Well, during that night we worked like Trojans—Who were the Trojans and why did they work hard? You ought to know with your superior education. We dug out a square pit in the middle of the station and lined it with dry grass. In it we arranged chairs and mattresses so that we could rest and sleep here out of reach of the bullets. We also turned the Chapel into a living-house and store, because its brick walls and iron roof made it secure against fire and fairly safe from bullets. On the second day the Ruga-ruga, led on by Ayub, attacked us on the west side, where our stockade was weakest and where we were overlooked a little by that mound we used to call the Snakes’s Hill. Brother Bayley was standing talking to me about some dressings he wanted for Josiah Briggs who had been shot in the foot, when suddenly he uttered a shriek, whirled round and fell at my feet. He died a few minutes afterwards. John was so infuriated at his death that in spite of my shouts to be careful, he climbed up to a look-out post and fired his double-barrelled sporting rifle at a group of Ruga-ruga on Snakes’s Hill. Whilst he was stooping to reload a poisoned arrow struck him on the chest and penetrated his lung. A good many of the Ruga-ruga were Manyema savages, slaves of the Arabs, and they fought with bows and poisoned arrows. John scrambled down somehow on to the ground. Ebenezer Anderson helped me to carry him into the pit shelter and there we undressed him. He was streaming with blood and coughing up blood and fast losing consciousness. Somehow or other—oh, what a time it was!—we got the arrow-head out of the wound. I don’t know even now how, for we were both of us bunglers and it had got partly wedged in the ribs. And we had to cut the poor dear about. Fortunately we had Bayley’s instruments down with us in this pit. But I can’t go into all these details. Shall I ever get this letter finished? Whilst we were attending to John we heard a tremendous shouting. It was the Humba war song—the Masai, you know. They had come at last to our assistance and taken the Ruga-ruga rather by surprise. But just before they made their rush up the hill, the Ruga-ruga had contrived to shoot arrows with flaming cotton soaked in oil on to our thatched roofs. Fire was spreading from building to building except the Chapel and the store. My Big-geru had lost their heads. Up to that time they had been so good. Our Walunga were trying to open the doors of the stockade and dash out into the open country. Then the Ruga-ruga would have broken in and all would have been up with us. Fortunately the charge of the Masai came at that very moment, when I was beginning to doubt if God had not forgotten us. They killed lots of the Ruga-ruga and would hack off their heads and throw them back into our stockade.