The safari remained encamped at this spot all the next day, and the day succeeding. Natives came into camp, at first only the men, hesitatingly; then the women. A brisk little trade sprang up for yams, bananas, _m'wembe_ meal, eggs, and milk. No shrewder bargainer exists than your African safari man, and these soon discovered that beads and wire possessed great purchasing power in this unsophisticated country. The bartering had to be done in sign language, as Swahili seemed to be unknown; and no man in the safari understood this unknown tongue. Kingozi sat in state before his tent, smoking his pipe--which he still enjoyed in spite of his blindness--and awaiting events in that vast patience so necessary to the successful African traveller. Occasionally a group of the chatting natives would drift toward his throne, would fall into awestricken silence, would stare, would drift away again; but none addressed him. The Leopard Woman, obeying rules that Kingozi had managed to convey as very strict, held apart. Only in the evening, after the lion-fearing visitors had all departed, did they sit together sociably by the fire. The nights at this elevation were cool--cold they seemed to the heat-seasoned travellers.
There was not much conversation. Kingozi was lost in a deep brooding, which she respected. The occasion was serious, and both knew it. During the moment of decision the man's duty and principle had been the most important matters in the world. Once the decision was irrevocably made, however, these things fell below the horizon. There loomed only the thought of perpetual blindness. Kingozi faced it bravely; but such a fact requires adjustment, and in these hours of waiting the adjustments were being made.
Only once or twice did Bibi-ya-chui utter the thoughts that continually possessed her.
"It seems so foolish!" she complained to him. "You are making yourself blind for always; and you are going to be a prisoner for long! If you would go back, you would not be captured and held by Winkleman when you reach M'tela!"
But such expostulations she knew to be vain, even as she uttered them.
At about nine o'clock of the third day Cazi Moto reported a file of warriors, many warriors--"like the leaves of grass!" armed with spears and shields, wearing black ostrich plumes, debouching from the grove a mile across the way. At the same instant the Leopard Woman, her alarm causing her to violate her instructions, came to Kingozi's camp.