I could not submit to such disrespectful suspicions, but if he wished Bombay to convey my present to him, I saw no harm in the proposition.

The king waived the point, and we all started, carrying as a present the things enumerated in the note.

[24] The Union Jack led the way.

At the ferry three shots were fired, when, stepping into two large canoes, we all went across the Kafu together, and found, to our surprise, a small hut built for the reception, low down on the opposite bank, where no strange eyes could see us.
Within this, sitting on a low wooden stool placed upon a double matting of skins--cows' below and leopards' above--on an elevated platform of grass, was the great king Kamrasi, looking, enshrouded in his mbugu dress, for all the world like a pope in state--calm and actionless.
One bracelet of fine-twisted brass wire adorned his left wrist, and his hair, half an inch long, was worked up into small peppercorn-like knobs by rubbing the hand circularly over the crown of the head.

His eyes were long, face narrow, and nose prominent, after the true fashion of his breed; and though a finely-made man, considerably above six feet high, he was not so large as Rumanika.