guards whom
Babemba had left outside our gate started through the town, leading
with us the two donkeys and the white ox. I remember by an afterthought,
telling Sammy, who was looking very uncomfortable, to return to the huts
and fetch some blankets and a couple of iron cooking-pots which might
become necessities to us.

"Oh! Mr. Quatermain," he answered, "I will obey you, though with fear
and trembling."

He went and when a few hours afterwards I noted that he had never
reappeared, I came to the conclusion, with a sigh, for I was very fond
of Sammy in a way, that he had fallen into trouble and been killed.
Probably, I thought, "his fear and trembling" had overcome his reason
and caused him to run in the wrong direction with the cooking-pots.

The first part of our march through the town was easy enough, but after
we had crossed the market-place and emerged into the narrow way that ran
between many lines of huts to the south gate it became more difficult,
since this path was already crowded with hundreds of terrified
fugitives, old people, sick being carried, little boys, girls, and women
with infants at the breast. It was impossible to control these poor
folk; all we could do was to fight our way through them. However, we got
out at last and climbing the slope, took up the best position we could
on and just beneath its crest where the trees and scattered boulders
gave us very fair cover, which we improved upon in every way feasible in
the time at our disposal, by building little breastworks of stone and so
forth. The fugitives who had accompanied us, and those who followed, a
multitude in all, did not stop here, but flowed on along the road and
vanished into the wooded country behind.

I suggested to Brother John that he should take his wife and daughter
and the three beasts and go with them. He seemed inclined to accept the
idea, needless to say for their sakes, not for his own, for he was a
very fearless old fellow. But the two ladies utterly refused to budge.
Hope said that she would stop with Stephen, and her mother declared that
she had every confidence in me and preferred to remain where she was.
Then I suggested that Stephen should go too, but at this he grew so
angry that I dropped the subject.

So in the end we established them in a pleasant little hollow by a
spring just over the crest of the rise, where unless our flank were
turned or we were rushed, they would be out of the reach of bullets.
Moreover,