“Now, I will give you one more chance for life. Look around on these men with whom you have eaten and drunk. If there is any one of them who will plead for you, your life is yours.
“What say you, Soudanese and Zanzibaris? Shall this man have life or death?”
“Death!” came from every voice unanimously.
“Then Yallah rabuna! Depart to God!”
The Soudanese with whom he had gossipped and fraternally lived in the forest briskly stepped forward and seized him, and the Zanzibaris flung the fatal noose around his neck. A man climbed the tree, and tossed the rope to a hundred pair of willing hands, and at the signal marched away, and Rehan was a silent figure hanging between earth and heaven.
“Pass the word, Mr. Stairs, throughout the camp among the Pasha’s people, and bid them come and look at the dead Rehan, that they may think of this serious scene, and please God mend their ways.”
I had a relapse that night, and for days afterwards it appeared to me that little hope was left for me. Then my good doctor was stricken sorely with a pernicious type of fever which has so often proved fatal on the African seaboard of the Atlantic. For many a day he was also an object of anxiety, and the Pasha being a medical practitioner in past times most kindly bestirred himself to assist his friend. Then Mr. Mounteney Jephson fell so seriously ill that one night his life was despaired of. He was said to be in a state of collapse, and our priceless doctor rose from his sick bed and hastened with his men supporting him to the side of his sick comrade, and applied restoratives, and relieved our intense anxieties, and before retiring, he called upon me to relieve my spasms. Thus passed these dreadful days.
On the 29th of April I was able to sit up in bed, and from this date to the 7th of May there was a steady but sure improvement, though the tongue which indicated the inflammation of the mucous membrane of the stomach appeared to be obstinately unpromising.
1889.
May 3.
Mazamboni’s.
May 3rd.—Two packets of letters were brought to me by natives in the neighbourhood of the Lake shore, and as they were in Arabic I sent them to the Pasha. Presently the Pasha appeared and demanded an interview. When he was seated he informed me that there had been a mistake, for one of the packets was a mail for Wadelai despatched some days ago from our camp, while the other packet was the mail from Wadelai.