Before entering the banana shades we repaired our ranks, and marched in more compact order. A strong body of men armed with Winchesters formed the advance guard; a similar number of men armed with Remingtons, under the command of Stairs, closed the rear of the column. But however well cautioned the men were against breaking rank, no sooner had the advance guard passed safely through a dangerous locality than the main body invariably despatched scores of looters into huts and granaries to hunt up booty and fowls, bananas, goats, sugar-cane, and trivial articles of no earthly use. These plantations hid a large number of natives, who permitted the advance to pass because their files were unbroken, and their eyes on the watch, but those straggling looters soon gave the aborigines the opportunity. Some arrows flew well aimed; one pinned a man's arm to his side, another glancing from a rib admonished its owner of his folly. A volley from rifles drove the men away from their covert without harm to any of them.
At the easternmost settlement we camped. There were only two large conical huts and other outhouses in it, and around these the huts for the night were arranged hastily, put up with banana leaves sufficient to shed rain and dew.
At dusk I called the captives to me again, and attempted, during half an hour, to gain a lucid answer to the question as to whether there was a great body of water or great river east of us. When one of the headmen who were assisting us demanded to know which was the largest Nyanza, that of Unyoro, or that of Uganda--
"Nyanza!" cried the native boy--"Nyanza? Ay, the Nyanza lies this way" (pointing east) "and extends that way" (north-east) "a long distance;" and when asked how many "sleeps" intervened between the Babusessé, held up three fingers on his dexter hand, and answered "three."
It was now dark, and we were suddenly startled by a shriek of pain, and a sequent yell singularly weird, and with a note of triumph in it, and in the silence that followed we heard the hurtling of arrows through the banana leaves above our heads.
"Put out the fires! Keep cool. Where are the sentries? Why are they not at their posts?" were the next words uttered.