"Have you ever been headman ?" "Would you like to be ?" "Yes." "Are you able ?" "Surely." "Choose, then.

Which of us would you like to work for ?" "You!" he answered promptly, pointing at Fred.
It was on the tip of the tongue of every one of us to ask him instantly why, but that would have been too rank indiscretion.

It never pays to seem curious about a native's personal reasons, and it was many weeks before we knew why he had made up his mind in advance to choose Fred and not either of us for his master.
His choice made, and the offer of his services accepted, he took over Fred forthwith--demanded his keys--found out which our room was--went over our belongings and transferred the best of our things into Fred's bag and the worst of his into ours--remade Fred's bed after a mysterious fashion of his own, taking one of my new blankets and one of Will's in exchange for Fred's old ones--cleaned Fred's guns thoroughly after carefully abstracting the oil and waste from our gun-cases and transferring them to Fred's--removed the laces from my shooting boots and replaced them with Fred's knotted ones--sharpened Fred's razors and shaved himself with mine (to the enduring destruction of its once artistic edge)--and departed in the direction of the bazaar.
He returned at the end of an hour and a half with a motley following of about twenty, arrayed in blankets of every imaginable faded hue and in every stage of dirtiness.
"You wanting cook," he announced.

"These three making cook." He waved three nondescripts to the front, and we chose a tall Swahili because he grinned better than the others.

"Although," as Fred remarked, "what the devil grinning has to do with cooking is more than anybody knows." The man, whose name was Juma, turned out to be an execrable cook, but as he never left off grinning under any circumstances (and it would have been impossible to imagine circumstances worse than those we warred with later on) we never had the heart to dismiss him.
After that, Will and I selected a servant apiece who were destined forever to wage war on Kazimoto in hopeless efforts to prevent his giving Fred the best end of everything.