At Ikomba, another B.S.A. station, I found that Mr. Forbes had gone home, and promptly looted the excellent new potatoes which I found in his garden. On February 9th I reached Mambwe, and from there made a trip down to the Awemba country, which is described in the next chapter. On our return to Mambwe I was laid up with a very severe attack of fever which did not leave me for two months, till I reached the highlands around Kivu. I was delirious for some time, but improved sufficiently to be carried to Kawimbi, a mission station near Abercorn. Mr. and Mrs. May were most kind to me; the station is very pretty, and looks like an English village with its picturesque little cottages and numerous flower-beds. The following morning I was carried on to Abercorn, although the missionaries kindly pressed me to stay, promising to nurse me and make me well. I was sorely tempted, but felt bound to hurry on. At Abercorn I utterly collapsed for several days, and in the intervals of delirium eked out a precarious existence on Worcester sauce and limes. Here I heard a lion story. The hero of the story (also the author) having been told that a leopard was taking toll of the goats, built a platform in a tree and sat up over a goat. Nothing, however, turned up; but in the morning, tired of doing nothing, he fired an arrow at a venture into a patch of grass, and on going to pick it up, found that it had transfixed the heart of a stupendous black-maned lion. Considering the state of my health, I thought this rather unkind. At last I was sufficiently recovered to move once more, and was carried in a machila, under Mr. Boyd’s care, to Kituta, the A.L.C. station at the south-eastern extremity of Tanganyika. The first glimpse of those waters, round which so many dark tragedies have been enacted, cheered me considerably. I had realized another ambition, and had arrived at the real starting-point of our Odyssey. Kituta is a beautiful but pestilential spot, chiefly remarkable for its abominable smells. It is also the scene of another lion story which deserves perpetuation. There was once a very nervous agent in charge of the station with a particular horror of lions. One of these brutes commenced eating the natives of the village; so the agent barricaded himself in his room and slept with six native watchmen in case of attack. Hearing, or thinking that he heard, the lion prowling round, he fired out of the window and knocked a hole through the administration boat. The following night he again heard sounds and fired, bagging the collector’s donkey at the first shot. A certain well-known sportsman, who was hunting in the vicinity, wrote in and congratulated him on shooting his first lion. He rose to the occasion, and now silences all sceptics by producing the letter, and has acquired quite a reputation as a hunter of big game.