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AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
that we had weapons as well as yourselves. Come, 
take your canoe ; see, we push it away for you to seize 
it.” We eventually won them back with smiles. We 
spoke to them sweetly as before. The natives were 
more respectful in their demeanour. They laughed, 
cried out admiringly ; imitated the pistol shots ; “ Boom, 
boom, boom,” they shouted. They then presented me 
with a bunch of bananas ! We became enthusiastic 
admirers of each other. 
Meantime, two more large canoes came up, also bold 
and confident, for they had not yet been taught a 
lesson. These new-comers insisted that we should visit 
their king Kamoydah. We begged to be excused. 
They became still more urgent in their request. We 
said it was impossible ; they were strangers, and not 
very well behaved ; if they wished to barter with us, 
they could load their canoes and come to Ngevi, where 
we would be happy to exchange beads or cloth for 
their articles. Three other canoes were now seen 
approaching. We sat, however, extremely still, patient, 
and placable, and waited for them. The united voices 
of the 130 natives made a terrible din, but we endured 
it with saintly meekness and the fortitude of stoics — 
for a period. We bore the storm of entreaties mixed 
with rude menaces until instinct warned me that it 
was becoming; dangerous. I then delivered some 
instructions to the boat’s crew, and, nodding to the 
shore, affected to surrender with an indifferent grace. 
They became suddenly silent. We lifted the stone 
anchor, and took to our oars, steering to the broken 
water, ruffled by the nor’-wester, beyond the shelter 
of the island, convoyed by the six canoes. We 
accompanied them some hundreds of yards, and then, 
suddenly hoisting sail, swept by them like an arrow. 
We preferred the prospect of the lone watery expanse 
to the company of the perverse inebriates of Ugamba. 
We continued sailing for half an hour, and as it was 
then near sunset, dropped anchor in seventy-five feet 
of water. The wind, which had swept in strong gusts 
from the north-west, suddenly fell, for in the north-east 
