Tom Burnaby Part 9

"Dago man come close!"

Tom glanced round. The larger canoe was no more than three-quarters of a mile behind, and its crew gave a whoop of delight when they saw how they had gained on the other. The Portuguese stood up in the stern, and, raising his rifle to his shoulder, fired. Mbutu instinctively ducked, and it was well he did so, for the bullet flew by within an inch of his head and plumped into the water a few yards beyond. Tom's canoe then rounded a bend, and once more the pursuers were lost to view.

Half an hour later the two vessels were again in sight of each other, and now were scarcely half a mile apart. Another shot came whizzing through the air, and pa.s.sed between the two Baganda nearest Mbutu. They gave a slight shudder as they heard its weird ping, and bent frantically to their paddles. Tom's mouth was set, and there came into his blue eyes the steely expression which had always given his school-fellows a feeling of expectancy and apprehension. He did not think of himself.

He thought only of his uncle and the Portuguese, of how for his uncle's sake he must by hook or by crook evade the clutches of the conspirator behind. His feeling towards the pursuer was curiously impersonal, the same kind of feeling that he would have had towards a bowler at cricket--a skilled player to keep his eye on and beat if he could. He saw that but for some unforeseen accident he would be compelled to take to the woods within a very few minutes, and then, though he was resolved not to be captured, he would give little for his chances of reaching the expedition in time.

At this critical moment his eye lit on a tree overhanging the river, which had here narrowed to little more than a gorge between steep banks.

It was light in the trunk, but very thick in foliage. A second glance showed him that the roots, protruding from loose red soil, were almost bare, and he instantly inferred that a recent storm, and probably the flooding of the river, had shaken their hold. A third glance as the canoe brought him nearer made it plain that, but for a rope-work of climbing plants which had woven itself about the trunk, the tree would have already fallen across the stream.

Tom saw here a bare chance of escape, and, with characteristic readiness to seize the merest semblance of an opportunity, he prepared to make the most of it. As the canoe shot along beneath the overhanging branches, he marked a small rivulet that cut a way through the bank just beyond the tree. In a ringing voice, careless now whether his pursuer heard him or not, he ordered the men to run the canoe ash.o.r.e, then to follow him up the narrow watercourse with their axes. In half a minute he had swarmed up the bank; in another half the men's keen axes had torn away the climbing-plant supports. His men threw themselves _en ma.s.se_ upon the trunk, and just as the enemy's canoe came within two hundred paces, the tree fell with a loud crash, and lay across from bank to bank, completely blocking the waterway with its tangle of boughs and leaves.

Springing down the bank again, Tom and his panting crew jumped into the canoe, and were three hundred yards up-stream and nearly out of sight before the Portuguese had realized the impossibility of continuing the chase on the water. He wasted some minutes in a vain attempt to drag his craft over the obstruction, and a few more in flinging curses after Tom and firing at random over the tree; then he landed with his crew, and began to chase his quarry along the sh.o.r.e. But before he had run a quarter of a mile he found himself up to his knees in ooze, and, after floundering helplessly about for a time, he fired one vindictive shot and relinquished the pursuit.

Not till then did Tom allow his crew to relax their efforts.

"Easy all; you have done well!" he cried.

They shipped their paddles gladly. They were gasping for breath; the sinews of their arms stood out like whip-cord, and their streaming faces had taken on the livid hue that is the only paleness a black knows. Tom himself, after the tension of the last hour, felt limp and unstrung, and it was with a sigh of thankfulness that he heard Mbutu, interpreting one of the natives, inform him that the marshy flats at which they had arrived formed the eastern extremity of Lake Mazingo. The sun was just setting, and in the fast-gathering darkness he could descry the gigantic forms of hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses taking their evening bath in the mud.

Feeling a.s.sured that the surrounding swamp would effectually protect him from any nocturnal surprise on the part of the Portuguese, Tom gave orders to the men to make as good a meal as they could, and then to sleep in the canoe, taking turns to watch. For himself, he stayed his hunger with a few bananas that Mbutu had put aside for him, some biscuits, and a cake of unleavened millet produced by his thoughtful henchman. He examined the wounded man's arm, and gave it a fresh dressing; then, worn out by the anxieties and excitements of the day, he wrapped himself in his rug, gazed up at the benignant stars, and fell fast asleep.

CHAPTER V

A Long March

Lake Mazingo--Tom's Talisman--Scenes on the March--In Sight--Tom Surprises the Doctor--Imubinga

Tom woke with the dawn, feeling anything but well. His head was aching violently; he was reluctant to move; and when at last he threw off his rug and raised himself on his elbow, his head swam and he shivered. A clammy mist lay thick upon the surface of the lake, completely hiding everything beyond a radius of a dozen yards. The water smelt abominably, reminding Tom so strongly of the Clyde at its worst that he said to himself: "I declare I am homesick!" and laughed at the new application of the word.

"It looks very much," he thought, "as though I'm in for a spell of fever. But I simply can't afford time to be ill. Wish this wretched mist would clear away, so that I could see whereabouts we are."

At this moment Mbutu came up from the other end of the canoe. He held out a small paper packet to his master, who took it and opened it before his dazed recollection was fully awake.

"Ah! cinchona, that blessed bark!" he exclaimed, when he saw the white powder. "I remember the padre gave us some to put among our baggage.

Thanks, Mbutu! you're a clever fellow to guess so readily what is wrong with me. Well, here goes; out of the bitter" (he swallowed the drug) "shall come forth the sweet, and let's hope I'll soon be as strong as Samson himself. And look! there's the sun struggling through this detestable wet blanket. The mist will soon be gone, and then we must make a start."

