I still remained motionless and silent, for I feared that if I spoke he would mark my position and rush at me, and I had no wish to kill him and did not intend that he should kill me; but, as the flame was now rapidly dying out, I considered that if any fighting was to be done it had better be in what light remained, for so I had the advantage, whereas in the dark the advantage clearly lay with the blind man. When, therefore, having received no reply to his question in Ochwi he asked in barbarous Hausa, “Is there no one here?” I replied, “Yes. There is one left.” “Who art thou?” he demanded with fierce suspicion. “I am the new prisoner who was brought here yesterday,” I answered. “Have they blinded thee yet?” he asked. “No,” said I. “They were about to put out my eyes when the fight began.” “Where are all the others?” he inquired. “They are lying all around, dead,” I answered. “What!” he shouted. “Have they killed all the slaves but me?” “Many of them thou didst kill thyself,” said I, “and as to the rest, they killed one another or were killed by the wizards.” “Dost thou tell me that I have killed my friends?” he exclaimed in a tone of horrified surprise. “I thought it was the wizards and the men of Kumasi with whom I was fighting, and now thou sayest I have killed my comrades. This is a dreadful thing!” and to my surprise he burst into loud weeping, tearing at his hair and beating his breast with his clenched fist. I took the opportunity to pick up the remaining candle and drop it into the furnace, for I had no mind to be left in the darkness with this unstable, excitable savage. “And where are the wizards and the Kumasi men?” he asked presently. “They are all dead,” said I. “Their bodies lie around thee.” He broke out again into boisterous blubbering lamentations. “All gone,” he moaned, “and thou tellest me I have killed them--have killed my brothers who have worked by my side this long, long time. Why should I not die, too? Come, my friend, take a knife and kill me so that I may rest among my friends.” “This is folly,” said I, for I felt that time was too precious to be wasted on maudlin lamentation. “The others are dead and we are alive. Let me bind up thy arm, and then let us begone from this accursed place.” I tore off a strip of cloth from the garment of one of the dead fetish-men, and bound up his bleeding arm as well as I could. “Now,” I said, “thou knowest this place better than I. How shall we go?” “We cannot get out by the entrance,” he answered, “for the houses of the wizards are there, and we shall be taken as soon as we come out.” This was manifestly true, and was as I had expected; but some move would have to be made without delay, for more of the fetish-men or their armed followers might arrive at any moment. “Is there any other way out?” I asked.