Next day Selous hunted, and later, when in camp, was surrounded by great crowds of natives which, however, left at sundown. "I could not sleep, however, and was lying under my blanket, thinking of many things, and revolving various plans in my head, when about nine o'clock I observed a man come cautiously round the end of our scherm and pass quickly down the line of smouldering fires. As he stopped beside the fire, near the foot of Paul and Charley's blankets, I saw that he was one of the two men who had accompanied us as guides from Monzi's. I saw him kneel down and shake Paul by the leg, and then heard him whispering to him hurriedly and excitedly. Then I heard Paul say to Charley, 'Tell our master the news; wake him up.' I at once said, 'What is it, Charley? I am awake.' 'The man says, sir, that all the women have left the village, and he thinks that something is wrong,' he answered. I thought so too, and hastily pulled on my shoes, and then put on my coat and cartridge-belt, in which, however, there were only four cartridges. As I did so, I gave orders to my boys to extinguish all the fires, which they instantly did by throwing sand on the embers, so that an intense darkness at once hid everything within our scherm. "Paul and Charley were now sitting on their blankets with their rifles in their hands, and I went and held a whispered conversation with them, proposing to Paul that he and I should creep round the village and reconnoitre, and listen if possible to what the inhabitants were talking about. 'Wait a second,' I said, 'whilst I get out a few more cartridges,' and I was just leaning across my blankets to get at the bag containing them when three guns went off almost in my face, and several more at different points round the scherm. The muzzles of all these guns were within our scherm when they were discharged, so that our assailants must have crawled right up to the back of our camp and fired through the interstices between the cornstalks. The three shots that were let off just in front of me were doubtless intended for Paul, Charley, and myself, but by great good luck none of us was hit. As I stooped to pick up my rifle, which was lying on the blankets beside me, Paul and Charley jumped up and sprang past me. 'Into the grass!' I called to them in Dutch, and prepared to follow. The discharge of the guns was immediately followed by a perfect shower of barbed javelins, which I could hear pattering on the large leathern bags in which most of our goods were packed, and then a number of Mashukulumbwe rushed in amongst us.