INTRODUCTION Bb 
men and several officers. Our fellow voyagers were commis-~ 
sioned to take the places of the slain, and to reorganize 
and stiffen the native soldiers. ‘They have no European 
troops on the coast, and were wholly dependent on what, 
I fear, was a rather poor quality of native; to beat back, 
in the first place, and then reduce to order, the rebellious 
Somali — they surely were not to be envied. The mon- 
soon was only beginning, but already the big blue white- 
capped rollers were thundering full into the unprotected 
mouth of what was really no harbour at all. A small 
coasting steamer, and some dhows, reared and tore at 
their anchors, as though they would wrench their bows 
out. And landing our friends, their scanty supply of am- 
munition and stores, as well as their mules, taxed evidently 
the resources of the place—as well as those of the crew. 
The leaky undecked dhow that came off for them, leaped 
up and down alongside. The mules had, of course, to be 
slung, and popped down into the hollow of the dhow 
just at the right moment. ‘The hold would be full of shout- 
ing, gesticulating naked men, being shot up into the air, 
when down would plump among them a very bewildered 
mule, dropped sharply by the donkey engine. When there 
were a lot of mules in that narrow hold, as well as a crowd 
of men, it seemed nothing short of wonderful that every- 
thing and everybody was not kicked to pieces. And the 
rotten boat itself was so leaky that it looked as though 
the turmoil within it would make it founder. Charming 
men, and, no doubt, good officers, those Italians were. 
But who could help feeling sorry for them, dropped down 
in a little open port, into which no steamer could enter 
till the monsoon blew on, that is, in three or four months? 
time. They could not receive mails or reinforcements 
by sea, and on land the Somali had so infested and harassed 
the place, that no mail runner had got through from Juba 
for months. 
