CHAPTER 16 Hermann Hagedorn’s: The Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt.

HE GOES OUT INTO THE WILDERNESS

ALMOST a year before the close of his term Roosevelt had decided to take a hunting-trip through Africa when he retired from the Presidency.  He had ever since his college days been eager to hunt the big game of the tropics.  He was hungry, moreover, for the wilderness.  Except for brief trips in the West, coursing wolves in Oklahoma and hunting bears with hounds in Colorado and Mississippi, he had kept to the crowded haunts of men

Immediately after the close of the convention which nominated Taft he had written to Mrs.  Cowles:
I am very much pleased with the result; and now, as regards myself, I am already looking away from politics and towards Africa.  When I am thru with a thing I am thru with it; and as long as I have power to work I want to turn heart and soul to the next bit of work to be done.  With the life I have led it is unlikely that I shall retain vigor to a very advanced age, and I want to be a man of action as long as I can.  I do not want to make the African trip as a mere holiday, and I am trying to arrange, and hope to succeed in arranging, that I shall go on a regular scientific trip representing, say, the National Museum, with one or two professional field taxidermists to cure the trophies and arrange for their transport back to this country.  

He made the arrangements he desired with the Smithsonian Institution, and less than three weeks after he left the White House on that stormy 4th of March, with his son Kermit, aged nineteen, as his companion, was on board the S.  S.  Hamburg, moving slowly down the harbor, amid the din of a thousand steamboat whistles, leaving behind him a disconsolate people who wondered how they were going to get along for twelve months without "T.  R. "

Wise men shook their heads and said he was too old for Africa, and if the lions did not get him, the fever would.  His friends were apprehensive; his enemies hoped for the worst; the "timid good" thought him bloodthirsty, and said so.  The American people as a whole wished him "good hunting," knowing quite definitely that he would come back, for the simple reason that they needed him. 

At Naples he changed from the Hamburg to the Admiral of the German East Africa line.  A day in the Italian city gave Europe its first opportunity to see the amazing American who had set European newspapers and European dinner-tables agog with curiosity and admiration. 

The King and Queen of Italy came to greet him.  The German Emperor sent gifts and messages.  The crowds went wild. 

The "folks back home" felt a thrill as they heard of it, feeling themselves honored in their fellow-citizen.  But Roosevelt, who was after bigger sport, was glad when the Admiral steamed past Capri toward Suez.  

He landed at Mombasa in British East Africa on April 21st, and found R.  J.  Cunninghame and Leslie Tarlton, famous African hunters and old friends of his, waiting for him with all the preparations complete for the long expedition through the heart of Africa to the Sudan, The actual hunt was to begin at Kapiti Plains, three hundred miles by train from the beautiful bay where Mombasa lay framed in tropic foliage. 

For two days the tram moved slowly north-westward through what seemed to Roosevelt's fascinated eyes a thrilling vision of a long-vanished era.  He sat on a seat across the cow-catcher.  The country through which he passed was a great government preserve and a very paradise for the naturalist.  Strange birds of every description brilliant rollers, sun-birds, bee-eaters, and weaver-birds-flew past or started up suddenly almost under the wheels of the train.  In the dusk the engine barely escaped running over a hyena. 

At one time [he wrote later] we passed a herd of a dozen or so great giraffes, cows and calves, cantering along through the open woods a couple of hundred yards to the right of the train.  Again, still closer, four waterbuck cows, their big ears thrown forward, stared at us without moving until we had passed.  Hartebeests were everywhere; one herd was on the track, and when the engine whistled they bucked and sprang with ungainly agility and galloped clear of the danger.  A long-tailed straw-colored monkey ran from one tree to another.  Huge black ostriches appeared from time to time.  Once a troop of impalla, close to the track, took fright; and as the beautiful creatures fled we saw now one and now another bound clear over the high bushes.  A herd of zebra clattered across a cutting of the line not a hundred yards ahead of the train; the hurried their progress, but only for a moment, and as we passed they were already turning round to gaze. 

At Kapiti Plains, their safari the term denoting both the caravan with which an expedition is made and the expedition itself was waiting for them, the tents already pitched.  Cunninghame, who knew the ways of the natives, was in charge of the small army of porters, gun-bearers, tent-boys, horse-boys, and native soldiers which was assembled at the station, two hundred or more of them, for the safari was traveling with heavy baggage.  There were four tons of salt alone to be carried for the curing of the skins, and an endless array of canned food.  One native bore a leather case of books.  That was the Pigskin Library, containing some eighty volumes ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Gregorovius's History of Rome.  The Roosevelts, it seemed, had no intention of being bored in Africa, for lack of reading-matter. 

