DEAR LUCY,—
I am beginning to write this as near as I can guess November 15, but I've got out in my dates and no wonder. I've also got a broken head—I expect a touch of concussion besides a scalp wound—and it is simple agony to write for long. My eyes hurt so. I must however try to tell you—and John's mother—what has happened, so I shall write a little every day if I am fit to and send these letters to the coast by the first chance. Ali bin Ferhani thinks he can manage a messenger later on who would cross into the British "sphere." I expect you got my first message sent by the Masai? In case you didn't or in case something happens to me and I can't finish a long letter, I'll tell you the plain facts first: John's dead, Bayley's dead, Josiah's dead. Anderson and I are wounded. I'm nearly well. The station is only partially destroyed. Now you know the worst.
When I returned here from Burungi it was about the tenth of October, so far as we could keep count. John was very angry with me at first, for leaving you and for coming to live with three men and I a single woman. I well-nigh lost patience with him. But I said, Well if that's all I'll marry one of you, I'll marry Ebenezer if he'll have me. Ebenezer Anderson didn't look overjoyed, but John said: That's all right; you came out to marry him, so the Mission expected, and you're only now fulfilling the contract. All right, I said, you're a minister of the Gospel, you could marry us at home, so you can do it here, only it won't be legal till we're re-married at the Consulate. But it'll be a marriage in God's eyes, which is the great thing. I felt reckless about it somehow. Of course I'm not going to live with Eb until all this trouble's over and everything is legal. Well, after that was done with, the country round seemed to be getting jumpy and Mbogo sent to say the Ruga-ruga under that Devil, Ayub, were coming to attack us, coming with lots of men and guns. So we sent out word to the Masai, and they turned up well. About three hundred spears. But after a bit they got tired of waiting, so went off somewhere else to do some raiding on their own account.
Towards the end of October—perhaps it was the 28th—no sooner was our first bell rung for dressing—half-past five—than we heard the most unearthly yelling and a tremendous firing of guns. I just got my clothes and boots on anyhow and the men turned out in shirts and trousers and with their boots unlaced. The bullets were flying like hail above the stockade, first of all too high. We dared not go to peep through for fear of being shot. Well, John didn't lose his head one bit. He gave out the Sniders to all our Walunga who could use them, and he and Bayley and Anderson took up the posts they had settled beforehand.
Then the Ruga-ruga made a rush almost up to the ditch which they seemed not to expect, and John and the men let them have it. Five or six were killed. After that Mbogo's Walunga came up and took them on the flank with guns and spears, and they didn't like it at all and withdrew for a spell. But I can't tell you everything—Perhaps some day I will if you ever care to hear it—I've got to write to John's mother as well as you.
The fighting in the afternoon was chiefly between the Ruga-ruga and Mbogo's villages. I suppose they thought they'd better finish them off before they came again to us. They drove Mbogo's people out of all their villages except the big one near us, where Mbogo lives. This was higher up, and Mbogo and John had worked at its fortification on Captain Brentham's plan—it turned out to be much more easily defended than our place. Fortunately also the Ruga-ruga and the Arabs don't like fighting at night—Oh my headache, I must leave off for a bit....
Well, during that night we worked like Trojans—Who were the Trojans and why did they work hard? You ought to know with your superior education. We dug out a square pit in the middle of the station and lined it with dry grass. In it we arranged chairs and mattresses so that we could rest and sleep here out of reach of the bullets. We also turned the Chapel into a living-house and store, because its brick walls and iron roof made it secure against fire and fairly safe from bullets.
On the second day the Ruga-ruga, led on by Ayub, attacked us on the west side, where our stockade was weakest and where we were overlooked a little by that mound we used to call the Snakes's Hill. Brother Bayley was standing talking to me about some dressings he wanted for Josiah Briggs who had been shot in the foot, when suddenly he uttered a shriek, whirled round and fell at my feet. He died a few minutes afterwards. John was so infuriated at his death that in spite of my shouts to be careful, he climbed up to a look-out post and fired his double-barrelled sporting rifle at a group of Ruga-ruga on Snakes's Hill. Whilst he was stooping to reload a poisoned arrow struck him on the chest and penetrated his lung. A good many of the Ruga-ruga were Manyema savages, slaves of the Arabs, and they fought with bows and poisoned arrows. John scrambled down somehow on to the ground. Ebenezer Anderson helped me to carry him into the pit shelter and there we undressed him. He was streaming with blood and coughing up blood and fast losing consciousness. Somehow or other—oh, what a time it was!—we got the arrow-head out of the wound. I don't know even now how, for we were both of us bunglers and it had got partly wedged in the ribs. And we had to cut the poor dear about. Fortunately we had Bayley's instruments down with us in this pit. But I can't go into all these details. Shall I ever get this letter finished?
Whilst we were attending to John we heard a tremendous shouting. It was the Humba war song—the Masai, you know. They had come at last to our assistance and taken the Ruga-ruga rather by surprise. But just before they made their rush up the hill, the Ruga-ruga had contrived to shoot arrows with flaming cotton soaked in oil on to our thatched roofs. Fire was spreading from building to building except the Chapel and the store. My Big-geru had lost their heads. Up to that time they had been so good. Our Walunga were trying to open the doors of the stockade and dash out into the open country. Then the Ruga-ruga would have broken in and all would have been up with us. Fortunately the charge of the Masai came at that very moment, when I was beginning to doubt if God had not forgotten us. They killed lots of the Ruga-ruga and would hack off their heads and throw them back into our stockade.
Then the Ruga-ruga seemed to get reinforcements from the Ugogo direction—quite a large body of men, they say, led by two Arabs—the two Arabs whom John had got expelled a year ago by Mbogo for trading in slaves. They had got a small cannon and its noise and the landing of a stone cannon ball in the middle of a party of Masai gave them a fright, so that all of the Masai drew off from near our station and ran round to the high ground behind Mbogo's town. Once more it seemed as though nothing could save us. The Ruga-ruga fired stone balls at our stockade and seemed making up their minds to a rush.