Shouting an expression of thanks I bent, and, unable to recover my lost rifle in the frightful mêlée, snatched up the dead Arab's sword that had so nearly caused my death, then fought on by my deliverer's side. His wounds were many, for blood was flowing from cuts and gashes innumerable in his bare black flesh, yet he appeared insensible to pain, striving forward, gasping as he dealt each blow, determined to conquer.
The fight continued with unabated fury—the bloodshed was horrible. The open square before the gate of the Kasbah was transformed into a veritable slaughter-yard, the stones being slippery with blood, and passage rendered difficult by the corpses that lay piled everywhere. At last, however, while engaged in another warm corner, the shrill, awe-inspiring war cry of the Dagombas again sounded above the tumult, and turning, I saw that by some means our men had opened the great gate, and that they were pouring into the spacious courtyards that I so well remembered.
Our assault, though fiercely and savagely repelled, was at last successful. We were entering the stronghold of Samory, and had achieved a feat that the well-equipped expeditions of the French and English had failed to accomplish.
The Arabs during the next quarter of an hour struggled bravely against their adversity and fought with a dogged courage of which I had not believed them capable. Soon, however, finding themselves conquered, they cried for quarter. Had they known the peculiar temperament of the Dagombas and the soldiers of Mo, they would never thus have implored mercy. But they cried out, and some even sank on their knees in the blood of their dead comrades, uttering piteous appeals. But the Arabs of Samory had never shown mercy to the Dagombas or the people of Mo, and consequently our army, in the first flush of their victory, filled with the awful lust for blood, treated their cries with jeers, and as they advanced into court after court within the great Kasbah walls, they fell upon all they met, armed or unarmed, men or women, and massacred them where they stood.
The appeal shouted time after time by Kona to view our victory in temperate spirit and spare those who submitted, was disregarded by all in this wholesale savage butchery. The scene within the Arab chieftain's stronghold was, alas! far more horrible than any I had witnessed during the revolt in Mo. Guards, officials and slaves of Samory's household were indiscriminately put to the sword, some of the men being hunted into corners and speared by the Dagombas, while others were forced upon their knees by the soldiers of Mo and mercilessly decapitated. The door of the great harem, long ago reputed to contain a thousand inmates, including slaves, was burst open, and in those beautiful and luxuriant courts and chambers the whole of the women were butchered with a brutality quite as fiendish as any displayed by the Arabs themselves. The handsome favourites of Samory in their filmy garments of gold tissue and girdles of precious stones were dragged by their long tresses from their hiding places and literally hacked to pieces, their magnificent and costly jewels being torn from them and regarded as legitimate loot. Women's death-screams filled the great courts and corridors; their life-blood stained the pavements of polished jasper and bespattered the conquerors. The Dagombas, finding themselves inside this extensive abode of luxury, where beautiful fountains shot high into the morning sunlight, sweet-smelling flowers bloomed everywhere and sensuous odours from perfuming-pans hung heavily in the air, seemed suddenly transformed into a demoniac horde bent upon the most ruthless devastation. They remembered that times without number had the Sofas of Samory burnt their villages and towns, and carried hundreds of their tribesmen away as slaves; they were now seeking revenge for past wrongs.
As, nauseated by the sight of blood, I witnessed these awful atrocities, I reflected that the curse of Zomara, uttered solemnly by Omar when Samory had sold us to the slave-dealers, had at last fallen upon the Arab chieftain.
Omar had prophesied the downfall of Samory, and his utterance was now fulfilled.
Screams, piercing and heart-rending, sounded everywhere, mingled with the fierce war-shouts of our savage allies, as, time after time, some unfortunate woman in gorgeous garb and ablaze with valuable gems was discovered, dragged unceremoniously from her hiding-place to the great court wherein I stood, her many necklets ruthlessly torn from her white throat and a keen sword drawn across it as a butcher would calmly despatch a lamb. Then, when life had ebbed, her body would be cast into the great basin of the fountain, where hundreds of others had already been pitched.
In other parts of the Kasbah a similar massacre was proceeding, none of those found therein being allowed to escape; while an active search was everywhere in progress for Samory himself.
From where I stood I witnessed the breaking up of the Arab ruler's throne, and the tearing down of the great canopy of amaranth silk under which Samory had reclined when, with Omar, I had been brought before him. The crescent of solid gold that had surmounted it was handed to Kona, who broke it in half beneath his heel as sign of the completeness of his victory. Then, when the destruction of the seat of the brutal autocrat was complete, the débris with the torn silk, and the long strips of crimson cloth, whereon good counsels from the Korân were embroidered in Kufic characters of gold, that had formed a kind of frieze to the chamber, were carried out into the court by fifty willing hands, heaped up and there burnt.