This looked interesting, so we said nothing. Fundi marched the

day through very proudly. At evening he deposited the rifle in
the proper place, and set to work with a will at raising the big

tent.
The day following he tried it again. It worked. The third day he

marched deliberately up past the syce to take his place near me.
And the fourth day, as we were going hunting, Fundi calmly fell

in with the rest. Nothing had been said, but Fundi had definitely
grasped his chance to rise from the ranks. In this he differed

from his companion in glory. That worthy citizen pocketed his five
rupees and was never heard from again; I do not even remember his

name nor how he looked.
I killed a buck of some sort, and Memba Sasa, as usual, stepped

forward to attend to the trophy. But I stopped him.
"Fundi," said I, "if you are a gunbearer, prepare this beast."

He stepped up confidently and set to work. I watched him closely.
He did it very well, without awkwardness, though he made one or

two minor mistakes in method.
"Have you done this before?" I inquired.

"No, bwana."
"How did you learn to do it?"

"I have watched the gunbearers when I was a porter bringing in
meat."*

*Except in the greatest emergencies a gunbearer would never
think of carrying any sort of a burden.

This was pleasing, but it would never do, at this stage of the
game, to let him think so, neither on his own account nor that of

the real gunbearers.
"You will bring in meat today also," said I, for I was indeed a

little shorthanded, "and you will learn how to make the top
incision straighter."

When we had reached camp I handed him the Springfield.
"Clean this," I told him.

He departed with it, returning it after a time for my inspection.
It looked all right. I catechized him on the method he had

employed-for high velocities require very especial
treatment-and found him letter perfect.

"You learned this also by watching?"
"Yes, bwana, I watched the gunbearers by the fire, evenings."

Evidently Fundi had been preparing for his chance.
Next day, as he walked alongside, I noticed that he had not

removed the leather cap, or sight protector, that covers the end
of the rifle and is fastened on by a leather thong. Immediately I

called a halt.
"Fundi," said I, "do you know that the cover should be in your

pocket? Suppose a rhinoceros jumps up very near at hand: how can
you get time to unlace the thong and hand me the rifle?"

He thrust the rifle at me suddenly. In some magical fashion the
sight cover had disappeared!

"I have thought of this," said he, "and I have tied the thong,
so, in order that it come away with one pull; and I snatch it

off, so, with my left hand while I am giving you the gun with my
right hand. It seemed good to keep the cover on, for there are

many branches, and the sight is very easy to injure."
Of course this was good sense, and most ingenious; Fundi bade

fair to be quite a boy, but the native African is very easily
spoiled. Therefore, although my inclination was strongly to

praise him, I did nothing of the sort.
"A gunbearer carries the gun away from the branches," was my only

comment.
Shortly after occurred an incident by way of deeper test. We were

all riding rather idly along the easy slope below the foothills.
The grass was short, so we thought we could see easily everything

there was to be seen; but, as we passed some thirty yards from a
small tree, an unexpected and unnecessary rhinoceros rose from an

equally unexpected and unnecessary green hollow beneath the tree,
and charged us. He made straight for Billy. Her mule,

panic-stricken, froze with terror in spite of Billy's attack with
a parasol. I spurred my own animal between her and the charging

brute, with some vague idea of slipping off the other side as the
rhino struck. F. and B. leaped from their own animals, and F.,

with a little .28 calibre rifle, took a hasty shot at the big
brute. Now, of course a .28 calibre rifle would hardly injure a

rhino, but the bullet happened to catch his right shoulder just
as he was about to come down on his right foot. The shock tripped

him up as neatly as though he had been upset by a rope. At the
same instant Billy's mule came to its senses and bolted,

whereupon I too jumped off. The whole thing took about two finger
snaps of time. At the instant I hit the ground, Fundi passed the

double rifle across the horse's back to me.
Note two things to the credit of Fundi: in the first place, he

had not bolted; in the second place, instead of running up to the
left side of my mount and perhaps colliding with and certainly

confusing me, he had come up on the right side and passed the
rifle to me ACROSS the horse. I do not know whether or not he had

figured this out beforehand, but it was cleverly done.
The rhinoceros rolled over and over, like a shot rabbit, kicked

for a moment, and came to his feet. We were now all ready for
him, in battle array, but he had evidently had enough. He turned

at right angles and trotted off, apparently-and probably-none
the worse for the little bullet in his shoulder.

Fundi now began acquiring things that he supposed befitting to
his dignity. The first of these matters was a faded fez, in which

he stuck a long feather. From that he progressed in worldly
wealth. How he got it all, on what credit, or with what hypnotic

power, I do not know. Probably he hypothecated his wages,
certainly he had his five rupees.

At any rate he started out with a ragged undershirt and a pair of
white, baggy breeches. He entered Nairobi at the end of the trip

with a cap, a neat khaki shirt, two water bottles, a cartridge
belt, a sash with a tasseI, a pair of spiral puttees, an old pair

of shoes, and a personal private small boy, picked up en route
from some of the savage tribes, to carry his cooking pot, make

his fires, draw his water, and generally perform his lordly
behests. This was indeed "more-than-oriental-splendour!"

>From now on Fundi considered himself my second gunbearer. I had
no use for him, but Fundi's development interested me, and I

wanted to give him a chance. His main fault at first was
eagerness. He had to be rapped pretty sharply and a good number

of times before he discovered that he really must walk in the
rear. His habit of calling my attention to perfectly obvious

things I cured by liberal sarcasm. His intense desire to take his
own line as perhaps opposed to mine when we were casting about on

trail, I abated kindly but firmly with the toe of my boot. His
evident but mistakentendency to consider himself on an equality

with Memba Sasa we both squelched by giving him the hard and
dirty work to do. But his faults were never those of voluntary

omission, and he came on surprisingly; in fact so surprisingly
that he began to get quite cocky over it. Not that he was ever in

the least aggressive or disrespectful or neglectful-it would
have been easy to deal with that sort of thing-but he carried

his head pretty high, and evidently began to have mental
reservations. Fundi needed a little wholesomediscipline. He was

forgetting his porter days, and was rapidly coming to consider
himself a full-fledged gunbearer.

The occasion soon arose. We were returning from a buffalo hunt
and ran across two rhinoceroses, one of which carried a splendid

horn. B. wanted a well developed specimen very much, so we took