How I found Livingstone : $b Travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. LivingstoneStanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
History
How I found Livingstone : $b Travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone
Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Livingstone, David, 1813-1873
When I inquired into the details of the attack, and the manner of the
death of these Arabs, I was told that after the first firing which
warned the inhabitants of Tabora that the enemy was upon them, Khamis
bin Abdullah and some of the principal Arabs who happened to be with
him had ascended to the roof of his tembe, and with his spyglass he had
looked towards the direction of the firing. To his great astonishment he
saw the plain around Tabora filled with approaching savages, and about
two miles off, near Kazima, a tent pitched, which he knew to belong to
Mirambo, from its having been presented to that chief by the Arabs of
Tabora when they were on good terms with him.
Khamis bin Abdullah descended to his house saying, "Let us go to meet
him. Arm yourselves, my friends, and come with me." His friends advised
him strongly sat to go out of his tembe; for so long as each Arab kept
to his tembe they were more than a match for the Ruga Ruga and the
Watuta together. But Khamis broke out impatiently with, "Would you
advise us to stop in our tembes, for fear of this Mshensi (pagan)? Who
goes with me?" His little protege, Khamis, son of a dead friend, asked
to be allowed to be his gun-bearer. Mohammed bin Abdulluh, Ibrahim bin
Rashid, and Sayf, the son of Ali, young Arabs of good families, who were
proud to live with the noble Khamis, also offered to go with him. After
hastily arming eighty of his slaves, contrary to the advice of his
prudent friends, he sallied out, and was soon face to face with his
cunning and determined enemy Mirambo. This chief, upon seeing the Arabs
advance towards him, gave orders to retreat slowly. Khamis, deceived by
this, rushed on with his friends after them. Suddenly Mirambo ordered
his men to advance upon them in a body, and at the sight of the
precipitate rush upon their party, Khamis's slaves incontinently took to
their heels, never even deigning to cast a glance behind them, leaving
their master to the fate which was now overtaking him. The savages
surrounded the five Arabs, and though several of them fell before the
Arabs' fire, continued to shoot at the little party, until Khamis bin
Abdullah received a bullet in the leg, which brought him to his knees,
and, for the first time, to the knowledge that his slaves had deserted
him. Though wounded, the brave man continued shooting, but he soon
afterwards received a bullet through the heart. Little Khamis, upon
seeing his adopted father's fall, exclaimed: "My father Khamis is dead,
I will die with him," and continued fighting until he received, shortly
after, his death wound. In a few minutes there was not one Arab left
alive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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