Ebenezer was just splendid at this time. I'm not sorry now I agreed to marry him, though the poor dear is still pretty bad and hardly right in his mind yet. But just at this critical moment he and Josiah and five of our men who knew how to handle guns kept up such a fire with the rifles that they shot down several of the big men among the enemy. Then poor Josiah was shot in the stomach and died an hour or two afterwards. Ebenezer got a splinter of wood in his eye—through a cannon ball striking a post near him, and he was put out of action for a bit. Meantime nothing more happened. There was a lull. The Ruga-ruga drew off out of sight.
I could think of nothing but John all this time, though I had a feeling of being stunned and hurt myself. He recovered consciousness and talked of no one but you. I think he thought you were with him all the time, and I confess that hurt me. It was Lucy my darling, my own true wife—and I wondered whether you were—and Lucy you've come back and now we'll go home together.... He didn't mention my name once, and I can't remember that he said a word about God. Perhaps he didn't know he was dying. Towards the last his body swelled dreadfully and he sank into a stupor. He must have died just about sunset. When he was going I seemed to be going too. I suppose I fainted, for when one of my Big-geru came down into the pit with some broth she'd made she set up a howling and a yelling saying we were both dead, that Bwana Fulata, as they called John, had taken me with him.
My girls undressed me and found then that I had been wounded all the time. A slug or a rusty nail fired out of one of the guns had ripped across my shoulders and the back of my head and I'd never noticed it. It must have been when Eb and I were helping John down into the pit—I thought some one then had given me a push. And while I sat beside John the blood had soaked all the back of my bodice and caked quite hard. It's left a kind of blood-poisoning, but I'm getting over it. Only it causes these awful headaches. And poor Eb before the fighting finished got hit in the arm, and then from our clumsy attempts to extract the iron filings which had struck him he got blood-poisoning too, much worse than me. I can't say what his temperature went up to because I can't find any of our clinical thermometers, but to judge from his ravings it must have been pretty high.
In the night following that second day, Mbogo came with a lot of his headmen and took us three away and all our Big-geru to inside his own village and put us in his women's quarters. He's a white man if you like, under his skin. He was afraid we might all be burnt to death by the fire spreading inside our station. So we should have done. I lost my senses that night from weakness or shock or something. When I came to again I could hardly move my head for pain. But my girls bathed me and gave me wonderful potions of their own making and I was able to sit up. Mbogo came in, but spoke behind the door for modesty. What do you think of that in a black savage? A "Mshenzi"! Because he thought I might be undressed. But he said in Swahili: "Fear no more. Your friends are coming."
The next morning I heard that Ali bin Ferhani, who'd been a friend of John's—you remember?—had come with a big party of his followers, and hearing he was on his way the Ruga-ruga had bolted because they all respect him as a "Sheikh." He says he is going to stop here with his men till peace comes, or at any rate till white people take command here.
Your Masai messengers came two days after Ali bin Ferhani had arrived, and I wrote with great difficulty the message I sent you and got the Big-geru to do it up for me. Some of them write quite nicely themselves now, but only in Kagulu.
There's lots and lots more I could tell you if we ever meet again or I ever have time and plenty of paper. After the Ruga-ruga were gone and the fires were beaten out my Big-geru searched in the Chapel and the ruins of the school houses and found three copy-books and a stone bottle of ink and some pens. I've used nearly a copy-book each for you and John's mother and a bit of a one writing to Mr. Callaway and a short note to Mr. Bayley's mother. I haven't made a proper search yet, but I can't find any will left by John. I don't suppose he had much to leave you.
You'd better go now and marry your Captain. It's the least he can do after compromising you, whether it was his fault or not. You never loved John as he deserved to be loved and you did wrong to become engaged to him, as his mother always said. If you hadn't been there he'd have married me. And we should have been happy as happy because I'd have slaved for him. I loved him from the time we first met, because he was kind and polite to me even though I was not well favoured. He never laughed at my hymns as you used to do. They may have been rubbish, but I meant well. In those days I was that religious it had to come out somehow. I said I loved the Lord and I did—I thought. I ain't so sure about it now. His ways are truly past finding out and I've given up trying, though I shall stick to Mission work for John's sake. John would have said the coming of Ali bin Ferhani was providential, but why couldn't Providence have acted a bit sooner and saved John and Brother Bayley? I suppose we shall know some day....
Well, good-bye, Lucy. Let me have a line to say you got this packet. I've no envelope to put it in.
I was going to finish up with Yours in the love of Jesus, but I really don't know....