bidding her good-bye, I started at daybreak on my return to
my own kraal.

Although I was living among a race of black people who would be deemed
savages, and who had slaughtered my companions who had been shipwrecked
on the coast, still I felt a sort of home-feeling on rejoining my kraal
and on meeting Inyati again after only three days' absence. Now that I
knew about the male passengers and sailors having been assagied, I
talked to several of the young Caffres about it; and their remarks were
so sensible, and seemed to me so reasonable, that I must here repeat
them.

They said that only twice had white men come on their coast. The first
men who came made signs of friendship, and were well received. They
stayed two days on shore, and then enticed several young men and maidens
to go with them to the shore, where they captured them and carried them
to their ship. Resistance was of course offered by the men, and several
were shot, also two females were shot. On hearing of this treachery,
all the chiefs along the coast met in council, and agreed that, if any
more white men came to the coast, the people were to retreat, and a
watch was to be set on the white men, and they were to be surprised and
assagied before they could shoot anybody. Seeing our shipwrecked men on
the coast, the Caffres concluded that we had come on an expedition
similar to that of the former visitors, and so they had attacked us.
They admitted that when they found there were women among the party they
hesitated, but having received the chief's orders to attack us, they had
no choice but to obey. "Now," they said, "we must keep you always, for
if you went back among white people, you would tell them we had killed
your companions, and then an army of white men would come and attack
us."

There was no doubt it was by a mistake that my fellow-voyagers had been
killed, but when I heard the Caffres' explanation I could not think them
very wrong. We, in fact, had suffered for the sins of some
slave-hunters, who might or might not have been English.

I explained to the Caffres how we had been shipwrecked and had escaped
on rafts, and how they would have received presents had they been kind
to us, and had they forwarded us to the nearest English or Dutch town.
They admitted that such might have been the case, but now, having killed
the white men, they said they must keep the thing quiet. I told them,
that even now, if they forwarded me and the thre