Tom Burnaby Part 25

One of the three he clubbed with his musket, and then, while Mbutu, who returned at this moment, fiercely engaged the second, he pressed hotly upon the third. Two of the Bahima were prostrate; the remaining eight were vainly attempting to stem the torrent now pouring over the palisade, and Tom was in the thick of the melee, laying about him doughtily. It was a tense moment; Tom and his little band were outnumbered ten to one; and the fate of the village hung in the balance.

The enemy were creeping up behind for a final rush, when the katikiro charged down at the head of two hundred yelling Bairo. The stockade was cleared in a few seconds and the baffled enemy driven back over the ditch.

"Whew!" blew Tom, and then for the first time became aware that he had received a slight spear-wound in the right arm. "Blood-brother indeed!"

he said with a smile to the katikiro. "But Msala, my friend, you were only just in time. In a minute or two it would have been another case of what-d'ye-call-him against the world. Why were you so long bringing up reinforcements?"

The katikiro was exceedingly sorry, but just before Mbutu had reached him a similar request had been made by the chief, and he had felt bound, of course, to obey his chief first. But it turned out after all to be a mere waste of time, for the enemy in the north-west quarter, while making an extremely bl.u.s.terous demonstration, had never come within striking distance, and Msala had soon recognized that their show of activity was a mere feint to draw off attention from the real attack at the other end. Tom saw that the delay had been unavoidable, and could only be thankful that the much-needed support had come after all in the very nick of time.

The brief rest was a boon; but the enemy were not routed, nor even definitively driven off. They were still clinging to their position outside the stockade, and the Bahima could not get at them without exposing themselves, nor even a.s.sail them effectively with their spears, for the Arabs had rifles, and were indeed dropping shots over into the village. It was clearly necessary to put a stop to these offensive tactics, and Tom was perplexed as to what measure to adopt. Suddenly the idea occurred to him: could he try a few fireb.a.l.l.s? Vague recollections came to him of something he had read about fireb.a.l.l.s in defence of towns during the wars in the Netherlands. He had noticed plenty of coa.r.s.e wool of sheep and goats in the village; there were heaps of shavings where the artificers had been making spear-shafts; and the place was reeking with fat of various kinds. He knew also that there was a large store of the native spirituous liquors, museru and marwa, in a shed near the hut of the chief's cook and purveyor, the muchumbi wanyama, and he thought it would be rather a good than an evil if some of the spirits were consumed externally. He therefore left the katikiro in command while he himself went to consult the chief.

Barega was charmed with the simplicity and ingenuity of the notion of worrying the enemy with fireb.a.l.l.s, but somewhat downcast when he learnt the use to which his wine-cellar was to be put. Thereupon Tom, with the tact that had marked all his dealing with the natives, did not insist, but quietly pointed out that if the Arabs got in, they would set fire to the village, and the spirits would be destroyed with all the rest. It was surely better to use half of it in doing some mischief among the enemy, and perhaps by this means decisively turn the scale.

The chief thought over the matter, consulted the kasegara, and finally, with an obvious wrench, gave his consent to the course Kuboko proposed.

No more time was lost; twenty natives were immediately set to roll up b.a.l.l.s about six inches in diameter, made of wool and shavings and fat, and anything else combustible that came to hand, and finally steeped in the heady spirit. When some hundred b.a.l.l.s were ready, Tom had them carried to his old post, where the Arabs were once more attempting to scale the stockade. They were lighted and thrown in rapid succession over the stockade on to the trellis-bridge. The Arabs at first tried to quench the fallen b.a.l.l.s, but others came flaming through the air still more rapidly, and after some score had been thrown, fearing that their retreat over the ditch was likely to be cut off by the burning of their bridge, the enemy threw up the sponge and beat a hasty retreat. As they retired, the Bahima gave a tremendous whoop, and sent a cloud of arrows and spears after them, causing many a gap in their ranks. They fled on in rage and confusion, and vanished behind the plantation.

