Samba Part 24

Great was the surprise of the natives when they awoke next morning to see the mysterious tank full of water, and a tiny overflow trickling from it over the cataract. They discussed it for the whole of the day, inventing every explanation but the right one. The original spring had been so near the river and so inconspicuous that its disappearance was not noticed.

Jack felt a glow of satisfaction as he looked round on his work. Here was an orderly settlement, on an excellent natural site, defended by a stockade and wall impregnable save to artillery, with fresh clean huts, well-cultivated fields, and an inexhaustible water supply. It had involved much thought and care and toil; how amply they had been rewarded!

His men were now all transferred from their old settlement to the new one. Imbono's people still remained in their villages, not without reluctance. They knew that the gate of Ilombekabasi would always be open to them if danger threatened; but they felt the attractions of the place, and wished to migrate at once. And they were particularly jealous of the refugees. These people were strangers; why should they have better habitations and stronger defences than they themselves?

Why were they permitted to remain in Imbono's country at all? Jack had much ado to keep the peace between the two parties. Quarrels were frequent, and that they did not develop into open strife was a tribute to Jack's diplomacy, and to the strange influence which Samba had acquired. The winning qualities which had captivated Mr. Martindale seemed to have a magical effect upon the people. The boy had always been a special pet among his own folks; his merry nature won the affection of Imbono's subjects also. Jack kept an observant eye upon him, and more than once saw him quietly approach a group where bickering and recrimination were going on, and by some grace of address, or some droll antic played with his inseparable companion Pat, turn frowns to smiles, and suspicion to good fellowship.

Among the inhabitants of Ilombekabasi was the Belgian sergeant rescued from the villagers in Ilola. He gave his parole not to attempt to escape, and indeed endured captivity patiently, for he knew not how far away his friends might be, and to wander alone in this forest country meant death. Jack sometimes talked with him, taking the opportunity of airing his French, and finding some little interest in sounding the man's views. At first the Belgian would not admit that the natives had any rights, or that there was anything particularly obnoxious in the system of administration. But he changed his mind one day when Jack put to him a personal question.

"How would you, a Belgian, like it if some strange sovereign--the German emperor, say--came down upon you and compelled you to go into your woods and collect beech-nuts for him, paying you at the rate of a sou a day, or not at all, and thrashing or maiming or killing you if you did not collect enough?"

The question was unanswerable, and from that time the Belgian became a meditative man.

The refugees were gradually increasing in number. By the time the camp was finished Mboyo's command had grown to sixty men, with nearly as many women and twice as many children. All brought stories of the barbarous deeds of the rubber collectors; many bore in maimed limbs or scarred backs the personal evidences of the oppressors' cruelty. Jack was moved almost to tears one day. A fine-looking negro came into the camp carrying something wrapped in palm leaves, and asked to be taken to Lokolobolo. When brought before Jack he removed the wrappings, and, unutterable woe depicted on his face, displayed a tiny black hand and foot. His village had been raided, he said, and with his wife and children and a few others he had fled to the forest, where they lived on roots and leaves and nuts. The forest guards tracked them out. One day, when he was absent fishing, a brutal sentry came upon his wife as she was collecting leaves for the evening meal. He learnt from one of his friends what happened. Before the woman could escape the sentry shot her, and as she was only wounded, his "boys" chopped her with their knives till she died. Others of his hangers-on took the children; and when the father returned to the place where he had left them, he found the dead body of his wife, and one hand and foot, all that remained of his little ones from the cannibal feast.

It was incidents like these that stiffened Jack's back. He had crossed his Rubicon: the gate of Ilombekabasi stood open to all who chose to come. And they came steadily. For a time many of them were too weak to be useful members of the little society. But as with good food and freedom from care their strength increased, they began to be self-supporting, Mboyo employed them in attending to the crops and bringing new ground under cultivation. Several were artificers, and were useful in doing smith's or carpenter's work.

In addition to keeping the villagers employed, Jack set apart a portion of every day for military exercises. Every able-bodied man was armed; those for whom there were no rifles carried the native spears. When Boloko fled from Ilola he left a number of Albini rifles and a stock of ammunition behind. These Jack appropriated, so that his corps of riflemen now numbered sixty. He used his cartridges very sparingly, for his stock was not large, and he saw no possibility of replenishing it.

Now and again he arranged for a sham fight. One party of men was told off to storm the stockade, an equal party to defend it. No firearms were used on these occasions; the weapons employed were wooden poles with wadded ends. Such fights afforded excellent practice against a real attack, and not a little amus.e.m.e.nt and enjoyment to the natives, who entered into the spirit of them enthusiastically, and took the hard knocks and bruises with as much cheerfulness as schoolboys on a football field. These little operations were useful to Jack also. By their means he discovered the weak spots in his defences, and was able to strengthen them accordingly.

