However, although the leader of the band, he was not present at the attack, being engaged in some slave-raiding business in the interior.
"When I learned this terrible news, the shock of it, or the loss of blood, brought on a return of insensibility, from which I only awoke two days later to find myself on board a Dutch trading vessel that was sailing for Zanzibar.

It was the lights of this ship that the Arabs had seen and mistaken for those of an English man-of-war.

She had put into Kilwa for water, and the sailors, finding me on the verandah of the house and still living, in the goodness of their hearts carried me on board.

Of the old woman they had seen nothing; I suppose that at their approach she ran away.
"At Zanzibar, in an almost dying condition, I was handed over to a clergyman of our mission, in whose house I lay desperately ill for a long while.

Indeed six months went by before I fully recovered my right mind.