As these reflections flitted through my brain I remembered that a drunken Frenchman named Leblanc, whom I had known in my youth and who had been a friend of Napoleon, or so he said, told me that the great emperor when he was besieging Acre in the Holy Land, was forced to retreat.  Being unable to carry off his wounded men, he left them in a monastery on Mount Carmel, each with a dose of poison by his side.  Apparently they did not take the poison, for according to Leblanc, who said he was present there (not as a wounded man), the Turks came and butchered them.  So Napoleon chose to save his own life and that of his army at the expense of his wounded.  But, after all, I reflected, he was no shining example to Christian men and I hadn’t time to find any poison.  In a few words I explained the situation to Mavovo, leaving out the story of Napoleon, and asked his advice.

“We must run,” he answered.  “Although I do not like running, life is more than stores, and he who lives may one day pay his debts.”

“But the wounded, Mavovo; we cannot carry them.”

“I will see to them, Macumazana; it is the fortune of war.  Or if they prefer it, we can leave them—­to be nursed by the Arabs,” which of course was just Napoleon and his poison over again.

I confess that I was about to assent, not wishing that I and Stephen, especially Stephen, should be potted in an obscure engagement with some miserable slave-traders, when something happened.

It will be remembered that shortly after dawn Hans, using a shirt for a flag, had led the fugitive slaves past the camp up to the hill behind.  There he and they had vanished, and from that moment to this we had seen nothing of him or them.  Now of a sudden he reappeared still waving the shirt.  After him rushed a great mob of naked men, two hundred of them perhaps, brandishing slave-sticks, stones and the boughs of trees.  When they had almost reached the boma whence we watched them amazed, they split into two bodies, half of them passing to our left, apparently under the command of the Mazitu who had accompanied Hans to the slave-camp, and the other half to the right following the old Hottentot himself.  I stared at Mavovo, for I was too thunderstruck to speak.

“Ah!” said Mavovo, “that Spotted Snake of yours” (he referred to Hans), “is great in his own way, for he has even been able to put courage into the hearts of slaves.  Do you not understand, my father, that they are about to attack those Arabs, yes, and to pull them down, as wild dogs do a buffalo calf?”

It was true:  this was the Hottentot’s superb design.  Moreover, it succeeded.  Up on the hillside he had watched the progress of the fight and seen how it must end.  Then, through the interpreter who was with him, he harangued those slaves, pointing out to them that we, their white friends, were about to be overwhelmed, and that they must either strike for themselves, or return to the yoke.  Among them were some who had been warriors in their own tribes, and through these he stirred the others.  They seized the slave-sticks from which they had been freed, pieces of rock, anything that came to their hands, and at a given signal charged, leaving only the women and children behind them.