Then, allowing an average of twenty to a canoe, the Pongo tribe number about two thousand males old enough to paddle, an estimate which turned out to be singularly correct.
Next morning at dawn we started, with some difficulty.

To begin with, in the middle of the night old Babemba came to the canvas shelter under which I was sleeping, woke me up and in a long speech implored me not to go.

He said he was convinced that the Pongo intended foul play of some sort and that all this talk of peace was a mere trick to entrap us white men into the country, probably in order to sacrifice us to its gods for a religious reason.
I answered that I quite agreed with him, but that as my companions insisted upon making this journey, I could not desert them.

All that I could do was to beg him to keep a sharp look-out so that he might be able to help us in case we got into trouble.
"Here I will stay and watch for you, lord Macumazana," he answered, "but if you fall into a snare, am I able to swim through the water like a fish, or to fly through the air like a bird to free you ?" After he had gone one of the Zulu hunters arrived, a man named Ganza, a sort of lieutenant to Mavovo, and sang the same song.

He said that it was not right that I should go without guns to die among devils and leave him and his companions wandering alone in a strange land.
I answered that I was much of the same opinion, but that Dogeetah insisted upon going and that I had no choice.
"Then let us kill Dogeetah, or at any rate tie him up, so that he can do no more mischief in his madness," Ganza suggested blandly, whereon I turned him out.
Lastly Sammy arrived and said: "Mr.Quatermain, before you plunge into this deep well of foolishness, I beg that you will consider your responsibilities to God and man, and especially to us, your household, who are now but lost sheep far from home, and further, that you will remember that if anything disagreeable should overtake you, you are indebted to me to the extent of two months' wages which will probably prove unrecoverable." I produced a little leather bag from a tin box and counted out to Sammy the wages due to him, also those for three months in advance.
To my astonishment he began to weep.