The long circle towards our evening camp always proved very long indeed.  We arrived at dusk to find supper ready for us.  As we were old campaigners we ate this off chop boxes as tables, and sat on the ground.  It was served by a Wakamba youth we had nicknamed Herbert Spencer, on account of his gigantic intellect.  Herbert meant well, but about all he succeeded in accomplishing was a pathetically wrinkled brow of care and scared eyes.  He had never been harshly treated by any of us, but he acted as though always ready to bolt.  If there were twenty easy right methods of doing a thing and one difficult wrong method, Herbert would get the latter every time.  No amount of experience could teach him the logic of our simplest ways.  One evening he brought a tumbler of mixed water and condensed milk.  Harold Hill glanced into the receptacle.

“Stir it,” he commanded briefly.

Herbert Spencer obeyed.  We talked about something else.  Some five or ten minutes later one of us noticed that Herbert was still stirring, and called attention to the fact.  When the latter saw our eyes were on him he speeded up until the spoon fairly rattled in the tumbler.  Then, when he thought our attention had relaxed again, he relaxed also his efforts—­the spoon travelled slower and slower in its dreamy circle.  We amused ourselves for some time thus.  Then we became so weak from laughter that we fell backward off our seats, and some one gasped a command that Herbert cease.

I am afraid, after a little, that we rather enjoyed mildly tormenting poor Herbert Spencer.  He tried so hard, and looked so scared, and was so unbelievably stupid!  Almost always he had to pick his orders word by word from a vast amount of high-flown, unnecessary English.

“O Herbert Spencer,” the command would run, “if you would condescend to bend your mighty intellect to the lowly subject of maji, and will snatch time from your profound cerebrations to assure its being moto sans, I would esteem it infinite condescension on your part to let pesi pesi.”

And Herbert, listening to all this with a painful, strained intensity, would catch the six-key words, and would falter forth a trembling “N’dio bwana.”

Somewhere down deep within Herbert Spencer’s make up, however, was a sense of moral duty.  When we finally broke camp for good, on the great hill of Lucania, Herbert Spencer, relieved from his job, bolted like a shot.  As far as we could see him he was running at top speed.  If he had not possessed a sense of duty, he would have done this long ago.

We camped always well up on some of the numerous hills; for, although anxious enough to find lions in the daytime, we had no use for them at all by night.  This usually meant that the boys had to carry water some distance.  We kept a canvas bath-tub full for the benefit of the dogs, from which they could drink at any time.  This necessary privilege after a hard day nearly drove Captain D. crazy.  It happened like this: