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During the ten days they waited there, not a single branch was broken from a tree, not a single axe-stroke swung to leave a tell-tale white blaze on the dark bush. The.
tiny night fire fed with dry trash and dead wood was carefully screened, and before dawn was smothered with sand so that not a wisp of smoke was left to mark them in the day.
Voices were never raised above conversational tones, and even the clatter of a bucket brought such a swift and ferocious reprimand from Fly
On the eighth night the scouts that Fly
Last night three old bulls drank at the water-hole of the sick hyena. They carried teeth so, and so, and so..
showing the arm to measure the length of ivory, ". - - apart from them, ten cows left their feet in the mud, six of them with young calves. Yesterday, at the place where the hill of Inhosana breaks and turns its arms, I saw where another herd had crossed, moving towards the dawn; five young bulls, twenty-three cows and..
The reports were jumbled, unintelligible to Sebastian who did not carry a map of the land in his head. But Fly
He noted the estimates of thickness and length of tusk.
Immature ivory was hardly worth carrying home, good only for carving into billiard balls and piano keys. The market was glutted with it.
But on the other hand, a prime tusk, over one hundred pounds in weight, seven foot long and twice the thickness of a fat woman's thigh, would fetch fifty shillings a pound avoirdupois.
An animal carrying such a tusk in each side of his face was worth four or five hundred pounds in good, gold sovereigns.
One by one Fly
There were no elephant on the Tabora escarpment. A
blight had struck the groves of mapundu trees, and withered the fruit before it could ripen. Dearly the elephant loved mapundu berries and they had gone elsewhere to find them.
They had gone up to the Sonia Heights, to Kilombera, and to the Salito hills.
Salito was an easy day's march from the German boma at Mahenge. Fly
As each of the scouts finished his report, Fly
"What of Plough the Earth?"
And they said, "We saw nothing. We heard nothing."
The last scout came in two days after the others. He looked sheepish and more than a little guilty.
"Where the hell have you been?" Fly
"Knowing that the great Lord Fini would ask of certain matters, I turned aside in my journey to the village of Yetu, who is my uncle. My uncle is a fundi. No wild thing walks, no lion kills, no elephant breaks a branch from a tree but my uncle knows of it. Thus I went to ask him of these things
"Thy uncle is a famous fundi, he is also a famous breeder of daughters," Fly
"Indeed, my uncle Yetu is a man of fame." Hurriedly the scout went on to turn Fly
"You do not bring a story from the honey-bird to cool my anger against you?" Fly
"of Plough the Earth while you were ploughing the bellies of your uncle's many daughters?" His eagerness was soured by scepticism. Too many times he had followed wild stories in his pursuit of the great bull. He leaned forward across the fire to watch the gun-bearer's eyes as he replied, "It is true, lord." Fly
For his first ten years in Africa, Fly
Then he saw a myth come alive. One evening, camped near the Zambezi in Portuguese territory, he had taken a bird-gun and walked along the bank hoping for a brace of sand-grouse. Two miles from the camp he had seen a flight of birds coming in to the water, flying fast as racing pigeons, whistling in on backswept wings, and he had ducked into a thick bank of reeds and watched them come.