On their departure from our presence, we were congratulating ourselves upon the good fortune that continued to follow us, when to our astonishment some officials from Rudok rode in in hot haste, and throughout the night and following morning we constantly heard fresh arrivals, the rapid jingling of the bells which were hung round the ponies' necks proclaiming how hurriedly they were riding. It was dark, and we could hear men's voices from the stream that ran down the centre of the nullah, while we ourselves had encamped close to the mountain side. We could see they had lit some fires and were sitting and standing around them, occupied in eager conversation. From the light of the flames we could see their matchlocks standing up against one another on the ground. Our hopes, which only a short time ago had been so sanguine, had now received a severe blow, and we wondered, yet guessed, what the intentions of these men might be.
In order to solve this mysterious gathering we sent and invited the chief men to our tent. Two of them were before very long ushered in by Esau, intelligent-looking fellows enough and open to hear all we had to say, yet staunch in their determination to obstruct our further march onwards up the nullah we were in. Threats, bribes of money and goods, as well as every other kind of argument, entirely failed to carry any weight with these Rudok officials, for they very wisely remarked that "if we allow you to go this road, we shall for such an act of disobedience undoubtedly lose our heads, whereas if we stop you we shall receive a reward." They maintained that they would rather risk being killed in attempting to oppose us than meet with certain death for negligence of their work in letting us go through. Argue as we might, nothing would alter their determination, namely, that the only road open to us was back by the road we had come. It was by this time growing late, and the officials took their leave of us.
Throughout the still night we could hear the loud talk and peals of laughter that rang out from the groups of men who had bivouacked by the stream.
At daybreak we discovered that more men had swollen the gathering, but nevertheless we began to load up as usual, and having distributed our sporting rifles and guns amongst our muleteers, tried to impress upon them the necessity of having to fight our way through, should we meet with opposition.