Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

"NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT" 305
although all his instincts are up in arms against these
intruders, yet this happy tag of Stairs as to national-
ity quite makes Mushidis heart "white," as he terms it.
"They are English, do you hear, sons of the dust?"
shouts Mushidi to the crowd of people, " and we know
the English to be true people." Then he blows a heavy
blast through his nostrils and orders me to write out
his royal reply. Not a philippic this, but a chat on paper
in which Stairs, with wave of royal hand, is invited
to come on and put these Belgians in their proper place.
Once or twice I was just reaching for a metaphoric bucket
of cold water to dash on Mushidis political plans, when
he struck in again and again with his favourite and
favourable description of the English people — too
favourite and too favourable, as time would tell.
Now comes the great Lord Mayors Show day— 14th
December—when I am delegated by H.R.H. Mushidi
to push out to the suburbs and meet the advancing
expedition, orders being stringent that I must lead them
to a stipulated camping-ground in the capital—there or
nowhere. Lean and travel-stained, here they come at
last out of the grass with flags flying, Captain Bodson,
the Marquis de Bonchamps, Dr. Moloney and Kobinson,
led by Stairs, who headed the Indian file. Fresh and
trig from Europe, how they stare at me in my bush rags
and shaggy, unmanageable whiskers ! We greet each
other in French and English—French, I mean, as far as
the irregular verbs and no farther. But this wayside
pause is soon broken, and on we surge for Mushidi's in a