Next to them was a deep ring of women, half of whom carried their babies; and outside these again was a still deeper circle of men, some blowing horns, but most holding their spears erect.

To the sound of the music both these rings of the opposite sexes kept jumping and sidling round and round the drummers, making the most grotesque and obscene motions to one another.
9th to 14th .-- Nothing of material consequence happened until the 14th, when eighty of Rionga's men brought in two slaves and thirty tusks of ivory, as a present to Mahamed.

Of course, I knew this was a bribe to induce Mahamed to fight with Rionga against Kamrasi; but, counting that no affair of mine, I tried to induce these men to give me some geographical information of the countries they had just left.

Not one of them would come near me, for they knew I was friends with Kamrasi; and Mahamed's men, when they saw mine attempting to converse with them, abused them for "prying into other men's concerns." "These men," they said, "are our friends, and not yours; if we choose to give them presents of cloth and beads, and they give us a return in ivory, what is that to you ?" Mysterious Mahamed next came to me, and begged for a blanket, as he said he was going off for a few days to a depot where he had some ivory; and he also wanted to borrow a musket, as one of his had been burnt.
My suspicions and even apprehensions, were now greatly excited.

I began to think he had prevailed on me to stop here, that I might hold the place whilst he went to fight Kamrasi with Rionga's men; so I begged him to listen to my advice, and not attempt to cross the Nile, "else," I said, "all his guns would be taken from him, and his passage back cut off." At once he saw the drift of my thought, and said he was not going towards the Nile, but on the contrary, he was going with Rionga's men in the opposite direction, to a place called Paira.