The _sultani_ duly appeared the next morning; women brought in firewood and products of the country to trade; all was well. The entire day, and the succeeding days for over a week, Kingozi sat under his big tree, smoking his black pipe. The _sultani_ sat beside him. For long periods at a time nothing at all was said. Then for equally long periods a lively conversation went on, through an interpreter mostly, though occasionally the _sultani_ launched into his bastard Swahili or Kingozi ventured a few words in the new tongue. Once in a while some intimate would saunter into view, and would be summoned by his king. Then Kingozi patiently did the following things:

(a) He performed disappearing tricks with a rupee or other small object; causing it to vanish, and then plucking it from unexpected places.

(b) With a pair of scissors--which were magic aplenty in themselves--he cut a folded paper in such a manner that when unfolded a row of paper dolls was disclosed. This was a very successful trick. The pleased warriors dandled them up and down delightedly in an _n'goma_.

(c) He opened and shut an opera hat. The ordinary "plug hat" was known to these people, but not an opera hat.

(d) He allowed them to look through his prism glasses.

(e) On rare occasions he lit a match.

This vaudeville entertainment was always a huge success. The newcomers squatted around the two chairs, and the conversation continued.

Bibi-ya-chui occasionally stood near and listened. The subjects were trivial in themselves, and repeated endlessly.

Ten minutes of this bored her to the point of extinction. She could not understand how Kingozi managed to survive ten hours day after day. Only once was he absent from his post, and then for only a few hours. He went out accompanied by Simba and a dozen _shenzis_, and shot a wildebeeste. The tail of this--an object much prized as a fly whisk--he presented to his majesty. All the rest of the time he talked and listened.

"It is such childish nonsense!" the Leopard Woman expostulated. "How can you do it?"

"Goes with the job. It's a thing you must learn to do if you would get on in this business."

And once more she seemed to catch a glimpse of the infinity of savage Africa, which has been the same for uncounted ages, impersonal, without history, without the values of time!

But had she known it, Kingozi was getting what he required. Information came to him a word now, a word then; promises came to him in single phrases lost in empty gossip. He collected what he wanted grain by grain from bushels of chaff. The whole sum of his new knowledge could have been expressed in a paragraph, took him a week to get, but was just what he wanted. If he had asked categorical questions, he would have received lies. If he had attempted to hurry matters, he would have got nothing at all.

About sundown the _sultani_ would depart, followed shortly by the last straggler of his people. The succeeding hours were clear of _shenzis_, for either the custom of the country or the presence of strangers seemed to demand an _n'goma_ every evening. In the night stillness sounds carried readily. The drums, no longer rubbed but beaten in rhythm; the shrill wailing chants of women; the stamp and shuffle of feet; the cadenced clapping of hands rose and fell according to the fervour of the dance. The throb of these sounds was as a background to the evening--fierce, passionate, barbaric.

After the departure of the _sultani_ Kingozi took a bath and changed his clothes. The necessity for this was more mental than physical. Then he relaxed luxuriously. It was then that he resumed his relations with the Leopard Woman, and that they discussed matters of more or less importance to both.

The first evening they talked of the wonder of the ivory stockade. Kingozi had not yet had an opportunity to find out whence the tusks had come, whether the elephants had been killed in this vicinity, or whether the ivory had been traded from the Congo.

"It is very valuable," he said. "I must find out whether old Stick-in-the- mud knows what they are worth, or whether he can be traded out of them on any reasonable basis."

"You will not be going farther," she suggested one evening, apropos of nothing.

"Farther? Why not?" he asked rather blankly.

"You told me you were an ivory hunter," she pointed out.

"Ah--yes. But I have hardly the goods to trade--come back later," he stumbled, for once caught off his guard. "I'm really looking for new hunting grounds."

She did not pursue the subject; but the enigmatic smile lurked for a moment in the depths of her eyes.

Every night after supper Kingozi caused his medicine chest to be brought out and opened, and for a half-hour he doctored the sick. On this subject he manifested an approach to enthusiasm.

"I know I can't doctor them all," he answered her objection, "and that it's foolish to pick out one here and there; but it interests me. I told you I was a medical student by training." He fingered over the square bottles, each in its socket. "This is not the usual safari drug list," he said. "I like to take these queer cases and see what I can do with them. I may learn something; at any rate, it interests me. McCloud at Nairobi fitted me out; and told me what it would be valuable to observe."

She appeared interested, and shortly he became enough convinced of this to show and explain each drug separately. The quinine he carried in the hydrochlorate instead of the sulphate, and he waxed eloquent telling her why. Crystals of iodine as opposed to permanganate of potash for antiseptic he discussed. From that he branched into antisepsis as opposed to asepsis as a practical method in the field.

"Theory has nothing to do with it," said he. "It's a matter of which will _work!_"

It was all technical; but it interested her for the simple reason that Kingozi was really enthusiastic. True enthusiasm, without pose or self- consciousness, invariably arouses interest.