Tom Burnaby Part 36

Tom called up a prisoner, and, questioning him, learnt that the canoe was probably crossing at the shortest pa.s.sage, requiring only half the time that would be taken from the point at which the expedition had struck the lake.

"Anything more to be seen, Mbutu?"

"No, sah, nuffin."

"Come down, then; we'll have to do a little scouting."

A path ran round the lake close to the edge, narrow and much overgrown, but evidently leading to the spot from which the canoe had started for the island. Tom sent fifty of his best scouts, under Mboda, to explore this path.

"If you come across any canoes, seize them," he said. "Don't fight if they are defended in force; they probably won't be worth losing lives for."

While the scouts were gone he ordered the men to form an entrenched camp. For all he knew the enemy might be lurking in the forest ready to take advantage of any slip, any sign of unwariness; and until he had located the Arabs, and, if possible, discovered what their strength was, it was impossible to form definite plans for an attack on the fortress.

Towards dusk Mboda returned with his men and reported that the path grew wider and less obstructed as it bent northward. They had seen one canoe, manned by a crew of half a dozen Manyema, who had shipped their paddles and jeered when they caught sight of the scouts. The best marksmen among these had tried a shot at the canoe, which, though it had fallen short, had been sufficient to set the men hastily paddling towards the island. Mboda had tried to see exactly where their landing-place was, but the sh.o.r.e of the island appeared to be an impenetrable wall of jungle.

When the evening meal had been eaten, and the camp-fires were lit, Tom sent for his prisoners again and subjected them to a further interrogation. He learnt that the lake was fed by a small river flowing from the north-east, as well as by numerous rivulets at other points.

The surplus water escaped on the left, where it formed a fairly large stream. The mouth of the river on the north-east was fringed with dense clumps of reeds.

"Since there are apparently no canoes to be captured we shall have to make some," said Tom to himself; "and that will take time. I hope our stock of food will last till we capture the Arabs' stores. Dug-outs will be the easiest to make, I suppose. These men of mine have never made a canoe in their lives, I suspect. Msala," he said aloud to the katikiro, "could you make a canoe, do you think?"

Msala looked doubtful, but at length said that he thought he could if Kuboko would show him the way!

"Like the genius who had never played the fiddle, but thought he could if he tried!" thought Tom. "O wise man!" he said. "That's a good answer. I'll try to show you the way, though I've done nothing of the sort since I broke a dozen pen-knives carving a sailing-boat when I was a boy of twelve. The first question is, where are these canoes to be made, eh?"

Msala could give no a.s.sistance towards solving this problem, but Tom soon thought it out for himself. The outlet on the west was wide, the prisoner had said, and comparatively free from reeds. Operations there would run the risk of being disturbed, for no doubt the enemy possessed a considerable flotilla on the island. But the reeds at the mouth of the river on the north-east would serve as a screen, and a few sharpshooters carefully posted would easily defend the position against attack.

"That's the place, evidently," said Tom. "To-morrow morning, Msala, we'll start building our fleet. Now for sleep, my men--we must be up early in the morning."

Next day he ordered his men to build a block-house where he had emerged from the forest, so as to intercept any fugitive Arabs who might have found their way back to the lake, and to keep a general look-out.

Leaving a garrison of two hundred men there, he started with the rest towards the north-east corner, which they reached after an arduous march of fifteen miles, the path having to be cut after they left the princ.i.p.al landing-stage opposite the eastern sh.o.r.e of the island. It happened to be a particularly bright and clear day, and at different points along the route Tom caught glimpses of the island, which enabled him to form a fairly good idea of its character and extent. He judged it to be about a mile long; it was covered with vegetation of the nature of jungle, tall forest-trees being conspicuously absent. The prisoners pointed out the exact spot, near the centre of the island, where the fort was situated, but so dense was the thicket that not a corner of it was visible. They explained that, while the forest-growth at the sh.o.r.e was allowed to remain in its pristine wildness, within this fringe and behind some plantations the ground had been cleared, and the fort, capable of containing two thousand men, had been built on a slight eminence in the very centre of the island. It consisted of a double row of palisades, fifteen feet in height, the exterior palisade being defended throughout its whole circuit by a glacis, with a slope of one foot in four.

"So there are two difficulties to surmount," thought Tom. "First, the difficulty of reaching the island and landing my men; then the difficulty of storming a fort defended by such high outworks and a glacis to boot. It's a case of scaling-ladders as well as canoes. A great piece of luck that I thought of bringing so many artificers among the carriers."

