NARROW ESCAPE OF SPEKE.

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without flinching. He thought that this was done to test his courage, and had he cried for mercy, he would have been sacrificed on the spot. But worse was yet to come. Speke's jailer, probably vexed at having been kept away from the pillage, stepped up close, and coolly stabbed him with his spear. He raised his body a little in defence, when his assailant knocked him down by jobbing the spear violently on his shoulder, almost cutting the jugular arteries. Speke rose again as he poised his spear and caught the next prod, intended for his heart, on the back of one of his shackled hands, the flesh of which was gouged to the bone. The villain now stepped back, as if to get him off his guard, and dashed his spear down to the bone of his left thigh. Speke seized the spear with both hands, but his tormentor drew a club from his girdle and nearly broke his left arm with a blow which caused him to drop the spear. Finding now that the spear was too blunt to finish the business at once while he was standing still, he dropped the rope-end, walked back a dozen paces, and rushing at him with savage fury, plunged the spear through the thick part of his right thigh to the ground. With the quickness of lightning, seeing that death was inevitable if he hesitated an instant, Speke sprang on his legs and gave the miscreant such a sharp back-hander in the face with his bound fists that he staggered him for a moment. That moment was enough for a start, and he ran for his life, taking care, by holding his hands on one side, not to be tripped up by the dangling rope. He was barefoot and almost naked as he darted over the shingly beach towards the sea. His persecutor followed for a short distance, then threw his spear like a javelin after him. Speke dodged it by stooping, and his pursuer gave up the chase. Still he had to run the gauntlet of about forty thieves, who all tried to cut off his retreat. He

D

bobbed as they threw their spears after him, until he reached the shore, where he had the satisfaction of seeing that he was followed no longer. Fainting from loss of blood, he sat down on a mound of sand, picked open with his teeth the knots that bound his hands, and opened his breast to the pleasant sea-breeze of sunrise. The prospect, however, was gloomy. There was probably no help nearer than Ain Tarad. He could not walk the distance; and it seemed as if he must inevitably perish in the desert, when, gazing on the few remaining huts of Berbera, he saw some female figures beckoning to him. In desperation he hobbled towards them, his right leg being drawn up nearly double, and so weak that it would only support the weight of his body for an instant at a time. The women turned out to be the four who the evening before had been permitted to join the camp.

Just then he saw some men hurrying to meet him along the shore. These were the old Balyuz and several of the servants. He learned from them what had happened. Immediately on the alarm, the soldiers had fired their guns, and all but one or two made off. Stroyan had been killed, probably at the beginning of the affair. Burton and Herne had fled just after Speke had left the central tent. Burton had been speared in the face, Herne much bruised with war-clubs, and some of the men of the expedition had received severe swordcuts. Speke's companions were safely on board the Ain Tarad vessel, which had come in so providentially the previous evening, and they had sent the Balyuz and the other men to search for him. He was carried to the vessel, and stretched on the poop, thankful for his miraculous escape, but bitterly grieving for the loss of his excellent friend, poor Stroyan. Burton now despatched a boat's crew to the site of the camp, where they only

PROPERTY DESTROYED.

51

found such things left as were too cumbersome to carry away. The Somali had destroyed about £1500 worth of property, but had spoilt in the scramble almost everything which could have been of value to them. The boat's crew, however, succeeded in bringing back Stroyan's body. The survivors weighed anchor on the 20th, and in two days arrived at Aden. Speke lost in this unfortunate expedition, which failed from inexperience, about £510 worth of his private property, which he never recovered. He had, he says, nothing to show for it but eleven artificial holes in his body. When he arrived at Aden he was a miserable-looking cripple; but during his residence of three weeks, in which every attention was paid him by his friends, his wounds healed so rapidly that he was able to walk abroad before he left. They closed, he says, like the cuts in an India-rubber ball when pricked by a penknife, in spite of the unfavourable climate of Aden. He attributes this to the healthy and abstemious life he had previously led. He left Aden on “sick certificate," and arrived in England in the early part of June 1855. But as the Crimean war was then at its height, though suffering from blindness, he could not resist the call to active service, and got appointed as Captain in a regiment of Turks, with whom he remained till the close of the war.

As for the Somali, they brought on themselves the vengeance of the British Government. A blockade of their coast-line was established, the condition of the raising of which was the surrender of the authors of the outrageous attack on the camp, the chief of whom was Ou Ali, the murderer of Stroyan. The Habr Owel believed the matter serious when they found that a British man-of-war was the only vessel present at the next Berbera fair, and they petitioned for a treaty of friendship,

52

MEASURES OF RETALIATION.

sending for trial to Aden a man who showed the scar of a gun-shot wound in his back, and promising to send forward all other suspicious characters as soon as they could catch them. It does not, however, appear from Speke's narrative whether the most guilty parties ever suffered condign punishment.

CHAPTER II.

DISCOVERY OF THE TANGANYIKA LAKE.

PROJECTED EXPEDITION INTO THE INTERIOR OF EASTERN EQUATORIAL AFRICA THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY AND THE MISSIONARIES' MAP-CAPTAINS BURTON AND SPEKE GO TO ZANZIBAR-AN EXCURSION ALONG THE COAST, AND TO FUGA-THEY START FOR THE INTERIOR— HEADQUARTERS AT KAZÉ, AN ARAB DEPOT-DISCOVERY OF THE TANGANYIKA OR UJIJI LAKE-SPEKE CROSSES THE LAKE-BURTON AND SPEKE EXPLORE IT NORTHWARDS-RETURN TO KAZÉ.

CAPTAIN SPEKE, finding himself in the East without occupation, as the Crimean war was over, was planning an excursion, for purposes of natural history, to the Caucasus, and had already made considerable preparations, when he was again invited to join Captain Burton in exploring Africa, with the understanding that he should be put to no expense, as the Home and Indian Governments had promised to contribute £1000 each. This decided him to take the first mail to England, and give up the Caucasian scheme. He thought, as at first, that he had better nurse his furlough for a future occasion, being, as he observes, more of a sportsman and traveller than a soldier, and only caring for his profession when he had the sport of fighting. Arrived in England, he was introduced to the Royal Geographical Society by Burton, and made acquainted with the special objects of the projected expedition. On the walls of the Society's rooms hung a large