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

OUR EASTERN EXODUS 343
sufferings abound, so too the consolations, and like a
whiff of ozone from the Indian Ocean comes the whisper
that the British are actually working up into the Interior.
How my heart goes pit-a-pat at the news ! One Arab,
with a glassy stare, even tells me tremblingly that
news ! news !—they have already laid siege to Mulozi's
stronghold, and if we are in high glee he is in high
dudgeon at the tidings. Like a toothless negress, who
will never see anything to laugh at, this besieging of
their Karonga headquarters is a hard knock at my Arab
informant. Who will cash his ivory cheques now, seeing
Mulozi his old pawnbroker is nearly bankrupt? The
shrinking of the planet is proverbial, and here is another
proof of the smallness of our globe. Our whole concern
now is how to successfully wriggle out East by crossing
the Arab lines and, sub silentio^ join hands with our own
British kin. The problem of route, however, is a minor one
compared with the problem of secrecy, for in Africa a
mere glance is like proclaiming everything at Charing
Cross. With this triumphant reactionary majority
hemming us in, the stern demand is to be as secret as
the grave, for in Africa three can keep a secret only when
two of them are dead. So, too, with any new venture such
as this projected breaking through to the East, for every
three conspirators you can always reckon on four spies.
Therefore, on the native principle of '* not setting your
snare while the partridges are looking on," I slip off
towards the East like a thief in the night, the outline of a
plan dawning hazily on my mind. All my movements