The morning of the third day came. Usual camp activities carried them on until nine o'clock. Kingozi was settled in his chair awaiting what the day would bring forth. The Leopard Woman coming across from her tent to the guest house stopped short at what she saw.
Across the way, a half or three-quarters of a mile distant, beyond the green papyrus swamp, on the slope from the edge of the forest, appeared a long file of men bearing burdens on their heads. Even at this distance she made out the colour of occasional garments of khaki cloth, or the green of canvas on the packs.
She arrived at Kingozi's side simultaneously with Cazi Moto.
"A safari comes, _bwana_," said the latter. "It is across the swamp."
"What kind of a safari?" he asked quietly.
The Leopard Woman answered him. There was no note of jubilation in her voice.
"It is a white man's safari," she told him. "I can see khaki--and they are marching as a white man's safari marches."
"Get my glasses," he told Cazi Moto. Then to her, his voice vibrating with emotion too long controlled: "Look and tell me, fairly. I must know. Whatever the outcome you must tell me truth. It will not matter. I can do nothing."
"I will tell you the truth," she promised, raising the glasses.
"It is Winkleman's safari," she announced sadly. "I have been able to see. It is a very large safari with many loads," she added.
Kingozi's face turned gray. He dropped his face into his hands. Gently she laid her hand on his bowed head. Thus they waited, while the safari, evidently under local guidance, plunged into some hidden path through the papyrus, and so disappeared.
Let us now follow Simba, Mali-ya-bwana, and their six men and the two strange _shenzis_ who were to act as guides.
They started off across the veldt at about four o'clock of the afternoon and travelled rapidly until dark. The gait they took was not a run, but it got them over the ground at four and a half to five miles an hour. Shortly after sundown they stopped for an hour, ate, drank, and lay flat on their backs. Then they arose, lighted a candle end in the mica lantern, and resumed their journey. Thus they travelled day and night for three days. There seemed to be neither plan nor regularity to their journeying. Whenever they became tired enough to sleep, they lay down and slept for a little while; whenever they became hungry, they ate; and whenever they thirsted, they drank, paying no attention whatever to the time of day, the state of their larder, or the distance to more water. No ideas of conservation hampered them in the least. If the water gave out, they argued, they would be thirsty; but it was as well to be thirsty later from lack of water than to be thirsty now from some silly idea of abstention. No white man could have travelled successfully under that system. Nevertheless, the little band held together and arrived in the fringe of hills fit and comparatively fresh.