200 
THE KILTMA.-NJAE 0 EXPEDITION. 
hurry to my presence and inform me what they had 
heard. 
This they were in no way loth to do, fearing, indeed, 
for their lives in this assemblage of warriors armed 
to the teeth, whom a word from their chief would pre¬ 
cipitate on any victim of his wrath. I suspected, even 
when I heard their terrified account, that this scene 
was a good bit of clever acting on Mandara’s part, 
meant to have its due effect on me by the panic it 
should produce among my men. 
At any rate, as we sat in the gloom of the early 
night still discussing our situation, my dinner un¬ 
touched on the table, and, to judge from the gleam of 
their watch-fires in the bush, the soldiers of Mandara 
still encircling us, the prospect seemed a sufficiently 
sombre one. Nor did the night bring a temporary 
truce to my anxieties. I found it difficult to compose 
myself to sleep, for my brain was continually forming 
projects for escaping secretly from Mandara’s country, 
and yet carrying away somehow my fifty-eight loads 
of goods; a well-nigh impossible feat to accomplish 
with ten men. Every sudden noise from the bush, 
the anxious whispers from my watching men, the dis¬ 
tant blowing of a horn, or firing of a gun made me 
start from bed wide-awake and expecting a midnight 
attack from the savages. And when towards dawn I 
found a short forgetfulness in fitful dozing, it was but 
to awake on a morrow of similar anxietv. 
€/ 
However, the tension was fortunately relieved by an 
unexpected and unintentional ally. The Wa-kiboso, 
whom Mandara had been recently raiding, had routed 
his armies with considerable slaughter—he confessed 
to the loss of 100 men, about ten per cent, of his 
entire force—and had further sent a bombastic mes- 
