The Ivory Trail Part 54

There was not much need for caution. The roar of flames, the shouting, the excitement would have protected us, whatever noise we made, however openly we ran. Over and above the tumult we could hear Schubert's bull-throated bellowing, and then the echo to him as the sergeants took up the shout all together, ordering "Off with the gra.s.s roofs! Off with the roofs!"

The white officials were more than interested, and had no time for anything but thought for the blaze. As we crossed the shoulder of the far side of the hill we could see them standing on the drill-ground all together, clearly defined against the crimson flare. Schillingschen was with them.

There was no sign of what had happened at the boma. The gang would have to emerge from a little-used gate at the northern end, provided they could break the lock or secure the key to it; otherwise their only chance was to climb the wall by the cook-house roof and jump twenty feet on the far side. I was for running to the little gate and bursting it in from the outside, but Fred d.a.m.ned me for a mutineer between his panting for breath, and Will, who was longer-winded, agreed with him.

"Have to leave their end of the plan to them! Let's do our part right!"

As it turned out, we were last at the rendezvous. We heard the chain clanking in the dark just ahead of us, and try how we might, could not catch up. Then, near the boat bow, Kazimoto suddenly recognized Fred and nearly throttled him in a fierce embrace, releasing all his pent-up rage, agony, resentment, misery, fear in one paroxysm of affection for the man who cared enough to run risks for the sake of rescuing him.

Fred had to pry him off by main force.

"Into the boat with you!" Will ordered them. "Chain-gang first! Get down below, and lie down! The first head that shows shall be hit with a club! Quickly now!"

Clanking their infernal chain like all the ghosts from all the haunted granges of the Old World, they climbed overside and disappeared. There were more figures left on sh.o.r.e then than we expected. Brown we could make out dimly in the dark: he was chattering nervously, and admitted that but for Kazimoto he would not be there. The faithful fellow had broken down the corrugated iron part.i.tion and had dragged him out by main force. He was rather resentful than grateful.

"Hauled here by a n.i.g.g.e.r--think of it!"

We ordered Brown on board and below, pretty peremptorily. Lady Saffren Waldon stepped out of the darkness next, holding a rifle and two bandoliers so full of cartridges that she could hardly raise her arms.

We took the load from her, and helped her overside. Fred took the rifle and succ.u.mbed to the hunter's habit of opening the breach first thing. It was a German sporting Mauser, with a hair trigger attachment and magazine, as handy and useful a weapon as the heart of man could wish. He had scarcely snapped the breach to again when a voice we all recognized made the hair rise on my neck. Fred jumped and raised the rifle. Will swore softly--endlessly.

"Ga.s.sharrrrammminy! You men took us for d.a.m.ned fools, didn't you? You thought to get away and leave us! By h.e.l.l, no! We go or you stay!

Birds of a feather fly together! One of you is American--I am American! Two of you are English--I am English, and can prove it! My friends come with me!"

Fred leveled the rifle at him.

"About face! Off back to town with you!" he barked.

"Not on your tin-type!" Coutla.s.s yelled. "I'm no man's popinjay!

Shoot if you dare, and I'll spoil the whole game! Help! He-e-e-lp!

He-e-e-e-lp!"

The other Greek and the Goanese joined in the shout, the dark man setting up such an ululating screech that the very storm dwindled into second place in comparison. It was true, the unearthly yelling was carried out over the water, and very likely not a sound of it reached twenty yards inland; but it rattled our nerves, nevertheless. The skin grew p.r.i.c.kly all up and down my backbone, and the men on the chain-gang inside the hull began shouting to know what the matter was.

Will remembered then that he was captain for the day, and made virtue of necessity.

"In with you!" he ordered. "Quick!"

With a grin that was half-triumph, half-cunning, and wholly glad, Coutla.s.s helped his companions over the bow, and had the civility to stand there with hand outstretched to help us in after him. We sent him below with his friends, but he came up again and insisted on leaning his weight on the poles with which we began shoving off into deeper water. It was hard work, for with her human cargo and several hundred gallons of water that had leaked through her gaping seams, the dhow was down several inches. Her hull had just begun to feel the wind and to rise and fall freely, when a white figure ran screaming down toward the water's edge and stood there waving to us frantically.

"Leave her!" said Lady Waldon excitedly, clutching my arm. I was up on the bow, just about to lay the pole along the deck and haul on the halyards. She spoke very slowly right in my ear. "That, is my maid Rebecca. The faithless s.l.u.t--"

Coutla.s.s began to shout, trying to pole the dhow back to land single-handed.

"We can't leave that woman behind there!" Fred shouted, hardly making himself heard against the wind.

"Can't we!" shouted Lady Waldon. "Give me that rifle, and I'll solve the problem for you!"

But Coutla.s.s solved it in another way by jumping overboard, over his head in deep water, taking our hempen warp with him (I had made one end of it fast to the bitts, meaning to be able to find it in the dark).

There was quite a sea running, even as close insh.o.r.e as that, and for a moment I doubted whether the Greek would make it. By that time it was all we could do to see the woman's white figure, still gesticulating, and screaming like a mad thing. Presently, however, the warp tightened, and then by the strain on it I knew that Coutla.s.s was trying to haul us back insh.o.r.e. Failing to do that, for the strength of the wind was increasing, he seized the Syrian woman by the waist and plunged into the water with her. I saw them disappear and hauled on the warp hand-over-hand with all my might, Lady Waldon leaning over to strike at my hands until I shouted to Fred to come and hold her. Then she begged Fred again for the rifle, promising to kill the two of them and reduce our problem to that extent if we would only let her.

