Mirambo invited the strangers to remain in his country as long as they liked; and, as their future movements would require a little while for arrangement, he would give them anything they wanted in the way of provisions for their men.
The audience then broke up, and our friends went to the camp—which had been arranged during the interview—to discuss the new turn of events.
MAN OF MASSI KAMBI.
Abdul and Mohammed were sent to obtain all the information in their power, and in the course of a couple of hours they returned with a considerable budget. Mirambo had not exaggerated the state of affairs in Uhha and Uvinza. Abdul had talked with two Arab merchants who had been plundered of all they possessed while endeavoring to pass through Uhha. Their goods were stolen, their porters held for sale as slaves, and they only escaped by promising to send fifty bales of cloth from Unyamyembe. A third Arab who accompanied them was held as a hostage, and the King of Uhha had threatened to put him to death unless the cloth was received within thirty days.
Under the circumstances it was deemed advisable to abandon the journey to Lake Tanganyika and proceed to Zanzibar by way of Unyamyembe. Of course the decision was a great disappointment to Frank and Fred, and not much less to Doctor Bronson, but all of them had too much philosophy to grieve over what could not be helped.
"We can do one thing, if we can't do another," said Frank. "We will question everybody who can give us any information, and perhaps we can say something about the great lake, even if we don't see it."
Fred agreed to join Frank in the effort to give an account of the country beyond them, and for a couple of days they attended to little else than the collection of news concerning it. They talked with the Arab merchants, read all the books in their possession which had anything to say about Tanganyika and the Congo, questioned the Doctor, and in other ways showed that they were not to be set down as inattentive travellers.