Cupid in Africa Part 22

Bertram would have welcomed warmly an opportunity to wring little birdie's neck, in the gust of anger that followed the fright.

Giving the signal to rise and advance, Bertram strode on, and, still under the stimulus of alarm, forgot that he was tired.

He a.n.a.lysed his feelings. . . . Was he frightened and afraid? Not at all. The whistle had "made him jump," and given him a "start," of course. The waiting for the blast of fire, that he knew would follow the signal, had been terribly trying-a torture to the nerves. The problem of what to do, in response to the enemy's first move, had been an agonising anxiety-but he would certainly have done something-given clear orders as to object and distance if there had been anything to fire at; used his revolver coolly and set a good example if there had been a charge down the path; headed a fierce rush at the Maxim if one had come out of cover and prepared to open fire. . . . No-he decidedly was not frightened and afraid. . . He was glad that he had remained erect, and, with his hand on his revolver, had, with seeming coolness, scanned the surrounding trees and jungle for signs of an ambushed enemy. . . .

The road forked, and he turned to Ali Suleiman, who had marched near him from the start, in the proud capacity of guide.

"Which of these paths?" said he.

"The left hands, sah, please G.o.d," was the reply; "the right is closed also."

"What d'you mean?" asked Bertram, staring down the open track that branched to the right.

"See, _Bwana_," replied Ali, pointing to a small branch that lay in the middle of the path, with its broken end towards them and its leaves away from them. "Road closed. I 'spec _askari_ patrol from Butani putting it there, when they know _Bwana_ coming, thank G.o.d, please."

Apparently this twig, to the experienced eye, was precisely equivalent to a notice-board bearing the legend, _No Thoroughfare_. Bertram signalled a halt and turned to the Havildar at the head of the advance-guard.

"Take ten men and patrol down that path for a thousand yards," said he.

"Then march back, wait for the rear-guard, and report to the Jemadar Sahib."

The man saluted, and Bertram saw him and his patrol move off, before he gave the order for the column to advance again. . . . That should secure the _safari_ from attack down _that_ path, anyhow. Ten determined men could hold up any number for any length of time, if they did the right thing. . . . These beastly bush fighting conditions cut both ways. . . .

Yes-then suppose a small patrol of enemy _askaris_ were on this track in front of him, and decided to hold the convoy up, what could he do?

To advance upon them, practically in single file, would be like approaching a long stick of sealing-wax to the door of a furnace-the point would melt and melt until the whole stick had disappeared without reaching the fire. . . . Of course, if there was a possibility of getting into the jungle, he would send out parties to take them in flank as he charged down the path. But that was just the point-you _couldn't_ get more than a few yards into the jungle in the likeliest places, and, when you'd done that, you'd be utterly out of touch with your right and left-hand man in no time-not to mention the fact that you'd have no sense of direction or distance. . . .

No. . . . He'd just head a charge straight for them, and if it were a really determined one and the distance not too great, enough of the advance-guard might survive to reach them with the bayonet. . . .

Evidently, if there were any rules at all in this jungle warfare, one would be that the smaller of the two forces should dispose itself to bring every rifle to bear with magazine fire, and the larger should make the swiftest charge it possibly could. If it didn't-a dozen men would be as good as a thousand-while their ammunition held out. . . . What an advantage over the Indian Sepoy, with his open order _maidan_ {150} training, the _askari_, bred and born and trained to this bush-fighting, would have! The German _ought_ to win this campaign with his very big army of indigenous soldiers and his "salted" Colonials. What chance had the Sepoy or the British Regular in these utterly strange and unthought-of conditions? . . . As well train aviators and then put them in submarines as train the Indian Army for the frontier and the plains and then put them in these swamps and jungles where your enemy is invisible and your sole "formation" is single file. What about the sacred and Medean Law: _Never fire until you can see something to fire at_? They'd never fire at all, at that rate, with an enemy who habitually used machine-guns from tree-tops and fired from dense cover-and small blame to him. . . .

A sound of rushing water, and a few minutes later the path became the edge of a river-bank beneath which the torrent swirled. It looked as though its swift erosion would soon bring the crumbling and beetling bank down, and the path would lead straight into the river. He must mention the fact at Butindi.

