The country they marched over—a northward extension of the "Mkunda mkali" or "Bitter waste"—was at first steppe-like, then rocky and rising in a series of escarpments. Almost its only trees seemed to be flat-topped acacias, without leafage at this season, glistening in the blazing sun and studded with long white thorns. The thin grass was mostly burnt; nevertheless it was frequented by much game, and the land was apparently devoid of human inhabitants. Brentham, always obsessed by the fear of food scarcity, but hardly liking to absent himself from the line of march and his following caravan, started each morning a few minutes ahead of the rest and walked in advance as a pioneer, with his gun-carrier at his elbow. In this way he sometimes brought down, close to the path, an inquisitive Grant’s gazelle or hartebeest; or a zebra out of the many herds which closed up to espy the distant concourse of men and then dissolved into a cloud of dust at the report of the gun. Even at this lean season of the year the male zebras were in good condition. Their yellow fat and juicy, sickly-sweet flesh delighted the hungry porters. On the early morning of the fourth day, the expedition passed a few parched native plantations and one or two burnt huts and, as the sun rose, marched into the irregular circle of the Stott station, across a half-dry water-course, and found no human being to greet it. Silence and partially burnt buildings of clay and thatch, torn paper, vultures on the scorched trees, broken crockery, scraps of cloth, one or two pools of dried blood, empty cartridge-cases, and the torn sacking and splintered boards of packing-cases. "This is pretty ghastly, Miss Jamblin," said Brentham, returning to the hastily-cleaned camp amid the ruins of the Mission Station. Lucy, feeling she could do nothing to help and had better not look at the caked patches of dried blood which the porters were removing, had withdrawn herself to a folding chair placed by Halima under the thin shade of a fire-scorched tree. Ann was examining the vestiges of the Stott property which the looters had left behind: school books and primers in the Swahili language, empty ink-pots, broken slates, enamelled iron plates and some substantial tables of native timber, too heavy for either the fugitives or their enemies to carry away. Ann’s white solar "topi" and white dress were already smudged and sooted from the burnt wood and thatch.