Halts
Always End Disastrously In Africa, Giving Men Time For Mischief;-
-And Here Was An Example Of It.
During the target-practice,
which was always instituted on such occasions to give confidence
to our men, the little pepper-box Rahan, my head valet,
challenged a comrade to a duel with carbines.
Being stopped by
those around him, he vented his wrath in terrible oaths, and
swung about his arms, until his gun accidentally went off, and
blew his middle finger off.
Baraka next, with a kind of natural influence of affinity when a
row is commenced, made himself so offensive to Bombay, as to send
him running to me so agitated with excitement that I thought him
drunk. He seized my hands, cried, and implored me to turn him
off. What could this mean? I could not divine; neither could he
explain, further than that he had come to a determination that I
must send either him or Baraka to the right-about; and his first
idea was that he, and not Baraka, should be the victim. Baraka's
jealousy about his position had not struck me yet. I called them
both together and asked what quarrel they had, but could not
extract the truth. Baraka protested that he had never given,
either by word or deed, the slightest cause of rupture; he only
desired the prosperity of the march, and that peace should reign
throughout the camp; but Bombay was suspicious of him, and
malignantly abused him, for what reason Baraka could not tell.
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