t was true: this was the Hottentot's superb design. Moreover, it
succeeded. Up on the hillside he had watched the progress of the fight
and seen how it must end. Then, through the interpreter who was with
him, he harangued those slaves, pointing out to them that we, their
white friends, were about to be overwhelmed, and that they must either
strike for themselves, or return to the yoke. Among them were some who
had been warriors in their own tribes, and through these he stirred the
others. They seized the slave-sticks from which they had been freed,
pieces of rock, anything that came to their hands, and at a given signal
charged, leaving only the women and children behind them.

Seeing them come the scattered Arabs began to fire at them, killing
some, but thereby revealing their own hiding-places. At these the slaves
rushed. They hurled themselves upon the Arabs; they tore them, they
dashed out their brains in such fashion that within another five minutes
quite two-thirds of them were dead; and the rest, of whom we took some
toll with our rifles as they bolted from cover, were in full flight.

It was a terrible vengeance. Never did I witness a more savage scene
than that of these outraged men wreaking their wrongs upon their
tormentors. I remember that when most of the Arabs had been killed and
a few were escaped, the slaves found one, I think it was the captain of
the gang, who had hidden himself in a little patch of dead reeds washed
up by the stream. Somehow they managed to fire these; I expect that
Hans, who had remained discreetly in the background after the fighting
began, emerged when it was over and gave them a match. In due course out
came the wretched Arab. Then they flung themselves on him as marching
ants do upon a caterpillar, and despite his cries for mercy, tore him to
fragments, literally to fragments. Being what they were, it was hard
to blame them. If we had seen our parents shot, our infants pitilessly
butchered, our homes destroyed and our women and children marched off
in the slave-sticks to be sold into bondage, should we not have done the
same? I think so, although we are not ignorant savages.

Thus our lives were saved by those whom we had tried to save, and for
once justice was done even in those dark parts of Africa, for in that
time they were dark indeed. Had it not been for Hans and the courage
which he managed to inspire into the hearts of these crushed blacks, I
have little doubt but that