On the third day in camp Roosevelt, having completed the arrangement of the "outfit," went on his first African hunt, riding northward from the railroad across the desolate flats of short grass to the low hills or kopjes beyond.  Almost immediately he came upon the shy denizens of the wilds here, there, and everywhere about him, hartebeest and wildebeest (antelope and brindled gnu), countless zebra and beautiful gazelles.  In a shower, the first of the season's "big rains," he shot his first African game. 

The day following he rode with his party to the hills of Kitanga, sixteen miles away, where Sir Alfred Pease, who had hunted with him the day before, had a large farm.  It lay in a beautiful country.  Below the one-story house, with its shady veranda on three sides, was a green valley with countless flat-topped acacia-trees; beyond were wide, lonely plains, low hills, and beyond these the snowy summit of Kilmanjaro, crimson in the twilight.  The plains were bare except for low bushes covered with flowers like morning-glories; but along the watercourses were mimosas in blossom and giant cactus-like euphorbias shaped like candelabra, and on the higher hills fig-trees and wild olives.  Wild flowers and birds were everywhere, brilliant with many colors. 

Day after day, Roosevelt rode, with only his native horse-boy and gun-bearers for company, out over the strange and fascinating plains.  These rides with his silent black followers through the lonely country, teeming with game, had a peculiar charm.  Here a herd of zebra stared at him as he rode by; there a hartebeest, perched as a lookout on some huge anthill a dozen feet high, leaped frantically away as it became aware of his presence.  On the plains were herds of hundreds and herds of thousands of the beautiful wild creatures; in the brush of the ravines were strange rustlings.  All day he was out, dozing at midday under some wide-branching tree or watching with his telescope the distant herds.  Then again he would mount, riding home finally as the vast, mysterious African landscape grew to wonderful beauty in the dying twilight.  

The region in which the Pease farm lay was noted lion country.  Lions were, in fact, the terror of the neighborhood, carrying off natives bodily and frequently attacking even mounted men.  All the men with whom Roosevelt hunted had had their adventures with the king of beasts.  Some of them had been badly mauled; all had had narrow escapes.  Every day, Roosevelt came on the skeleton of a zebra or a gnu some lion had killed and eaten, leaving the last of the ghastly meal to the vultures and ravens and the hideous marabout storks. 

He hunted lions twice in vain.  The third time, after beating through the ravines all morning with Kermit and his host without result, in a dry, sandy watercourse he came upon the track of a lion.  They all dismounted and walked cautiously along each side of the "creek," the horses following close behind.  The two dogs that ran ahead began to show signs of scenting the lion. 

The natives shouted and threw stones into each patch of brush, while Roosevelt and the other hunters stood where they could best command any probable exit. 

The hair of the dogs suddenly bristled as they drew toward a patch of brush in evident excitement. 

"Simba!" called one of the natives, pointing with his finger. 

The patch which he indicated was scarcely more than five yards away, just across the little ravine.  Roosevelt peered eagerly into the bushes.  He caught a glimpse of tawny hide. 

"Shoot!" some one called.  

Roosevelt fired.  There was a commotion in the bushes.  Kermit fired.  Two lions the size of a mastiff broke out on the farther side.  They were cubs and badly wounded.  The hunters, deeply disappointed, killed them in mercy. 

It was late afternoon, and th;re was scarce hope of another lion that day, but in the winding bed of another watercourse, two miles or so away, they came suddenly upon the spoor of two big lions. 

They beat through the brush without result and again mounted, riding to another patch a quarter of a mile away.  They shouted loudly as they approached it. 

The response was immediate.  There were loud grumblings, then crashings through the thick brush. 

The hunters flung themselves from their horses and for a breathless minute waited. 

Suddenly, thirty yards off, galloping out of the brush, appeared the tawny form of a great, mane-less lion. 

Roosevelt fired.  The soft-nosed bullet plowed forward through the lion's flank and he swerved, so that the shot that followed missed.  A third time Roosevelt fired. 
Down he came, sixty yards off, his hind quarters dragging, his head up, his ears back, his jaws open and lips drawn up in a prodigious snarl, as he endeavored to turn to face us.  His back was broken.  .  .  .  Kermit, Sir Alfred and I fired, almost together, into his chest.  His head sank and he died. 

