Evening drew on: just as usual, the cow with her calf came and provided me with two glasses of milk. I had a yam or two, a picking from the inside of a half-burnt tuber, a morsel from a similarly half-burnt lump of pickled meat, and I had come to the end of my slender stock of provisions. My dogs kept up a continual howling; their sufferings from their burnt feet must have been excessive, and they whined in concert with the general desolation. The servants, however, were as calm and undisturbed as usual. Neither the Nubians nor the negroes seemed to be much concerned; and why should they? They had just nothing to lose.
I looked around and counted up my party. It consisted of seven bipeds and seven quadrupeds; the same number of each, and each of about the same sensibility.
When the darkness of night had really set in, the region of the Seriba had all the aspect of an active colliery. The venerable fig-tree in front of the main entrance was still flaring away, and the palisade was yet burning, apparently shutting in the scene of ruin with a garland of light. It was a ghastly illumination. To the Nubians the spectacle was not altogether a novelty. The sight of a negro village in flames was to them familiar enough; but now the tables were turned, and they had to learn for themselves what it is to be hungry and destitute of every prospect of supply. Such were the conditions under which that night we had to seek our rest.
DESOLATION.
Hardly anything could be more impressive than the scene that revealed itself on the following morning. Not merely the places where the fire had raged, but the regions around were strewn with a thick layer of ashes; the steppes and sorghum-fields were whitened with them. It would be easy to have imagined that the glowing green of the tropics had for a time retreated, and allowed itself to be replaced by a gloomy and wintry vegetation transported from the arctic zone. Almost as white as snow were the layers of ashes that had settled on the sorghum-fields, only broken by the heaps of half-burnt clods that rose like hillocks of turf upon a moor. The smoke still lingered on the ground, and veiled the general scene; the trees seemed to stretch out their dry bare arms to heaven, and helped to complete the resemblance to the winterly aspect of the frozen world.
It was a pitiful sight to watch the brown and swarthy figures of the negroes, wrapped in their brown and swarthy rags, run hither and thither amongst the still smouldering ruins; and the wretchedness of the view was not a little aggravated by the bloated carcases of half-roasted donkeys and sheep that lay scattered about in various parts. Troops of women were bustling about and carrying water-vessels of every sort, eager in their endeavours to put out the lurking fire that was threatening the corn-magazines that hitherto had escaped. These clay-built reservoirs of corn were the only memorials that seemed to survive the devastation. Blackened indeed by the smoke, the “googahs” were still erect. Varying in height from five feet to seven, they were hardly ever wanting in the homes either of the Dyoor or Dinka: and now as they stood surmounting the otherwise universal débris, their very numbers made them conspicuous, and, forming a fantastic feature in the scene, gave their testimony as to what had been the crowded proximity of hut to hut.
Hurrying up from the surrounding country, the natives flocked to search for beads amidst the ruins, although every bead must necessarily have been spoilt. Others of them, with a better purpose, set to work to construct sheds of straw for the shelter of the houseless.
The next day was opened with a general effort to restore the buildings of the Seriba. Hundreds of Bongo, Dyoor, and Dinka brought the necessary wood, straw, and bamboos, and proceeded to construct their new huts with much dexterity: on an average, six men would completely finish a hut twenty feet in diameter in a couple of days.
No common sense had been learnt through the late calamity, for not only was the Seriba erected on the selfsame spot, but in the selfsame manner as before. The fear of being assassinated by the Dinka was assigned as the reason for refusing to follow the example of Khalil, the controller of Kurshook Ali’s Seriba, who, in rebuilding his establishment, had insisted upon placing the Vokeel’s residence and the magazines alone within the palisade, leaving the soldiers’ huts in detached groups outside. In vain, day after day, did I repeat my warning of the danger they were inviting of the repetition of a similar misfortune; but all my exhortations to care and prudence were utterly wasted; the people were obstinate, and I could not help passing many a sleepless night in continual dread of a second catastrophe that I was aware I was powerless to avert.
ORIGIN OF THE MISFORTUNE.