A little later the rest of the Mazitu came, driving before them all
the non-combatants who remained in the town. With these was King
Bausi, in a terrible state of excitement.
"Was I not wise, Macumazana," he shouted, "to fear the slave-traders
and their guns? Now they have come to kill those who are old and to
take the young away in their gangs to sell them."
"Yes, King," I could not help answering, "you were wise. But if you
had done what I said and kept a better look-out Hassan could not have
crept on you like a leopard on a goat."
"It is true," he groaned; "but who knows the taste of a fruit till he
has bitten it?"
Then he went to see to the disposal of his soldiers along the ridge,
placing, by my advice, the most of them at each end of the line to
frustrate any attempt to out-flank us. We, for our part, busied
ourselves in serving out those guns which we had taken in the first
fight with the slavers to the thirty or forty picked men whom I had
been instructing in the use of firearms. If they did not do much
damage, at least, I thought, they could make a noise and impress the
enemy with the idea that we were well armed.
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