that,’ I replied and showed my .450 Webley, driving my personal crew one by one at gunpoint into a boat. I told the rest that if they didn’t follow, they’d have to fend for themselves: ‘No more skoff for you!’ Off I went with my hostages and made camp at the foot of the rapids. When the others pitched up at sundown, I made them kneel and rub their foreheads in the dust and give the royal salute. That finished the ‘indaba’. I had got them in the native’s weakest spot – the belly!
With setbacks like these – plus veldt fires, squalls, reedy banks that made it impossible to land – I made little progress. The worst difficulty of exploration, I learned, is that it is a tormenting isolation. There was no chumming it up with the blacks, naturally, and the need for sympathetic company would have been unbearable were it not for the terrier bitch I’d been gifted at the Wankie colliery. That little wire-haired lady was my only pal, my inseparable companion. I sympathised with Dr Livingstone’s affection for his dear Chitane, who drowned around these parts, they say. My Flossie had a marvellous nose and, though she could not save my journey, she saved my life in the end.
Late in my travels, King Litia, a sort of deputy to Lewanika, sent me a favourite chief of his to catch a lift. The most I can say for this chief, Koko, is that he had ‘taking’ ways. Unhappy over the tough barter I’d driven for his ride, he upset my dugout on a swift side channel of the river, unaware that I could swim like a fish. The consequences, however, were dire: I came down with a bout of 104-degree fever. I ordered a rest for me and my men. That night, feverish and half-asleep, I heard Flossie growling, and saw a dark figure crawling on hands and knees towards us. I gave a shout. The fellow replied that he wanted fire. Not plausible! There was a fire positively roaring on the other side of camp. It was plainly an attempt to knife me. I threatened to shoot, and he cleared. It was Koko – he had not forgotten the indignity of his own ten-foot drop into the water.
There are those who flatter themselves that they truly know the native. I would never make such a claim. The native is harder to understand than a woman. The more you know him, the less you know of him. The key is not to let his savagery in. To wit, I never whip a native unless he deserves it. A dog and a native are on a par: one should give them a good thrashing when they have earned it, but one should thrash neither until one’s temper has cooled. So when we arrived at our destination, I kept my calm, tied Koko to a tree overnight, and turned him over to the new district commissioner at dawn. I released the few boys I had left – I had lost several to crocs and fever and run out of rations to feed the rest – and spent two days in bed, fighting my fever and awaiting trial.
During the hearing, darling Koko confessed at least five times that he’d have blotted me flat if luck had not contrived against him. The district commissioner, fresh from Oxford, was the sort who puts on a coat and cravat to visit a native queen. He asked me what I demanded for my trouble. Well, I demanded a hiding! The DC ruled thusly: ‘’Tis a trivial case. I shall dock his pay.’ I am giving you this as an absolute fact. Remember, it was a young country with a native population preponderating largely over a sprinkling of white. So Koko had his pay docked – and he shortly received it back in kind by pinching from my boss boy the handsome leopard skin I’d received from his king Litia! Koko, as I say, was a daisy.
By then, the rains had arrived, in high dudgeon. I got back to The Old Drift two days later, famished and alone, soaked to the skin and flayed to the bone by a wet saddle. I headed straight for Mopane’s hotel. He greeted me, kindly did not poke at the wound of my failed voyage to the coast, and fed me what was left of lunch – a hunk of bread and a tin of Vienna sausages. After my modest