"Tell them I’ll listen to the others, but won’t hear a word from them." The causeway being too narrow for two men to pass securely, the file faced about and retreated to the shore. Then they came on again, the negroes this time leading, and the Swahilis remaining at the end of the causeway. The first negro, a finely proportioned fellow whom it was a pleasure to look upon, began to address the white man, using his hands freely. "What does he say?" asked Ferrier. The askari did not know his dialect. From the crowd of men who had gathered at the wall one stepped forward saying that he knew it. "Well, tell me what he says." "Him say msungu come out: no lib for no more fight. Great big lot o’ black men: msungu no can run away." "You can tell him that the msungu won’t come out, and the black men had better run away. They have come to fight us, who never did them any harm. They have come to help a lot of thieves and murderers, who have stolen the goods of the black men round about. This fort is where they lived, and where they kept the goods they stole. The fort now belongs to the msungu. A great many wasungu are now coming from their fort far away to punish them, and when they come they will scatter them as the lion scatters sheep. Tell them we are quite happy; we aren’t a bit afraid of them; we have beaten them twice, and we’ll beat them again. They had better take up their cook-pots and go home." This little speech Ferrier delivered sentence by sentence, wondering how much of it was fairly translated. The deputation clearly gathered the gist of it, for with every sentence they became manifestly more incensed. At the close they shouted and waved their arms, and then the leader, with the air of one playing his trump card, cried out that the msungu’s talk was fool’s talk, for they held a sheep-faced msungu a prisoner in their village far away, and if their demand was not instantly complied with, the sheep-faced msungu would be killed. "By Jove!" thought Ferrier, "they didn’t recognize old John then. What a tremendous lark! I’ll give them a shocker." To the evident amazement of the natives he laughed heartily. Then, bidding them stand where they were until he came back to them, he returned into the fort. "I say, John," he said, with a chuckle, shaking the sleeping form; "wake up, old chap. There’s a deputation outside summoning us to surrender, and threatening if we don’t to slaughter a sheep-faced msungu--sheep-faced, old chap!--whom they’ve got penned up in their village. Come and show yourself; I bet they’ll look sheepish. It was evidently too dark to see you when you came down on your raft. Slip your things on: you don’t look the same man in that blanket."