the spacious courtyards that I so well
remembered.

Our assault, though fiercely and savagely repelled, was at last
successful. We were entering the stronghold of Samory, and had achieved a
feat that the well-equipped expeditions of the French and English had
failed to accomplish.

The Arabs during the next quarter of an hour struggled bravely against
their adversity and fought with a dogged courage of which I had not
believed them capable. Soon, however, finding themselves conquered, they
cried for quarter. Had they known the peculiar temperament of the
Dagombas and the soldiers of Mo, they would never thus have implored
mercy. But they cried out, and some even sank on their knees in the blood
of their dead comrades, uttering piteous appeals. But the Arabs of Samory
had never shown mercy to the Dagombas or the people of Mo, and
consequently our army, in the first flush of their victory, filled with
the awful lust for blood, treated their cries with jeers, and as they
advanced into court after court within the great Kasbah walls, they fell
upon all they met, armed or unarmed, men or women, and massacred them
where they stood.

The appeal shouted time after time by Kona to view our victory in
temperate spirit and spare those who submitted, was disregarded by all in
this wholesale savage butchery. The scene within the Arab chieftain's
stronghold was, alas! far more horrible than any I had witnessed during
the revolt in Mo. Guards, officials and slaves of Samory's household were
indiscriminately put to the sword, some of the men being hunted into
corners and speared by the Dagombas, while others were forced upon their
knees by the soldiers of Mo and mercilessly decapitated. The door of the
great harem, long ago reputed to contain a thousand inmates, including
slaves, was burst open, and in those beautiful and luxuriant courts and
chambers the whole of the women were butchered with a brutality quite as
fiendish as any displayed by the Arabs themselves. The handsome
favourites of Samory in their filmy garments of gold tissue and girdles
of precious stones were dragged by their long tresses from their hiding
places and literally hacked to pieces, their magnificent and costly
jewels being torn from them and regarded as legitimate loot. Women's
death-screams filled the great courts and corridors; their life-blood
stained the pavements of polished jasper and bespattered the conquerors.
The Dagombas, finding themselves inside