“Samama hapa,” he observed.

There!  That was the word I had been frantically searching my memory for!  Samama—­stop!

The others struggled in.  We were very warm.  Up to the bench led a tiny car track, the rails not over two feet apart, like the toy railroads children use.  This did not look much like grownup transportation, but it and the bench and the dim lantern represented all the visible world.

We sat philosophically on the bench and enjoyed the soft tropical night.  The air was tepid, heavy with unknown perfume, black as a band of velvet across the eyes, musical with the subdued undertones of a thousand thousand night insects.  At points overhead the soft blind darkness melted imperceptibly into stars.

After a long interval we distinguished a distant faint rattling, that each moment increased in loudness.  Shortly came into view along the narrow tracks a most extraordinary vehicle.  It was a small square platform on wheels, across which ran a bench seat, and over which spread a canopy.  It carried also a dim lantern.  This rumbled up to us and stopped.  From its stern hopped two black boys.  Obeying a smiling invitation, we took our places on the bench.  The two boys immediately set to pushing us along the narrow track.

We were off at an astonishing speed through the darkness.  The night was deliciously tepid; and, as I have said, absolutely dark.  We made out the tops of palms and the dim loom of great spreading trees, and could smell sweet, soft odours.  The bare-headed, lightly-clad boys pattered alongside whenever the grade was easy, one hand resting against the rail; or pushed mightily up little hills; or clung alongside like monkeys while we rattled and swooped and plunged down hill into the darkness.  Subsequently we learned that a huge flat beam projecting amidships from beneath the seat operated a brake which we above were supposed to manipulate; but being quite ignorant as to the ethics and mechanics of this strange street-car system, we swung and swayed at times quite breathlessly.

After about fifteen minutes we began to pick up lights ahead, then to pass dimly-seen garden walls with trees whose brilliant flowers the lantern revealed fitfully.  At last we made out white stucco houses, and shortly drew up with a flourish before the hotel itself.

This was a two-story stucco affair, with deep verandas sunken in at each story.  It fronted a wide white street facing a public garden; and this, we subsequently discovered, was about the only clear and open space in all the narrow town.  Antelope horns were everywhere hung on the walls; and teakwood easy-chairs, with rests on which comfortably to elevate your feet above your head, stood all about.  We entered a bare, brick-floored dining-room, and partook of tropical fruits quite new to us—­papayes, mangoes, custard apples, pawpaws, and the small red eating bananas too delicate for export.  Overhead the punkahs swung back and forth in lazy hypnotic rhythm.  We could see the two blacks at the ends of the punkah cords outside on the veranda, their bodies swaying lithely in alternation as they threw their weight against the light ropes.  Other blacks, in the long white robes and exquisitely worked white skull caps of the Swahili, glided noiselessly on bare feet, serving.