368 THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 



occasionally charged the Imbozhwa. The women went up and 

 down the village with sieves, as if winnowing, and singing songs 

 and lullilooing to encourage their husbands and friends who were 

 fighting: each had a branch of the Ficus Indica in her hand, 

 which she waved as a charm. About ten of the Imbozhwa were 

 killed, but dead and wounded were at once carried of by their 

 countrymen. They continued the assault from early dawn till 

 1 p. M., and showed great bravery, but they wounded only two 

 with their arrows. Their care to secure the wounded was admir- 

 able ; two or three at once seized the fallen man and ran off 

 with him, though pursued by a great crowd of Wanyamwezi with 

 spears, and fired at by the Arabs Victoria-cross fellows truly 

 many of them were ! Those who had a bunch of animals' tails, 

 with medicine, tied to their waists, came sidling and ambling up 

 to near the unfinished stockade, and shot their arrows high up 

 into the air, to fall among the Wanyamwezi, then picked up any 

 arrows on the field, ran back and returned again. They thought 

 that by the ambling gait they avoided the balls, and when these 

 whistled past them they put down their heads, as if to allow 

 them to pass over : they had never encountered guns before. 

 When a man was killed and not carried off, the Wanyamwezi 

 brought his head and put it on a pole on the stockade ; six heads 

 were thus placed. A fine young man was caught and brought in 

 by the Wanyemwezi ; one stabbed him behind, and another cut 

 his forehead with an axe. Livingstone called in vain to them 

 not to kill him. As a last appeal, he said to the crowd that 

 surrounded him, "Don't kill me, and I shall take you to where 

 the women are." "You lie," said his enemies ; "you intend to 

 take us where we may be shot by your friends ;" and they killed 

 him. 



For two weeks or more the Imbozhwa kept up the siege, and 

 finally forced the Arabs to restore all the prisoners taken ; but 

 still they did not leave, and when a small party of Wanyemwezi 

 went out to feel the enemy they were set upon and driven back. 

 At length it was decided to quietly abandon the stockade at night, 

 and under cover of darkness steal away, a stratagem which worked 



