With that in her arms she will only think of mothering!" An askari seized the baby by the arm and leg and gave it with a laugh to another woman to hold, its mother whimpering with fright until she saw it safely nestled.
"Quick, now! What about this one ?" It seemed there was no charge against her.

The two sergeants searched through the piles of blue sheets in vain.
"Then what the devil is she here for?
What do you want, you ?" The trembling woman pointed to her baby, but was dumb.

It needed courage to answer that lieutenant, and the crack--crack--crack of a thick kiboko descending at measured intervals on the naked back of the boy who had answered boldly was no help toward reassurance.
"Speak!" the lieutenant ordered, "or I shall have you compelled to speak!" She burst into sudden volubility.

The dam once down, she poured forth a catalogue of wrongs that seemed endless, switching off from one dialect to another and at intervals inserting, apropos apparently of nothing, the few words of German she had picked up.

The lieutenant yelled for an interpreter, and a Nyamwezi who knew German rose from the front bench and came and stood beside her.
"That baby is a white man's," he explained.
"What does she want ?" "She says the white man is the bwana dakitari (the doctor!)." "Oh! Then I am glad she came here.