But he was now becoming seriously alarmed at Mr. Martindale's continued absence. Eight weeks had pa.s.sed since his last letter came to hand, nearly five months since his departure. What could have happened?

Jack could not think that his uncle had willingly left him so long to bear his heavy responsibility, and now that he had more leisure he could not prevent himself from imagining all kinds of mishaps and disasters. At last, when he was on the point of sending a special messenger down the river to make inquiries, a negro arrived at the settlement with a letter. He had come within a hundred and fifty miles of Ilombekabasi as a paddler on a white man's canoe; the remainder of the distance he had covered on foot. Jack opened the letter eagerly.

It read:--

MY DEAR JACK,--

Sorry to leave you so long. Have been on my back with an attack of malaria; three weeks unconscious, they told me. No need to be anxious: I'm on the mend; soon be as fit as a riddle. Pretty weak, of course; malaria isn't exactly slathers of fun. It will be a fortnight or three weeks before I can start; then must travel slowly. Expect me somewhat over a month after you get this. I've been in a stew about you. Hope you've had no trouble. Can you stomach native food? Didn't forget your birthday. Got a present for you--quite a daisy.

Your affectionate uncle, JOHN MARTINDALE.

P.S.--Got some hydraulic plant at Boma: a bargain.

CHAPTER XVII

A Buffalo Hunt

"Dear old uncle!" said Jack as he handed the letter to Barney. "'Pon my soul, I'd forgotten my own birthday, and I haven't the ghost of a notion what the day of the month is; have you, Barney?"

"Divil a bit, sorr."

"Though, of course, I could reckon it out by counting up the Sundays.

D'you know, Barney, I almost wish I'd made these negroes knock off work one day a week."

"Sure it wouldn't have answered atall atall sorr. A day's idleness would mean a day's quarrelling. Uv coorse 'tis a pity they're ignorant haythens, an' I wish we could have Father Mahone out for a month or two to tache the poor craturs; but until they can be tached in the proper way, betther let 'em alone, sorr."

"Perhaps you're right, Barney. Doesn't it seem to you odd that Uncle says nothing about the rubber question? His first letter, you remember, was full of it."

"Master's a wise man, sorr. What he does not say says more than what he does. He wouldn't be sure, you see, that his letter would iver reach you. And bedad, if he'd had good things to say uv the State officers, wouldn't he have said 'em? He's found 'em out, sorr, 'tis my belief."

"I shall be jolly glad to see him, dear old boy."

"And so will I, sorr, an' to see some things fit for a Christian to ate. Master's stomach won't take n.i.g.g.e.rs' food, an' mine wouldn't if I could help it."

"But you're getting fat, man!"

"Sure that's the terrible pity uv it. Wid dacent food I kept as lean as a rake, and I'd niver have believed that the only way to get fat was to ate pig's food; for that's what it is, sorr, this maniac and other stuff. I'll now be wanting to get thin again, sorr."

The white men's stores had long since given out. For weeks they had had no sugar, no coffee, tea, or cocoa. Jack as well as Barney had to share the natives' food. Jack did not mind the change, and he believed that Barney's objection was more than half feigned, for the Irishman ate with unfailing appet.i.te. The native diet was indeed nutritious and not unappetising. It included fish from the streams, which they ate both fresh and smoked; bananas, pine-apples, plantains, Indian corn, manioc, ground-nuts, and sweet potatoes. Manioc was their most important food, and Jack after a time began to like it, as made into _kw.a.n.ga_. The root of the plant is pounded to a pulp, soaked for twenty-four hours in running water, and when it ferments, is worked up into a stiff dough. Cut into slices and fried in ground-nut oil it is very palatable. Jack also found the groundnuts delicious when roasted.

A few goats kept in the settlement provided milk, and they had a regular supply of eggs from their fowls, so that Jack at least considered himself very well off.

The crops around the settlement ripened and were gathered: fine fields of Indian corn, amazing quant.i.ties of manioc and ground-nuts, that ripen beneath the soil. Yet Jack began to wonder whether his plantations would meet the needs of the population. It was still growing. The renown of Lokolobolo and Ilombekabasi had evidently spread far and wide, for every week more refugees came in from villages far apart. Besides the men of Jack's original party, there were now nearly two hundred people in the settlement, and Jack always had to remember that these might any day be increased by the four hundred from Imbono's villages, if Elbel returned to avenge Boloko's expulsion, as he certainly would do. Further, Mr. Martindale would no doubt bring back with him a certain number of trained workmen--carpenters, engine-men, and so forth; all these must be provided with house room and food. Jack was glad that he had planned the settlement on generous lines, though as he looked around he asked himself somewhat anxiously whether it would suffice to accommodate all. And what would his uncle say to it? Would he endorse what Jack had done, and take upon himself the protection of these outcasts against their own lawfully const.i.tuted, however unlawfully administered, government? Only time could decide that, and Jack awaited with growing impatience his uncle's return.

