Note 15 — Chapter XVI

Some two or three months after we had left Loanda, Ali Kiboga escaped from his captivity, and after a desperate journey, during which he must have gone through marvellous adventures, succeeded in reaching Boma, whence he was sent to Kabinda, thence by the Portuguese gunboat Tamega to San Paulo de Loanda. After a short stay at Loanda, the United States corvette Essex, Captain Schley, took him to Saint Helena, and thence, through the kindness of the captain of one of Donald Currie’s Cape Line steamers, he was carried gratuitously to Cape Town. Again the Samaritan act of assisting the needy and distressed stranger was performed by the agent of the Union Steamship Company’s line, who placed him on board the Kaffir, which was bound for Zanzibar. It is well known that soon after leaving Table Bay the Kaffir was wrecked. From the Cape Times, February 19, 1878, I clip the following, in spite of its compliment to myself: “On the bow were some natives of Zanzibar. Among them was the man who had gone through Africa with Stanley. This man was supposed to have been drowned with four others. But early in the morning he was found very snugly lying under a tent made of a blanket, with a roaring fire before him. Of all the wrecked people that night there was no one who had been more comfortable than Stanley’s Arab. The power of resource and the genius of the master had evidently been imparted in some degree to the man.”