"Ah! I think they've had enough," said Tom. "Barega, my brother, what do you think of our morning's work?"

Barega confessed himself "pleased too much", as Mbutu interpreted him.

"Say one fing, sah; say no want no more museru wasted!"

"Good heavens!" was Tom's thought, "it's all got to be argued again.

Wasted! As Mr. Barkworth would say, 'There's no grat.i.tude in these natives!'" But all he said was: "Tell the chief that I hope we shall need no more of his excellent stuff, and that I consider he has shown a fine spirit of self-denial for the common good. The scamp!" he added under his breath; "he ought to be as pleased as Punch!"

Tom was in the highest spirits. He felt confident now that the resources at his command were sufficient to defend the village against all attacks in force, and he hoped that the enemy would appreciate the situation and relinquish their enterprise.

The rest of that day pa.s.sed uneventfully. At night sentries were posted as usual, and none of the precautions were relaxed; but there was no attack. The day slipped by with the same tranquillity. Parties of the enemy were seen at times, but they were always out of range, and, so far as could be ascertained from the village, were not making any preparations for renewing the a.s.sault. That night Tom, walking round by the stockade the last thing before turning in, noticed that at short intervals from the north gate round the western and southern sides to the extreme south-east corner, where the ground shelved down rapidly to the foot of the precipice, large watch-fires were burning, which had not previously been the case.

"What does that mean?" he thought. "Are they going to make a regular siege of it? I hope not, for to be cooped up here for another week would be awful. I'd give something for a newspaper, or Ranjy's cricket book, or even Euclid--yes, by Jove, even old _quod erat demonstrandum_--to help pa.s.s the time away. By the by, I'll be forgetting all my maths out here, and if I'm to stick to engineering that'll never do. Well, if it turns out a siege, I'll set myself a few stiff problems and correct the solutions experimentally, eh?--besides teaching these beggars something of infantry drill. Heigh-ho! 'the heathen in his blindness'--who'd have thought I should ever be living among 'em, and a blood-brother too!"

And as he walked back to his hut, in a fit of abstraction he began to whistle the tune of "From Greenland's icy mountains," to the great contentment of the katikiro lying awake.

CHAPTER XIV

The Siege of Barega's

The Arab Camp--A Balista--A Vain Appeal--Eureka--Cutting a Channel--The Eleventh Hour--Barega's Last Fight--After the Battle

Tom's premonitions were well founded; on awaking next morning he saw that the whole accessible part of the village was blockaded by a chain of posts extending from the north gate to the south-east corner. The banana plantations on the south side appeared to be occupied in force, and the object of the enemy was clearly to prevent any going in or coming out, and so to starve the villagers into submission. Naturally Tom congratulated himself on his foresight in stocking the village with food, and expressed to the chief his confident hope that the besiegers would tire.

That their intentions were serious was soon evident. Early in the morning a large gang of Manyema were observed, nearly half a mile up the hill, engaged in damming up the stream, and diverting its course from the village away to the left Tom turned to the katikiro, who happened to be by his side, and smilingly pointed out what the enemy were doing. The katikiro was never loth to laugh, and he fairly bubbled over, slapping his thighs and chuckling with infinite enjoyment.

"How mad they will be," thought Tom, "when they find that we can manage without water! The man who planted this village round a constant spring was a genius. Besides, they must know there's plenty of water in the ditch at present, not very palatable, perhaps, but enough to keep us alive."

