immediately started for the scene of action, Scherlink and I accompanying him with a detachment of all the best men. We marched half the night, when, getting into a dense forest, where it was too dark and dangerous to move on, we lay down in our tracks and waited for dawn. We were only about three hours on the road next morning when we met a number of natives sent to us with a letter from Michaux.

They were carrying several Winchester repeating rifles, and escorting prisoners — tokens of a victory over the Arab forces. Gongo Lutete, it seems, had found that the Arabs were already across the river; whereupon he and all his people, ahead of Michaux and Duchesne, together with the regulars, had marched to find the Arabs, and had arrived at the two forts just as the sun went down. Albert Frees, meanwhile, had been