The other lion had leaped out of the brush like-wise, and was now galloping off across the plain, six or eight hundred yards away.  The hunters flung themselves on their horses in pursuit.  Seeing them rapidly gain on him, the lion suddenly halted and came to bay in the tall grass of a slight hollow. 

Roosevelt, on horseback a hundred and fifty yards away, fired, but without effect.  Kermit fired with the same result.  Old Ben, the dog, barked loudly.  The lion ignored him. 

Roosevelt's black sais, his horse-boy, came running up and took hold of the bridle of his master's sorrel, the only man afoot, with a lion in the brush near by, making ready to charge.  Roosevelt dismounted quickly.  If the lion charged he would have to trust to straight powder to stop him.  Any attempt to get away on the horse was out of the question, with the plucky sais on foot. 

"Good," he said to the black boy.  "Now we'll see this thing through. "

The lion was now standing up, with head held low, glaring at his enemies and lashing his tail.  He growled, and his growling sounded like harsh and savage thunder, as, lashing his tail more and more quickly, he came on. 

Roosevelt knelt, resting his elbow on the boy's bent shoulder, took steady aim, and fired.  The lion fell over on his side, recovered himself, and stood up, growling savagely.  Again Roosevelt fired.  The bullet broke the lion's back.  He did not rise again. 

The Roosevelt party spent a fortnight at the ranch in the Kitanga Hills, then started "on safari" northward, the big line of burden-bearers laden with the baggage of the expedition, sixty pounds to a man.  The American flag, that flew each night over the tent of Bwana Makuba, as the natives called the Great Chief, was borne at the head of the column.  The saises led the extra horses, and here and there among the porters, or marching at their side, were the askaris, the rifle-bearing soldiers who guarded the caravan from attack from without and protected its white members from possible rebellion.  In the camps the tents were pitched in long lines, and every night countless fires were lighted to frighten away the hyenas and the lions that grunted and prowled in the darkness round about. 

Near the first camp they made, by a water-hole in a half-dried stream, Roosevelt killed three lions. 

The black askaris, pacing up and down with their rifles at the edge of the camp, kept a watchful eye that night. 

The safari moved on across the high veldt to the foot of Kilimakiu Mountain, over innumerable game trails that crossed and crisscrossed to hidden drinking-places baked dry after a two years' drought; past countless herds of game.  They camped near a large ostrich-farm in a grove of shade-trees over-looking the vast plain, with the far-off mountains amber and purple in the dusk. 

Roosevelt, hunting next morning with Slatter, the owner of the ostrich-farm, some nine miles from camp, had just sent a runner to fetch Heller, the naturalist of the expedition, to strip and prepare the skin of an eland he had shot, when a savage from a native village near by came running up to tell him and his companions that there was a rhinoceros on the hillside three-quarters of a mile away. 

They sprang to their saddles.  The huge beast was standing in the open, like an uncouth statue of some prehistoric creature.  Unsuspecting, he lay down. 

As Roosevelt stepped out of the shelter of the bushes to take aim, the piglike eyes of the rhinoceros saw him for the first time.  With extraordinary agility he jumped to his feet.  Roosevelt fired.  The animal wheeled and galloped full on him, the blood spouting from his nostrils. 

Roosevelt fired once more, the bullet entering between the neck and shoulder and piercing the heart.  The great bull came on, plowing the ground with horn and feet, and dropped dead just thirteen paces away. 

Now through the merciless equatorial heat the safari moved across the endless flats of scorched grass that were the Athi Plain.  At the junction of the Nairobi and Rewero rivers lay Jujo Farm, the ranch of an American named McMillan.  There they halted. 

For a week Roosevelt enjoyed the hospitality of the typical East African farm with its low, vine-shaded house and its garden beautiful with flowers and strange tropic birds.  Game lingered and fed directly around the house.  Hartebeests, wildebeests, and zebra grazed in sight on the plain.  Now and then a hippopotamus from the river near by came up by night and ravaged the garden. 

In the woods at the valley's edge, Roosevelt shot the stately water-buck and the graceful impalla that bounded with birdlike lightness in flight.  With a bullet he broke the neck of a python that charged him.  On the plain he shot giraffes.  One day he spied a hippopotamus in a black wooded pool. 

As we crept noiselessly up to the steep bank which edged the pool, the sight was typically African.  On the still water floated a crocodile, nothing but his eyes and nostrils visible.  The bank was covered with a dense growth of trees, festooned with vines; among the branches sat herons; a little cormorant dived into the water; and a very large and brilliantly colored kingfisher, with a red beak and large turquoise crest, perched unheedingly within a few feet of us. 

