_Dec. 20._—The next morning an assault was attempted, for the enemy emerged from the bush on the run into the clearing; but our arrangements seemed to surprise them, for they retreated again almost immediately into the gloomy obscurities of the jungle, where they maintained, with indomitable spirit, horn-blowing and a terrific “bo-bo-boing.” We had, it seems—though I have not had time to mention it before—passed the tribes which emitted cries of “Ooh-hu-hu, ooh-hu, ooh-hu-hu,” for ever since our arrival at Vinya-Njara we had listened with varied feelings to the remarkable war-strains of “Bo-bo, bo-bo, bo-bo-o-o-oh,” uttered in tones so singular as to impress even my African comrades with a sense of its eccentricity. About noon a large flotilla of canoes was observed ascending the river close to the left bank, manned by such a dense mass of men that any number between five hundred and eight hundred would be within the mark. We watched them very carefully until they had ascended the river about half a mile above us, when, taking advantage of the current, they bore down towards us, blowing their war-horns, and drumming vigorously. At the same moment, as though this were a signal in concert with those on land, war-horns responded from the forest, and I had scarcely time to order every man to look out when the battle-tempest of arrows broke upon us from the woods. But the twenty men in the nests at the corners of the village proved sufficient to resist the attack from the forest side, Frank Pocock being in charge of one, and Sheikh Abdallah of the other, while I, with twenty men lining the bushes along the water line, defended the river side. This was a period when every man felt that he must either fight or resign himself to the only other alternative, that of being heaved a headless corpse into the river. Our many successful struggles for a precarious existence had begun to animate even the most cowardly with that pride of life that superiority creates, and that feeling of invulnerability that frequent lucky escapes foster. I was conscious, as I cast my eyes about, that my followers were conspicuously distinguishing themselves, and were at last emerging from that low level of undeveloped manhood which is the general state of men untried and inexperienced. With a number of intelligent whites, that acquisition of courageous qualities would have been assisted by natural good sense, and a few months’ hard service such as we had undergone would have sufficed to render them calm and steady in critical times; but with such people as I had, who had long shown—with the exception of a few—a wonderful inaptitude for steadiness, the lesson had taken two years. These last few days on the Livingstone river had been rapidly perfecting that compact band for the yet more dangerous times and periods to come.