Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/167

 plain; every consideration, therefore, seemed to persuade a speedy decision, but the consequences of the last engagement seemed to have damped the spirit of the rebels, without having much raised that of the king's army. In fact, the days were dark and wet, and the nights cold, circumstances in which no Abyssinian chooses to fight. The army was thinly cloathed, or not cloathed at all, and encamped on high ground, where fuel, though it had not failed them yet, must soon have done so.

An accident that happened this night had nearly brought about a revolution which the wisest heads had laboured for many years in vain. Ras Michael had retired to bed at his ordinary time, somewhat before eleven o'clock, and a lamp was left burning as usual in his tent, for he was afraid of spirits. He was just fallen asleep, when he felt a man's arm reach into the bed over him, which he immediately seized hold of, crying to his attendants, at the same time, for help. Those that ran first into the tent threw down the lamp and put out the light, so that the man would have escaped, had not the people behind got about him, and endeavoured to hold him down, while entangled in, and struggling with the cords of the tent. The first person that seized him was a favourite servant of the Ras, a young man named Laeca Mariam, of a good family in Tigré; he, not perceiving his danger for want of light, received a stab with a broad knife, which pierced his heart, so that he fell without speaking a word. Numbers immediately secured the assassin, who was found to have dropt one knife within the Ras's tent, with which he had attempted at first to have stabbed him: but he was found to have another knife, two-edged, and sharp in the point, fixed along his arm, with