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by the enemy for sudden fear, and a furious fusillade was opened on our men 
by which several more were wounded. Then with or without order our guns 
went off, and numbers of the enemy were shot down. The bulk of them,, 
however, including Chiwaura, scrambled over the further wall and dropped 
into the marsh below, where a good many of them were drowned. Chiwaura 
himself was shot as he was running away, and fell dead into the marsh. The 
citadel was then entered by our men, and hundreds of women were found 
cooped up in the houses, many of them in slave sticks. They were set free 
and directed to proceed to Kotakota, where many of them had their homes. 1 
That same night our forces returned to Kotakota. The next two days were 
spent in levelling the walls of Chiwaura’s town. 
We then decided to proceed down the south-west shore of the lake, part of 
us going overland and the remainder on the gunboats and steamers to the Rifu 
peninsula, which was strongly held by Makanjira, whose relation Kuluunda, 
a famous woman chief amongst the Yao, had displaced Kazembe, our ally and 
her nephew. Whilst attacking Kazembe’s old town (Kazembe himself had 
joined us with a few men remaining faithful to him) we received information 
that a dau had just crossed from Makanjira’s with seventy fighting men 
on board, and a large quantity of gunpowder, and would probably land in 
“ Leopard Bay.” H.M.S. Pioneer was dispatched thither under the command 
of Lieut. Villiers, R.N. Although the Pioneer did not succeed in preventing 
the dau from reaching the shore she fired into her and disabled her so that she 
stranded on the rocks. But Makanjira’s men succeeded in escaping to the hill 
overlooking Leopard Bay where they were joined by the defeated enemy 
who had been driven out of Kazembe’s town. The situation was further 
complicated by the arrival of a large Arab slave-trading caravan, commanded 
by four or five white Arabs and containing several hundred slaves. The Arabs, 
joined their forces to those of Kuluunda and Makanjira, and for several days 
we besieged these people by land and water round the lofty hill which overlooks 
Leopard Bay. Eventually the Arabs of the slave caravan, Kuluunda, and most 
of her followers were captured or surrendered; but meantime a force of Jumbe’s 
men was left to continue the siege of the hill while our Sikhs, Makua, and 300 
of Jumbe’s soldiers, together with Jumbe himself and all the officers, were 
conveyed across the lake to Makanjira’s main town. We had made the journey 
by way of Monkey Bay so as to have a short rest before embarking on the 
most critical part of our programme. We had timed ourselves to arrive at 
Makanjira’s town at dawn. The enemy were taken somewhat by surprise, and 
we succeeded in effecting a landing on the sandy promontory to the south 
of Makanjira’s huge straggling metropolis of many thousand huts and houses- 
without meeting with any serious resistance. This promontory was separated 
from the town by a strip of low-lying swampy country. After entrenching 
ourselves in a camp the bulk of our forces started with Captain Johnson, 
Lieut. Edwards, and Mr. Glave to try conclusions with Makanjira’s forces, 
while the town was shelled over their heads by Mr. Sharpe from the camp 
and from the two gunboats which steamed along the shore. The Pioneer found 
1 Not a few of these poor women were far gone with child, and the terror of the bombardment 
so upset them that on the way to Kotakota woman after woman sat down by the way and gave birth to a 
child, which she straightway abandoned in her panic fear of Chiwaura’s pursuit. It was a quaint though 
touching sight to see the Sikh soldiers gravely gathering up the new-born babes and carrying them with 
their many other burdens of rifle and kit into Kotakota, where they were afterwards impartially distributed 
among the various women who claimed to be recently parturient. Never in any historical tale or 
Gilbertian burlesque were babies so hopelessly “ mixed.” 
