HORRIBLE SLAUGHTER. 633 



one of the fellows haggling about a fowl, and seizing hold of it. 

 Before he had got thirty yards out, the discharge of two guns 

 in the middle of the crowd told that slaughter had begun : 

 crowds dashed off from the place, and threw down their wares 

 in confusion, and ran. At the same time that the three opened 

 fire on the mass of people near the upper end of the market- 

 place volleys were discharged from a party down near the creek 

 on the panic-stricken women, who dashed at the canoes. These, 

 some fifty or more, were jammed in the creek, and the men for- 

 got their paddles in the terror that seized all. The canoes were 

 not to be got out, for the creek was too small for so many ; men 

 and women, wounded by the balls, poured into them, and leaped 

 and scrambled into the water, shrieking. A long line of heads 

 in the river showed that great numbers struck out for an island 

 a full mile off: in going towards it they had to put the left 

 shoulder to a current of about two miles an hour ; if they had 

 struck away diagonally to the opposite bank, the current would 

 have aided them, and though nearly three miles off, some would 

 have gained land : as it was, the heads above water showed the 

 long line of those that would inevitably perish. 



Shot after shot continued to be fired on the helpless and per- 

 ishing. Some of the long line of heads disappeared quietly; 

 whilst other poor creatures threw their arms high, as if appeal- 

 ing to the great Father above, and sank. One canoe took in as 

 many as it could hold, and all paddled with hands and arms : 

 three canoes, got out in haste, picked up sinking friends, till all 

 went down together, and disappeared. One man in a long 

 canoe, which could have held forty or fifty, had clearly lost his 

 head ; he had been out in the stream before the massacre began, 

 and now paddled up the river nowhere, and never looked to 

 the drowning. By-and-by all the heads disappeared ; some had 

 turned down stream towards the bank, and escaped. Dugumbe 

 put people into one of the deserted vessels to save those in the 

 water, and saved twenty-one. One woman refused to be taken on 

 board, thinking that she was to be made a slave ; she preferred 

 the chance of life by swimming, to the lot of a slave. The Arabs 

 themselves estimated the loss of life at between three hundred 

 and thirty and four* hundred souls. The shooting-party near 

 the canoes were so reckless, they killed two of their own people ; 



