It was terrible to see these same Arabs walking round among the sable mob, as calmly as a farmer does among a herd of cattle, and picking one out here and there. But, oh! the grief, and the agony, and the anxiety displayed in voice and in action by these poor doomed creatures—the scene defies description. Here was the child torn shrieking from its mother’s side, there a wife separated from her husband, or a husband from a weeping wife.
Some indulged their grief quietly, others gave vent to loud howls and lamentations; while others lay moaning and groaning on the ground, ever and anon taking up great handfuls of dust, and throwing it up over their poor heads!
I could not help turning away and shedding tears. But had they been tears of blood they could not have saved these people. They were relentlessly marched away, and I was really glad when night fell, and sleep sealed the eyes of even those who mourned.
It was bright clear moonlight. I rose from my couch, and stole out into the open air. I wanted to think. The close warm atmosphere of the tent seemed to stifle me, and I could not sleep.
I passed slowly up the beaten footpath towards the king’s tent. There was not a single soul astir, it had been a busy exciting day with everyone, and the king had been liberal enough in his offers of rum to his chief favourites; and although some of them ought to have been doing duty as sentinels near to his sacred person, they had preferred retirement and slumber.
I stole away from the camp, and ascended an eminence some distance from it, and sat me down on a rock. It was cool and pleasant here, away from that blood-stained camp. The moonlight flooded all the beautiful country, bathing plain and rock and tree in its mellow rays. The only sounds that broke the stillness were the yapping howl of the cowardly jackal, and farther off in the woods the mournful roar of lions.
It was a lovely scene, but terrible in its loveliness. I buried my face in my hands. I was boldly struggling against my sorrow. How long, I thought, would this life last? Should I live and die among these terrible savages? Escape there seemed none. To attempt it, I knew, would end in failure, and probably in death by torture. I was many hundreds of miles from the sea. I did not even know in what direction Zanzibar lay. No, I must wait for a time, at all events. What mattered a year or two more to one so young as I!
I suppose this last reflection had some kind of a drowsy influence on me, for I lay down with my head on a piece of rock, and with face upturned to the sky, fell fast asleep.