I sent Bombay to the king to
tell him the news, and ask him what he thought of doing next. He
replied that he would push for Gani direct; and sent back a pot
of pombe for the sick man.
16th. - The king to-day inquired after my health, and, strange to
say, did not accompany his message with a begging request.
17th. - My respite, however, was not long. At the earliest
possible hour in the morning the king sent begging for things one
hundred times refused, supposing, apparently, that I had some
little reserve store which I wished to conceal from him.
18th and 19th. - I sent Bombay to the palace to beg for pombe, as
it was the only thing I had an appetite for, but the king would
see no person but myself. He had broken his rifle washing-rod,
and this must be mended, the pages who brought it saying that no
one dared take it back to him until it was repaired. A guinea-
fowl was sent after dark for me to see, as a proof that the king
was a sportsman complete.
20th. - The king going out shooting borrowed my powder-horn. The
Wanguana mobbed the hut and bullied me for food, merely because
they did not like the trouble of helping themselves from the
king's garden, though they knew I had purchased their privilege
to do so at the price of a gold chronometer and the best guns
England could produce.
21st. - I now, for the first time, saw the way in which the king
collected his army together. The highroads were all thronged
with Waganda warriors, painted in divers colours, with plantain-
leaf bands round their heads, scanty goat-skin fastened to their
loins, and spears and shield in their hands, singing the tambure
or march, ending with a repetition of the word Mkavia, or
Monarch. They surpassed in number, according to Bombay, the
troops and ragamuffins enlisted by Sultain Majid when Sayyid
Sweni threatened to attack Zanzibar; in fact, he never saw such a
large army collected anywhere.
Bombay, on going to the palace, hoping to obtain plantains for
the men, found the king holding a levee, for the purpose of
despatching this said army somewhere, but where no one would
pronounce. The king, then, observing my men who had gone to
Unyoro together with Kamrasi's, questioned them on their mission;
and when told that no white men were there, he waxed wrathful,
and said it was a falsehood, for his men had seen them, and could
not be mistaken. Kamrasi, he said, must have hidden them
somewhere, fearful of the number of guns which now surrounded
him; and, for the same reason, he told lies, yes, lies - but no
man living shall dare tell himself lies; and now, as he could not
obtain his object by fair means, he would use arms and force it
out.
