94 WILD LIFE AMONGST BEASTIES shaven headpiece, and was quite a pantomime artist.

He felt dissatisfied with an insufficiency of meat according to his high ideals, so with a noble grin picked up a resounding, hollow gourd, tapped it first, and then his stomach. This, in spite of a ton or more of hippo and a number of buck.

So one morning Ibrahim and he went out to prospect ; I was seedy, and glad to delegate some of the search. Ibrahim returned crestfallen, poor fellow, and had to make up with a fib (he had probably found honey and rested under a tree most of the time). So he reported that he had done great things ; that he had discovered an elephant lying asleep, but, of course, it was useless to come back to me, as I was not shooting them on the Blue Nile. The comedian bore out his statement with much profusion of gesture and language, so I asked him to bring tlie elephant here, when I would provide him with plenty of meat, for which he had been offering a very long prayer to Allah on behalf of his children. His answer was obvious, and was accompanied by a smile which evinced recognition that the story had failed, and gave the show completely away.

Nevertheless, having perhaps observed my partiality for eggs in the matter of the Sheikh of Galegu, with much ado he produced no fewer than three. He was evidently a wit of the very first order and qualified for a native music-hall, for the eggs were