" He
paused, then went on: "A long while ago, nearly twenty-three years to
be accurate, I went to live at Kilwa as a missionary with my young
wife. I built a mission station and a church there, and we were happy
and fairly successful in our work. Then on one evil day the Swahili
and other Arabs came in dhows to establish a slave-dealing station. I
resisted them, and the end of it was that they attacked us, killed
most of my people and enslaved the rest. In that attack I received a
cut from a sword on the head--look, here is the mark of it," and
drawing his white hair apart he showed us a long scar that was plainly
visible in the moonlight.
"The blow knocked me senseless just about sunset one evening. When I
came to myself again it was broad daylight and everybody was gone,
except one old woman who was tending me. She was half-crazed with
grief because her husband and two sons had been killed, and another
son, a boy, and a daughter had been taken away. I asked her where my
young wife was. She answered that she, too, had been taken away eight
or ten hours before, because the Arabs had seen the lights of a ship
out at sea, and thought they might be those of a British man-of-war
that was known to be cruising on the coast.
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