izing hold of it. Before I had got
thirty yards out, the discharge of two guns in the middle of the crowd
told me that slaughter had begun: crowds dashed off from the place, and
threw down their wares in confusion, and ran. At the same time that the
three opened fire on the mass of people near the upper end of the
marketplace volleys were discharged from a party down near the creek on
the panic-stricken women, who dashed at the canoes. These, some fifty or
more, were jammed in the creek, and the men forgot their paddles in the
terror that seized all. The canoes were not to be got out, for the creek
was too small for so many; men and women, wounded by the balls, poured
into them, and leaped and scrambled into the water, shrieking. A long
line of heads in the river showed that great numbers struck out for an
island a full mile off: in going towards it they had to put the left
shoulder to a current of about two miles an hour; if they had struck
away diagonally to the opposite bank, the current would have aided them,
and, though nearly three miles off, some would have gained land: as it
was, the heads above water showed the long line of those that would
inevitably perish.

Shot after shot continued to be fired on the helpless and perishing.
Some of the long line of heads disappeared quietly; whilst other poor
creatures threw their arms high, as if appealing to the great Father
above, and sank. One canoe took in as many as it could hold, and all
paddled with hands and arms: three canoes, got out in haste, picked up
sinking friends, till all went down together, and disappeared. One man
in a long canoe, which could have held forty or fifty, had clearly lost
his head; he had been out in the stream before the massacre began, and
now paddled up the river nowhere, and never looked to the drowning.
By-and-bye all the heads disappeared; some had turned down stream
towards the bank, and escaped. Dugumbe put people into one of the
deserted vessels to save those in the water, and saved twenty-one, but
one woman refused to be taken on board from thinking that she was to be
made a slave of; she preferred the chance of life by swimming, to the
lot of a slave: the Bagenya women are expert in the water, as they are
accustomed to dive for oysters, and those who went down stream may have
escaped, but the Arabs themselves estimated the loss of life at between
330 and 400 souls. The shooting-party near the canoes were so reckless,
they killed t