The hippopotamus escaped, for, as he was stealthily creeping upon him, there was a crash of a great body in the papyrus near by. 

"A rhino!" cried his companions.  "Shoot! Shoot!"

The rhinoceros broke from cover, tv/itching its head from side to side as it came lumbering straight at him.  Roosevelt fired, but the ungainly brute seemed to come on only more swiftly.  He fired again.  The rhinoceros turned heavily into the thicket.  Cautiously Roosevelt pursued him through the tangle of thorn-bushes, reeds, and small low-branching trees.  There was a sudden furious snorting.  Once more the animal turned and charged.  As Roosevelt fired again the rhino wheeled, struggled back into the thicket, and fell. 

From Jujo Farm, the Roosevelt party proceeded a dozen miles to the ranch of a settler named Heatley, who owned a twenty-thousand acre farm on the Kamiti River.  Game of all sorts was abundant there, the hartebeest and zebra running in great herds.  It was the buffalo they were after here, however, the huge beasts that made their home in the papyrus swamps.  Once, cautiously creeping on two or three, they were suddenly confronted with eighty or more that had lain hidden in the tall grass and now, at the sight of danger, fronted the hunters in a quarter-circle with angry, outstretched heads. 

It was not a nice country in which, to be charged by the herd [wrote Roosevelt, later], and for a moment things trembled in the balance.  There was a perceptible motion of uneasiness among some of our followers. 

"Stand steady!    Don't run!" I called out. 

"And don't shoot!" called out Cunninghame; for to do either would invite a charge. 

A few seconds passed, and then the unwounded mass of the herd resumed their flight. 

The Roosevelt party now proceeded to Nairobi, on the railroad, where the professional naturalists, Heller and Mearns, prepared the hundreds of specimens the members of the party had shot, for shipment to the coast.  They spent a week in the prosperous and attractive town, then, after a brief trip up the railway, started south from Kijabe on June sth for a sixty-mile trek through the waterless country which lies across the way to the Sotik on the border of German East Africa. 

They had added four ox-wagons to the expedition, each drawn by seven or eight yoke of the native humped cattle, and for three days crawled through "the thirst," making the longest halt by day and trekking steadily forward by night under a full moon.  The trail led first through open brush, then out on the vast and dusty plain.  The natives sang weirdly.  At intervals a zebra barked in the dim distance; jackals shrieked; and the plains plover wailed and scolded overhead.  During the third night came a deluge of rain.  Through it Roosevelt heard two lions grunting not far ahead.  The storm had made them bold; they were after prey.  Roosevelt set a guard; the natives built fires; the lions crept away. 

Day by day the expedition moved southward, camping now by running streams amid aloes and cactus and mimosa and every variety of strange beast and bird, tiny and huge.  There was good hunting by day of giraffes and rhinoceroses, topi and cheetah and lion, and comfortable traveling, for the weather was cool.  By night the huntsmen told stories about the fire while lions moaned close by. 

They turned northward at last toward Lake Naivasha, crossing a dry watercourse known as the "salt marsh," where the beauty of bird-song and color overhead gave no hint of the cobras that lurked beneath.  There were no paths here made by human feet, and the safari followed the game trails or made their own way.  They were now among bold mountain ridges in a wild and beautiful country of flowers of many colors in the open places and tangled archways through forests of strange trees.  The trail wound through narrow clefts, across ravines of singular beauty, and along the brink of sheer cliffs.  At the end of four difficult days they descended to Lake Naivasha. 

Here, Roosevelt had been told, would be hippopotami in the lagoons and among the lily-pads; and he heard them that night, bellowing and roaring as they fought among themselves.  An English settler took him in a steam-launch after his quarry next day, but it was twenty-four hours later before he brought down his game.  He struck the tremendous beast at a hundred yards as it was about to lumber off into the papyrus.  The hippopotamus spun round, plunged into the water, and charged him where he stood in the launch, floundering and splashing through the water-lilies, his huge jaws wide open.  Again and again Roosevelt fired.  The beast never swerved, though every bullet found its mark.  He fired again, this time striking the brain; the charge was ended. 

Two days later, in a rowboat in deep water, he wounded another hippopotamus.  It sank.  A native felt for the body with a pole and immediately called out in terror as the huge monster came to the surface, striking the boat so that it nearly upset.  He was followed by another and another, until the water seemed to boil with the ungainly beasts, scattering hither and thither. 

