504 AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION 
tance away from the scene, and had collected their facul- 
ties, they found there were only eight of them alive ; 
and, alas for us who were left to bewail his sudden 
doom ! there was no white face among them. But pre- 
sently, close to them, another commotion, another heave 
and belching of waters, and out of them the insensible 
form of the “ little master ” appeared, and they heard a 
loud moan from him. Then Uledi, forgetting his late 
escape from the whirling pit, flung out his arms, and 
struck gallantly towards him, but another pool sucked 
them both in, and the waves closed over them before he 
could reach him ; and for the second time the brave 
coxswain emerged, faint and weary- — but Frank Pocock 
was seen no more. 
“ My brave, honest, kindly-natured Frank, have you 
left me so ? Oh, my long-tried friend, what fatal rash- 
ness ! Ah, Uledi, had you but saved him, I should 
have made you a rich man.” 
“ Our fate is in the hands of God, master,” replied he, 
sadly and wearily. 
Various were the opinions ventured upon the cause 
which occasioned the loss of such an expert swimmer. 
Baraka, with some reason, suggested that Frank’s in- 
stinctive impulse would have been to swim upward, and 
that during his frantic struggle towards the air he might 
have struck his head against the canoe. Slmmari 
O 
was inclined to think that the bandages on his feet 
might have impeded him ; while Saywa thought it 
must have been his heavy clothes which prevented 
the full play of the limbs required in such a desperate 
situation. 
All over Zinga, Mbelo, and Mowa the dismal tidings 
spread rapidly. “ The brother of the Mundele is lost — - 
lost at Massassa,” they cried ; and, inspired by pure 
sympathy, they descended to Zinga, to hear how the 
fatal accident occurred. Good, kindly Ndala — who came 
accompanied by his wives, and with a true delicacy of 
feeling would not permit the natives to throng about 
me, but drove them outside the camp, where they might 
wonder and gossip without disturbing us— old Monango, 
