The following day he reached the plateau and saw abundance of zebra, Liechtenstein's hartebeest, blue wildebeest, roan antelope, and eland. Later he interviewed old Monzi, who told him he had seen no white man since the visit of Dr. Livingstone thirty-five years before. The natives were very friendly, as Selous gave them an eland and a zebra he had shot, and all seemed to go well. At Monzi's the traveller got two guides to take him to the Kafukwe, and at the second village he struck he found himself for the first time amongst the naked Mashukulumbwe. Here a lot of Sikabenga's men (Barotsi) arrived with a crowd of armed Mashukulumbwe, and said they had come to buy ammunition. The attitude of the natives was suspicious, and when Selous refused either to sell them powder or to go with them, they said: "You will live two days more, but on the third day your head will lie in a different place from your body."
Selous, however, paid no heed to their threats, and that day proceeded on his journey, telling his guides to proceed east to the Mashukulumbwe villages and intending to camp in the open veldt. Paul and Charley, who both had experience with natives north of the Zambesi, agreed that this was the best policy, but "we unfortunately allowed ourselves to be dissuaded and led into the jaws of death by our ignorant guides." These men said the party would find no water on the plateau but only in the villages, so there they went.
At the second village the natives were frightened, and, avoiding this place, they pressed on over a veldt teeming with game to the Ungwesi river. Here Selous camped at a village where, after preliminary shyness, the natives seemed fairly friendly and showed the hunter where to camp and get wood and water. At the Magoi-ee Selous found himself in a highly populated district and camped at a village where lived Minenga, the chief of the district. That worthy insisted on Selous camping alongside the village and would take no refusal. Accordingly Selous found himself in the lions' den, as it were, and felt he must brave it out now if anything went wrong, so he set to work to make a "scherm" of cornstalks and plant-poles to secure the donkeys.
After a while things did not look so bad, as the natives abandoned their spears and came and joined in a dance with the Batonga boys. Then, too, the women and girls came down and ate with Selous' men—usually a sure sign of peace. By nightfall Selous viewed the whole scene and felt he had no cause for alarm, and felt he had quite gained the goodwill of these savages. At nine o'clock, when Selous was already in bed, Minenga sent him a message to come to drink, but, as he was tired, he did not go. In the light of subsequent events, Selous was glad he had not accepted the invitation, for he would certainly have been murdered. The dance and noisy musical instruments were intended to drown any noise that might have occurred.
Next day Selous hunted, and later, when in camp, was surrounded by great crowds of natives which, however, left at sundown.
"I could not sleep, however, and was lying under my blanket, thinking of many things, and revolving various plans in my head, when about nine o'clock I observed a man come cautiously round the end of our scherm and pass quickly down the line of smouldering fires. As he stopped beside the fire, near the foot of Paul and Charley's blankets, I saw that he was one of the two men who had accompanied us as guides from Monzi's. I saw him kneel down and shake Paul by the leg, and then heard him whispering to him hurriedly and excitedly. Then I heard Paul say to Charley, 'Tell our master the news; wake him up.' I at once said, 'What is it, Charley? I am awake.' 'The man says, sir, that all the women have left the village, and he thinks that something is wrong,' he answered. I thought so too, and hastily pulled on my shoes, and then put on my coat and cartridge-belt, in which, however, there were only four cartridges. As I did so, I gave orders to my boys to extinguish all the fires, which they instantly did by throwing sand on the embers, so that an intense darkness at once hid everything within our scherm.
"Paul and Charley were now sitting on their blankets with their rifles in their hands, and I went and held a whispered conversation with them, proposing to Paul that he and I should creep round the village and reconnoitre, and listen if possible to what the inhabitants were talking about. 'Wait a second,' I said, 'whilst I get out a few more cartridges,' and I was just leaning across my blankets to get at the bag containing them when three guns went off almost in my face, and several more at different points round the scherm. The muzzles of all these guns were within our scherm when they were discharged, so that our assailants must have crawled right up to the back of our camp and fired through the interstices between the cornstalks. The three shots that were let off just in front of me were doubtless intended for Paul, Charley, and myself, but by great good luck none of us was hit. As I stooped to pick up my rifle, which was lying on the blankets beside me, Paul and Charley jumped up and sprang past me. 'Into the grass!' I called to them in Dutch, and prepared to follow. The discharge of the guns was immediately followed by a perfect shower of barbed javelins, which I could hear pattering on the large leathern bags in which most of our goods were packed, and then a number of Mashukulumbwe rushed in amongst us.
"I can fairly say that I retained my presence of mind perfectly at this juncture. My rifle, when I picked it up, was unloaded; for, in case of accident, I never kept it loaded in camp, and I therefore had first to push in a cartridge. As I have said before, between our camp and the long grass lay a short space of cleared ground, dug into irregular ridges and furrows. Across this I retreated backwards, amidst a mixed crowd of my own boys and Mashukulumbwe.
"I did my best to get a shot into one of our treacherous assailants, but in the darkness it was impossible to distinguish friend from foe. Three times I had my rifle to my shoulder to fire at a Mashukulumbwe, and as often someone who I thought was one of my own boys came between. I was within ten yards of the long grass, but with my back to it, when, with a yell, another detachment of Mashukulumbwe rushed out of it to cut off our retreat. At this juncture I fell backwards over one of the ridges, and two men, rushing out of the grass, fell right over me, one of them kicking me in the ribs and falling over my body, whilst another fell over my legs. I was on my feet again in an instant, and then made a rush for the long grass, which I reached without mishap, and in which I felt comparatively safe. I presently crept forwards for about twenty yards and then sat still listening. Standing up again, I saw that the Mashukulumbwe were moving about in our camp. It was, however, impossible to see anyone with sufficient distinctness to get a shot, for whenever one of the partially-extinguished fires commenced to burn up again it was at once put out by having more sand thrown over it.
"But I now thought no more of firing at them. I had had time to realise the full horror of my position. A solitary Englishman, alone in Central Africa, in the middle of a hostile country, without blankets or anything else but what he stood in and a rifle with four cartridges. I doubt whether Mark Tapley himself would have seen anything cheerful in the situation. Could I only have found Paul or Charley or even one of my own Kafirs, I thought my chance of getting back to Panda-ma-tenka would be much increased, for I should then have an interpreter, I myself knowing but little of the languages spoken north of the Zambesi. I now began to quarter the grass cautiously backwards and forwards, whistling softly, in hopes that some of my own boys might be lying in hiding near me; but I could find no one, and at length came to the conclusion that all those of my people who had escaped death would make the most of the darkness and get as far as possible from Minenga's before day-dawn, and I decided that I had better do the same."[37]