When the force reached the mouth of the river, it was too late to begin the work of constructing canoes. Tom ordered his men to make an entrenched camp, and to throw up a special earthwork behind the screen of reeds, where a company of picked marksmen could easily defend the canoe-makers from attack. Early next morning Tom set all his men who had axes to fell the largest and straightest teak in the forest, a few hundred feet from the sh.o.r.e. When the trees were felled, another band of men was set to strip off the foliage and bark, and so quickly did they work that by nightfall a large number of huge logs lay ready for scooping out, varying in length from forty to sixty-five feet. Tom saw that he would need a fleet of about forty-five canoes if he intended to convey all his force to the island at one time, as would probably be necessary. He therefore selected the requisite number of trees himself, and while the carriers were felling these he instructed the warriors how to dig them out. He divided them into gangs of twenty to thirty, each gang to form one canoe crew, and he set these to fashion their own craft. He marked off equal lengths along the logs, and gave each man his own portion to scoop out with knife or pike-head, encouraging them to work hard by the promise of a reward to the man who finished his portion first. They all worked with a will, driving their tools into the wood with unfaltering zeal, and showing much interest in their novel work.

While the digging-out was in progress, Tom employed other men in making thwarts and rough paddles, and the best carpenters in constructing scaling-ladders. After ten days' work he was in possession of forty-five dug-outs, with their due equipment of paddles, and fifty ladders ten feet high. The canoes were, of course, keelless, and Tom knew that they were bound to sway and roll with the slightest movement of the body; but fortunately there was little likelihood of their having to encounter rough weather, and he hoped that they would suffice to convey his men across the four miles separating the lake sh.o.r.e at this point from the island. "They'll do as well as Napoleon's flat-bottom boats, I expect," he thought; "or better, for his invasion never came off, and mine will."

The work had not been carried on for ten days without molestation.

Every day canoes came from the island, filled with armed men, evidently curious to learn what was going on out of sight. On the first day they paddled towards the mouth of the river, and Tom ordered his men behind the earthwork to allow them to approach well within gunshot, and then to let them have a sharp volley. The canoes came within fifty yards of the concealed marksmen without suspecting their danger, and at least half the men on board were hit when the Bahima opened fire. The survivors paddled away in frantic haste, and ever after that the canoes kept out of harm's way, the Arabs contenting themselves with patrolling the lake, in cheerful a.s.surance that their fortress was impregnable. All this time Tom sent scouting-parties regularly along the sh.o.r.e, from whom he learnt that at several points on the western side there were large clearings, which appeared to have been slave settlements, and he concluded that the slaves had either been withdrawn into the island or sent deeper into the forest.

His preparations so far being complete--and none too soon, for the stock of food was running low,--Tom decided to make a reconnaissance towards the island. He first tested some of his canoes on the river, out of sight from the Arabs, employing a few men who knew how to paddle, and found to his great pleasure that, though clumsy and incapable of being propelled swiftly, they rode the water fairly upright, and were safe enough in a calm. He therefore ordered his men to launch half a dozen of the canoes at the mouth of the river, and with these fully manned with riflemen he moved slowly towards the island. The movement was instantly observed; hardly a minute had elapsed before a fleet of twenty light, swift canoes, filled with armed Manyema, shot out from the island and made towards him. Recognizing that he could not hope to vie with them in speed, and that he could not approach the island so closely as he wished without running great risks, Tom ordered his men to paddle back, and regained his camp. A tremendous yell of delight from the Arabs' canoes, ringing clear over the still water, bore witness to the enemy's confidence, but Tom only smiled. He remembered reading, in one of Stanley's books, an account of how that great explorer had defended some canoes from attack in precisely similar circ.u.mstances, and once more he found his recollection serve him well. He sent his men into the forest, some to cut long poles an inch thick, others to cut poles three inches thick and seven feet long, a third band to cut straight long trees four inches thick, and a fourth to remove the bark from all these and make bark-rope. While this was being done Tom selected three of the longest canoes, and had them drawn up parallel to one another near the water's edge, and four feet apart. As the stripped trees were brought up they were laid across the canoes, and lashed firmly to the thwarts with the bark-rope. Then the seven-foot poles were lashed in an upright position to the thwarts of the outer canoes at the extreme edge, and the inch-thick rods were twisted in and out among these uprights, just as gipsies make baskets. After this, thin saplings were woven in through any remaining interstices, and at the end of the day the structure resembled a huge oblong stockade of basket-work, sixty-five feet long and twenty-seven feet wide. A gap having been cut in one of its faces, and a rough gate made, the contrivance was complete.

