Tom Burnaby Part 35

Tom's Armada

On the Trail--A Picked Force--Through the Great Forest--The Last of Mabruki--On the Lake Sh.o.r.e--Building a Flotilla--Floating Forts--The Island in the Lake--Forcing a Landing--A Parley--De Castro Expresses Himself--Preparing for the Attack--Mwonda the Dauntless--Fire and Sword--Rumaliza's House--De Castro's Last Shot

It was now one o'clock in the afternoon. For nine hours Tom and all his men had been afoot, engaged in one of the most arduous struggles that native Africa had known. The great fight so long antic.i.p.ated was over; the dreaded power of Rumaliza, the centre of the hateful slave-traffic, was broken; Rumaliza himself, with his lieutenant Ahmed and many other of his princ.i.p.al coadjutors, lay on the field, and the shattered remnant of the force that left its distant stronghold in such warlike ardour and confidence was routed beyond hope of rallying. But Tom saw that his work was not yet completed. The fortress in the forest still remained.

It was no doubt strongly garrisoned; the fugitives would naturally betake themselves thither; the survivors of De Castro's force and De Castro himself would gather there, and in course of time, though they could never expect to recover their old strength and prestige, they might repair their disaster sufficiently to menace for years to come the security and happiness of the weaker tribes. "I must destroy their scorpions' nest," said Tom to himself wearily; "when shall I see home again?"

He saw that his force was too much exhausted to carry operations further that day. Of less than four thousand men, at least five hundred lay dead and wounded; and their exertions had been so violent and so long-continued that the living and unwounded were fit for nothing but rest. Mbutu and the eight hundred who had so opportunely arrived with him were still apparently keeping up the pursuit, and it was impossible to make any detailed arrangements until they returned. Tom, therefore, sent off a messenger to the village with news of the victory, and with orders to the katikiro to bring up two hundred men with a stock of ammunition. He then went with a few of his body-guard to the Arabs'

camp, where their vast horde of slave carriers must now be dealt with.

He found that the slaves, at least five thousand in number, had risen and overpowered their guards, and were working havoc among the effects of their late masters. At Tom's appearance they crowded round him, some of them recognizing him as the prisoner who had escaped months before from the clutches of Mustapha. The poor creatures were wild with delight at the discomfiture of the Arabs, and many of them threw themselves at Tom's feet and vowed that they were his, body and soul, to do with as he pleased. Seeing on them unmistakeable evidences of terrible suffering during their recent march--open sores, mutilated features, scars and weals made by the lash--Tom lost all compa.s.sion for the Arabs who had perished in the fight, and was strengthened in his resolve to visit the Arab stronghold and there complete the work he had begun.

He ordered his men to knock off the chains from their necks and ankles, and those who were thus liberated to a.s.sist in the work with their fellows. He ordered them also to collect the ammunition, stores, and camp furniture and carry them to the zariba, and then to dig deep trenches and bury the dead. The slaves were suffering greatly from want of water, and Tom informed them of the stream two miles to the south, and allowed them to go and refresh themselves at it, commanding them to report themselves before nightfall at the zariba, where he intended to camp for the night.

Two hours later Mbutu returned, accompanied by a portion of his force.

They gave a great shout when Tom welcomed them, and Mbutu, his face beaming with joy, informed his master of his recent movements. With a quickness for grasping a military situation with which Tom had not credited him, he had seen the importance of preventing any considerable concentration of the fugitives, and sent small bodies of men to the right and left to guard the approaches to the forest, and thus prevent any junction of the scattered bands of Arabs and Manyema who had spread out fanwise in the course of their retreat.

"You have done splendidly, Mbutu," said Tom, patting him on the shoulder. "But why were you so late in bringing up the eight hundred men? We were almost at our last gasp."

Mbutu explained that when his brother reached the volcano he found the eight hundred men in a state of great perplexity at the non-appearance of Kuboko. They had waited and waited, expecting to be engaged in some enterprise of moment, and when hour after hour pa.s.sed away, and day followed day, without their receiving any orders, they had grown angry.

