Hour after hour we crept up the wide stream with black, threatening shores on either beam, and all remained quiet, and nothing stirred on land to break the stillness of the sultry night nor our pent-up expectancy. Our destination was eight miles up-stream. About half-way we passed through the narrow neck between Kombe and Kala islands, and a short time later our motor-boat, when hugging the east bank, had the misfortune to ground on a sand-bar and hold fast. While we lay there, phantom dark craft passed us, going up-stream and returning down. One heard a low, tense word or two spoken across the gloom, the muffled beat of the engines; and then the darkness swallowed everything. After some delay and much exertion with poles and oars, we got afloat again and proceeded, now more slowly, up-stream, keeping our course by following a tiny bright light, like a firefly, that showed now and again in the distance ahead, where the leaders were in the stream or had landed at an important bend in the channel. About midnight, when we were still persistently working up the channel, which had narrowed considerably, exclamations and low voices drifted to us out of the darkness ahead. In a moment more we knew that we were at our destination, while voices directed us to the landing-place close on our right. It was very dark—so dark that one could at best see a yard or two—so, groping along the boat-bottom, you got near to where a voice said “jump,” and in doing so found yourself immersed to your very knees in deep, holding mud through which, after you had got rifle and equipment clear of the mess, you waded heavily ashore; no longer dry and fairly comfortable, but wet, mud-plastered and chilled, and thoroughly uncomfortable. On our arrival we learned that, at the landing, a German picket had been alarmed and driven in, and therefore we knew that the enemy command would soon be warned that danger threatened. Back from the landing there was a long, narrow, level mud-flat, clear of the bush that bordered it blackly on either side, and here our forces formed up as they landed. Finally, when all were accounted for and in position, word was passed round that we were to remain here for an hour or two, and men stretched themselves on the hard tidal-damp ground and shivered; yet slept as only tired soldiers can sleep. At 3 a.m. we were up and on the move again; slowly marching up the trolley line that led inland, in a southerly direction, toward Mkwaya. Breaking the stillness of a bush-land that apparently lay asleep and without inhabitant, I remember a solitary cock, at some near-by dwelling, crowed clear and full-voiced as we neared Mkwaya; declaring habitations, and promising the coming of dawn. Almost immediately afterwards the first faint shade of daylight was heralded by the boom of artillery from the direction of Mingoyo. [Sidenote: ARTILLERY ENGAGED]