The possibility of this occurrence, however, many of Bruce's enemies have obstinately refused to believe. The experiment of firing a candle through a door is one which has very often been performed; and, even if its practicability had never been shown, it would be evident to any one who reflected on the subject for a moment, that such a result must unavoidably take place. The momentum, or force of a shot, is not separately the effect either of its weight or of its velocity, but the joint product of both. A light or soft body, therefore, propelled with great velocity, may have an effect equal to that of a heavy or hard body propelled with less: air, for instance, rapidly displaced by the passing of a cannon-shot, is known to produce very unexpected results; and all sailors know how heavily water strikes when it falls with any velocity. But, though a deal table and tallow candle must have been at the disposal of the meanest of Bruce's critics, it cost them less, and was, at the same time, more gratifying to them to accuse the traveller of falsehood, than to put his experiment to the proof or to reason on the truth of his statements.
Salt himself, however, corroborates the story forty years afterward. "In the course of the same day," he says, "these two Greeks paid me a visit; and I have seldom been acquainted with more venerable or respectable-looking men. The elder was exceedingly infirm, and appeared to be nearly blind; so that it was with some difficulty that he could be brought up, on a mule, into the room in which we were sitting. On being seated, he expressed great anxiety to examine my features, and repeatedly inquired whether I was any relation of Yagoube (Mr. Bruce).
"He afterward conversed with me for some time respecting that traveller, and in almost every particular confirmed the account I have already quoted upon the authority of Dofter Esther. He related in addition, that the Emperor Tecla Haimanout never paid much attention to Mr. Bruce till after 'his shooting through a table with a candle'—a fact which I had never before heard mentioned in the country—when he became a great favourite, and was called Baalomaal; he added that, on a particular occasion, the emperor took a fancy to Mr. Bruce's watch, and asked him for it; but that that gentleman refused, and said abruptly, 'Is it the custom in this kingdom for a king to beg?' which answer made a great noise throughout the court."
Bruce now experienced an instance of kindness in Ayto Confu, the son of Ozoro Esther, which gave him great pleasure. On the west of Abyssinia, adjoining the frontiers of Sennaar, there is a hot, unwholesome strip of low country, inhabited only by Mohammedans, and divided into several small districts, which are known by the general name of Mazuga.
Ayto Confu possessed several of these districts; one of which, Ras el Feel, having been always commanded by a Mohammedan, as Bruce says, "had no rank among the great governments of the state." To this command Bruce was now unexpectedly appointed, and was, in consequence, created by the king governor of Ras el Feel, with permission to appoint his Moorish friend Yasine as his deputy. Bruce considered that he would be enabled, by Yasine's friendship, to secure to his interests the Arabs and sheikhs of Atbara; for he had already resolved to return to England by Sennaar, "and," as he says, "never to trust myself again in the hands of that bloody assassin, the Naybe of Masuah."
Salt has taken great pains to endeavour to prove that Bruce never was governor of Ras el Feel. He says (forty years after Bruce had quitted the country) that people, several of whom must have been children when Bruce was in Abyssinia, told him they had "never heard" that Bruce was governor of Ras el Feel. Bruce, however, never pretended that he acted as governor of this district; he merely says that he was appointed governor, with permission for his friend Yasine to act as his deputy, his sole object being to form an acquaintance with that barbarous country; and considering that, in Abyssinia, appointments are not gazetted, Salt should have felt that Bruce's statement might be perfectly correct, even though the people he met with had "never heard" of it.
"I now," says Bruce, "for the first time since my arrival at Abyssinia, abandoned myself to joy;" but his constitution was too much weakened to bear this excitement, and accordingly, the following day, when he went home to Emfras, he was attacked by his old and relentless enemy the Bengazi ague. For some time he was unable to leave the house, and was even confined to his bed: his journal barely mentions this illness, but his handwriting during this period shows very affectingly the weak and exhausted state of his frame.
The rebel Fasil had no sooner heard of Ras Michael's return to Gondar than he marched against the Agows. A bloody battle was fought at one of their principal settlements, in which Fasil proved victorious. A council was forthwith held, in which Ras Michael declared that, although the rainy season was at hand, the king's forces should immediately take the field.
Gusho and Powussen having sworn to Michael that they would never return without Fasil's head, decamped next morning, but with the secret determination to arrange a conspiracy against the ras.
While preparations for the war were making, the iteghe, or queen-mother, seeing the declining state of Bruce's health, endeavoured to dissuade him from the undertaking which was apparently always uppermost in his thoughts. "See! see!" said the royal moralist, "how every day of our life furnishes us with proofs of the perverseness and contradiction of human nature: you are come from Jerusalem, through vile Turkish governments, and hot, unwholesome climates, to see a river and a bog, no part of which you can carry away, were it ever so valuable—of which you have in your own country a thousand larger, better, and cleaner; and you even take it ill when I discourage you from the pursuit of this fancy, in which you are likely to perish, without your friends at home ever hearing when or where the accident happened. While I, on the other hand, the mother of kings, who have sat upon the throne of this country more than thirty years, have for my only wish, night and day, that, after giving up everything in the world, I could be conveyed to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and beg alms for my subsistence all my life after, if I could only be buried at last in the street within sight of the gate of that temple where our blessed Saviour once lay!"