Some of them had wandered miles away to the south of the mountain to see if there was anything in that direction that seemed to call for them.

When Mboda appeared and ordered them to return, it took some time to collect the dispersed bands, and though they had made all haste, they had found it impossible to march with any great speed over the broken country between the volcano and the village. Mbutu had met them, indeed, a few miles north of the village, and had brought them on, with the fresh men drawn from the garrison, as rapidly as possible. He was thankful "too much, too much," he said, that he had arrived at such a critical moment. To save time, he had chosen to risk wading across the swamp in preference to taking the longer circuit round it through the forest.

"And you did well," said Tom. "If you had gone the farther way we should have been overpowered, I fear. It was a stroke of genius, Mbutu.

The art of generalship is to know when to take risks. Some people call it luck, but I can't see myself why luck should have such a happy knack of favouring the incapable."

Mbutu did not understand this speech, but he saw that his master was pleased with him, and he went with all cheerfulness and contentment to superintend the camping arrangements for the night, receiving willing a.s.sistance from Msala, who came up presently in a state of great delight, tempered by regret at his own enforced absence from the scene of the great battle. To please Mbutu, Tom then sent his brother Mboda with a small force into the forest to build a new stockade on the farther bank of the fordable stream, so as to block the way of any Arabs who might endeavour to retrace their steps over the central path.

Next morning, before returning to the village, Tom sent eight hundred of his best men, divided into several bands under trusty leaders, to dog the fugitive Arabs. Some were to scour the country on the outskirts of the forest, others to penetrate the forest itself, press forward beyond the new stockade, and watch every narrow cross-track, every possible alley, so as effectually to bar the retreat of the Arabs except by long circuitous routes on which, as the news of their defeat spread, they would be exposed to the attacks of the tribes they had ill-treated and oppressed. These scouting bodies were to carry with them sufficient food for three days, and at the end of that time to return.

Tom's march to the village was a triumphal progress. The people came out in their thousands to meet him, and in a great glad throng, amid the din of drums and loud songs of victory, escorted him to his head-quarters. Mwonga ordered several of his finest oxen to be killed for the victor's feast, and extensive preparations were made for high jubilation. Tom could not but be sympathetic towards the people's rejoicings, but he recognized the danger of their imagining that nothing remained to be done, and he determined at once to make the situation clear to them. Early in the afternoon he summoned all the chiefs to a council at some distance from the village, where they could deliberate without interrupting, or being interrupted by, the festal proceedings.

When they were a.s.sembled he made a short address to them, in which he reviewed what had been accomplished, and clearly stated what had yet to be done.

"True, the Arabs are scattered," he said. "You have all done n.o.bly.

But many of your men have been killed; many of your women are widows and your children fatherless to-day. If your sacrifices, your toils, your wounds, are not to be useless, you must not stay your hands until this nest of venomous snakes is utterly destroyed. You must make one more effort, my brothers. It may not be a great one. The flower of the Arab army is destroyed; there cannot be more than a handful at their stronghold. Our successes. .h.i.therto will have encouraged you, and you will not fail to see that by one final blow you may destroy your enemies for ever. If, however, you let slip this opportunity, the Arabs will in time recover even from this great defeat, as they have recovered from defeats in the past, and by and by the old evil work of raiding for ivory and slaves will begin again. I myself will lead you to this Arab stronghold, and in a few weeks the impregnable fortress of which they boast shall be a heap of smoking ruins."

The majority of the chiefs shouted an instant a.s.sent to Kuboko's proposal, but some murmured discontentedly, and declared that they had done enough; the Arab stronghold was far away, and they wished to get back to their own villages and resume their ordinary life. Tom accepted the position good-humouredly.

