XXXIII 
THREE SLAVE GIRLS 
289 
present of three handsome slave girls. Can the 
reader wonder that I was in a quandary as 
to what to do with such a useless encumbrance ? 
Let the bashful young man ask himself what plan he 
would adopt if suddenly saddled with a trio of dusky 
belles, and he will begin to 
realize my difficulty ! Bootle’s 
predicament with his baby 
cannot be classed in the same 
category: it was merely 
child’s play. 
On my approach, one of 
the girls told me that some 
four weeks previously she had 
been taken from a village on 
the Locheringo River, and 
that her two companions had 
been carried off by Mataka’s 
people from a village near 
the English mission station 
at Unangu. She piteously 
begged me to keep her and 
her companions, for, if I 
refused, they would, she said, simply be treated 
as slaves and spend the rest of their lives in 
absolute misery. Feeling sorry for the poor 
creatures, I told Mperembe’s men to inform their 
chief that I had neither gunpowder nor percus- 
u 
