They rush forth, these warriors of the great fantasias, to meet the will of God – his adorable will – as the Jews rush forth to meet the Sabbath: ‘Get thee up, brethren, to welcome the bride!’ Or David, King of Israel, in his Psalm 119: ‘O how love I thy law!’ They are a communion of yes-sayers, they are in love with danger, with death and with God.

As Job’s laments are not silenced by expositions of the justice and mercy of God, but it is before the revelation of God’s greatness that the complainer surrenders and consents, the Prophet surrenders and consents: ‘God is great.’ In the same way did Farah consent, when after three weeks’ hard tracking we came up close to a herd of elephants and I shot and missed, and the elephants marched away so that we never saw them again. In the same way did he consent when in a year of drought, news was brought him from Somaliland that half his camels had perished, and when I told him of Denys Finch-Hatton’s death: ‘God is great.’

It is a general notion among Christians that Mohammedanism is more intolerant than Christianity, but such is not my own experience. There were three great prophets – Nebbes – Farah told me, Mohammed, Jesus and Moses. He would not recognize Christ as the Son of God, for God could have no son in the flesh, but he would agree that he had no human father. He named him Isa ben Mariammo. About Mariammo he spoke much, praising her beauty and virginity – she had, he said, been walking in her mother’s garden when an angel had brushed her shoulder with his wing; through this she had conceived. He smacked his own small son Saufe because he repeated some words of abuse about the Virgin which naughty Kikuyu totos from the Scotch Mission had taught him.

When in the thirties I was staying in the south of England with Denys’ brother, the Earl of Winchilsea, the painter John Philpot came down to paint the portrait of my hostess, who was very lovely. He had travelled much in North Africa, and on an afternoon when we were walking together in the park he recounted to me an experience of his from there.

In the First World War, he said, he had had a shellshock or a nervous breakdown; he would never feel sure that he was doing what he ought to do.

‘When I was painting a picture,’ he explained, ‘I felt that I ought to make up my bank account. When I was making up my bank account, I felt that I ought to go for a walk. And when, in a long walk, I had got five miles away from home, I realized that I ought to be, at this very moment, in front of my easel. I was constantly in flight, an exile everywhere.