Settlers and Scouts Part 4

But in this he was mistaken, for when he came some weeks later to enter into occupation of his estate, the goat was brought to him with every mark of respect by a deputation of the villagers.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH--Juma takes to the Bush

Mr. Halliday spent the next two days in surveying the neighbourhood of Mr. Gilmour's stake. The country was all that his friend had described.

The soil was rich; the river, as the natives informed him, never ran dry, though its waters were sometimes very low; and the valley was intersected by several smaller watercourses, which, though now dry, were full streams in the rainy season, so that the estate would never lack irrigation except after long-continued drought. Being well satisfied with the locality, Mr. Halliday got his men to erect a number of boundary posts about a rectangular area of some 1,500 acres, and then set off on the return journey to Nairobi to lodge a claim for a Government grant in the office of the District Commissioner. He paid his preliminary survey fee of seventy-five rupees; then, knowing that it would be months before the official survey was made, he decided to purchase stores, stock, and material for building a bungalow and out-houses, and to engage porters to convey these to the spot, and a certain number of servants to staff the farm. Formal possession of the land would be granted as soon as it was certified to be actually occupied and the balance of the survey fee, some two hundred rupees, was paid; but the lease for ninety-nine years would not be made out until the Commissioner received proof that development had taken place, which practically meant the expenditure of forty times the rent, this being twelve cents an acre. Thus it would be about three years before Mr.

Halliday was definitely accepted as a settler and leaseholder, and he impressed upon John that they must both put their backs into the work if they intended to be successful.

It was a month before the second safari was ready to start--a far more important caravan than the first. To begin with, there was a large quant.i.ty of stores for the use of the white men, together with seeds, root plants, and a few apple-tree slips, which by all accounts would thrive. Then there was a considerable amount of thin corrugated iron for roofing, some gla.s.s, and some ready-made window-frames, which if made on the spot would have involved too great an expenditure of time and labour. There were a few simple agricultural implements which Mr.

Halliday had brought from home, guessing, and rightly as it proved, that even allowing for the cost of freight they were cheaper than they could have been bought in Nairobi. These included the "small holdings plough"

of Ipswich, which had to be taken to pieces for convenience of transit.

Mr. Halliday deplored the lack of roads and of bridges over the streams, which made it impossible to employ vehicles for the carriage of his goods, and prevented him from taking several pieces of machinery he would have liked to have with him. But he purchased a few donkeys, each of which could carry twice as much as a man.

In addition to these articles, a large number of live-stock was included in the caravan. It might be possible, Mr. Halliday was told, to purchase cattle and sheep from the natives in the neighbourhood of his farm, but he was advised to buy a good number of half-bred animals in Nairobi, the native sheep and goats being woolless, and of no value except for their flesh and hides. Later on, when he was fairly settled, he hoped to introduce some English stock to cross with the native.

Accordingly he bought 750 sheep at an average price of six shillings a head, a few goats, and a score of cattle, for which he paid 140.

To carry his goods he found it necessary to engage, in addition to the donkeys, forty porters, a few of whom he intended to keep as labourers on the farm or servants in the house, if they proved satisfactory. Of these forty only one, Coja the headman, had been a member of the first expedition, the rest of that party being unwilling to do any more work until they had spent their wages. Twelve of the new company were Swahilis, the remainder Wakamba or Wakikuyu. Four of the Swahilis were askaris, or armed porters. Said Mohammed had done so well on the first journey that he was engaged permanently as cook. John declared that his conversation was well worth his wages, but Mr. Halliday took severely practical views of everything, and said that he didn't pay for conversation. He hired two Indian mistris for three months, at two rupees a day, to build his bungalow and do what other carpenter's work was necessary. And since his farm was to be mainly a stock-farm, he engaged a stalwart Masai and his son, a lad of sixteen or seventeen, to a.s.sist in the herding, the Masai being a pastoral race _par excellence_.

Mr. Halliday had not intended to increase his men's burdens on this occasion by "trade" goods, thinking that the friendship he had already sealed with the chief of the neighbouring village would obviate any further dealings with the natives. But he changed his mind on the advice of Mr. Gillespie, who represented that he might come in contact with other tribes not so well disposed, that he might find it necessary to purchase more sheep and cattle, especially if tick fever or some other disease broke out among his stock, and that it would be well to have the means of purchasing ivory, if he found an opportunity, the tribes to the north of Kenya being reputed great elephant hunters.

