Although I could not lift a rifle myself I managed to collect these men round me and to direct their fire, which proved so terrifying to the Pongos that after ten or a dozen of them had been knocked over, they began to give back sullenly and were helped into their canoes by those men who were left in charge of them.
Then at length at a signal they got out their paddles, and, still shouting curses and defiance at us, rowed away till they became but specks upon the bosom of the great lake and vanished.
Two of the canoes we captured, however, and with them six or seven Pongos.

These the Mazitu wished to put to death, but at the bidding of Brother John, whose orders, it will be remembered, had the same authority in Mazitu-land as those of the king, they bound their arms and made them prisoners instead.
In about half an hour it was all over, but of the rest of that day I cannot write, as I think I fainted from utter exhaustion, which was not, perhaps, wonderful, considering all that we had undergone in the four and a half days that had elapsed since we first embarked upon the Great Lake.

For constant strain, physical and mental, I recall no such four days during the whole of my adventurous life.

It was indeed wonderful that we came through them alive.
The last thing I remember was the appearance of Sammy, looking very smart, in his blue cotton smock, who, now that the fighting was over, emerged like a butterfly when the sun shines after rain.
"Oh! Mr.Quatermain," he said, "I welcome you home again after arduous exertions and looking into the eyes of bloody war.

All the days of absence, and a good part of the nights, too, while the mosquitoes hunted slumber, I prayed for your safety like one o'clock, and perhaps, Mr.
Quatermain, that helped to do the trick, for what says poet?
Those who serve and wait are almost as good as those who cook dinner." Such were the words which reached and, oddly enough, impressed themselves upon my darkening brain.