One morning a messenger came in from Ilola to say that news had reached Imbono of a herd of buffaloes which were feeding about five miles off in the open country to the west. Hitherto Jack had not had leisure to indulge his tastes for sport; but the knowledge that big game was now so near at hand prompted him to try his luck. Leaving Barney in charge of the settlement, he set off the same morning with Imbono and Mboyo, who had both become very fair marksmen, the former with an Albini rifle that had been Boloko's, the latter with a Mauser presented to him by Jack.

Samba and Lepoko were in attendance, carrying lunch for the party.

Though Jack had picked up a good deal of the language, he found it in some respects so extraordinarily difficult that he was always glad of Lepoko as a stand-by.

By the time they had reached the spot where the herd had first been sighted, it had moved some distance away; but it was easily tracked, and by dint of careful stalking up the wind the party got within three hundred yards without being discovered by the keen-scented beasts.

Then, however, the country became so open that to approach nearer unseen was impossible, and Jack decided to take a shot at them without going farther.

He had brought the heavy sporting rifle which had accounted for Imbono's enemy the hippopotamus in the river. Selecting the largest of the herd--they were the red buffaloes of the district, a good deal smaller than the kind he had seen in America--he fired and brought it down. The others broke away towards a clump of euphorbias, and Jack got another shot as they disappeared; but neither this nor the small-bore bullets of the chiefs' rifles appeared to take effect, for in an instant, as it seemed, the whole remaining herd vanished from sight.

Jack slipped two more cartridges into his empty chamber, and, leaving the bush from behind which he had fired, ran towards his kill. It was his first buffalo, and only those who have known the delight of bagging their first big game could appreciate his elation and excitement. He outstripped the rest of his party. The two chiefs, chagrined at their failure to bring down the animals at which they had aimed, seemed to have lost all interest in the hunt. Samba left them discussing with Lepoko the relative merits of their rifles, and hurried on after his master.

Jack bent over the prostrate body. Despite the tremor of excitement he had felt as he c.o.c.ked his rifle he found that his aim had been true: the buffalo had been shot through the brain. At that moment--so strange are mental a.s.sociations--he wished his school chum Tom Ingestre could have been there. Tom was the keenest sportsman in the school; how he would envy Jack when he saw the great horns and skull hanging as a trophy above the mantelpiece when he paid that promised visit to New York!

But while recollections of "Tiger Tom," as the school had nicknamed him, were running through his mind, Jack was suddenly startled by a bellow behind him and a couple of shots. Springing erect, he faced round towards the sound, to see Samba's dark body darting between himself and a second buffalo plunging towards him from the direction of the bushes. As happened once to Stanley travelling between Vivi and Isangila, the suddenness of the onset for the moment paralysed his will; he was too young a sportsman to be ready for every emergency.

But the most seasoned hunter could not have dared to fire, for Samba's body at that instant almost hid the buffalo from view, coming as it did with lowered head.

The animal was only ten yards away when Samba crossed its track; but the boy's quick action broke its charge, and it stopped short, as though half inclined to turn in pursuit of Samba, who had now pa.s.sed to its left. Then it again caught sight of Jack and the dead buffalo, and with another wild bellow dashed forward. In these few instants, however, Jack had recovered his self-possession, and raised his rifle to his shoulder. As the beast plunged forward it was met by a bullet which stretched it inert within a few feet of Jack's earlier victim.

"Bonolu mongo!"[1] exclaimed Jack, clapping Samba on the shoulder.

"But for your plucky dash I should have been knocked over and probably killed. You saw him coming, eh?"

"Njenaki!"[2] replied Samba, with his beaming smile.

Meanwhile the two chiefs had run up with Lepoko and were examining the second buffalo, with an air of haste and excitement. They began to talk at one another so loud and fiercely, and to gesticulate so violently, that Jack, though he could not make out a word of what they were saying, saw that a pretty quarrel was working up.

"Now, Lepoko," he said, putting himself between the chiefs and sitting on the buffalo's head, "what is all this about?"

"Me tell ma.s.sa," said Lepoko. "Imbono he say he kill ngombo; Mboyo say no, he kill ngombo; Lepoko say ma.s.sa kill ngombo; no can tell; me fink one, two, free hab kill ngombo all same."

"Well, my own opinion is pretty well fixed, but we'll see. Why, there are three bullet marks in his hide besides mine. That's mine, you see, that large hole in the middle of the forehead. One of you two must have hit him twice. And I'm hanged if the bullets didn't go clean through him. No wonder he was in a rage. Tell them what I say, Lepoko."