It was now R’alli’s turn again. We had not seen the fellow for some time, but I am willing to swear three times by Allah, that since we treated him as we did at Zarhoi he had been our most faithful and devoted adherent. He would never let us go anywhere without preparing the way before us, so he had gone on in advance of our barges now, and spread our fame amongst the sheriffs and other idiots, who did not know us as he did, and who received his reports by beating the tabala or war-drum; or, to speak with more strict accuracy, he found the drum being beaten, and fearing that the sound of that one instrument would lead to the beating of others, he confiscated it at once. Then he, R’alli, having inquired what all the noise meant, the owner of the drum replied that he was afraid the white men were coming to take away his goods, his oxen, his sheep, and so on. “Then,” added R’alli, with an air of extreme amiability, “to show him he had nothing to fear, I took everything away from him.” I began to shout at him—“And that is the way you make friends for us!” “To give everything back when you have passed,” he went on with a smile. If the story he told me is true, and I shouldn’t like to swear that it was, I wouldn’t mind taking my oath that the poor sheriff will not get all his property back. However, the unabashed R’alli continued, “You ought to dress me now as you do your other soldiers, for am not I now one of your troops?” [Illustration: SHERIFF’S HOUSE AT GUNGI.] I observed that I had already given him stuff enough to clothe his whole family. “But my bubu and breeches are dirty now!” he replied. “Well, go and wash them, you wretch!” was the angry rejoinder. “What!” he cried, “would you like a soldier under such a chief as you to demean himself by such work as that?” Sheriff Hameit, to whom I had sent Abiddin’s letter the evening before, answered us very impolitely, declaring that his religion forbade him to have anything to do with infidels. I consoled myself for this fresh failure by having a chat with the little Kunta Tahar, Mohamed’s companion, who had come on to Gungi to see that the rice was duly handed over to us. He told me of the death in 1890 near Saredina of Abiddin, the son of Hamet Beckay, of whom he had been a faithful retainer when at Gardio near Lake Debo.