The ceremony began with the cutting into small pieces of a sheep’s heart and liver, these being toasted upon a skewer, making a mutton Kabob. Olomondo, chief of the Wanderobo, a nation of hunters, then took a sharp arrow with which he cut into the flesh of each Blood-Brother just above the heart. The Kabob was then passed round, and each chief, taking a piece of meat, rubbed it in his own blood and gave it to his neighbor to be eaten. When Boyes had eaten blood of all the chiefs, and all had eaten his, the peace was sealed which made him in practise king of the Kikuyu. He was able at last to take a holiday, and spent some months out hunting among the Wanderobo. While the Kikuyu nation as a whole fed out of the white chief’s hand, he still had the witch doctors for his enemies, and one very powerful sorcerer caused the Chinga tribes to murder three Goa Portuguese. These Eurasian traders, wearing European dress, were mistaken for white men, and their death showed the natives that it would be quite possible to kill Boyes, who was now returning toward civilization with an immense load of ivory. Boyes came along in a hurry, riding ahead of his slow caravan with only four attendants and these he presently distanced, galloping along a path between two hedges among the fields of a friendly tribe--straight into a deadly native ambush. Then the mule shied out of the path, bolted across the fields and saved his life. Of the four attendants behind, two were speared. Moreover the whole country was wild with excitement, and five thousand fighting men were marching against Boyes. He camped, fenced his position and stood to arms all night, short of ammunition, put to the last, the greatest of many tests. Once more his nerves were overstrung, the delay terrified him, the silence appalled him waiting for dawn, and death. And as usual he treated the natives to a new kind of surprise, taking his tiny force against the enemy’s camp: “They had not thought it necessary to put any sentries out.”