The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A RomanceJohnston, Harry
General
The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
Johnston, Harry
British -- Africa, East -- Fiction; Missions -- Tanzania -- Fiction
My girls undressed me and found then that I had been wounded all the
time. A slug or a rusty nail fired out of one of the guns had ripped
across my shoulders and the back of my head and I’d never noticed it.
It must have been when Eb and I were helping John down into the pit—I
thought some one then had given me a push. And while I sat beside John
the blood had soaked all the back of my bodice and caked quite hard.
It’s left a kind of blood-poisoning, but I’m getting over it. Only it
causes these awful headaches. And poor Eb before the fighting finished
got hit in the arm, and then from our clumsy attempts to extract the
iron filings which had struck him he got blood-poisoning too, much worse
than me. I can’t say what his temperature went up to because I can’t
find any of our clinical thermometers, but to judge from his ravings it
must have been pretty high.
In the night following that second day, Mbogo came with a lot of his
headmen and took us three away and all our Big-geru to inside his own
village and put us in his women’s quarters. _He’s_ a white man if you
like, under his skin. He was afraid we might all be burnt to death by
the fire spreading inside our station. So we should have done. I lost
my senses that night from weakness or shock or something. When I came
to again I could hardly move my head for pain. But my girls bathed me
and gave me wonderful potions of their own making and I was able to sit
up. Mbogo came in, but spoke behind the door for modesty. What do you
think of that in a black savage? A "Mshenzi"! Because he thought I
might be undressed. But he said in Swahili: "Fear no more. Your friends
are coming."
The next morning I heard that Ali bin Ferhani, who’d been a friend of
John’s—you remember?—had come with a big party of his followers, and
hearing he was on his way the Ruga-ruga had bolted because they all
respect him as a "Sheikh." He says he is going to stop here with his
men till peace comes, or at any rate till white people take command
here.
Your Masai messengers came two days after Ali bin Ferhani had arrived,
and I wrote with great difficulty the message I sent you and got the
Big-geru to do it up for me. Some of them write quite nicely themselves
now, but only in Kagulu.
There’s lots and lots more I could tell you if we ever meet again or I
ever have time and plenty of paper. After the Ruga-ruga were gone and
the fires were beaten out my Big-geru searched in the Chapel and the
ruins of the school houses and found three copy-books and a stone bottle
of ink and some pens. I’ve used nearly a copy-book each for you and
John’s mother and a bit of a one writing to Mr. Callaway and a short
note to Mr. Bayley’s mother. I haven’t made a proper search yet, but I
can’t find any will left by John. I don’t suppose he had much to leave
you.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account