All being at last ready, Mr. Halliday set out on his second journey, which took him nearly four times as long as the first, owing partly to a certain turbulence among the Swahili porters, and partly to the difficulty of driving the animals. Apart from their natural tendency to lag and to stray, it was a difficult and sometimes a perilous operation to get them across the many streams; fortunately it was the height of the dry season, and the depth of water insignificant. Several sheep were drowned, some strayed and could not be recovered; one or two died of over-marching. The donkeys also gave a good deal of trouble, having to be unloaded at every stream, lugged across, and then loaded up again.

It was a long and tiresome business each night to construct a boma of sufficient circuit to enclose the whole of the safari, and in spite of this th.o.r.n.y fence, and watchfires kept constantly alight, a lion on one occasion broke in at dead of night, snapped up a sheep, and made off with it before the alarm could be given.

Mr. Halliday found the porters even more troublesome than the animals.

It turned out that one of the Swahilis was an old rival of Coja ben Selim. He was a big man named Juma, with a stronger strain of Arab blood than the rest, and he constantly disputed Coja's authority, and incited the other men to complain of their loads and their food. Mr.

Halliday had to be continually on the watch, and only by dint of great firmness and by keeping Juma on one occasion without food for a day did he succeed in preventing a mutiny. Juma had brought his wife with him, a very stout negress of some Bantu race; or rather, she had attached herself to the expedition when it had marched some ten miles out of Nairobi, and resolutely refused to leave. Her presence proved to be rather an advantage than otherwise, for once when Mr. Halliday had found it necessary to give Juma a stern reprimand, the woman volubly a.s.sisted him, demanding of her husband why he was such a fool as to endanger his pay. Juma was evidently in some awe of his spouse, and Coja told John privately that she had a terrible tongue.

At length the safari arrived at the site of the farm, and though Mr.

Halliday did not flatter himself that his troubles were over, he felt a great relief that the anxieties of the journey were a thing of the past.

The first proceeding was to construct a substantial boma. Then he selected a site for his bungalow, fixing on a pleasant knoll above the river and at a distance of about two hundred yards from it. John pleaded for a position nearer the river, but Mr. Halliday pointed out that the stream was at present shrunk, and would no doubt swell to a much greater width in the rainy season, when exhalations from it might be dangerous to health. He had brought a couple of tents to live in while the bungalow was building; his natives ran up gra.s.s huts for themselves; and within twenty-four hours of their arrival, with the tents pitched, the huts erected, the sheep and cattle grazing, and a boma enclosing them all, the place had already begun to a.s.sume the aspect of a settlement.

During the first night the sleep of the camp was disturbed by the distant roaring of lions, and Mr. Halliday took turns with John to watch. They had learnt from Mr. Gillespie that the lion stalks his prey in absolute silence, so that they did not fear an actual visitation while the roars continued; and though the sounds came nearer towards the morning, the dread beasts made no attempt to break in. Examining the ground on the following day, Mr. Halliday found pug marks about half-a-mile from the enclosure, and a little further away the scanty remains of a zebra. The proximity of lions was somewhat perturbing.

Sometimes, as Mr. Halliday had learnt, the mere presence of man was enough to drive them away; but if they had once tasted human flesh they showed extraordinary audacity and cunning in obtaining further victims.

As a precaution, he caused an inner boma to be erected around the tents and the gra.s.s huts of the men, so that if lions should break into the outer enclosure they would find another barrier between them and human prey.

During the daytime the building of the bungalow and the cattle-sheds proceeded apace. There was plenty of wood in the neighbourhood, and the people of the village beyond the river a.s.sisted in cutting and transporting the timber in exchange for a small quant.i.ty of cloth, beads, or wire. No work could be got out of the porters, except a few of the Wakamba, who began to prepare the ground around the bungalow for cultivation. Mr. Halliday would willingly have seen the backs of the whole company, but Juma declared that they must rest a few days after their long march before returning to Nairobi; and having no means of expelling them Mr. Halliday must needs submit, though he hoped their stay would be short. Apart from other reasons why their presence was undesirable, they consumed a prodigious amount of food, which had to be purchased from the chief; and while the Wakamba were satisfied with grain and fruits, the Swahili demanded meat, which meant that either some of the cattle must be killed, or the Hallidays must go hunting for their unwelcome guests.

