In The Evening I Listened To The Men Conversing Over The Whole Affair,
When I Learnt The Entire Truth.
It appears that Richarn and two other
men were with the unfortunate Sali when the brute charged him, and the
cowards all bolted without firing a shot in defense.
There was a large
white ant-hill about fifty yards distant, to which they retreated; from
the top of this fort they repeatedly saw the man thrown into the air,
and heard him calling for assistance. Instead of hastening in a body to
his aid, they called to him to "keep quiet and the buffalo would leave
him." This is a sample of the courage of these Khartoumers. The buffalo
was so disabled by my shot of yesterday that he was incapable of leaving
the spot, as, with a broken shoulder, he could not get through the deep
mud. My Reilly No. 10 bullet was found under the skin of the right
shoulder, having passed in at the left shoulder rather above the lungs.
The windings of this monotonous river are extraordinary, and during dead
calms in these vast marshes the feeling of melancholy produced is beyond
description. The White Nile is a veritable "Styx." When the wind does
happen to blow hard, the navigation is most difficult, owing to the
constant windings; the sailors being utterly ignorant, and the rig of
the vessel being the usual huge "leg of mutton" sail, there is an amount
of screaming and confusion at every attempt to tack which generally ends
in our being driven on the lee marsh; this is preferable to a capsize,
which is sometimes anything but distant.
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