His Men,
Eager For Murder And Plunder, Immediately Started Upon Their Bloody
Errand, And Surrounding The Unsuspecting Colony, They Fired The Huts And
Killed EVERY MAN, Including The Chief, Owine; Capturing The Women And
Children As Slaves.
Ibrahim had received the mother and two girls as
presents from Mahommed Wat-el-Mek.
As the two rival companies had been
forced to fraternize, owing to the now generally hostile attitude of the
surrounding tribes, the leaders had become wonderfully polite,
exchanging presents, getting drunk together upon raw spirits, and
behaving in a brotherly manner - according to their ideas of
fraternity. There was a peculiar charm in the association with children
in this land of hardened hearts and savage natures: there is a time in
the life of the most savage animal when infancy is free from the fierce
instincts of race; even the lion's whelp will fondle the hand that it
would tear in riper years: thus, separated in this land of horrors from
all civilization, and forced by hard necessity into the vicinity of all
that was brutal and disgusting, it was an indescribable relief to be
surrounded by those who were yet innocent, and who clung in their
forsaken state to those who looked upon them with pity. We had now six
little dependents, none of whom could ever belong to us, as they were
all slaves, but who were well looked after by my wife; fed, amused, and
kept clean. The boy Abbai was the greatest favourite, as, having neither
father nor mother, he claimed the greatest care:
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