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Nlamo's tale is as follows. He went into the lower khel and instead of running quickly to the skull tree he entertained himself with setting fire to some houses. When he finally reached the tree he could not get down the heads but had to wait until an Ao helped him with a dao. Instead of then following the coolies he went further up into the village thinking that we still were between the two khels and he just saw some people coming down the path into the lower khel who he thought were our coolies (apparently he had forgotten that all our people were marked by white head-bands). (250) These disappeared again in the jungle and as he did not see us he now turned into the path to our camp. There he saw those men again closely and he recognised that they were Pangsha people. |
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Full of fear he turned to flee and when the enemy came closer he fired a shot from my rifle. Apparently he hit a man as they disappeared into the jungle. The Pangsha men did not know that he had been separated from the troop and thought that we were all still in the village. That gave Nlamo and his companions time to run away and when the Pangsha people realised their mistake they could no longer reach them and they probably did not dare to follow them on the trail where yesterday two of their people had been hit by our bullets. That is how this dangerous adventure ended all of which had been Nlamo's fault alone as he had not done strictly what he had been sent out to do. Later it became clear to us that the people who had called to their friends to cut him off had stood about a mile away on another hill while the Pangsha men in the village could not see clearly because of the smoke. |
