"All four shots in the mouth; the honours are easy," said Mr. Halliday. "You're a better shot than I thought you, John. We'd better pull the thing up, hadn't we?"
But they found the post so firmly fixed that they could neither pull it up nor push it over. It was evidently a case for digging. Having no implements with them they were obliged to leave it standing; but Mr. Halliday showed the admiring natives the bullet marks in the mouth, and, slapping the top of the head, assured them that the devil would do no more harm. He then gave the chief another strip of cloth and a handful of beads in reward for his services, and the party returned to the river, where the happy result of the expedition was announced to the main body of the villagers, from whom the proceedings had been hidden by the contour of the ground. The chief wished Mr. Halliday to feast with him, and afterwards witness a war-dance, and when the invitation was declined, he insisted on his white friend accepting a small pied goat.
"The pioneer of our stock, John," said Mr. Halliday. "But the chief must take charge of it until we come up to settle. I don't suppose we shall see it again."
But in this he was mistaken, for when he came some weeks later to enter into occupation of his estate, the goat was brought to him with every mark of respect by a deputation of the villagers.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH--Juma takes to the Bush
Mr. Halliday spent the next two days in surveying the neighbourhood of Mr. Gilmour's stake. The country was all that his friend had described. The soil was rich; the river, as the natives informed him, never ran dry, though its waters were sometimes very low; and the valley was intersected by several smaller watercourses, which, though now dry, were full streams in the rainy season, so that the estate would never lack irrigation except after long-continued drought. Being well satisfied with the locality, Mr. Halliday got his men to erect a number of boundary posts about a rectangular area of some 1,500 acres, and then set off on the return journey to Nairobi to lodge a claim for a Government grant in the office of the District Commissioner. He paid his preliminary survey fee of seventy-five rupees; then, knowing that it would be months before the official survey was made, he decided to purchase stores, stock, and material for building a bungalow and out-houses, and to engage porters to convey these to the spot, and a certain number of servants to staff the farm. Formal possession of the land would be granted as soon as it was certified to be actually occupied and the balance of the survey fee, some two hundred rupees, was paid; but the lease for ninety-nine years would not be made out until the Commissioner received proof that development had taken place, which practically meant the expenditure of forty times the rent, this being twelve cents an acre. Thus it would be about three years before Mr. Halliday was definitely accepted as a settler and leaseholder, and he impressed upon John that they must both put their backs into the work if they intended to be successful.