Next morning Tom went to a distance of three hundred yards and tried a shot at the stockade with one of his men's rifles. The bullet penetrated the wall, but fell dead inside. He then ordered his men to collect reeds and large leaves from the toughest plants they could find, and with these to line the inside of the palisade. When this was done he tried another shot, and found that the bullet embedded itself in the lining. Delighted with the a.s.surance that the structure was practically bullet-proof, he next instructed his men to make loopholes at intervals along the sides, and then ordered eight hundred of the carriers to haul and push the strange, awkward-looking fort to the water. He then sent sixty paddlers to take their places on the thwarts, and a hundred and fifty musketeers to find room among them. He was in some anxiety lest with its full complement of men the fort should be too heavy to float, but a few moments' paddling convinced him that, unwieldy as it was, it would ride the water, though to propel it with any speed was out of the question. A great shout of applause burst from the onlookers as the floating fort moved a few yards towards the lake. Tom ordered it back, stepped on board, closed the gate, and started on his reconnaissance.

The warriors left on sh.o.r.e watched the progress of the strange craft across the lake. It went on slowly and steadily towards the island, and reached the middle of the channel before any sign of movement was made by the enemy. Then forty canoes swept out swiftly from the island's green bank, and in one of the foremost, as it came more clearly in sight, Tom, spying through one of the loopholes, saw his old enemy De Castro. The canoes came on rapidly; when within four hundred yards they stopped dead, and the men on board of them opened fire. The worst marksman could hardly have missed so huge a target, and the exposed wall of the redoubt rang with the impact of hundreds of bullets, only a few of which penetrated, to fall quite harmlessly in the water between the canoes. Tom then ordered the paddlers to slew the fort round, so that it presented one of its longer sides to the enemy, and a few moments later a volley burst from the loopholes, doing considerable damage among the crowded craft of the Arabs. Seeing that the inventiveness of the English lad had once more proved too much for him, De Castro, with a curse, ordered his men to paddle back to the island, and Tom was left to make his reconnaissance unmolested.

Slowly the unwieldy ma.s.s moved round the island--slowly, steadily, like some uncouth leviathan. Even Tom's own men on sh.o.r.e, who had seen it made, watched it with awe, and some of them cried out that it was a spirit in monstrous shape. As he circ.u.mnavigated the island, Tom kept a keen look-out towards it, and found that there were several possible landing-places, the sh.o.r.e being comparatively low. Deciding that the most convenient point of debarkation was a spa.r.s.ely wooded tongue of land at the south-east corner, Tom made a careful mental note of the whole position, and returned to his own quarters, well satisfied with his day's work.

The next two days were spent in constructing two similar floating redoubts, and in practising the men in paddling, for the majority of them were helpless on the water. Tom was loth to delay his attack, and feared that De Castro might make an attempt to escape. He therefore withdrew half the men from the block-house at the edge of the forest, and kept them, along with men from his force, constantly patrolling the sh.o.r.es of the lake, to watch for any movement from the island. His fears were groundless, as he afterwards discovered. De Castro did indeed suggest to Mustapha that the princ.i.p.al men should decamp with the treasure, leaving the fort to its fate, but the Arab curtly refused. He had sworn an oath on the Koran before Rumaliza's departure to defend the treasure till the last, and he himself had a bone to pick with the audacious English youth who had tied him up with his own rope in his own hut. He was, besides, so positive that the enemy, even if he effected a landing, would fling himself in vain against the defences, that he scoffed at De Castro's fears and taunted him with cowardice.

At dawn on a bright January day Tom set forth on his momentous enterprise. The three redoubts, each with two hundred men on board, led the way, followed by thirty canoes fully manned, these last containing the worst marksmen in the force. Tom half expected that the enemy, having already proved their helplessness against the floating forts, would make no attempt to oppose his landing; but he soon saw that his pa.s.sage was not to be uncontested. Forty-five canoes came out to meet him. At a distance of a thousand yards the Arabs' flotilla divided into two squadrons, and, rowing three strokes to the one of Tom's paddlers, evidently intended to sweep behind the c.u.mbrous redoubts and fall upon the canoes, a design which Tom at once took steps to defeat. He was himself in the centre redoubt. He ordered the other two to move off to right and left until there was a clear quarter of a mile between him and them. The formation of his flotilla had then roughly the shape of a bent bow, the three redoubts representing the arc and the canoes the angle formed by the stretched string. By thus extending his front, Tom compelled the Arabs to make a wide circuit. Even then they pa.s.sed within range of the loopholed faces of the floating forts, and suffered severely from the merciless volleys poured out by the Bahima. Drawing out of range, they had just begun to converge behind the redoubts when Tom ordered these to stop, thus allowing time for his canoes behind to close up and pa.s.s between them. The position was now reversed, the bow being pointed in exactly the opposite direction, Tom's canoes nearest the island, and the Arabs' farthest away. Within his redoubt Tom could distinctly hear the wild threats and cries of De Castro as he ordered his men to swing round and paddle back to the island.

