hundreds, and amid a shower of balls and arrows de Heusch beat a retreat, strange to say unhurt, and left, “ apres les avoir envoyes quelques prunneaux” as he expressed it to me.

During his absence Sefu had despatched Debruyne with a strong escort to the river, his object being to persuade us to cross over and visit him, escorted by not more than half a dozen men. Our own spies had warned us that Sefu intended by some pretext to persuade us to cross over, and then either to kill us or make us prisoners. Being forewarned we refused, and explained that we had the Commandant's orders not to pass the Lomami, at the same time mentioning that we expected the Commandant Dhanis to be with us in a day or two. I did my best to persuade Debruyne to swim over to us, but as things then stood he refused to.