After a good dinner and the sun had set, Selous, shouldering his rifle and a supply of meat, again struck south. At dawn, perished with cold, he reached the last Mashukulumbwe village, and, being near Monzi's, he determined to risk trouble, and entered the village. Here he found an unarmed boy, who furnished him with water, but even as he drank it he heard whispering in a hut close by and saw a man come out stealthily and vanish in the darkness. Presently this man returned with a gun in his hand, and later Selous heard him testing a bullet with the ramrod. All was quiet for a time, however, and Selous sat dozing over the fire. Then he awoke with a start, to find that two unarmed men had arrived and sat by the fire close to him. They questioned him and he endeavoured to answer them. "In endeavouring to do so to the best of my ability, I kept gradually turning more towards them, till presently my rifle lay almost behind me. It was whilst I was in this position that I heard someone behind me. I turned quickly round to clutch my rifle, but was too late, for the man whom I had heard just stooped and seized it before my own hand touched it, and, never pausing, rushed off with it and disappeared in the darkness. I sprang up, and at the same moment one of the two men who had engaged me in conversation did so too, and, in the act of rising, dropped some dry grass which he had hitherto concealed beneath his large ox-hide rug on to the fire. There was at once a blaze of light which lit up the whole of the open space around the fire. My eyes instinctively looked towards the hut which I had seen the man with the gun enter, and there, sure enough, he sat in the doorway taking aim at me not ten yards from where I sat. There was no time to remonstrate. I sprang out into the darkness, seizing one of the pieces of wildebeest meat as I did so; and, as the village was surrounded with long grass, pursuit would have been hopeless, and was not attempted. My would-be assassin never got off his shot."[38]