"He's afraid we shall be there first," said Tom with a smile to Mbutu.

His move had completely disconcerted the enemy, who abandoned outright the attempt to delay the progress of the flotilla, and made off at full speed to the island. There most of the armed men disembarked, and the unarmed paddlers, with a few Arab marksmen as guard, withdrew the canoes towards the north.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Fight on the Lake]

Tom's redoubt arrived without mishap off the spot selected for the landing, and was there met by a tremendous fusillade from the enemy concealed in the wood. Thanks to the stoutness of his palisade, he sustained no casualties, but it was evident that his men would suffer severely if they landed before the woods were cleared. He knew from his prisoners that thick copses stretched northwards and westwards from the tongue of land he had arrived at; about a hundred and fifty yards inland they gave place to plantations of pine-apples, bananas, and other fruits; then came another belt of wild woodland fifty yards deep.

Judging from the hotness of the enemy's fire that the woods coming down to the sh.o.r.e were full of marksmen, he decided that these must at once be cleared. He ordered the separate canoes to stand off for the present out of range, and then sent two of the redoubts northwards to hug the sh.o.r.e, and halt about a hundred yards up, while he had his own redoubt propelled for the same distance to the west. At a given signal, the men in the redoubts opened fire through the loopholes, their fire crossing over the south-east corner of the island, enfilading the copses that commanded the landing-place. After half an hour of this, Tom came to the conclusion, from the sudden cessation of the enemy's fire, that they had abandoned their positions and fallen back into the belt of woodland nearer the fort. He therefore landed two hundred fighting-men from each of the two redoubts, unperceived by the Arabs, and sent one redoubt up coast northwards, and another to the west, to divert, if possible, the enemy's attention from movements in their front. Then, running his own redoubt on to the tongue of land, he ordered the canoes in the offing to paddle up swiftly and disembark their men, retaining the men in his own redoubt to protect the landing-parties. But no attack was made; the landing was quickly effected. Tom then threw open the gate of his redoubt, disembarked his fighting-men, and sent the redoubt back to the mainland to fetch the scaling-ladders, and a supply of food and ammunition, including a number of fire-b.a.l.l.s he had brought with him from the village.

He had now more than a thousand men safely on the island. As soon as they were formed up, he led eight hundred forward to penetrate the copse, and, after discovering by means of skirmishers that the movements of the redoubts had, as he hoped, drawn off a large body of the enemy from his front, he threw his men across the plantations and into the farther wood. There, after a sharp fight, in which his men distinguished themselves by the nimbleness with which they worked forward under cover of the trees, he had the satisfaction of seeing the Arabs bolt across the open s.p.a.ce beyond, and enter the fort by the gate in the outer stockade. Between himself and the glacis the land was absolutely clear of trees.

There were three gates to the fort, as Tom had learnt from the prisoners, one at the north, one at the east, and the one at the south by which the Arabs had just entered. Before sunset he had formed an entrenched camp opposite the eastern gate, into which he drew the whole of his force. Next morning he sent one redoubt, accompanied by five canoes, each way round the island to search for the Arab flotilla, surmising that the enemy, fearing an a.s.sault in front, would not venture to despatch a sufficient force to protect their boats. It turned out as he hoped. The redoubts returned in the afternoon, and reported that the enemy's canoes were found moored along the northern sh.o.r.e, under the charge of a mere handful of Manyema, who, when they saw the mysterious forts bearing remorselessly down upon them, did not wait to fire even one volley, but incontinently fled. Mwonda, who had been in command of the expedition, gleefully pointed to the long lines of canoes which he had brought back with him, towed by the redoubts and by the ten canoes which had accompanied them.

"Well done, Mwonda!" said Tom. "Now we will keep twenty of the captured canoes for our own use; the rest you can tow out into the lake and set on fire. We shall thus effectually prevent any of our enemy from escaping."

The men cheered wildly as they saw the blaze on the surface of the water, and clamoured to be led against the fort. But Tom called the katikiro, the kasegara, and other chief men to his side.