He wondered where the enemy had fixed their main camp. Those of them who came within sight were for the most part Manyema, and it occurred to Tom that perhaps the Arabs had departed for a time, to return with reinforcements of their own race. However, on the third night of the siege a Muhima managed to creep out without attracting the attention of the besiegers, and returned after being absent about three hours, with information that relieved Tom's mind on that point. He discovered that the Arabs had formed an entrenched camp in a green hollow at the foot of the precipice at the north-east corner of the village. They had evidently noticed that by moving in close to the base of the cliffs they were protected by the overhanging spur from the weapons of the Bahima, as well as from any other missiles, such as rocks or fireb.a.l.l.s, that might be hurled from above. They had placed their camp so that any projectiles thus cast at them would fall outside their eastern boundary, and their rampart and trench were sufficiently formidable to secure them against a.s.sault. The position had the further advantage that the cliff protected them from the prevailing wind, while they had a good supply of water from a stream that joined the village stream a few hundred yards below the precipice. Some little distance to the south, where the ground rose steeply, a large body of their slave carriers had been penned like cattle, under a strong guard. The Muhima said that the chief camp contained some fifteen hundred Arabs, a number which Tom thought might safely be divided by three.

Several days pa.s.sed away, most wearisomely for the two thousand people shut up within the stockade. While in time of peace, with men constantly away on hunting expeditions and women working in the fields, the village was never offensively over-populated, yet now that all the people were necessarily at home, with more than the usual number of cattle, Tom feared that it would before long be a hot-bed of fever. The people, he had found, were always accustomed to allow calves and other young animals to sleep in their own huts along with their families, but it was quite unusual, even for them, to be cooped up constantly with full-grown beasts. He did what he could to make the conditions as little unfavourable to health as possible; but not much was in his power, and he fretted at his impotence.

The besiegers had clearly abandoned all ideas of an a.s.sault in force, but every now and then a bullet or a slug would whistle over the stockade, and more than one man was killed. Tom got the chief at length to forbid any of the people to show themselves, and, accustomed as they were to a free and open life, they were greatly irritated by the restriction. Seeing that something must be done to keep them in good-humour, Tom took advantage of their love of novelty and their amazing fondness for drill to instruct them for an hour or two every day in simple movements and formations, finding that they were quite content to continue drilling on their own account for hours at a stretch.

As time went on, the besiegers were amazed at the unconcern with which the stoppage of the water-supply had been received in the village, and came to the conclusion that the people must have been drawing on the stagnant and dirty water in the ditch. One morning, then, Tom, who never relaxed his vigilance, saw a body of men approaching under cover of a light palisade lined with skins of Hima oxen, which effectually protected them from the spears and arrows of the villagers. He was not long left in doubt about the object they had in view. They came right up to the ditch, and began to cut a channel where the ground sloped down to the east, so as to drain off the water.

Tom was in no anxiety about the loss of water, but he objected to being "done", as he put it to himself, and yet, in default of firearms, saw no means of preventing the enemy from effecting their purpose. Fortunately a tremendous downpour of rain, forerunner of the approaching rainy season, drove the Arabs away for that time, and Tom at once set his wits to work to defeat their scheme should they return. Thinking of one thing after another, all at once he remembered, in an old ill.u.s.trated edition of Caesar he had used in a lower form at school, some engravings of the torments used by the Romans in their siege operations. There was the catapult--ah! and the balista; that was the very thing. Could he manage to rig up a balista before the ditch was effectually drained? It was worth trying.

"Good heavens! what it is to be without pencil and paper!" he groaned.

But he managed with a spear-head to scratch on a stone a rough diagram of the machine, as nearly as he remembered it, and then immediately set to work to construct a model.

There was plenty of wood in the village, and it took very little time to hammer together the square framework, and to chisel out the grooved beam on which the missile was to run. While this was being done he set some of the Bairo to twist two many-stranded ropes, and the native smiths to forge an iron handle for his winch. When this was fixed in its place at the bottom of the grooved plank, and the ropes securely fastened at each side of the frame, he placed one of the fireb.a.l.l.s in front of the cross rope on the plank, sloped this downwards at an angle of forty-five degrees, and drew the rope back by means of the winch until it was stretched to its utmost tension and almost as tight as a steel spring.

Then he released his hold of the handle, it flew round, the spring was suddenly relaxed, and the ball shot along the groove and over the stockade, falling some ten yards beyond.

"I'll have a welcome ready for the Arabs if they return," he thought, delighted at the success of his experiment.

