ready for their journey. After they had marched a little while,
Moto heard the warriors nearest him talk of an attack Casema had
determined to make upon a village some time during that night, as he had
found out that most of the fighting men had gone south on a hunting
expedition, leaving only a few able men to guard it, while there were
numbers of women and children within. The village belonged to an
isolated tribe of the Northern Wabemba, sometimes called Bobemba.

Towards the decline of day the Wazavila halted in a thick grove; and as
they would not permit the captives or their own people to kindle fires,
all were compelled to eat the grains of Indian corn doled out to them
unroasted--a task which the stoutest jaws would find excessively hard.
In the meantime it was noticed how the warriors sharpened their spears,
and critically examined the strings of their hows, and made other
preparations for war upon the defenceless village of the Wabemba, which
must have been near, else why all their preparations?

About three hours after darkness, after leaving twenty men to guard
Kalulu and his companions, the Wazavila, to the number of one hundred
and fifty, started to put their murderous purpose into effect.

Though Kalulu, Selim, and their friends listened keenly for the sounds
of the strife, they heard nothing; but at the end of a couple of hours
they saw a red blaze over the tops of the trees to the south, and they
knew that the work of the devil was being enacted, or that it had been
consummated, and that fearful glare of fire seen against the sky was
only the final completion of the craven and wicked deed. About midnight
the fiends returned with about two hundred and fifty women and children,
and a few old men, the able-bodied having perished to a man, as they
afterwards found out, in the defence of their homes. The order to march
was given, and through the pathless jungle and forest the Wazavila urged
their slaves with spear, blade, and shaft, so they might be far out of
reach before the vengeful Wabemba came on their trail.

The morning rose and found them still tramping on in a direction
considerably north of east, and showed the scene with all its horrors to
the sympathising Selim and Abdullah, though to Kalulu, Simba, and Moto
such scenes were not new.

On this and the following days, for nearly a fortnight, the two Arab
boys had this accursed evil of Africa brought vividly before their
minds, and they saw