We paid the owners handsomely, giving them their choice of money or blankets when they bore down on us in long canoes demanding vengeance.

They voted for blankets and money, but vowed they would far rather have the bananas, because now their own people would be on short commons to make up for the surfeit of ours.
We left them never doubting that they would send word to the nearest German officer.

(They told us there was a wood-cutting station within a "few hours," and we prayed he might be only a non-commissioned man in charge of it, but knew that prayer was too sweetly reasonable to be answered where the German Gott makes war on foreigners.) Kazimoto assured us he heard them telling one another they would make complaint against us within the day.
It remained, then, only to guess where that steam launch might be.

We were approaching the northern end of Ukerewe, not a day's sail, if the light wind held, from the narrow mouth of the channel between Ukerewe and the mainland.

That was the likeliest place for the launch to lie in wait; it was where we would have waited had we been pursuers and they the pursued.