Berkeley said: ‘We had better go out there at once.’ But it was raining heavily; the road round Mbagathi Bridge was impassable, so that it would be useless to think of starting a car, and we should have to take the shorter cut across the river on foot. I collected the bicarbonate and oil which I used against accidents with corrosives, and we took two boys with hurricane lamps with us. The Masai also had brought lamps. The descent to the river, in the tall wet bush and long wet grass, was steep and stony, but the Masai knew of a better way than my riding-path, and when we came to the river itself, which had swelled high with the rain, they carried me across.

On the way none of us had spoken. As now, to the other side of the river, we were ascending the long slope of the Masai Reserve, I said to Berkeley: ‘If Sandoa is dead by the time we get there, I shall not go back to the farm. I shall stay on with the Masai. If they will have me.’ I had no answer from Berkeley, only, the next moment, a sudden, wild, extremely rude curse straight in my face. For he had in that second put his foot into the long marching column of an army of Siafu. The Siafu are the universally dreaded, man-eating ants of Africa, the which, left to themselves, will eat you up alive. My dogs in their hut at night when they had got the Siafu on them would yell out miserably in their agony, until you rushed out to save them. My friend Ingrid Lindström of Njoro at one time had her whole flock of turkeys devoured by the killers. They are about mostly at night, and in the rainy season. If you happen to get the Siafu on you, there is nothing for you but to tear off your clothes and have the person nearest at hand pluck them out of your flesh. Now, turning round to see what was happening to Berkeley, I saw him, in the midst of the infinite black African night and of the Masai plain, his trousers at his heels, changing feet as if he were treading water, with one toto holding up a hurricane lamp and another picking out the burning, ferocious creatures from his strangely white legs.

When we came to the Masai manyatta we found Sandoa still alive. By a stroke of luck, or by some kind of intuition, he had taken but one tablet of Kamante’s medicine – possibly also the intestines of Masai Morani are hardier than those of other human beings. I administered the bicarbonate and oil to him, feeling that I ought to be on my knees with gratitude, and I saw him well on his way to recovery before, in the grey light of dawn, Berkeley and I returned to my house.