Will and I hauled the dripping pair on board, and Coutla.s.s carried the maid to the stern. She had fainted, either from fright or from being half-drowned, there was no guessing which. Then in pitch blackness with Will's help I got the ship beam to the wind and began to make sail.

Now danger was only just beginning! I was the only one of them all who knew anything whatever about sails and sailing. I was too weak to get the sail up single-handed, had no compa.s.s, knew nothing whatever of the rocks and shoals, except by rumor that there were plenty of both.

There appeared to be no way of reefing the lateen sail, which was made of no better material than calico, and I was entirely unfamiliar with the rigging.

Behind us, as we payed before the gaining wind, was brilliant blaze that showed where Muanza was. Against the blaze stood out the lakeward boma wall. I stood due east away from it, and discovered presently that by easing on the halyard so as to lower the long spar I could obtain something the effect of reefing.

I set Fred and Will to making a sea-anchor of buckets and spars in case the sail or rotten rigging should carry away, leaving us at the mercy of the short steep waves that fresh-water lakes and the North Sea only know. The big curved spar, now that it was hanging low, bucked and swung and the dhow steered like an omnibus on slippery pavement.

Luckily, I had living ballast and could trim the ship how I chose.

They all began to grow seasick, but I gave them something to think about by making them shift backward and forward and from side to side until I found which way the dhow rode easiest.

When Fred had finished the sea-anchor he got out the tools and began striking off the iron rings on the porters' necks through which the chain pa.s.sed. The job took him two hours, but at the end of it we owned a good serviceable chain, and a crew that could be drilled to take the brute hard labor off our shoulders.

Coutla.s.s meanwhile was busy on the seat in the stern beside me making h.e.l.lenic inflammatory love to Lady Waldon's maid, whom he had wrapped in his own blanket and held shivering in his arms. Lady Waldon herself sat on the other side of me, affecting not to be aware of the existence of either of them. The other Greek and the Goanese had been driven below, where they started to smoke until I saw the glow of their pipes and shouted to Will to stop that foolishness. He s.n.a.t.c.hed both pipes and threw them overboard. The thought of being seen from sh.o.r.e was almost incitement enough for murder. They refused to turn a hand to anything that night, but sat sulking below the sloping roof of reeds and tarpaulin that did duty for a deck, wedged alongside of seasick Wanyamwezi.

It was Kazimoto who chose the least disheartened of the gang, beat them and stung them into liveliness, and set them to bailing. There was a trough running thwartwise of the ship into which the water had to be lifted from the midship well. It took the gang of eight men, working in relays, until nearly dawn to get the water out of her; and to keep her bottom reasonably dry after that two men working constantly.

I knew vaguely that the great island of Ukerewe lay to the northwestward of us. Between that and the mainland, running roughly north, was a pa.s.sage that narrowed in more than one place to less than a hundred yards. That would have been the obvious course to take had we not been afraid of pursuit, had we dared get away by daylight, and provided I had known the way. As it was I intended to add another hundred miles to the distance between us and the northern sh.o.r.e of the lake, by sailing well clear of and around Ukerewe, trusting to the less frequented water and the wilder islands to make escape easier.

I judged it likely that the moment we were missed, the launch would be sent off in search of us, and that the Germans would search the narrow pa.s.sage first. They would expect us to take the narrow pa.s.sage, as the shortest, and depend on their ability to steam a dozen miles an hour to overhaul us, even should we get a long start on the outside course.

With gaining wind, a following sea, a little ship crowded to suffocation, and a sail that might blow to shreds at any minute, it was not long before I began to pray for the lee of Ukerewe, and to stand in closer toward where I judged the end of the island ought to be than perhaps I should have done. It was lucky, though, that I did.

In making calculations I had overlooked the obvious fact that, steaming three miles to our one, the launch could very well afford to take the outside course to start with. Then they could take a good look for us in the open water next morning, and, failing to find us, steam all around Ukerewe, come back down the inside pa.s.sage, and catch us between two banks.

It was Lady Saffren Waldon on my left hand, looking anywhere but at her maid and sweeping the dark waste of water with eyes as restless as the waves themselves, who gave the first alarm.

"What is that light?" she asked me.

Following the direction of her hand I saw a red glow on the water to our left, not more than a mile behind.

"Reflection from the burning town," I answered, but I had no sooner said it than I knew the answer was foolish. It was the glow that rides above hot steamer funnels in the night.

"Fred!" I shouted, for fear took hold of the very roots of my heart, "for the love of G.o.d make every one keep silence! Show no lights!

Don't speak above a whisper! Keep all heads below the gunwale! That cursed German launch is after us!"

We were in double danger. I could hear surf pounding on rocks to starboard. I did not dare to come up into the wind because n.o.body but I knew how the spar would have to be pa.s.sed around the mast, and in any case the noise and the fluttering sail might attract attention.

"Look out for breakers ahead!" I ordered. "I'm going to hold this course and hope they pa.s.s us in the dark!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"DAVID PREVAILED"

(I. Sam. 17:50)