After that I remember no more." "No," said Stephen, "for the bullet hit the Bible and the Bible hit your head and knocked you silly." "Ah!" said Sammy, "how true is what I was taught that the Book shall be a shield of defence to the righteous.

Now I understand why I was moved to bring the thick old Bible that belonged to my mother in heaven, and not the little thin one given to me by the Sunday school teacher, through which the ball of the enemy would have passed." Then he went off to cook the dinner.
Certainly it was a wonderful escape, though whether this was a direct reward of his piety, as he thought, is another matter.
As soon as we had eaten, we set to work to consider our position, of which the crux was what to do with the slaves.

There they sat in groups outside the fence, many of them showing traces of the recent conflict, and stared at us stupidly.

Then of a sudden, as though with one voice, they began to clamour for food.
"How are we to feed several hundred people ?" asked Stephen.
"The slavers must have done it somehow," I answered.

"Let's go and search their camp." So we went, followed by our hungry clients, and, in addition to many more things, to our delight found a great store of rice, mealies and other grain, some of which was ground into meal.