"My friends," he said to them, "I have come to beat the Arabs, as you know. But in the fights we have already had much blood has been shed.

It would be right, I think, t avoid further loss of life, both among ourselves and among the enemy, for many of them, as you know, are Manyema, who only fight for the Arabs their masters, and would be incapable of mischief without their leaders. I propose, therefore, to invite Mustapha, the chief in command, to surrender."

Every member of the little council was absolutely averse to this unexpected proposal. Msala declared that he had come to kill Arabs; he would rather kill them in fair stand-up fight, but if they surrendered he would kill them all the same, so that no bloodshed would be saved among them at any rate.

"Msala," said Tom sternly, "you have ill learnt the lessons I have tried to teach you. If the Arabs surrender they shall not escape altogether, but they must not be killed. I should hand the leaders over to the Congo Free State to be tried by its courts, like the court of justice in our village, of which you are such an ornament, Msala. The rest of the enemy I should allow to go free, but without firearms, and thus incapable of doing further mischief."

The katikiro still raised objections, but Tom combated them one by one, and at last brought all the officials to agree to his proposal.

Accordingly he called up Mboda, Mbutu's brother, as one of the most intelligent of the men with him, and sent him forward under a white flag to the gate of the fort, with directions to ask for Mustapha himself, and to deliver to him in form the summons to surrender. The messenger returned in about half an hour. He had spoken with Mustapha, who was accompanied by a little dark man with evil face. Mustapha had at first refused to treat, but at De Castro's request had at length agreed that a meeting should take place between the opposing leaders half-way between the camp and the fort. He proposed to come himself with two of his chief men, all unarmed, and he invited Kuboko to do likewise. Mboda had only just delivered this message when Mbutu broke in impetuously:

"Not go, sah," he said. "De Castro bad man; him come; him remember sah knock him down; him no friend; him no speak good words. Mustapha too; him tied; him berrah mad, oh yes! Not go, sah."

"Don't be afraid, Mbutu. There is honour among thieves. They have themselves proposed to come without arms. We shall merely have a talk, and be done with it. Go back, Mboda, and say that I agree to the proposal, and will meet Mustapha and his friends in an hour's time midway between our positions. Both sides, it is understood, will come unarmed."

An hour later Tom set off to the meeting, accompanied by Mwonda, and by Mboda as interpreter. He thought it well not to provoke the two hostile chiefs unnecessarily by bringing Mbutu before them, and Mbutu, much against his will, remained in the camp, his heart filled with misgiving.

To relieve him, Tom said, just before he started:

"You can keep a sharp look-out, Mbutu, and if you do see any open movement of treachery, which for my part I do not expect, you will order a company of men to fire, taking care not to hit me or my friends, you know."

As he approached the meeting-place he saw three men issue from the gate of the fort. He looked at them with interest. There was his old enemy Mustapha, his opponent in single-handed fight, his captor, and his victim. By his side, dwarfed by the Arab's giant frame, was De Castro, his red shirt and yellow breeches seeming all the more gaudy beside the white robes of the Arabs. The third figure--it was with a start that Tom recognized Mahmoud the hakim, who had befriended him to the utmost of his power during his short captivity months before. The two little groups met in the open field, and bowed ceremoniously, no outward sign of recognition pa.s.sing between Tom and the other side. Curiously scanning the features of the Portuguese, Tom almost found it in his heart to pity him. His face was lined and haggard, its expression was fierce and darker than ever; the iron of disappointment and defeat had evidently entered deep into his soul. He eyed Tom with an insolent and malignant scowl, and kept clenching and unclenching his fists. Mustapha was much more composed, preserving the impa.s.sivity so characteristic of his race.

Tom wasted no time in preliminaries. He gave no explanation of his presence there at the head of a great force of armed Bahima; he courteously but plainly stated the terms he had come to propose--unconditional surrender, the leaders to be placed in the hands of the Free State Government, their followers to be disarmed and dismissed. If these terms were not accepted the fort would be stormed.

Mustapha looked at him in silence for a moment; then his eyes flashed, and he cried:

"You come to me to propose terms? You, my enemy! Know that you are in my power. You will storm my fort? You shall never enter it alive. I have waited for this day; my revenge has been long in coming, but it has come at last. I fought you by the river; would to Allah I had slain you! I kept you a captive and fed you; would that I had slain you then!

Now is the third time; you shall not escape me."

De Castro, who had ill concealed his impatience, here took a step forward, spat upon the ground, and began to speak in broken English.