Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/590

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£66 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER

pay ; this word was no fooner uttered, when, apparently in a moil violent paflion, he leapt up, laid by his pipe, took his Hick, and ran into the midft of them, crying out with violent execrations, And who am I ? and who am I then ? a girl, a woman, or a Pagan dog like yourfelves ? and who is Waragna Fafil ; are you not his flaves ? or to whom elfe do you belong, that you are to make me pay for the confe- quences of your devilifh idolatries and fuperflitions? but you want payment, do ye ? here is your payment : he then tuckt his clothes tight about his girdle, began leaping two or three feet high, and laying about him with his Hick over their heads and faces, or wherever he could flrike them.

After this Woldo wrefted a lance from a long, aukward fellow that was next him, ftanding amazed, and levelled the pointathiminamanner that I thought to fee the poor peafant fall dead in an inflant : the fellow fled in a trice, fo did they all to a man ; and no wonder, for in my life I never faw any one play the furious devil fo naturally. Upon the man's running off, he cried out to my people to give him a gun, which made thefe poor wretches run fafter and hide them- lelves among the bufhes : lucky, indeed, was it for Woldo that my fervants did not put him to the trial, by giving him the gun as he demanded, for he would not have ven- tured to fire it, perhaps to have touched it, if it had been to have made him m after of the province.

I, who fat a fpedator on the other fide, thought we were now in a line fcrape, the evening coming on at a time of the year when it is not light at fix, my baggage and fer- vants on one fids of the river, myfelf and beails on the 4 ^other,