Among them, far and wide, they became his titles of
honour.
The roar of the flames grew less and the tumult within their fiery
circle died away. For now the Mazitu were returning from the last
fight in the market-place, if fight it could be called, bearing in
their arms great bundles of the guns which they had collected from the
dead Arabs, most of whom had thrown down their weapons in a last wild
effort to escape. But between the spears of the infuriated savages on
the one hand and the devouring fire on the other what escape was there
for them? The blood-stained wretches who remained in the camps and
towns of the slave-traders, along the eastern coast of Africa, or in
the Isle of Madagascar, alone could tell how many were lost, since of
those who went out from them to make war upon the Mazitu and their
white friends, none returned again with the long lines of expected
captives. They had gone to their own place, of which sometimes that
flaming African city has seemed to me a symbol. They were wicked men
indeed, devils stalking the earth in human form, without pity, without
shame.
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