378 
THE BAIT TAKES. 
[chap. XIII. 
mucli more powerful chief than Kamrasi, and that if 
he required my alliance, he must treat with me in 
person, and immediately send fifty men to transport 
my wife, myself, and effects to his camp, where we 
might, in a personal interview, come to terms. 
I told my vakeel to return to me with the fifty men, 
and to be sure to bring from Kamrasi some token by 
which I should know that he had actually seen him. 
The vakeel and Yaseen started. 
After some days, the absconded guide, Rabonga, 
appeared with a number of men, but without either 
my vakeel or Yaseen. He carried with him a small 
gourd bottle, carefully stopped ; this he broke, and 
extracted from the inside two pieces of printed paper, 
that Kamrasi had sent to me in reply. 
On examining the papers, I found them to be 
portions of the English Church Service translated into 
(I think) the “ Kisuahili ” language, by Dr. Krapf! 
There were many notes in pencil on the margin, written 
in English, as translations of words in the text. It 
quickly occurred to me that Speke must have given 
this book to Kamrasi on his arrival from Zanzibar, and 
that he now extracted the leaves, and sent them to me 
as the token I had demanded to show that my message 
had been delivered to him. 
Rabonga made a lame excuse for his previous 
desertion; he delivered a thin ox that Kamrasi had 
sent me, and he declared that his orders were, that he 
should take my whole party immediately to Kamrasi, 
as he was anxious that we should attack Fowooka 
without loss of time ; we were positively to start on 
the following morning ! My bait had taken ! and we 
should escape from this frightful spot, Shooa Morn. 
On the following morning we were carried in our 
litters by a number of men. The ox had been killed, 
the whole party had revelled in good food, and a 
supply sufficient for the journey was taken by my 
men. 
Without inflicting the tedium of the journey upon 
