In the course of another evening I had been describing to the Prince the big Ngomas on the farm, and as he said good night to me he added: ‘I should like to dine with you on Friday and to see such an Ngoma.’ This was Tuesday night, and for the next two days the Prince would be up at Nanyuky for the races.

When I came up to my rooms in Government House I found Farah there waiting for orders for the morrow, for you always bring your own servant with you when staying in the houses of friends. I said to him: ‘Something terrible has happened to us, Farah. The Prince is coming out on Friday to dine and to see our people dance. And you know that they will not dance at this time of year.’ For these Ngomas were ritual dances connected with the harvest, and all settlers knew well enough that in this matter the Natives would rather die than break with a sacred law of a thousand years.

Farah was as deeply shaken by the news as I myself. For a few minutes he was struck dumb and turned into stone. In the end he spoke. ‘If it be indeed so, Memsahib,’ he said, ‘to my mind there is only one thing for us to do. I shall take the car and go round to the big Chiefs. I shall speak to them and tell them that now they must come to help you. I shall remind them that three months ago you helped them.’ I had had the luck to be able to assist the Natives in a matter between them and the Government concerning salt-rocks to which they had formerly brought their cattle to lick salt. ‘But then,’ Farah added with some misgiving, ‘I can do nothing about this dinner. You will have to look after that, with Kamante, Memsahib.’ There was some distance and hardly any roads between the manyattas of the great Chiefs, and the old men would seize this opportunity to talk. I answered: ‘Nay, give no thought to that. I and Kamante will be able to look after it. For I think that you are right and that this is the best thing we can do.’

I returned to the farm to make preparations for Friday with a somewhat heavy heart, and Farah drove out from it, an ambassador on a tricky mission. When on the morning of Friday he was not back, the entire household, preparing the lobster up from Mombasa, the spurfowl brought in by Masai Morani, and Kamante’s Cumberland sauce for the ham, was dead silent. It would be a dark, eternal shame to our house and to all of us, were the prince to come out to see an Ngoma, and we to have no Ngoma to show him.