Again retracing his steps, Tom thrust his alpenstock through the narrow opening, and shouted to attract Mbutu's attention, to the complete discomfiture of the bolder spirits among the feathered inmates of the cavern, which had clung to their homes throughout this alarming episode. Mbutu's quick ears easily caught the signal, and he had no difficulty in discovering the cleft, which proved to be only a few feet from the stockade. Tom then returned by the road he had come, well satisfied with this little adventure, which came as a welcome break in his enforced idleness.
A day or two after this, Tom said to Mbutu:
"The people here are exceedingly kind, and I have learnt a great deal that is extremely interesting; but we can't stay here for ever. I should think in another week I'll be strong enough to make tracks, eh?"
"Sure nuff, sah. Nyanza ober dar;" he pointed almost due east; "chief send men too; help sah 'long."
"As a sort of escort, you mean, for I don't want to be carried again. I shan't forget that time in the forest, Mbutu, nor how much I owe to you. I feel years older, somehow; and, by the by, d'you think there's such a thing as a razor in the village? I can't see myself, having no looking-glass, but I feel that during that illness my face has got a trifle downy."
"No razor, sah; Bahima pluck hair out. Muzema-wa-taba do it for sah."
"That's the chief's pipe-lighter, isn't it? No, thanks! let him continue lighting his master's pipe. Talking of that, since everybody smokes here, women included, I feel rather out of it without a pipe too; but really their tobacco is so--well, so intensely aromatic that I don't care to risk it. How that medicine-man scowls at me, by the way." Mabruki had just passed them. "I am extremely sorry to have been the unconscious means of upsetting his apple-cart; and I wish he'd see reason and make friends."
"No like medicine-man," said Mbutu hurriedly, looking over his shoulder at the strange figure departing.
"I wonder what he does in those little fetish-huts all round the village," added Tom. "Come now, d'you think he'd be pleased if I asked him for one of those wooden charms I've seen him gibbering over?"
"Nebber, nebber, sah," returned the boy earnestly. "Sah white man; no want dem things; sah laugh inside."