CAESAR IN ABYSSINIA III

have many strange guns," said Basha, who could not specify
further.

The river plain below was continually patrolled. The
Ethiopian commander or his servant always had their
glasses fixed on the enemy. A donga, darker red than blood,
in the middle of the plain was accepted by the Ethiopians
as the provisional frontier.

We left for Gerlogubi by the same road. I was very
tired, but found the peppermints given to me by Leonard
Barnes three months before restorative enough. Fatigue
is always swept away by the ancient British cure-all. In
middle afternoon we were once more near Maranale, and
turned right for Afewerk's old headquarters.

" The road here," said Ali Nur, " was made by the
Abyssinian side of the Boundary Commission before Wai
Wai.53

Before we reached Gerlogubi there were three more bitter
wells at Morera, deserted by all except the bush pig. The
gawkish but elusive geranuk, antelopes with long bodies
and short necks, flitted through the thorn without a sound.
The road presented a chain of twists and turns to our driver,
whose wrists weakened long before Gerlogubi. The thorn,
laced with a wicked scarlet parasite and crowned every-
where by mimosas in pale flower, crowded us in again on
every side.

At Gerlogubi we were met by Balambaras Tafere. He
came down to the brushwood gate as we drove in over the
stony surface which surrounds Gerlogubi. Two bomb-
holes, profound appendices to the Wal-Wal dispute, lay
beyond the outer works of the camp. The bush had been
cut back for forty yards around the camp stockade and
trench : otherwise the camp would have had no field of
fire.

"Only four miles away," said Tafere, "is the Italian post
of Afdub, where three hundred Somali bandas are camped
behind barbed wire and trained all day in machine-gunnery
by Italian officers. We hear it all here," he added, a
frail officer with a delicate voice, " but what do we care ?
We are going back to Gorahai as soon as the war begins.93
Ali Nur said, cc One hundred and fifty bandas are at
Ubertaleh, which is behind Afdub, and another hundred
and fifty at Afira, which is behind Ubertaleh. Three