THE HAUSSAS. 363 



being hit the Haussas gave a fiendish yell, and, 

 roused almost to frenzy, rushed on the enemy with 

 their machetes,* taking two small iron cannon, 

 mounted on blocks of wood. I noticed the fellow 

 who hit me stealing away through the bush, and 

 brought him to the ground with a bullet through 

 the back from my breech-loading carbine, which 

 had done good work that morning, and in another 

 moment his head was hacked ofi" and stuck as a 

 fetish on a branch of a tree. My object being 

 attained, and the enemy being in full flight, I 

 rejoined Commander Le Froy, who assisted me in 

 the boat, for I was faint from loss of blood, and 

 took me off to the steamer, " Investigator," which 

 was throwing shells into the town. I was found to 

 be very dangerously wounded, for an iron plug had 

 entered the head just below the right ear, passing 

 through the "farotid gland, within the sixteenth of 

 an inch from the carotid artery, fractured the 

 lower jaw, shattered the roots of the teeth, and 

 still remains in the neck, from whence the first 

 surgeons of Europe, Sir William Fergusson, and 



* A kind of cutlass, 



