They were not molested again that day, which gave them time to make their position still stronger. The night passed quietly, and they were allowed to breakfast in peace. But about 9 o'clock the savages in great numbers advanced upon the camp. All hopes of peace were now at an end, and since he was forced to fight, Stanley determined to inflict no half-way punishment, but sweep that fair valley with the besom of destruction. He therefore selected four reliable men, placed them at the head of four detachments, assigning to each a fleet runner, whose duty it was, not to fight, but to report any disaster that threatened or befell the detachment to which the man belonged. He then ordered them to move out and attack the savages. As the route of the enemy was certain, he directed them to pursue them separately, yet keep before them as the place of final rendezvous, some high rocks five miles distant down the valley. The detachments poured forth from the camp, and the deadly fire-arms so appalled those savage warriors, armed only with the bow and spear, that they at once turned and fled. The detachments followed in hot pursuit, and what promised to be a fight, became a regular stampede. But one detachment having pursued a large force of the enemy into the open plain, the latter turned at bay.
The leader of the detachment, excited by the pursuit, and believing, in his contempt for the savages, that the mere sight of his little band would send them scurrying away in deadly fear, charged boldly on them. Quick as thought they closed around him in overwhelming numbers. The runner alone escaped and bore the sad tidings to Stanley. The appointment of these runners shows his wonderful prevision—that foresight which on many occasions alone saved him. He at once sent assistance to the detachment that the courier had reported surrounded. Alas, before it arrived every man had been massacred. The aid, though it came too late to save the brave detachment, arrived just in time to save the second, which was just falling into the same snare, for the large force that had annihilated the first had now turned on this, and its fate seemed sealed. The reinforcements hurried off by Stanley found it completely hemmed in by the savages. Two soldiers had already been killed, the captain was wounded, and in a few minutes more they would have shared the fate of the first detachment.
It was at this critical moment they arrived, and suddenly pouring a deadly volley into the rear of the assailants, sent them to the right about with astonishing quickness. The two detachments now wheeled and poured a concentrated volley into the savages, which sent them flying wildly over the plain. A swift pursuit was commenced, but the fleet enemy could not be overtaken, and the march up the valley was scarcely resisted. Stanley, in camp, carefully watched the progress of the fight, which could be distinguished at first by the volleys of his soldiers, and when, receding in the distance, these could be no longer heard, by the puffs of smoke which showed where the pursuit led.
But at length clouds of smoke of a different character began to ascend from the quiet valley. To the right and left the dark columns obscured the noonday sun, and far as the eye could reach, the plain, with its hundreds of villages of thatched huts, presented one wide conflagration, till the murky mass of cloudy vapor, as it rolled heavenward, made it appear like a second Sodom, suffering the vengeance of heaven. To the distance of eight miles, Stanley could see jets of smoke that told of burning villages. He had delayed to the last moment hostile action, but having once commenced it he meant to leave behind him no power of retaliation.
It was a victorious but sad day, and the return of the detachments was anything but a triumphal march, for they bore back twenty-one dead men, besides the wounded, while they could report but thirty-five of the enemy killed. So little difference in the number of the slain, when one was the pursued and the other the pursuing party, and when the former was armed only with spears and bows, and the latter with the deadly rifle, seems at first sight unaccountable, but it must be remembered that the unfortunate detachment that was surrounded and massacred to a man, furnished almost the entire list of the killed.
The camp was at peace that night, but it was a sad peace. A few more such victories as this and Stanley would be left without an expedition.
This unfortunate experience with these people showed the danger of his undertaking a new route. His object was not to travel among new people, but to reach the lake region with his boat and settle great geographical problems and establish certain facts having an intimate bearing on the future of Africa. Yet by his chosen course he really obtained no new and valuable information but imperiled and well-nigh ruined the expedition fitted out with so much expense and care.
His was the nearest course to the lake, yet the long one by which Speke reached it was the safest. He had been in a perilous position, and it was clearly his own foresight that saved him. The appointment of a courier or swift runner to each detachment to act as a telegraph, would probably have occurred to few, yet this certainly saved one detachment from destruction and how much more no one can tell.
But he was not satisfied with the vengeance he had taken and the devastation he had wrought. He had resolved to teach those savage negroes a lesson on the danger of treachery to strangers, and he meant, now he had commenced it, to make it thorough and complete, and so next morning he sent off sixty men to proceed to the farthest end of the valley, some eight miles away, and destroy what yet remained; passing on through the ruins of the villages, they came to a large village in the extreme northeast. A very slight resistance was made here, and they entered it and applied the torch, and soon it shared the fate of all the rest. Before they destroyed it, however, they loaded themselves with grain. Provisions were now plenty, for the frightened negroes had left everything behind them in their flight. There was no longer any need of purchasing food, the valley was depopulated, and all the accumulated provisions of the inhabitants was at the mercy of the victors. Finding he had enough to last the expedition six days, Stanley next morning started westward before daybreak, and was soon far away from this valley of destruction, leaving the thoroughly humbled natives to crawl back to the ashes of their ruined homes. Without further trouble, in three days, he reached Iramba. Here he halted and took a calm survey of his condition and prospects. He found that out of the more than three hundred men with which he had left the coast, but one hundred and ninety-four remained.
Sickness, desertion and battle had reduced his number over a third before he had reached the point where his actual labors were to commence. It was not a pleasant look-out, for, although two hundred men, well armed with rifles, made a formidable force in a country where only arrows and spears were used, still this heavy ratio of loss must stop, or the expedition itself must fail. He was not in a country where he could recruit soldiers, and each one lost was a dead loss, and thousands of miles of exploration lay before him, in prosecuting which, he knew not how many battles would be fought, nor how much sickness would have to be encountered. It would not seem a difficult piece of arithmetical calculation to determine how long three hundred men would last if one-third disappeared in three months, or how many men it would require to prosecute his labors three years. But Stanley never seemed to act as though he thought defeat possible. Whether his faith was in God, himself, or his star, it was nevertheless a strong and controlling faith. Still, now and then it is very evident that he was perfectly conscious of the desperate nature of his condition, and felt disease, which carried off his friends and retainers, or the spear, might end, at any moment, his explorations and his life.