er from our guns, which I very regretfully allowed to be
maintained, believing that our only chance of safety lay in inflicting
upon them a severe enough lesson to utterly discourage them from any
renewal of the attack. We continued firing until the last canoe had
reached the shore, by which time eleven of them had been utterly
destroyed and several others badly damaged, resulting in a loss to
Matadi of, according to my estimate, not far short of three hundred men.
We had just ceased firing, and the men were busy securing the guns
again, when the threatened storm burst forth, and our fight terminated
with one of the most terrific tempests of thunder, lightning, and rain
that I had ever been exposed to. It; lasted until about three o'clock
the next morning, and then passed off, leaving the heavens calm, clear,
and serene once more, and the stars even more brilliant than they had
been before the gathering of the storm. Of course, after the attempted
surprise of the schooner by the savages, there was no more sleep for me
that night, and before dawn I had resolved to send a boat ashore,
demanding the surrender of Matadi and his chiefs, as hostages for the
good behaviour of their people until the delivery of the English
prisoners, the alternative, in case of refusal, being the destruction of
the town.

Accordingly, as the rising sun was gilding the hill-tops, I ordered the
boat to be lowered, and sent her away in Gowland's charge, with Lobo to
act as interpreter, with a message to that effect. The guard of
warriors still held the landing-place, and to the chief in command of
them the message was given; its receipt, as Gowland subsequently
informed me, producing a very considerable amount of consternation. The
reply was that Matadi had been very severely wounded in the _accidental_
engagement of the previous night, and was believed to be dying; but that
the chief to whom the message had been given would communicate with his
brother chiefs, and that we should receive their reply on the following
morning. And to this Gowland had replied that if the white prisoners
were not surrendered, safe and sound, or the whole of the chiefs, Matadi
included, on board the schooner when the sun stood over a certain
hill-top--which would be in about an hour from that moment--the
schooner's guns would open fire upon the town and continue its
bombardment until every house in it was razed to the ground. And
therewith the gig returned to th