being only uneasy, he now became angry with himself and terribly frightened. Without reasoning further, he turned back, as though with a foreboding of evil. He stepped quickly to one side, and, as a matter of habit, formed in his daily hunting expeditions, he held his gun ready to shoot and glided through the prickly mimosas as silently as a panther creeping upon an antelope herd at night. Then he thrust his head above the tall shrubbery—and stood there as if petrified.

Nell was standing under the kousso bush with hands extended; the pinkish flowers, which she had dropped in her dismay, lay at her feet, and about twenty feet away a large golden-yellow animal was creeping toward her through the low grass.

Stasch distinctly saw its green eyes fixed on the chalk-white face of the girl, he saw its bowed head and flattened ears, its upraised paw stretched forward, expressing its waiting and stealthy attitude, its long body and even longer tail, the end of which was moving with an almost imperceptible cat-like movement. Another moment—a spring—and it would have been the last of Nell!

At this sight the boy, accustomed as he was to danger, at once realized that if he did not immediately regain his composure and presence of mind, if he were to shoot and merely wound the animal, no matter how badly, the girl would be doomed. Controlling himself, and stimulated by these thoughts, his arms and legs suddenly became as rigid as steel. Thanks to his habit of observation, he noticed a dark spot near the animal’s ear, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

At the same instant came the report of the shot, a scream from Nell, and a dreadful growl. Stasch sprang in front of Nell, and while protecting her with his own body took aim again.

The second shot was quite unnecessary. The terrible cat lay stretched out like a rag, its nose on the ground, its paws in the grass, and it never even twitched. The bullet, an explosive one, had torn away the entire back of the head and neck, above which the eyes glared and the bloody, torn ganglia of the brain could be seen.

The little huntsman and Nell stood for a moment side by side, looking first at the slain beast, then at each other—speechless. Then a strange thing happened. Stasch, whose self-possession and calmness would have astonished the most experienced marksman, suddenly turned pale, his legs began to tremble, tears started from his eyes, he put his hands to his head and repeated over and over again:

“Oh, Nell, Nell, if I had not turned back!”

Here he was seized with terror, a terror bordering on despair, and every nerve in his body twitched and trembled as if he had an attack of ague. After his tremendous mental and bodily tension there came a moment of weakness and lassitude. He imagined he saw the terrible beast lying in a dark cave tearing Nell’s body to pieces with its bloody mouth. And indeed this might really have happened—it would have happened had he not turned back. A moment, a second more, and it would have been too late. These thoughts were too much for him to bear.

The result was that Nell, who was the first to recover from the fright, was obliged to comfort him. The dear little child threw both her small arms around his neck and wept, crying out as loudly as though trying to awaken him out of a sound sleep.

“Stasch! Stasch! Nothing has happened to me! Only look and see! Nothing has happened to me! Little Stasch! Dear Stasch!”

It was some time before Stasch recovered his composure and calmness. Soon after Kali arrived on the scene; he had heard a shot near the camp, and knowing that Bwana Kubwa never shot in vain, he immediately brought a horse to carry away the game. But when the young negro saw the slain beast he suddenly drew back and his face became ashen-gray.

“Wobo!” he screamed.

Not until now did the children approach the stiffening carcass, for Stasch as yet had no definite idea of the kind of beast he had shot. At first sight the boy thought it might be a very large “serval,”^[34] but on taking a nearer view he knew that he was mistaken, for the dead beast was even larger than a leopard. Its golden-yellow skin was dotted with chestnut-brown spots; but its head was narrower than that of a leopard and resembled somewhat that of a wolf; its legs were longer, its paws broader, and its eyes enormous. One of them had been completely torn away by the bullet; the second still stared at the children as if out of a chasm, immovable, frightful. Stasch felt sure that it was some species of panther which zoologists knew as little about as geographers did of the Basso-Narok Sea.

Kali continued to gaze with terror at the outstretched animal, repeating in an undertone, as if afraid to awaken it:

“Wobo!—The Great Man has killed a wobo!”

But Stasch, turning to the girl, laid his hand on her little head, as if he wanted to make sure that wobo had not stolen her, and said:

“Do you see, Nell, do you see that even if you were quite grown up, you ought not to go alone in the jungle?”

“You are right, Stasch,” answered Nell with a penitent expression. “But may I go with you or with King?”

“Tell me, how did this happen? Did you hear it approach you?”

“No. A large golden fly flew out of the flowers, so I turned around toward it, and then I saw the beast just as it was creeping out from the ravine.”

“And what happened next?”

“It stood still and began to look at me.”

“Did it look at you long?”

“Long! It was only when I dropped the flowers and covered my face with my hands to protect myself that it began to creep up——”

Stasch knew that if Nell had been a negress she would have been carried off at once, and that she owed her deliverance to the surprise of the animal, which was disconcerted for a moment on the first sight of a creature so different from the people he had seen.

Again the boy shivered from head to foot.

“Thank heaven! Thank heaven that I turned back!”

Then he inquired further:

“What were you thinking of at that moment?”

“I wanted to call you, and—did not dare—but——”

“But—what?”

“But I thought that you would certainly defend me. I don’t know——”

At these words she threw her arm around his neck once more, and he began to stroke her hair.

“Are you not afraid now?”

“No.”

“My little Msimu! my Msimu! You see now what Africa is!”

“Yes. But you will kill all the vicious animals.”

“Yes, so I will!”

Both took another look at the beast of prey. Stasch, who wished to keep its skin as a souvenir, told Kali to skin it, but the negro was afraid that a second wobo might appear from out of the ravine, and he begged not to be left there alone, and when asked whether he was really more afraid of a wobo than he was of a lion he said:

“A lion roars in the night and does not jump over a fence, but a wobo jumps over it in broad daylight, kills many negroes in the very heart of the village, and then steals one and eats him. Neither a spear nor a bow is any protection against a wobo, for a wobo can’t be killed.”

“Nonsense,” said Stasch; “look at this one; isn’t it quite dead?”

“White man can kill a wobo, but not black man!” answered Kali.

At last they took a rope and tied the enormous cat to the horse, and the latter dragged it toward the camp.

But Stasch was unable to keep the skin, because King, who apparently guessed that the wobo had attempted to steal his little mistress, flew into such a rage that even Stasch was unable to pacify him. Grasping the slain beast with his trunk, he threw it twice into the air, then he began to beat it against a tree, and at last stamped it under his feet until it was a pulpy, formless mass. Stasch was only able to save its teeth, which with some other parts of its head he had laid down in the path of a swarm of ants, and an hour later they had cleaned up the bones so thoroughly that there was not a sign of flesh or of blood to be seen.