Thinking then how I could best cure the disease that was keeping me down, as I found the blister of no use, I tried to stick a packing needle, used as a seton, into my side; but finding it was not sharp enough, in such weak hands a mine, to go through my skin, I got Baraka to try; and he failing too, I then made him fire me, for the coughing was so incessant I could get no sleep at night.

I had now nothing whatever to think of but making dodges for lying easy, and for relieving my pains, or else for cooking strong broths to give me strength, for my legs were reduced to the appearance of pipe-sticks, until the 15th, when Baraka, in the same doleful manner as in Sorombo, came to me and said he had something to communicate, which was so terrible, if I heard it I should give up the march.

Lumeresi was his authority, but he would not tell it until Grant arrive.

I said to him, "Let us wait till Grant arrives; we shall then have some one with us who won't shrink from whispers"-- meaning Bombay; and so I let the matter drop for the time being.

But when Grant came, we had it out of him, and found this terrible mystery all hung on Lumeresi's prognostications that we never should get through Usui with so little cloth.
16th to 19th .-- At night, I had such a terrible air-catching fit, and made such a noise whilst trying to fill my lungs, that it alarmed all the camp, so much so that my men rushed into my tent to see if I was dying.