"Let those who wish to go to their homes go," he said. "I understand their feeling. I myself long ardently to see my own home again. Let them go, then; and I thank them for their brave and willing services.

But for the rest--I ask you, brothers, shall we sacrifice a little more, and make the Arabs drink to the dregs the bitter cup they have so often brewed for you their victims?"

"We will! we will!" cried most of the chiefs.

"It is well. Now, we have a long march before us, my brothers, but 'tis a long track that has no end. We shall reach their stronghold; we shall capture it, and if perchance a great booty, stores of ivory stolen from you, should fall into our hands, I promise you it shall be divided among you in proportion to the number of men you severally furnish."

The prospect of booty, conjoined with their deep-seated hatred of the Arabs and their exultation at their recent victory, made the chiefs all eagerness to attempt the new enterprise. Many of the murmurers were now among the most anxious to volunteer, and Tom was intensely amused as they tried with every appearance of artlessness to explain away their previous reluctance. He went on to say that he would not need all their men; he asked for only twelve hundred fighting men and as many carriers.

But both carriers and warriors must be of the very best; he needed men who were strong and active, and, above all, prompt to obey. He arranged with the chiefs to make a selection during the next few days from among their contingents, and was secretly pleased when he found, as the work of selection proceeded, that the men who were not picked went about with dejected faces, and openly envied their comrades' good fortune.

From prisoners who had fallen into his hands Tom learnt that when the Arab force left, a garrison of about five hundred men remained in the island fortress. They were all Arabs, well armed, under the command of his old enemy Mustapha, and secure in their possession of a post which they deemed impregnable. Before he could reach it, Tom had no doubt that the garrison would be increased by the arrival of De Castro with the survivors from his luckless expedition, and also by a certain number of Rumaliza's force, who would succeed in evading pursuit and escaping the perils of the forest. He might also have to reckon with the overdue raiding-party from the north. But even though the defenders of the fortress should number nearly a thousand, Tom was confident that twelve hundred of his disciplined and seasoned men would suffice to reduce the place.

Several days were spent in choosing men and collecting stores. Tom could not resist Msala's plea to be allowed this time to take an active part by his side. Mwonda was one of his lieutenants as a matter of course, and Mbutu begged that his brother Mboda might accompany the expedition. There was no lack of arms and ammunition; the chief difficulty that faced Tom was that of provisioning his force during the march through the forest, which he expected, from information received from the prisoners, to occupy nearly a month. While the resources of the village and the surrounding country were being taxed to the uttermost, Tom sent a force of five hundred men into the forest to build a strong redoubt three days' march within its borders, and arranged with one of his allies, the chief of a small village still farther in the forest, destroyed by the Arabs in their advance, to return and rebuild his village, with entrenchments and fortifications. Both these places he decided to make depots for large stores of grain, in order to reduce the work of the carriers with the expedition, and to form reserves in case of a check.

It was a fine day in December, a week after the battle, when the expedition started. Tom was convinced that in point of physique no finer force ever set out on any military enterprise. During the week all that good food and regular drill could do had been done to bring the men into perfect condition, and, looking at their well-developed muscular frames and clear bright eyes, Tom felt proud to command them.

The redoubt was already built and stocked when the column reached it at the end of the third day's march. Two days later, on reaching the native chief's village, Tom was surprised to see what progress had been made with its reconstruction. Men, women, and children were hard at work, running up gra.s.s huts and stockading the whole enceinte. When the force resumed their march next morning, Tom felt that the expedition was beginning in earnest.

