trouble .mil lose our ivory, and that it was
better to leave within two days. But we did
not have to wait two days for the trouble! It
came even before w6 had finished our shauri.
We heard a woman scream loud. We rushed
out, and met some Wangwann running towards
us, and among them a woman with a dwarfs
arrow in her breast.
“ ‘What’s this, what’s this?’ we asked, and
they cried out, ‘The dwarfs shot this woman
while she was drawing Water, and they aré doming
in immense numbers towards us from all
the other villages. It’s a war, prepare yourselves!’
"We were not a bit too soon: We had scarce-
ly Put on our belts and seized our guns before
the vicious wretches were upon us, and shooting
their reed arrows in clouds. They Screamed
and yelled just like monkeys. Many Of our people
fell dead instantly from the poison before
we could get together and fire on them. Mtagamoyo!
he was everywhere brandishing his tWO-
handed sword, and cleaving thént às you Would
cleave a banana. The arrows passed through
his shirt in many places. Therë were many
good fellows like Mtagamoyo there, and they
fought Well; but it Was of fro fiée. The
dwarfs were firing from the top of thé tfè'ès ;
they crept through thé fall gfasS cloSe iif> to
us, and shot their arrows iii ofrr facés. Tfrèfr
fOct. « , mm H C H T I N G T H U D W A R F S . 13 3
I, J
Mtagomoyo, seeing it was getting hot work,
shouted ‘Boma! Boma! Boma!’ (palisade), an<i
some hundred of us cut down banana-trees, tore
doors out, and houses down, and formed a boma
at each end of the street, and then we were a
little better off, for it was not such rapid, random
shooting; we fired more deliberately, and
after several hours drove them off.
“Do you think they gave us peace? Not a
bit; a fresh party came up and continued the
fight. They were such small things, we could
not see them very well; had they been tall men
like us, we might have picked off hundreds of
them We could not fight all the time, for some
o f us had to sleep, so Mtagamoyo divided us
into two parties, one party to go to sleep, the
other to watch the boma. A ll night we heard
the reed arrows flying past, or pattering on the
roofs or the boma fence; all night we heard
their yells. Once or twice they tried to storm
the boma, but we had twenty muskets at each
end.
“Well, the fight lasted all that night, and all
the next day, and throughout the next night.
And we could get no water, until Mtagamoyo
called out a hundred fellows, fifty with muskets
and fifty with big water-pots, to follow him.
Mtagamoyo was a lion; he held up a shield before
him, and looking around he just ran straight
where the crowd was thickest; and he seized