Though Dhanis was now master of Nyangwe, his difficulties were not all surmounted. He had not been installed there many days before it became necessary to burn down a large part of the town in order to frustrate an attempt by the Arabs to surprise it. Then other and worse dangers threatened. Influenza and smallpox broke out among his men and decimated them. No active prosecution of the campaign was possible until April, when these plagues abated and reinforcements, five hundred strong, under Commandant Gillain and Lieutenant Doorme, arrived. [Sidenote: Civilisation Triumphant.] Leaving De Wouters in command at Nyangwe, Dhanis now marched on Kassongo. It was a bold venture, for while the Arabs had sixty thousand men, and held four “bomas,” Dhanis disposed of only three hundred regular troops and two thousand auxiliaries. On April 22, Doorme had the good fortune, at the beginning of the fight, to rush an important fort which commanded the Arab rear. The Arabs were greatly perturbed by this circumstance, and fought with less than their usual valour. Before two hours had passed, Kassongo was in the hands of the Congo State troops, with vast quantities of valuable spoil. The triumph of civilisation over savagery was complete, the only jarring note in Belgian ears being confirmation of the murder of Emin Pasha a month before.[17] [Illustration: Hospital, New Antwerp.] [Illustration: The White Man’s Cemetery, Stanleyville.] FOOTNOTES: [16] A nephew of Hamed-ben-Mohamed, better known as Tippo Tip,—_i. e._, “winking the eye,”—an Arab slave merchant, invested with the government of Stanley Falls by King Leopold, at the instance of Stanley, he having, in consideration of a monthly salary, bound himself to repress all slave-hunting and slave-dealing below the Falls. [17] For amplified accounts of the Arab wars, see _The Congo State_, by D. C. Boulger; _Le mouvement géographique_, by A. J. Wauters, 1884-1898; _Rapport de Baron Dhanis sur la campagne arabe dans le Manyéma_, 1895; _The Fall of the Congo Arabs_, by Dr. Sidney L. Hinde. CHAPTER XVI BELGIAN CAMPAIGNS AGAINST THE ARABS (_Concluded_) [Sidenote: An Arab Traitor.]