One day Wasama, the Masai herdsman, reported that a number of the sheep had strayed. Not willing to lose them, Mr. Halliday and John set off with Wasama and two or three of the Wakamba to find them, taking their rifles in the hope of bringing down some game for the men. They tracked the wanderers through the long gra.s.s to the west of the encampment, and found that the trail led them into the woods on the rising ground in that direction. There they lost the trail, and scattered, the Englishmen arranging to fire a shot as a signal to the others if either of them came upon the track of the missing animals.

John was making his way through the wood, bending close to the ground, when he suddenly came upon a small hut standing by itself in a little glade. It consisted of four upright logs, the inters.p.a.ces filled with brushwood, and covered with a roof of twisted boughs. He halted, wondering whose dwelling it might be, and then, a movement among the undergrowth at the rear of the hut attracting his attention, he walked slowly towards the spot, holding his rifle in readiness to encounter danger. To his amazement he saw a quaint little figure emerge from the thicket. It was the form of an elderly man, not more than four feet high, dark brown in colour, with strangely bent shins, longish hair streaked with grey, and protruding jaws. He wore nothing but a loose cloak of undressed skin hung from the shoulders, and he carried a small bow. Still more to John's surprise, the little man came forward, and held out his hand with a frank gesture of friendliness, uttering a word or two in a low, quiet voice. John shook his hand, feeling a little confused in his inability to speak to the man; then, thinking that he might be able to a.s.sist in the search for the sheep, he fired off his rifle, upon which the man sprang back into his hut with every mark of terror.

The shot soon brought up the rest of the party, and on John explaining why he had fired, Wasama went to the entrance of the hut and shouted into the interior. After a little hesitation the owner came out, and a brief conversation ensued between the two men, at the close of which Wasama, who knew enough English to make himself understood, explained that the man was one of the Wanderobbo tribe and was living quite alone.

This fact was rather surprising, for the African natives always live in communities, large or small. But after further speech with the hermit, Wasama said that he had no tribe or village, all his people having been killed a long while ago. He had since lived in this little hut, occupying himself, after the manner of his people, in collecting wild honey and hunting, selling the skins of the animals he killed to the neighbouring villagers.

Mr. Halliday asked whether the man had seen anything of his sheep, and the Wanderobbo at once offered to help in the search in return for a few beads. The party set off again, and, emerging from the wood at its southern extremity, the little man soon discovered the trail, and the wanderers were seen placidly grazing half-a-mile away. The Wanderobbo seemed much more delighted with the few beads given him than the value of the gift appeared to justify, and at parting shook hands warmly with the Englishmen, promising, when Wasama had told him of their settlement, to bring them some honey shortly. Wasama collected the sheep and began to herd them back towards the farm, Mr. Halliday and the others going a little farther in pursuance of his intention of shooting something for the larder. But an hour's search revealing no trace of game, he started to return. He had just overtaken Wasama, about a mile from camp, when he saw Said Mohammed hastening towards him at a run.

"I hope there's nothing wrong," he said, but as the Bengali drew nearer it was plain from his perturbed countenance that he bore bad news.

"Master and esteemed sir," he said, panting as he came up, "I regret to inform you that a calamity has transpired."

"What is it?" asked Mr. Halliday, as the cook, who was of substantial physique, paused to recover breath.

"Larceny, sir. Juma, that badmash, awful scoundrel, sir, has lifted, or shall I say pinched, four donkeys, a dozen rifles, and a regular heap of trade goods, and has decamped, bunked, sir, with the Swahilis, who knows where?"

"What was Coja about?" demanded Mr. Halliday, at the same time quickening his pace.

"That, sir, deponent knoweth not. In fact, I have not seen Coja for some time, and suspect that he winked the other eye."

"How long ago was this?"

"I do not know the exact moment, since I was engaged in washing crockery after our matutinal repast, and did not discover the crime until I had made a hole in it; but on a modest computation I should say, not less than five hours ago."

