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Mohammed was gone for two days and a half, but Sebastian and Fly
Under a sun shelter of palm fronds they feasted three times a day on crab and sand-clams, and big green rock lobster which Sebastian fished from the lagoon, baking them in their. shells over the fire that Fly
On the first night the entertainment was provided by Fly
There was one purple cobra in particular which pursued him doggedly, and it was only after Fly
Gradually, however, the shakes subsided and by the following noon he was able to eat three large rock-lobsters and then collapse into a death-like sleep.
He woke in the late evening, looking as well as Sebastian had ever seen him, to greet the returning Mohammed and the dozen tall Angoni tribesmen who accompanied him.
They returned Fly
Fly
Luti smiled broadly, and bobbed his head in pleasure at being singled out by Fly
"Mohammed," Fly
"We are a day's march away."
"In which direction?"
"North."
Then we are in Portuguese territory!" exalted Fly
The Rovuma river was the frontier between Portuguese Mozambique and German East Africa. Once in Portuguese territory, Fly
All their efforts at extraditing him from the Portuguese had proved unsuccessful, for Fly
"You can relax, Bassie boy. Old Fleischer can't touch us now. And in three or four days we'll be home."
The first leg of the journey took them to Luti's village.
Lolling in their maschilles, hammock-like litters slung beneath a long pole and carried by four of Luti's men at a synchronized jog trot, Fly
The litter-bearers sang as they ran, and their deep melodious voices, coupled with the swinging motion of the maschille, lulled Sebastian into a mood of deep contentment. Occasionally he dozed. Where the path was wide enough to allow the maschilles to travel side by side, he lay and chatted with Fly
Each time Sebastian saw something new, he called across for Fly
In every glade and clearing were herds of the golden brown impala; delicate little creatures that watched them in wide-eyed curiosity as they passed.
Troops of guinea-fowl, like a dark cloud shadow on the earth, scratched and chittered on the banks of every stream.
Heavy, yellow eland, with their stubby horns and swinging dewlaps, trotting in Indian file, formed a regal frieze along the edge of the bush.
Sable and toon antelope; purple-brown waterbuck, with a perfect circle of white branded on their rumps; buffalo, big and black and ugly; giraffe, dainty little klipspringer, standing like chamois on the tumbled granite boulders of a kopje. The whole land seethed and skittered with life.
There were trees so strange in shape and size and foliage that Sebastian could hardly credit them as existing. Swollen baobabs, fifty feet in circumference, standing awkwardly as prehistoric monsters, fat pods filled with cream of tartar hanging from their deformed branches. "There were forests of rns asa trees, leaves not green as leaves should be, but rose and chocolate and red. Fever trees sixty feet high, with bright yellow trunks, shedding their bark like the brittle parchment of a snake's skin. Groves of mopani, whose massed foliage glittered a shiny, metallic green in the sun;
and in the jungle growth along the river banks, the lianas climbed up like long, grey worms and hung in loops and festoons among the wild fig and the buffalo-bean vines and the tree ferns.