The talk lasted far into the night, Mr. Gillespie giving advice and retailing reminiscences of his own early days as a settler, which John drank in eagerly. Next day they set about collecting porters for the journey. The news that a white man was going up country had already spread through the native quarter of the town, and Mr. Gillespie’s office was besieged by a great crowd of black men, representing a score of different races, all eager to join the stranger’s "safari." The experience of the coffee-planter was very useful at this juncture, and the Hallidays were quietly amused as he dismissed man after man with little ceremony and a curtness of speech which, had they understood it (he spoke in Swahili, the common vehicle of intercourse between European and native), would have amused them still more. A little M’kamba would come forward with a smile. "You’re a thief; be off," said Mr. Gillespie, and the man went away, still smiling. A hulking Swahili appears, a sullen look on his face. "You’re always quarrelling; be off," says Mr. Gillespie, and the Swahili retires, to join the crowd of rejected. At length half-a-dozen men were selected, three Swahilis, of whom Coja ben Selim, a big, good-tempered-looking fellow, was to be headman; and three Wakamba. Mr. Gillespie was doubtful whether so small a safari would suffice; but Mr. Halliday was bent on economy; he argued that he could not in any case afford an escort large enough to cope with a serious native attack, and further, that a party of modest dimensions was not so likely to provoke hostility as a large one. Moreover, he intended to pay only a flying visit to the site of his proposed settlement, for the purpose of a preliminary survey. If he was pleased with the country, he intended to mark out the ground and put in an application to the Land Commissioner for a lease of a thousand acres or so. With luck, a month would suffice for this prospecting journey, which incidentally, as Mr. Gillespie informed him, would absolve him from paying registration fees on his porters, such fees only being necessary when they were engaged for two months or more. It remained to hire a cook for the expedition. "We don’t need a cook," said Mr. Halliday. "I’ve roughed it often enough; we can do our own cooking." "Man, you’re a tenderfoot," said Mr. Gillespie, laughing. "You must have a cook. Your men would all mutiny if you didn’t. I don’t mean that he would cook for them; they’ll have their own cooking-pots; but they wouldn’t obey you for a day if they saw you cooking for yourself. The first maxim for a white man in this country is: ’Never do a black man’s work.’ Order your men about as much as you please, but _don’t do anything_." "But that’s a doctrine of the dark ages. Confound it, man, that’s the kind of thing we shook off centuries ago. I’m not a duke."