Yes, such things of beauty are indeed a joy forever, and I can well understand what little Flossie meant when she talked of Kenia as her companion. As Umslopogaas, savage old Zulu that he was, said when I pointed out to him the peak hanging in the glittering air: “A man might look thereon for a thousand years and yet be hungry to see.” But he gave rather another colour to his poetical idea when he added in a sort of chant, and with a touch of that weird imagination for which the man was remarkable, that when he was dead he should like his spirit to sit upon that snow-clad peak forever, and to rush down the steep white sides in the breath of the whirlwind, or on the flash of the lightning, and “slay, and slay, and slay.”
“Slay what, you old bloodhound?” I asked.
This rather puzzled him, but at length he answered—
“The other shadows.”
“So thou wouldst continue thy murdering even after death?” I said.
“I murder not,” he answered hotly; “I kill in fair fight. Man is born to kill. He who kills not when his blood is hot is a woman, and no man. The people who kill not are slaves. I say I kill in fair fight; and when I am ‘in the shadow,’ as you white men say, I hope to go on killing in fair fight. May my shadow be accursed and chilled to the bone forever if it should fall to murdering like a bushman with his poisoned arrows!” And he stalked away with much dignity, and left me laughing.
Just then the spies whom our host had sent out in the morning to find out if there were any traces of our Masai friends about, returned, and reported that the country had been scoured for fifteen miles round without a single Elmoran being seen, and that they believed that those gentry had given up the pursuit and returned whence they came. Mr. Mackenzie gave a sigh of relief when he heard this, and so indeed did we, for we had had quite enough of the Masai to last us for some time. Indeed, the general opinion was that, finding we had reached the mission station in safety, they had, knowing its strength, given up the pursuit of us as a bad job. How ill-judged that view was the sequel will show.
After the spies had gone, and Mrs. Mackenzie and Flossie had retired for the night, Alphonse, the little Frenchman, came out, and Sir Henry, who is a very good French scholar, got him to tell us how he came to visit Central Africa, which he did in a most extraordinary lingo, that for the most part I shall not attempt to reproduce.
“My grandfather,” he began, “was a soldier of the Guard, and served under Napoleon. He was in the retreat from Moscow, and lived for ten days on his own leggings and a pair he stole from a comrade. He used to get drunk—he died drunk, and I remember playing at drums on his coffin. My father—”
Here we suggested that he might skip his ancestry and come to the point.
“Bien, messieurs!” replied this comical little man, with a polite bow. “I did only wish to demonstrate that the military principle is not hereditary. My grandfather was a splendid man, six feet two high, broad in proportion, a swallower of fire and gaiters. Also he was remarkable for his moustache. To me there remains the moustache and—nothing more.
“I am, messieurs, a cook, and I was born at Marseilles. In that dear town I spent my happy youth. For years and years I washed the dishes at the Hôtel Continental. Ah, those were golden days!” and he sighed. “I am a Frenchman. Need I say, messieurs, that I admire beauty? Nay, I adore the fair. Messieurs, we admire all the roses in a garden, but we pluck one. I plucked one, and alas, messieurs, it pricked my finger. She was a chambermaid, her name Annette, her figure ravishing, her face an angel’s, her heart—alas, messieurs, that I should have to own it!—black and slippery as a patent leather boot. I loved to desperation, I adored her to despair. She transported me—in every sense; she inspired me. Never have I cooked as I cooked (for I had been promoted at the hotel) when Annette, my adored Annette, smiled on me. Never”—and here his manly voice broke into a sob—“never shall I cook so well again.” Here he melted into tears.
“Come, cheer up!” said Sir Henry in French, smacking him smartly on the back. “There’s no knowing what may happen, you know. To judge from your dinner today, I should say you were in a fair way to recovery.”
Alphonse stopped weeping, and began to rub his back. “Monsieur,” he said, “doubtless means to console, but his hand is heavy. To continue: we loved, and were happy in each other’s love. The birds in their little nest could not be happier than Alphonse and his Annette. Then came the blow—sapristi!—when I think of it. Messieurs will forgive me if I wipe away a tear. Mine was an evil number; I was drawn for the conscription. Fortune would be avenged on me for having won the heart of Annette.
“The evil moment came; I had to go. I tried to run away, but I was caught by brutal soldiers, and they banged me with the butt-end of muskets till my mustachios curled with pain. I had a cousin a linen-draper, well-to-do, but very ugly. He had drawn a good number, and sympathized when they thumped me. ‘To thee, my cousin,’
