Going on with my trading, I sent two or three cows out in different directions to be exchanged for sheep. It may have been a foolish thing to do, but I let the cows go out of my camp without sending any of my own men with them. I had done the same thing before, and the sheep had always been brought in, and it never occurred to me that it might not be so again; but on this occasion it happened otherwise: the sheep did not come in, and the natives refused to return the cattle. I was rather at a loss how to act, I had such a lot of ivory in the camp. I did not know whether it would be best to leave the camp and go after the cattle, or what to do. Whatever I did, however, must be done quickly, so I decided to leave a few men in camp—about ten askari and fifty Kikuyu—and go after the cattle. The most remarkable thing about the affair was that the cattle had been taken to exchange for sheep in charge of Karkerrie’s own men, and his son, and some of the men who went with him, had come back wounded, saying that they had lost the cattle. It was therefore now for me to find out what had really happened, and to recover the cattle.
The wounded men were not fit to go out to show me the place where the fight had taken place, but another of Karkerrie’s men offered to come with me and do so, so I saddled up my mule, and started off ahead of the main body of my men to the scene of the fight. On arriving there I found the place absolutely deserted, but, standing on a hill some little distance away, shouting and defying me, was a crowd of natives, who, however, did not attempt to come any nearer. As my own temper by this time was pretty well worked up, I pushed on till I got pretty close to them. They did not shift, so I slackened my pace to allow my own men to come up, and then advanced together to within about one hundred paces of them. Seeing, from their attitude and gestures, that they were preparing for a rush down on us, we fired a volley into them; several were killed, and a good many others must have been wounded. This apparently satisfied them, and they did not attempt to put up a fight, but ran away, shouting for their friends to help them to kill us. Realizing that it was useless to try to get the cows back from these people, and feeling rather uneasy about my own camp, I thought it advisable to return and see what was going on there; so I hurried back, and on nearing the camp I heard a lot of shouting and row going on. Being on my mule, I was able to push on quicker, and got ahead of the rest to see what was the matter, my men following as fast as they could. At the same time, I kept a sharp look out as I went on either side, in case there might be an ambush, and at intervals I fired my revolver into the bushes. On getting in sight of the camp, I found it was besieged by a crowd of howling savages, who, I soon discovered, were not Karkerrie’s men, but some natives from another tribe. Seeing me approach, and hearing my shout to encourage my men, they ceased the attack, and cleared off promptly into the bush. I found that two or three of my men had been slightly wounded by arrows, but none had been killed; while the other side had suffered pretty severely, quite a number of them having been killed. It appeared that these natives had heard of my absence, and thought it would be a good opportunity to attack the camp and get some loot. They had come upon it in a solid mass, and my men had only just managed to keep them at bay till we came up; in fact, the camp was practically surrounded when I got there, and it was impossible for the defenders to have held out much longer. Fortunately, I returned in time to prevent the enemy entering the camp, or all would have been lost.
