Niger

walls. There, very coolly, they selected sixteen of
the best, and drove them away across the border
at full gallop.
None of the inhabitants made any show of
resistance, except one young negro outside the town.
Him the Moors shot from his horse, and rode on.
Funingkedy’s single hero was brought within the
walls, and Mungo asked to attend him. He found
that a musket-ball had passed through the young
negro’s leg below the knee, fracturing both bones.
In the medical science of Mungo’s day there was
little hope for such a case. Nevertheless, possibly
with cold qualms at the result, Mungo proposed
that he operate and cut off the young man’s leg
above the knee.
Funingkedy greeted the proposal with horror.
This white-faced stranger was evidently worse than
a bandit. He delighted in deliberate torture. The
young man was hastily removed from his care and
consigned to that of some Mohammedan ‘ priests ’.
These, seeing that he would not recover, and that
he was a pagan, very practically set to equipping
the dying boy for the accidents and ferocities of the
next world as a slight change to the accidents and
ferocities of this. Mungo stood by and watched
while a c priest ’ whispered and whispered in the
dying youth’s ear, commanding him to repeat the
whisper. This at last he was able to do, crying,
‘ There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his
Prophet.’ He died that evening.
Another idle day passed. But by nightfall of the
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