The next day the march was resumed, and at eleven o'clock Zimbize, the stronghold of the enemy, came in view. The forces quickly surrounded it. A general assault followed and the village was captured, the inhabitants fleeing toward the mountains, pursued closely by the yelling Arabs. Only twenty dead bodies were found within. The next day, two more villages were burned and the day after, a detachment five hundred strong scoured the country around, carrying devastation and ruin in their path. At this critical period of the campaign, Stanley was still down with fever, and while he lay in his hammock, news came that the detachment of five hundred men had been surprised and killed. Mirambo had turned and ambushed them, and now the boasting of the morning was turning into despondency. The women made the night hideous with shrieks and lamentations over their slain husbands. The next day there was a regular stampede of the Arabs, and when Stanley was able to get out of his tent only seven men were left to him; all the rest had returned to Mfuto, and soon after to Tabna twenty-five miles distant. It was plain that it was useless to open the direct road to Ujiji, which lay through Mirambo's district. In fact, it seemed impossible to get there at all, and the only course left was to return to the coast and abandon the project of reaching Livingstone altogether. But what would Livingstone do locked up at Ujiji? He might perhaps go north and meet Baker, who was moving with a strong force southward. But he was told by a man that Livingstone was coming to Nyano Lake toward the Tanganika, on which Ujiji is situated, at the very time it was last reported he was murdered. He was then walking, dressed in American sheeting, having lost all his cloth in Lake Leemba. He had a breech-loading double-barreled rifle with him and two revolvers. Stanley felt that he could not give up trying to reach him now, when it was so probable that he was within four hundred miles of him.