April 11th.—Halt.
April 12th.—March to Mazamboni’s, four and a half hours.
1889.
April 12.
Mazamboni’s.
Continued our journey to the territory of our good friend Mazamboni, but the compact order was much broken. The Pasha’s people straggled over many miles of the road. This will have to be corrected to avoid wholesale casualities. There is no fear in this country, for this is our own, and the natives are in a fair way of becoming civilized.
Lieutenant Stairs was discovered, having made ample provision for the wants of the column, and had nothing but grateful news to deliver to us.
April 13th.—Halt. I write this in bed, am in great pain; Dr. Parke informs me I suffer from sub-acute gastritis, which I judge to be something of an inflammation of the stomach; am under the influence of morphia. Last night about 2 A.M. the first symptoms attacked me. A halt has been ordered, which I fear will be a long one. This compulsory pause will be a forced extension of time to those misguided people of the Equatorial Province who may hear of our departure from Kavalli, and who may take this halt as a further grace offered to them.
1889.
April 13.
Mazamboni’s.
Now followed, one day after another, days of excessive pain and almost utter weariness of life. The body pined for want of the nourishment that the excoriated stomach invariably rejected. Nothing but milk and water could be taken, and the agony caused by the digestion had to be eased by hypodermic injections of morphia. For the first few days the devoted surgeon enabled me to hope that, through his skilful nursing, I might soon recover, and my mind became active in planning the homeward march, and conceiving every unhappy circumstance attending it, and the necessary measures that should be taken. I supposed Kabba Rega was aware of the retreat of the Pasha and his people, and would do his utmost to oppose our progress, conceded to him in imagination hundreds of rifles, and thousands of spearmen with his allies, who use the long bows of the Wahuma, and fancied that after him we should meet the brave and warlike Wasongora, of whom I had heard in 1875, and then the Wanyankori, with their king named the “Lion,” persecuting the column night and day, and victim after victim dropping from among our living ranks; and then the passage of the Alexandra Nile amid a rain of arrows, to encounter the no less hostile people of Karagwé, assisted by the Waganda, and the column daily decreasing in strength and numbers, until some day, a few, after infinite struggles, would reach Msalala, and tell Mackay, the missionary, the horrible scenes of disaster that had dogged us and finally destroyed us; and lying helpless on my bed, with the murmur of the great camp round about me, all these difficulties, arrayed by the vividness of my imagination, had to be struggled against in some way, and forthwith I lost myself in imaginary scenes of endless fights and strategies along the base of the snowy range, seizing every point of vantage, rushing into a palisaded village, and answering every shot with two of most deadly aim; climbing a hill slope and repelling the enemy with such spleen that they would be glad to cease the persecution. Or at crossing of broad rivers, after a troublous search for the means, the ambuscades protecting the ferry, or forming zeribas with frantic energy, every man and woman assisting, the sharpshooters’ rifles keeping up the incessant and venomous fire; Stairs, Nelson, Jephson, Parke halloing their men with cheering voice, and every one aflame with desire to defend the people entrusted to our charge. Or scenes of combat in the underwood of the tropic forest, utterly heedless of the divine beauty of tropic flowering, cool shades and merry streamlets, and absorbed only in the sanguinary necessities of the moment. I sometimes worked myself into such a pitch of exaltation that a fever came and clouded all, and caused me to babble confusedly, and the Doctor, gently shaking his head, would have to administer an opiate.
Nor were these the only bugbears raised in my dazed mind. Morning after morning came the reports as usual of plots, and seditious circles of men drawing new nets of craft to gain something I knew not what, and pleasing their cruel hearts with foretelling the most ominous events. Many a rumour seemed to be afloat that the rebels were advancing with a soldiery bent on destruction, and the number of those deserting the camp by night grew greater and greater, until I had counted eighty. And then it was told me that someone was most active in disseminating falsehoods and inventions of terrible scenes of starvation wherein nothing but grass would be eaten, and that there was a grand effort to be made, because the effect of these tales was so widespread that something like a panic had seized the people.
The Pasha discovered one of his men as being most industrious at this evil work, and had had him tried and convicted, and sent for a detail of men to shoot him as an example. “No detail of Zanzibaris can be sent,” I managed to whisper to Stairs. “Let the Pasha shoot his guilty man with his own people. If he needs a guard for protection, let him have the men, but we came to save life, not to destroy it.” And as his own people could not be trusted to execute such an order, the man’s life was spared.