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Updated: June 19, 2025
"Take that to the captain there with my good wishes, Jerry, and ask him if he will drink with us," I said. Jerry, who was a plucky fellow, obeyed. Advancing with the steaming coffee, he held it under the Captain's nose. Evidently he knew the man's name, for I heard him say: "O Babemba, the white lords, Macumazana and Wazela, ask if you will share their holy drink with them?"
"That is so," broke in Babemba, "for when I was a lad I was a slave to the Pongo and doomed to be sacrificed to the White Devil. It was in escaping from them that I lost this eye." Needless to say, I made a note of this remark, though I did not think the moment opportune to follow the matter up.
"Glad to hear it, General Babemba," said Brother John, "although it would be better if he had never taken them away. Put them down and get on to your feet. I do not like to see men wriggling on their stomachs like monkeys." The order was obeyed, and we checked the guns and ammunition; also our revolvers and the other articles that had been taken away from us.
Two Babemba men came in and said that they had given up fighting, and begged for their wives, who had been captured by Syde's people on their way here: this reasonable request was refused at first, but better counsels prevailed, and they were willing to give something to appease the anger of the enemy, and sent back six captives, two of whom were the wives prayed for.
"You cannot see anything, can you?" "Nothing except wood," replied Babemba, staring at the deal slip with which it was lined. Then I threw a dish-cloth over it and, to change the subject, offered him another pannikin of the "holy drink" and a stool to sit on.
One man became so excited with yelling, that the others had to disarm him, and he then fell down as if in a fit; water poured on his head brought him to calmness. We go on the 22nd. 22nd November, 1868. This evening the Imbozhwa, or Babemba, came at dusk, and killed a Wanyamwezi woman on one side of the village, and a woman and child on the other side of it.
It was over! Great Heaven! it was over, and we began to count our losses. Four of the Zulus were dead and two others were badly wounded no, three, including Mavovo. They brought him to me leaning on the shoulder of Babemba and another Mazitu captain. He was a shocking sight, for he was shot in three places, and badly cut and battered as well.
"Why does the white lord do that?" asked Babemba. "Now I see that you are truly deceiving me, and that what you are giving me to swallow is nothing but hot mwavi, which in the innocent causes vomiting, but that in those who mean evil, death." "Stop that foolery, you idiot," I muttered to Stephen, kicking him on the shins, "or you'll get our throats cut."
"Nay, shoot not!" shouted Babemba. "Dogeetah is come!" A moment's pause, during which I heard arrows falling to the ground; then from all those thousands of throats a roar that shaped itself to the words: "Dogeetah! Dogeetah is come to save the white lords."
"But stay before you answer, I will speak what I know," and I repeated what I had learned from Hans, who confirmed my words, and from Harût and Marût, leaving out, however, any mention of their dealings with Lady Ragnall. "It is all true," said Babemba when I had finished, "for that old woman of whom Light-in-the-Darkness speaks, was one of the wives of my uncle and I knew her well. Hearken!
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