The two rowers, with frightened eyes, began to back water out of the perilous neighborhood.  Suddenly, twenty feet away, a huge head shot out of the lake, the jaws wide open, making ready to charge.  

Roosevelt fired on the instant.  The beast sank out of sight.  Roosevelt felt the boat quiver as the hippo passed underneath. 

In the midst of his hippo-hunt he was prostrated by a sudden attack of the fever from which he had.  suffered at long intervals ever since his Cuban campaign.  But he did not let it interfere seriously with the day's business.  His diary for that period of illness runs as follows:

July 16.  Wrote fever.  July 17.  Wrote fever.  July 18.  Getting better July 20.  5 Hippo. 
The party returned once more to Nairobi, the naturalists to pack and transport the accumulated skins and antlers, Roosevelt to visit some neighboring missions and to lay a cornerstone or two.  Then again they left civilization behind them for a four days' march across the high plateaus and mountain chains of the Aberdare range to Neri. 

The steep, twisting trail was slippery with sand.  Our last camp, at an altitude of about ten thousand feet, was so cold that the water froze in the basins, and the shivering porters slept in numbed discomfort.  There was constant fog and rain, and on the highest plateau, the bleak landscape, shrouded in driving mist, was northern to the senses.  The ground was rolling and through the deep valleys ran brawling brooks of clear water; one little stream, suddenly tearing down a hillside, might have been that which Childe Roland crossed before he came to the dark tower. 

At Neri, the District Commissioner had arranged a great Kikiyu dance in Roosevelt's honor, and before him the half-naked savages swung rhythmically in rings and columns, springing and shouting while the drums throbbed and the horns blared and the women shrieked their shrill applause.  The next day he was again on his way with Cunninghame, making for snow-capped Mt.  Kenia. 

They made their camp well up among the foot-hills in an open glade, surrounded by the green wall of the tangled forest, where parrots chattered and monkeys called.  They were after elephant. 

Three days of cautious progress through the dim, cool archways of the forest, and at last they came upon the herd whose tracks they had been stealthily following.  The great, lumbering animals were now only a few rods in advance of them, but the jungle was dense, and even now they could see nothing. 

They crept closer.  A great bull with heavy tusks lifted his head and slowly turned it toward the hunters.  Roosevelt fired.  The shock stunned the elephant, who stumbled forward, half falling, recovered himself, and fell crashing to earth under a second bullet. 

At the same instant the thick bushes parted at Roosevelt's left and through them surged a huge bull elephant, charging.  The matted mass of tough creepers snapped like a pack-thread before his rush.  He could have touched Roosevelt with his trunk. 

Roosevelt leaped aside.  He had had no time to reload his gun.  He dodged behind a tree trunk, opening his rifle, throwing out the empty shells, and slipping in two cartridges. 

Cunninghame fired right and left and flung him-self into the bushes. 

The elephant stopped short in his charge, wheeled, and disappeared in the thick cover. 

The two men ran forward, but the jungle had closed behind him.  They heard him trumpet shrilly in the distance.  Then there was silence. 

Roosevelt left the naturalists in charge of his elephant and returned to Neriboma to gather a safari of Kikuyu porters for a hunting trip along the Guaso Nyero.  Cunninghame and Heller joined him in a week, and together they proceeded to Meru on the northeastern slopes of Mt.  Kenia, where Kermit Roosevelt and Tarlton, who had been on a safari of their own, rejoined the party.  At Meru they remained a fortnight, hunting elephant and rhinoceros; then the party once more split, Roosevelt and Cunninghame with a donkey-train going off for a month along the Guaso Nyero after giraffe and ostrich and eland and oryx and buffalo and crocodile.  It was a hunter's paradise through which they trekked, and a land of varying and fascinating beauty.  October was two-thirds over before they again reached Nairobi.  

Five days later they were once more under way, starting from the railroad at Londiani for the Uasin Gishu plateau and the foot-hills of Mt.  Elgon.  There, crossing and recrossing the equator, now shivering in northern cold, now baking in tropic heat, they spent a month.  At Sergoi Lake they watched a company of savage warriors surround and kill a lion with their spears. 

Roosevelt returned to Nairobi the end of November, to bid farewell to his friends there and to the safari that had served him faithfully for seven months.  Then he proceeded with his party to Kisumu on Lake Victoria Nyanza where a twenty-four hours' trip by steamer took them to Eutebbe, the seat of the English Governor of Uganda.  The shores they skirted were beautiful with luxuriant meadows and forests, but the fisherfolk who had once prospered there had vanished, stricken with the terror that had crept on them out of the jungle to the north and slain them by thousands with the sleeping-sickness. 