He stared at the jungle of the opposite bank, apparently lifeless and deserted, though menacing, secretive and uncanny. An ugly place. . . .

Suppose the Germans bridged the river just here. . . . He found that he had come to a halt and was yearning to sit down. . . . He must not do that. He must keep moving. But he did not like that gap in the path where, for some yards, it ran along the edge of the bank. It was a gap in the wall, an open door in the house, a rent in the veil of protection.

The jungle seemed a friend instead of a blinding and crippling hindrance, impediment, and obstacle, now that the path lay open and exposed along that flank. Suppose there were an ambush in the jungle on the other side of the narrow rushing river, and a heavy fire was opened upon his men as they pa.s.sed? He could not get at an enemy so placed, nor return their fire for long, from an open place, while they were in densest cover.

They could simply prohibit the pa.s.sing of the _safari_. . . . Anyhow, he'd leave a force there to blaze like fury into the jungle across the river if a shot were fired from there.

"Naik," said he, to a corporal, "halt here with twenty men and line the edge of the bank. If you are fired at from across the river, pour in magazine fire as hard as you can go-and make the porters _run_ like the devil across this gap." He then translated, as well as he could, and marched on. He had done his best, anyhow.

For another hour he doggedly tramped on. The rain ceased, and the heat grew suffocating, stifling, terrible to bear. He felt that he was breathing pure steam, and that he must climb a tree in search of air-do _something_ to relieve his panting lungs. . . . He tore his tunic open at the throat. . . . _Help_! he was going to faint and fall. . . . With a great effort he swung about and raised his hand for the "halt" and lowered it with palm horizontal downward for the "lie down." . . . If the men were down themselves they would not realise that he had fallen. . . .

It would not do to fall while marching at their head, to fall and lie there for the next man to stumble over him, to set an example of weakness. . . . The officer should be the last man to succ.u.mb to anything-but wounds-in front. . . .

He sank to the ground, and feeling that he was going to faint away, put his head well down between his knees, and, after a while, felt better.

"_Bwana_ taking off tunic and belts," said Ali Suleiman, "and I carry them. _Bwana_ keep only revolver, by d.a.m.n, please G.o.d, sah."

A bright idea! Why not? Where was the sense in marching through these foul swamps and jungles as though it were along the Queen's Road at Bombay? And Ali, who would rather die than carry a load upon his head, like a low _shenzi_ of a porter, would be proud to carry his master's sword and personal kit.

In his shirt-sleeves, with exposed chest, Bertram felt another man, gave the signal to advance, and proceeded free of all impedimenta save his revolver. . . .

Suddenly the narrow, walled-in path debouched into a most beautiful open glade of trees like live oaks. These were not ma.s.sed together; there was no undergrowth of bush; the gra.s.s was short and fine; the ground sloping slightly upward was gravelly and dry-the whole spot one of Africa's freakish contrasts.

Bertram determined to halt the whole _safari_ here, get it "closed up"

into something like fours, and see every man, including the rear-guard, into the place before starting off again.

With the help of Ali, who interpreted to the headmen, he achieved his object, and, when he had satisfied himself that it was a case of "all present and correct," he returned to the head of the column and sat him down upon the trunk of a fallen tree. . . .

Everybody, save the sentries, whom he had posted about the glade, squatted or lay upon the ground, each man beside his load. . . .

Though free now of the horrible sense of suffocation, he felt sick and faint, and very weary. Although he had not had a proper meal since he left the _Barjordan_, he was not hungry-or thought he was not. . . .

Would it be his luck to be killed in the first fight that he took part in? His _good_ luck? When one is ill and half starved, weary beyond words, and bearing a nightmare burden of responsibility in conditions as comfortless and rough as they can well be, Death seems less a grisly terror than a friend, bearing an Order of Release in his bony hand. . . .

Ali stood before him unbuckling his haversack.

"Please G.o.d, sah, I am buying _Bwana_ this chocolates in Mombasa when finding master got no grubs for emergency rasher," said he, producing a big blue packet of chocolate.

"Good man!" replied Bertram. "I meant to get a stock of that myself. . . ."

He ate some chocolate, drank of the cold tea with which the excellent Ali had filled his water-bottle, and felt better.