Then began the long march towards the Arab fortress, a march to which Tom always looked back with mingled pleasure and pain. His previous acquaintance with the great Congo Forest had been made in a time of such stress, anxiety, and illness that he had missed many things which now, as he marched with a large confident force of warriors, he had more leisure to notice. The column was led by a company of pioneers to clear the path where it was overgrown with creepers and bush. Then came a company of musketeers, followed by pikemen, among whom Tom kept his place, accompanied by the ever-faithful Mbutu. Behind these trudged the carriers, strong straight men with no lumber about them, tramping along steadily beneath their burdens, poking fun at each other and at the men in front of them, laughing at any slight mishap that occurred during their progress. After these came the rest of the force, the officers placed among the men at intervals, big Mwonda being in command of the rearguard. The march began each day at 6.30 and continued until 11, when the column halted for dinner and rest; it was resumed at 12.30, and ended about 4 o'clock, to allow time for forming a camp before dark, and for stragglers to rejoin. Ten miles a day was the longest distance that could be traversed through the denser undergrowth, and Tom learnt from the Arab prisoners whom he had brought with him as guides that, allowing for delays caused by rivers to be crossed, felled trees to clamber over, detours to be made to avoid other obstacles, it would take him nearly three weeks to reach the lake in the midst of which the island-fortress stood.

Tom realized now for the first time what the worst difficulties of forest marching were. The ground was rank with vegetable corruption, the atmosphere with exhalations from myriads of dead insects, leaves, plants. At every pace his head, neck, arms, or clothes were caught by a tough creeper, a calamus thorn, a coa.r.s.e brier, or a giant thistle-like plant, scratching and rending whatever portion they hooked on.

Innumerable insects lent their aid to embarra.s.s and worry him, especially the polished black ants, which dropped upon him from the leaves of trees as he pa.s.sed, and inflicted bites worse than the wasp's sting, till his skin was swollen up in large white blisters. Yellow ants and termites also seemed to have an insatiable appet.i.te, nibbling, gnawing, prowling all day long. There was the mantis, too, a strange insect five inches long, gaunt, weird, mysterious; and numbers of ladybirds, their brilliant red spotted with black. Tom heard the rustling of millions of tiny wings, the garrulous chirp of crickets, the buzz of ant-lions, the dull roar of bull-frogs. And over all the lower sounds was the crackle of twigs, the crash of falling branches, the creaking of the huge, thick-clad stems as they were brushed by the wind.

There were leopard-scratches on the boles; a genet cat was occasionally seen; rhinoceroses and crocodiles were met at the broader streams; Tom was told several marvellous stories of the incredible strength of the sokos; once or twice some of his men a.s.sured him that they had caught sight of pigmies, who instantly disappeared as soon as they were observed. They gave no sign of hostility, and Tom congratulated himself on the fact that his saving of the pigmy woman's child seemed to have won for him the freedom of the forest.

There was very little to indicate that the path had already been traversed by a large Arab force. Occasionally the advance-guard came upon the remains of a human body, sometimes a mere skeleton with chains still about the neck and ankles--some poor slave left by the Arabs to die of starvation or by the more merciful agency of the wild beasts that haunted the forest shades. The native habit was to walk round these horrible obstructions in the path, but Tom had ordered his men to remove them into the forest.

On the sixth day of the march his foremost pioneer came running back to him in great excitement. He had come upon a dead body lying across the path, and he declared positively that it was the corpse of Mabruki.

Tom was at first incredulous, but on reaching the spot he saw that the figure stretched on the path was unmistakeably that of the medicine-man.

He lay face downwards, and innumerable insects were already at work on his body; but he could not have been dead long, for there was no sign of mutilation by any wild beast. One of the men turned the body over, and then Tom saw a pigmy spear transfixing the traitor's breast. The weapon was evidently poisoned, for the twisted limbs and contorted features indicated that the hapless man had tasted death in one of its most terrible forms.

"Put him out of sight!" said Tom, shuddering as he pa.s.sed on. He surmised that on escaping from the village to avoid the penalty due to his treason, Mabruki had struck due north and had used his knowledge of the forest to make his way by side tracks into the depths far from the main path. He had struck into that path when all fear of meeting Tom's men was gone, and then, while on his way to join the Arabs, or perhaps to foist his false magic upon some lesser chief, he had met with swift death at the hands of the Bambute.