Roosevelt secured a new safari at Kampalla, just west of Eutebbe, and, after paying his respects to the little black King of Uganda, proceeded with his party northwestward toward Lake Albert Nyanza.  For days they passed through the high elephant grass, twice as tall as a man on horseback.  In it, here and there, were strange trees where monkeys chattered and birds of many colors sprang like bright sparks in and out of the green shadow.  The hills became higher as they went on, and thorn-trees and royal palms flanked the trail.  Once they passed a company of porters returning from the Congo.  Their master, an elephant-poacher, had been killed by natives.  Once they came upon elephant spoor, and, following it through dim, cavernous windings in the dark, vine-covered jungle, were charged by the huge beast.  Steadily, silently, his feet swishing through the long grass, he came on.  Roosevelt and Kermit, facing him together, stopped him, and then, as he veered round, followed him for hours through the wild tangle.  They finished him at last. 

His trunk made excellent soup. 

The chiefs of the native villages had been warned some time before of their coming, and each camp, with open rest-house and wicker-work fence, was prepared for them when they arrived.  The local chief greeted them, when they came, with music of rudimentary fiddles and harps, and bowing and clapping of hands.  At Hoima, a little native town, they stayed for a day, exchanging courtesies with the King of Unyoro and the Episcopalian and Roman Catholic missionaries.  Then once more they proceeded northwestward through the luxuriant thicket where birds were a delight and puff-adders a constant peril.  On January 5th they reached Lake Albert Nyanza. 

A flotilla consisting of a crazy little steam-launch, two sailboats, and two large rowboats  was waiting for them, and immediately started northward down the White Nile. 

The brilliant tropic stars made lanes of light on the lapping water as we ran on through the night.  The river-horses roared from the reed-beds, and snorted and plunged beside the boat, and crocodiles slipped sullenly into the river as we glided by.  Toward morning a mist arose, and through it the crescent of the dying moon shone red and lurid.  Then the sun flamed aloft and soon the African landscape, vast, lonely, mysterious, stretched on every side in a shimmering glare of heat and light; and ahead of us the great, strange river went twisting away into the distance. 

They disembarked after two days in the Lado, northeast of the Belgian Congo, to hunt the white rhinoceros.  Here they were in the heart of the African jungle, a wild and lonely country where they saw no human beings except an occasional party of naked savages armed with bows and poisoned arrows.  The heat by day and night was terrific.  Roosevelt was bitten by the sleeping-sickness fly, but escaped infection, though at a river village where they had stopped the day before eight natives were dying of the dread disease, and the other white members of the party were all suffering at times from fever, dysentery, or heat prostration.  All night the hippopotami grunted and brayed and splashed among the reeds close to their camp, and now and again the hunters would hear the roaring of lions and the trumpeting of elephants.  One night a party of lions, scenting rhinoceros meat, prowled within fifteen feet of the tents. 

Game was plentiful and the party remained in the neighborhood three weeks or more, securing specimens for the museum.  For meat they depended entirely on their rifles.  Once Kermit shot a crocodile.  It was a female and contained a little more than four dozen eggs.     They scrambled the eggs and ate them. 

Once more they took to their flotilla and steamed and drifted down the Nile, white men and black men, tents, food, and spoils of the chase all huddled together under the torrid sun.  At Nimule, twenty-six hours later, they embarked, to begin on February 17th the ten days' march through the terrifying heat to Gondokoro. 

At quarter of three in the morning the whistle blew; we dressed and breakfasted while the tents were taken down and the loads adjusted.  Then off we strode, through the hot starlit night, our backs to the Southern Cross and our faces toward the Great Bear; for we were marching northward and homeward.  The drum throbbed and muttered as we walked, on and on, along the dim trail.  At last the stars began to pale, the gray east changed to opal and amber and amethyst, the red splendor of the sunrise flooded the world, and to the heat of the night succeeded the more merciless heat of the day.  Higher and higher rose the sun.  The sweat streamed down our faces and the bodies of the black men glistened like oiled iron. 

And so they came to Gondokoro and the world of officials, and palatial ships, and telegrams from potentates, and gloomy letters from old friends telling how the things that Theodore Roosevelt had fought for among his own people were in peril of destruction. 
The great hunting trip of Bwana Makuba was ended.