Page:First Footsteps in East Africa, 1894 - Volume 1.djvu/108

62 buried its head, and sent for permission to visit one of their number who had been imprisoned by the Hajj for the murder of his son Mas'ud. The place was at once thrown into confusion, the gates were locked, and the walls manned with Arab matchlock men: my three followers armed themselves, and I was summoned to the fray. Some declared that the Badawin were "doing " the town; other that they were the van of a giant host coming to ravish, sack, and slay: it turned out that these Badawin had preceded their comrades, who were bringing in, as the price of blood, an Abyssinian slave, seven camels, seven cows, a white mule, and a small black mare. The prisoner was visited by his brother, who volunteered to share his confinement, and the meeting was described as most pathetic: partly from mental organization and partly from the peculiarities of