The tragic end of the medicine-man made a deep impression on the natives. Many of them had believed that he was invulnerable to everything but superior magic, such as Kuboko's, and his death by so paltry a weapon as a pigmy's spear destroyed the last shred of their faith in him. Hearing now for the first time the story of his treason, they were quick to connect his fate with his crime, and said among themselves that white man's medicine certainly reached far and never failed.

Day followed day, and the march was little varied. Once or twice the column pa.s.sed the sites of what had been small villages, now waste and desolate. The Arabs had burnt and destroyed every human habitation upon or near their path. There were streams here and there to be crossed, sometimes by fords, sometimes by tall trunks thrown across from bank to bank, once on a bridge consisting of a large tree submerged two feet below the surface. Whenever a temporary thinness in the foliage overhead allowed the sunlight to stream fully on the path, the spirits of the men seemed to respond, and they broke into song. Tom noticed the leader in these choruses, a tall handsome young fellow with a fine mellow voice, clearly a prime favourite with the men. His songs were composed on the spur of the moment, but they were picked up at once by his comrades, who raised the chorus in strange wild harmony, Tom had become so accustomed to the ingenuous adulation of the negroes that it no longer caused a pang to his modesty to hear himself made the subject of their paeans. One of their songs, roughly rendered in English, ran:--

"Sing, O friends, sing!

We are all warriors bold, and Kuboko is king.

Aha! Aha!

Strong is his arm and invincible; sing, brothers, sing!

Blithely we march. Ah! what will the enemy say?

On to the fortress; long is the way.

Then we will eat and drink, dance all the livelong day.

Aha! Aha!"

Thanks to the slow rate of marching, regulated by the pace of the carriers, to the good food-supply, and to the physical fitness of the men when they started, there had not been more than fifty cases of sickness in the column, when, after twenty days' marching, Tom learnt from his prisoners that he was but half a day from the lake in which the Arab fort was situated. He pitched his camp that evening with even more care than usual, and gave strict orders that no member of the force was to stir beyond its bounds without permission. He sent forward a few scouts to reconnoitre, and one of these reported, on his return to camp, that he had caught sight of several Arabs making their way rapidly towards the lake.

"The enemy's scouts!" thought Tom. "Well, we could not hope to surprise them."

He posted extra sentries that night, though he hardly expected an attack, and the hours of darkness pa.s.sed without incident. By ten o'clock next morning, Tom, with the head of the column, had reached the lake side. It was a larger sheet of water than he had expected to see, extending as far as the eye could reach in a north-westerly direction, bordered to the very edge with dense forest and extensive banks of reeds. Some miles off, almost equidistant between the east and west sh.o.r.es, rose the island, a ma.s.s of dark green in the blue water. As the warriors came in sight of it they raised great shouts. Not one of them had seen it before, for the escape of a slave was an almost unknown event. Tom himself felt a strange thrill as he looked over the placid water and realized that that distant forest-covered islet was to be the scene of a stern fight. He stood gazing at it in silence, thinking of the long years during which it had been a hot-bed of cruelty and wrong, and he felt a thrill of joy at having attained the desire of his heart--the opportunity to strike at the head of the slave-dragon.

"And," he said to himself, "please G.o.d, I will strike hard!"

No well-trodden path led to the lake side. The men had had to make a way for themselves through the underwood. On reaching the edge they came upon clear signs of human activity--a rough landing-stage of boards, litter and debris of all kinds. But no human being except Tom's own men was in sight, nor, so far as could be ascertained, was any boat moored along the sh.o.r.e, though the banks of reeds might well conceal many craft.

"Mbutu," said Tom, "clamber up that tall tree and tell me what you see."

Mbutu, agile as a monkey, was soon swarming up a straight trunk.

"I see a boat!" he cried, when he came near the top. "Long, long way; go dis way"--he waved his arm from east to west. "Go from sh.o.r.e to island. Small canoe; four men. No more, sah."