After an hour's rest he gave the order to fall in, the headmen of the porters got their respective gangs loaded up again, and the _safari_ wound snake-like from the glade along the narrow path once more, Bertram at its head. He felt he was becoming a tactical soldier as he sent a lance-naik to go the round of the sentries and bid them stand fast until the rear-guard had disappeared into the jungle, when they were to rejoin it.

On tramped the _safari_, hour after hour, with occasional halts where the track widened, or the jungle, for a brief s.p.a.ce, gave way to forest or _dambo_. Suddenly the head of the column emerged from the denser jungle into an undulating country of thicket, glade, scrub, and forest. Bertram saw the smoke of campfires far away to the left; and with one accord the porters commenced to beat their loads, drum-wise, with their _safari_ sticks as they burst into some tribal chant or paean of rejoicing. The convoy had reached Butindi in safety.

CHAPTER XV _Butindi_

Half a mile beyond a village of the tiniest huts-built for themselves by the Kavirondo porters, and suggesting beehives rather than human habitations-Bertram beheld the entrenched and stockaded _boma_, zariba, or fort, that was to be his home for some months.

At that distance, it looked like a solid square of gra.s.s huts and tents, surrounded by a high wall. He guessed each side to be about two hundred yards in length. It stood in a clearing which gave a field of fire of some three hundred yards in every direction.

Halting the advance-guard, he formed it up from single file into fours; and, taking his kit from Ali, resumed it. Giving the order to march at "attention," he approached the _boma_, above the entrance to which an officer was watching him through field-gla.s.ses.

Halting his men at the plank which crossed the trench, he bade them "stand easy," and, leaving them in charge of a Havildar, crossed the little bridge and approached the gateway which faced sideways instead of outwards, and was so narrow that only one person at a time could pa.s.s through it.

Between the trench and the wall of the _boma_ was a s.p.a.ce some ten yards in width, wherein a number of small men in blue uniform, who resembled neither Indians nor Africans, were employed upon the off-duty duties of the soldier-cleaning rifles and accoutrements, chopping wood, rolling puttees, preparing food, washing clothing, and pursuing trains of thought or insects.

Against the wall stood the long lean-to shelters, consisting of a roof of plaited palm-leaf, supported by poles, in which they lived. By the entrance was a guard-house, which suggested a rabbit-hutch; and a sentry, who, seeing the approach of an armed party, turned out the guard. The Sergeant of the Guard was an enormous man with a skin like fine black satin, a skin than which no satin could be blacker nor more shiny. He was an obvious negro, Nubian or Soudanese, but the men of the guard were small and fair, and wore blue turbans, of which the ornamental end hung tail-wise down their backs. Beneath their blue tunics were unpleated kilts or skirts, of a kind of blue tartan, reaching to their knees. They had blue puttees and bare feet.

Saluting the guard, Bertram entered the _boma_ and found himself in the High Street of a close-packed village of huts and tents, which were the dwelling-places of the officers, the hospital and sick-lines, the commissariat store, the Officers' Mess, the cook-house, orderly-room, and offices.

In the middle of the High Street stood four poles which supported a roof.

A "table" of posts and packing-case boards, surrounded by native bedsteads of wood and string-by way of seats-const.i.tuted this, the Officers' Mess, Club, Common Room and Bar. A bunch of despondent-looking bananas hanging from the ridge-pole suggested food, and a bath containing a foot of water and an inch of mud suggested drink and cholera.

About the table sat several British officers in ragged shirts and shorts, drinking tea and eating native _chupatties_. They looked ill and weary.

The mosaic of sc.r.a.ps of stencilled packing-case wood, the tin plates, the biscuit-box "sugar-basin," the condensed milk tin "milk-jug," the battered metal teapot and the pile of sodden-looking _chupatties_ made as uninviting an afternoon tea menage as could be imagined, particularly in that setting of muddy clay floor, rough and dirty _angarebs_, and roof-and-wall thatch of withered leaves and gra.s.s. A typical scene of modern glorious war with its dirt, discomfort and privation, its disease, misery and weary boredom. . . .

Bertram approached the rickety gra.s.s hut and saluted.