Some three hours after the downpour had ceased, the Arabs came back in stronger force, again bearing their palisades. Tom allowed them to arrive within five yards of the trench, and then let fly a piece of rock from his balista. A tremendous cheer arose from the crowd of wondering negroes as the missile sped with sure aim to the very middle of the palisade, with such force that it tore a hole through skin and wicker-work, and struck a man behind.

The Arabs were startled, as they might well be, and halted. Before they had made up their minds what to do, another missile struck the palisade, and ricochetted across it, inflicting a blow on one of the Arabs that would have killed him if its force had not been partly broken. Another stone, and another, and then the enemy hesitated no longer; they dropped their palisade, flung down their tools, and bolted for their lives.

Mocking jeers and exultant laughter followed them, and then a shower of arrows, and four or five of them dropped. Tom ordered his men to cease shooting, and allowed the wounded to be carried off by their friends.

That was the last attempt the enemy made to take the offensive. They had clearly recognized by this time that they had a more formidable antagonist to deal with than the average native of Central Africa. Tom, indeed, had freely exposed himself to their marksmen throughout the operations, and had had more than one narrow escape, as well as the one slight wound in the arm, which gave him no concern. They could scarcely have failed to perceive that they had to reckon with a European of determination and resource, and from that time on they contented themselves with a strict investment. They rounded-up what cattle they could lay their hands on, and, having the banana and other plantations of the villagers to draw upon, they lived luxuriously without consuming the provisions they had themselves brought. They could thus afford to play a waiting game.

Within the village, however, things were becoming unpleasant, nay, dangerous. The sanitary arrangements, at any time crude and imperfect, were unequal to the necessities of the case, and one or two cases of sickness had already occurred. The strain upon the fort.i.tude of the people was proving more than it could bear. After three weeks the food-supply began to run short, and the daily rations were diminished, amid murmurings from the Bairo. A week later it was found necessary by the chief to order the slaughter of several of the much-prized cattle.

Now that it had come to this pa.s.s, the Bairo were bound to suffer most, for, living as they did for the most part on fruits and grain, the stock of which was well-nigh exhausted, they were without the resources of the Bahima, and were earlier in straits for food.

Early in the fifth week of the siege Tom begged the chief to call a palaver. Barega had displayed qualities of patience and endurance which won Tom's unbounded admiration. From the beginning of the siege he seemed to have recognized that his only chance of successful resistance was to trust in the ingenuity and prudence of his blood-brother, and he had sunk his own pre-eminence without a shade of jealousy. No doubt this was in great measure due to Tom's own tactfulness. He took no steps without consulting the chief, and he had that invaluable faculty which enables a man to get his own way without the other party suspecting it. Barega, therefore, willingly called a council, and showed his readiness to listen to anything his brother had to say.

"Barega and my brothers," Tom began, "we have held out so long, and we are not going to give in." (Grunts of applause.) "But we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that we are in sore straits. Our food will last but a few days more, and then, without help, we must starve. Now, if our enemies had no firearms, Barega and I together would lead you out of the village and attack them. But we cannot cope with their weapons, and if we made the attempt it would surely fail. Is it impossible to obtain help from outside? Are there no villages within reach whose people have suffered at the hands of the Arabs, and would aid us against the common enemy? Brothers, it is for you to speak."

The katikiro at once replied that there were three villages within a radius of thirty miles which certainly had suffered by the Arabs'

depredations and might possibly be able to lend a.s.sistance. One of them, however, Barega reminded the a.s.sembly, was ruled by a chief who was extremely jealous of his power, and would not be much inclined to put himself out on any such matter. Still, it could be tried. Barega then selected three of his fleetest runners, and two hours before dawn, under a moonless sky, they were sent out singly from the north gate.

When morning broke, Tom was called from his hut by furious cries in the village. Hastening out, he soon understood the cause of the uproar.

