lake of German
shipping; and the first Belgian force landed and occupied Ujiji, the
terminus of the Central Railway.

Then the blood of the Huns in Africa ran cold in their veins, and the
fear that the advancing Belgians would wreak vengeance for the crimes of
Germany in Belgium and to the Belgian consuls in prison in Tabora,
gripped their vitals. Hastily they sent their women and children at all
speed east along the line to Tabora, the new Provincial capital, and
planned to put up the stiff rearguard actions that should delay the
enemy, until the English might take Tabora and save their women from
Belgian hands. For the English, those soft-hearted fools, who had
already so well treated the women at Wilhelmstal, could be as easily
persuaded to exercise their flabby sentimentalism on the women and
children in Tabora. So ran the German reasoning.

Slowly and relentlessly the Belgian columns swept eastward along the
railway line, closely co-operating with the British force advancing from
Mwanza, south-east, toward the capital. But, in Molitor, the German
General Wable had met more than his match, and soon, outgeneralled and
out-manoeuvred, he had to rally on the last prepared position, west of
Tabora. Then, daily, went the German parlementaires under the white
flag, that standard the enemy know so well how to use, to the British
General praying that he would occupy Tabora while Wable kept the
Belgians in check. But the British General was adamant, and would have
none of it; and as Wable's shattered forces fled to the bush to march
south-east to where Lettow, the ever-vigilant, was keeping watch, the
Belgians entered the fair city of Tabora. And here were over five
hundred German women and children, clinging to the protection that the
Governor's wife should gain for them. For Frau von Schnee was a New
Zealand woman, and she might be looked to to persuade the British to
restrain the Belgian Askari.

But there was no need. The behaviour of Belgian officers and their
native soldiers was as correct and gentlemanly as that of officers
should be, and, to their relief and surprise, those white women found
the tables turned, and that their enemy could be as chivalrous to them
as German soldiers--their own brothers--had been vile to the wretched
people of Belgium. There was no nonsense about the Belgian General;
stern and just, but very strict, he brought the German population to
heel and kept them there. Cap in hand, the German