Arranged in a circle were fifty huts that resembled nothing so much
as a collection of old-fashioned straw covered beehives, enlarged to
shelter human bees. All about them women and children were
bustling; setting about getting the evening meal. Before one hut
sat a woman, pounding something in a stone pestle--"like the
drugstore men use at home,"--whispered Lathrop to Billy.

The arrival of the little band created a stir. The hideous old man,
with a sort of straw-bonnet, who had been beating on the antelope
skin drum called by Sikaso a "tom-tom" saw them and instantly picked
up his instrument and waddled off with as much dignity as his age
and a much distended stomach would allow him. The younger men,
however, advanced boldly toward the party. Some of them carried,
spears, others held Birmingham matchlocks of the kind the British
and French Governments have in vain tried to keep out of the hands
of the West African natives. These guns are smuggled in by
hundreds, by Arab traders who exchange the "gas-pipe" weapons worth
perhaps two dollars a-piece for priceless ivory, and even human
flesh for the slave dhows.

"Seesanah (peace)," said Sikaso gravely, advancing in his turn.

"Seesanah," echoed the tribesmen, who evidently recognized Sikaso
from their greetings. The boys stood grouped in the background--
Billy Barnes and Lathrop even viewing with some alarm the advance of
the savage-looking natives.

"Well, he seems to have fallen in with several members of his club,"
remarked the irrepressible Billy as old Sikaso and the natives
talked away at a great rate.