At midnight they bivouacked in the depth of a forest, and warriors were detailed to watch the captives, but the latter were so fatigued with the exertions of the day, that such precautions were needless. They had soon fallen asleep, despite the unpleasant thongs that encircled their necks, or the more unpleasant bonds which confined their hands behind them.
Chapter Fourteen.
The Slave Hunters meditate another Attack—A True Picture of the Slave Trade—The Inundated Plain—A Terrible Catastrophe—The Joys of Liberty—Simba fights with a Leopard—Kalulu sympathises with wounded Simba—Kalulu shows Abdullah the Art of making a Fire—Niani punishes the Dead Leopard—How a Mtuta Chief fights—Kalulu victorious—Simba thinks Kalulu a Hero—Spearing the Lepidosiren—How a True Son of the Forest acts—What Kalulu found in the Arabs’ Camp—Kalulu is kidnapped!—A Victim of an Atrocious Deed.
The unfortunate captives were wakened rudely at sunrise by smart taps applied to them by the warriors with the butts of their spears. Kalulu felt very much like resenting this rough behaviour; but Moto entreated him, as he saw him raise his flashing eyes, not to urge them to greater violence, as, whether he liked it or not, he was compelled to bear it.
They were soon on the road, for savages and slaves take but little time to make ready for their journey. After they had marched a little while, Moto heard the warriors nearest him talk of an attack Casema had determined to make upon a village some time during that night, as he had found out that most of the fighting men had gone south on a hunting expedition, leaving only a few able men to guard it, while there were numbers of women and children within. The village belonged to an isolated tribe of the Northern Wabemba, sometimes called Bobemba.
Towards the decline of day the Wazavila halted in a thick grove; and as they would not permit the captives or their own people to kindle fires, all were compelled to eat the grains of Indian corn doled out to them unroasted—a task which the stoutest jaws would find excessively hard. In the meantime it was noticed how the warriors sharpened their spears, and critically examined the strings of their hows, and made other preparations for war upon the defenceless village of the Wabemba, which must have been near, else why all their preparations?
About three hours after darkness, after leaving twenty men to guard Kalulu and his companions, the Wazavila, to the number of one hundred and fifty, started to put their murderous purpose into effect.
Though Kalulu, Selim, and their friends listened keenly for the sounds of the strife, they heard nothing; but at the end of a couple of hours they saw a red blaze over the tops of the trees to the south, and they knew that the work of the devil was being enacted, or that it had been consummated, and that fearful glare of fire seen against the sky was only the final completion of the craven and wicked deed. About midnight the fiends returned with about two hundred and fifty women and children, and a few old men, the able-bodied having perished to a man, as they afterwards found out, in the defence of their homes. The order to march was given, and through the pathless jungle and forest the Wazavila urged their slaves with spear, blade, and shaft, so they might be far out of reach before the vengeful Wabemba came on their trail.