THE RAVINE DISTRICT 



49 



the trader, no one will ever know. According to some, he wanted 

 to pay out the Masai for the horrible and wholesale butchery 

 they had just perpetrated ; according to others, he thought it a 

 good pretext for capturing their valuable herds. He did seize a 

 lot of cattle ; for several hundred head were brought in by the 

 Frenchmen to the Fort. I met these gentlemen a few weeks 

 later in Uganda and, as I knew Dick personally, gathered from 

 them some particulars of the fight. They told me that Dick 

 fought most fearlessly and bravely and, being an excellent shot, 

 dropped one Masai after another. He went to pick up the 



WAKIKUYU WOMEN. 



shield and spear of a Masai he had just slain, when the enemy 

 made a desperate rush, and at a critical moment Dick's rifle 

 jammed. He turned round to his men to get another, when 

 a Masai rushed forward and speared him through the back, 

 killing him on the spot. The Frenchmen killed Dick's assailant, 

 but fighting against overwhelming odds, they were compelled 

 to retreat to the Fort. In a couple of days they returned to 

 the scene of the fight in order to bury Dick. They found the 

 body stripped naked, and buried it on the Kedong escarpment. 

 They erected a plain wooden cross over the grave, which I 

 saw still standing w'hen I last journeyed that way. The inscrip- 

 tion simply states, that the cross was erected by his comrades 

 in arms to the memory of the deceased, slain by the Masai. 

 One of these two Frenchmen has died since ; he suffered 



D 



