[Sidenote: RAID ON LAKE VICTORIA NYANZA] It was thought to effect a night landing and make a surprise attack on the town, and plans were all prepared for this. In this connection three privates were voluntarily selected for a novel undertaking: it was arranged that an Australian bushman, a Canadian from the Yukon, and self (I was then a private) were to go ahead at landing and try to overpower, and kill if necessary, a certain sentry whose post was known to our command. But all plans were changed in the end, for, about midnight, when our lightless phantom ships were drawing in to Bukoba, wakeful watchers on a high island, that lay out in the bay before the town, detected our approach in the light of the half-full moon, and five great rockets shot in warning into the sky. The alarm was out! Soldiers in the town would be rushing to arms and our landing on the beach would now be in the face of enemy waiting to receive us. Thus, plans were changed, and the ships drew away from shore, beyond the vision of the enemy, and stood to, waiting for dawn. When dawn approached we again moved toward land. A force was to threaten a landing away south of the town, while the main forces drew in behind a long promontory north of Bukoba Bay. Close on dawn our ship dropped anchor and boats were lowered; and, one by one, they were filled with troops, and left the ship’s side for shore; while the ship trembled from stem to stern beneath the shock of her gun-fire, which was now rapidly shelling the heights before us, and the hidden positions beyond. Beneath the steep hill-face of the promontory each boat ran aground on the beach, and the troops scrambled overboard and waded ashore. [Sidenote: ATTACKING BUKOBA] It was breaking daylight when we began filing up the steep mountain-side, which was cliff-like in places, and the climb to the top proved a stiff one, of close on a mile in distance, and very breathless were we when the summit was reached, while we judged it our great good fortune that this awkward ground had been covered unopposed by enemy. Advancing across the summit, south toward Bukoba, some resistance was encountered there in the banana plantations and forest, but the real fighting did not begin until we reached the southern slopes and looked out on the town of Bukoba, some two miles distant, situated on low land that swept back from the shores of the lake to the foot of the hills, and over the intervening bouldered, rocky hill country, and on to the commanding heights, above the town, on the west and south. It was then that serious fighting began, and all day—while the ships shelled from the lake—we fought in attack against the enemy, who, to begin with, held out amongst the rocks and clumps of trees in the broken hills before us, and who, latterly, defended the commanding hills north-west of the town.