ast sound they shall utter, for numberless forms
are already swarming over the stockade, and now the stillness is rent by
the roar of firearms. Dark, ferocious faces grin with exultation as the
panic-stricken inhabitants, decimated by that deadly volley, turn wildly
in headlong flight for the only side of the stockade apparently left
open. But before these arises another mass of assailants, barring their
way, then springing upon them spear in hand; and the fiendish
war-whistle screeches its strident chorus, as the broad spears shear
down through flesh and muscle; and the earth is slippery with blood,
ghastly with writhing and disemboweled corpses.

If this nest of man-eaters was hellish before in its bloodstained
horror, words fail to describe its aspect now. The savage shouts of the
assailants, the despairing screeches of women and children, who have
come forth only to find all escape cut off, the gasping groans of the
wounded and of the slain, the gaping gashes and staggering forms, and
ever around, grim, demon-like countenances, with teeth bared and a
perfect hell of blood-fury gleaming from distended eyeballs. All is but
another inferno-picture, too common here in the dark places of the
earth. It seems that in a very few minutes not a living being in that
surprised village will be left alive.

But now voices are raised in remonstrance, in command--loud voices,
authoritative voices--ordering a cessation of the massacre, for this is
no expedition of vengeance, but a slave-hunting party. In Swahili and
Zulu the leaders strive to curb this blood-rage once let loose among
their followers. But the savage Wangoni, who are the speakers of the
latter tongue and who constitute about half the attacking party, have
tasted slaughter, and their ferocity is well-nigh beyond control;
indeed, but for the fact of being allowed to massacre a proportion of
the inhabitants of each place attacked, they could not be enlisted for
such a purpose at all. Still their broad spears flash in the moonlight,
and all who are in the way feel them--combatants, shrieking women,
paralyzed, crouching children; and not until the leader has threatened
to turn his rifles upon them will these ferocious auxiliaries be
persuaded to desist, and then only sullenly, and growling like a pack of
disappointed wolves.

Fully one-half of the male inhabitants have been slain and not a few
women and children, and now, as the heavy, sulphurous fumes of powder
smoke r