"Soon after we left, John. Which way did the men go?"

"Of that also I am in blissful ignorance, sir."

"We'll soon track them, anyway. John, we must go after them."

They hurried on towards the camp, taking Wasama with them, and leaving the sheep in charge of the Wakamba. When they reached the settlement, it was apparently deserted, except by the Indian carpenters and Juma's negro wife, who, as soon as she saw them, began excitedly to harangue some person out of sight, and then ran behind the bungalow, the walls of which were already up, and dragged forth Coja, whom she brought, a sheepish and crestfallen object, before his master.

Mr. Halliday did not delay either to reprimand or to receive explanations, but ordered Coja and the four Wakamba who had followed him from his hiding-place to sling on their cooking-pots and a little food and prepare to accompany him in chase of the fugitives.

"We don't know how long it will take us," he said to John. "Said Mohammed, you must come with us; we may be a day or two and shall want you to cook. Juma's wife seems a capable body; we'll leave her in charge. Coja, look for their tracks, and go on; we'll follow you."

Within a quarter of an hour of reaching camp the party set off, numbering eight in all. The track was very clear. For three miles it followed the route by which the safari had come several days before; then, to Mr. Halliday's surprise, it made a sudden turn westward.

"I made sure they would strike for the coast," he said. "They won't dare show themselves in any of our settled parts, and I don't understand their going off into the interior. They've had a good start of us, but we travel lighter and ought to catch them if we don't lose the trail."

The party hurried on, not pausing, though the day was now at its hottest. The trail led through open country, and across several streams, some of them of fair size. Here there were signs that the donkeys had given trouble, the soft earth at the brink being so trampled and cut up as to suggest that the animals had had to be pushed and hauled into the water. The trail was for the most part easily followed, for the fugitives had clearly been in too great a hurry to attempt to cover it. Once or twice, when it crossed stony ground, Coja was temporarily at fault, and he then declared he wished they had the Wanderobbo with them, for there were no people like the Wanderobbo for following a trail. Were they not matchless elephant hunters? But a little skirmishing beyond such stony tracts sufficed to pick up the trail again, and pushing on without respite, rest, or food, until sundown, Coja said that the newness of the footprints showed that the quarry was not far ahead. Darkness fell, however, without their having sighted the fugitives, and since they were all thoroughly tired and hungry, Mr. Halliday decided to halt for rest and a meal, and to resume the pursuit in the night if the moon rose, or at dawn.

"I say, father," said John, as they came to a halt, "we mustn't light a fire, or we'll give ourselves away."

"Quite right. We shall have to do without our cocoa to-night, and keep an extra sharp look-out for lions."

The white men had to satisfy themselves with biscuit and water from a brook; the natives ate some of the roasted beans without which they never travel. With the first glimmer of dawn the party were up and on the trail. Two hours' hard marching, at a pace which the natives had never known before, brought them up with the thieves. Coja was the first to catch sight of them, and he held up his hand as a sign to the rest to halt, informing Mr. Halliday in a whisper that the fugitives were only a little distance ahead, in the act of crossing a stream. Half of them had, indeed, already crossed; the remainder were trying to induce the donkeys to face the water.

"Can we catch them?" Mr. Halliday asked.

"Yes, sah, go round about," answered the man.

He led them in a direction at right angles to the path, so as to make a circuit and come upon the runaways from among the thick vegetation at the brink of the river. But Coja's advice turned out to be bad. They had reached the bank and were wheeling to burst upon the Swahilis, when they were suddenly descried by those who had crossed. A shout warned the men struggling with the donkeys; without a moment's hesitation they let go of the animals and took to their heels. When Mr. Halliday came upon the scene nothing was in sight but the donkeys, which on being released had scrambled up the bank out of the river and begun to bray with pleasure at the riddance of their loads.

"We ought to have come straight instead of round about," cried Mr.

Halliday, vexed at his failure to punish the men. It was obviously hopeless to pursue them further. The scrub was dense; the Swahilis had good rifles and ammunition; and being relieved of impedimenta, the loads of goods having been left on the farther bank when they fled, they could travel much faster than Mr. Halliday and his party, fatigued after their forced march.

"We must be satisfied with having got back our donkeys and their loads,"