Outside the stockade, just beyond arrow-range, a big Manyema was parading before the eyes of the villagers, holding a spear aloft, and on the end of it was the bleeding head of one of the three runners. Behind him marched a crowd of mocking negroes, pointing derisively to the impaled head, and shouting threats at the enraged villagers. Tom mentally registered that as one more atrocity for which the Arabs would some day have to pay, and then did his best to pacify the people.

The other two runners, as it turned out, had been lucky enough to get through the enemy's lines undetected. They both returned on the following night. One of them announced that Barega's rival had received him with scorn and insult, and that he had barely escaped with his life.

The other brought news that a raiding-party of Arabs, evidently despatched by the surrounding force, had surprised and burned the neighbouring village a few days before, and that the few inhabitants who had escaped were hiding in the forest.

With this intelligence, it was impossible to disguise the fact that the outlook was gloomy in the extreme. It was hopeless to look for help from outside, and from the inside it appeared that nothing could be done. The rainy season had set in, and sickness had declared itself unmistakeably, especially among the Bairo, who had all along been less well nourished than the Bahima. They were reduced now to a few handfuls of grain daily, and as they roamed about, the ribs showing through their skin, they cast ravenous eyes at the few remaining cattle. Murmurs of "Give us food! give us food!" met the ears of Barega and his officers as they went about, and some of the more violent of the poor people had begun again to listen to the half-lunatic ravings of the medicine-man, who, since his defeat, had sulked almost unnoticed in his hut. Even some of the Bahima, talking among themselves, said that it would be better to submit to the enemy than to die of slow starvation. The katikiro, who through all the incidents of the siege had never lost his faith in Tom, informed him of these murmurs, and Tom impressed on Barega that he must still them at once. The chief immediately summoned a ma.s.s-meeting, and addressed his people in an impa.s.sioned speech. What would their fate be, he asked, if they yielded? Nine-tenths of the men would be butchered on the spot, along with all the older women and all who were too infirm to stand the strain of marching in a slave-caravan.

What would become of their younger women and children? Barega pictured the line of miserable slaves, marching in chains at the mercy of their brutal captors, dropping and left to rot on the path; if they survived the march, to suffer tortures compared with which the fate of their murdered kinsfolk would be happy indeed. Let them choose, he cried, let them choose freely; as for him, he would die in his village, fighting his foe if so it might be; if not, still he would die a free man!

His burning words provoked a shout of approval from the throng, and then Tom stepped forward. A deep hush fell upon the a.s.sembly; every man there felt a strange magnetic power in the young white man who had stood by them and done them such good service.

"O Bahima and Bairo!" he cried, "brothers, all of you, do not give up hope. You have heard your brave chief; his words are the words of a lion-heart. I tell you now that I believe we shall yet win. There is a town, in a far land belonging to the Great White King, which was besieged like this village for many long days, and where the people waited and waited, hoping that at last their friends would come to their aid and drive away the hordes besieging them. Their food was gone; they were sick, aye, sick unto death; but did they give in? Know that the children of the Great White King never give in! No; they waited and fought, and some of them died, and then at last, far over the fields, they saw the spears of their friends advancing to help them, and the enemy melted away like mist in the sun, and they were saved! Let us wait also, a little longer, my brothers!"

For a moment after he had ceased the silence was unbroken. Then the katikiro sprang into the ring; his feelings could be played on like the notes of an instrument; raising his spear aloft he cried "Muzungu will save us! Kuboko will save us!" The crowd took up his cry, and Tom was touched to the quick to see their haggard faces lit up once more with the light of hope, and their wild eyes fixed on him as their expected deliverer.

That night he lay awake, thinking, thinking, racking his brains for some means of compelling the enemy to raise the siege and justifying the confidence of the villagers. All the expedients that he had ever read of were pa.s.sed in turn before his mind, only to be dismissed as impracticable; the want of firearms and gunpowder was against them all.

Then suddenly, by an inspiration seemingly quite unconnected with his train of thought, a light flashed upon his mind. There was no need to weigh probabilities; the idea carried conviction with it. Crying "I have it!" he sprang from his couch, waking Mbutu with a start.