"Berrah well, sah," said Mbutu. "Me sleepy too much, sah."

"Sleepy, are you? How's that? I slept as sound as that fellow--what was his name?--who snored for a hundred years. What!" (as an idea struck him) "you don't mean to say you've been watching all night?"

"Oh yes, sah! Sah berrah sleepy; dem black man no good; me tink about croc'dile. Uncle, sah, go by-by in canoe all same too much; leg trickle ober side, sah; croc'dile berrah hungry; come 'long, 'long; no nize, sah; him--"

Mbutu's only story was interrupted at this point by a howl from one of the crew. Expecting to see at least a leg or an arm less among them, Tom started up. What he actually saw was the howling native lying face upwards at full length along the bottom of the canoe, and his three mates walking solemnly over him, kneading him with their feet, a look of solemn determination imprinted on their features. What most astonished Tom was that, though the prostrate man still yelled, he appeared to like the performance, and rolled his eyes gratefully at his perambulating friends.

"What--what on earth are they doing?" laughed Tom.

"Him sick too much in tummick, sah," said Mbutu gravely. "Too much cheese, sah. Better next time soon."

"Is that their cure for dyspepsia, then? I must tell Dr. Corney about this. What a fine poster it would make for advertising somebody's pills! As the howls have stopped, I suppose the poor fellow is better?"

"Berrah well now, sah. Him no eat cheese not much no more. Cheese too much nice."

Tom laughed. The sun was rapidly dispersing the mist, which rolled back like a circular curtain. The surface of the lake was clear for half a mile round, though clear was after all not the word for it, papyrus sticking up thickly in all directions. Tom felt again rather depressed as he scanned the dismal prospect, but did his best to shake off the weight. Unable to eat anything himself, he ordered his men to have their breakfast and prepare to start.

The whole of that day was occupied in paddling down the lake. Tom could hardly endure the slowness of their progress. The crew would paddle for half a mile, then find the canoe entangled in a maze of subaqueous creepers, and have to try back for twenty yards or so and look for another pa.s.sage. Once, going at a fair pace, it embedded itself in a submerged bank of black mud, and all its occupants had to jump overboard, and partly by heaving, partly by loosening the mud with the axes, free the craft from the obstruction. Then, as the afternoon wore on, mosquitoes and ticks innumerable buzzed about their heads. The natives paid little heed to these importunate visitors, but Tom's face, neck, and arms were stung in scores of places, and he suffered almost intolerable torture. He found some mental relief in opening on his knees the writing-case given him by Mr. Barkworth, and penning an account of his adventures, intending to send the letter by one of the crew on their return journey. In course of time they came opposite a small native village on the lake-side, and Mbutu, with Tom's permission, leapt overboard and waded to the sh.o.r.e. He returned in about half an hour carrying a closely-woven straw basket, which he handed to Tom.

"Drink, sah, fust; berrah well. Next time, rub hands and face, so; berrah well. Berrah nice, sah; hurt all go too soon."

Tom saw that the basket was half-full of delicious new milk. He drank more gratefully than ever in his life before, then washed his face and arms in what was left.

About five o'clock they reached a point which the natives declared was the southern extremity of the lake, and beyond which they had been forbidden by their chief to go. Tom heaved a sigh of relief.

"There is an hour before sundown," he said. "We ought to be able to find a native hut or two by that time--eh, Mbutu?"

"Sure nuff, sah."

"The first thing is to get ash.o.r.e. The water is not deep enough for us to pull in, and the bottom seems nothing but mud."

"All same, sah; me know all 'bout it, sah."

Fixing his keen eyes on the water around, Mbutu picked out the direction in which the depth of water was greatest and the reeds thinnest, and under his guidance the Baganda gently paddled the canoe to within thirty yards of the sh.o.r.e.

"Stop dis place," he said at last. "Sah say by-by to black man; black man go home now; home to pickin."

Tom got out his rolls of calico and packets of beads, and gravely cut off from the one and counted out from the other the stipulated quant.i.ties, which he handed to the crew, adding a present to each, and an extra douceur to the head-man and the poor fellow injured the day before. He then made them a speech, thanking them in the King's name for the service they had done the British Empire in general and Major John Burnaby in particular, Mbutu translating very freely, and at considerable length, into the vernacular. Finally he handed his letter to the head-man, telling him that Mr. Barkworth would give him a handsome present when he delivered it. Then he went over the side, Mbutu following with the baggage.

It was past six o'clock, and almost without warning the sun sank down upon their right, and everything was dark. Mbutu led the way over the swampy soil, his master following gingerly at the distance of about a yard, just able to discern his black form. After ten minutes' walking they felt the ground gradually becoming drier, and half an hour later they found themselves treading a turf that reminded Tom of the Berkshire downs. He asked Mbutu what plan he had formed. The boy replied that he had none, except to find a village where they might rest in safety for the night. He added that he was beginning to be afraid of snakes, and hinted that a lion or two might happen to be prowling abroad.

"Me want see light, sah," he said.

At length, after they had been walking for an hour and a half, he gleefully exclaimed that he saw a twinkle ahead. Fifteen minutes later the pedestrians came to a sort of guard-house gateway, built of mud and wattles, across a narrow path. They pa.s.sed through it, and found themselves in the single street of a village lined with gra.s.s huts on each side, one of these, somewhat larger than the rest, having a fire in it, the glow of which Mbutu had seen through the door-hole. The inhabitants appeared to be asleep; there was no sound save the faint baa of a goat in the compound beyond, and the melancholy night moo of a cow.

Signing to his master to stop, Mbutu put down his little load, found a strip of calico and a bracelet of beads, and uttered a curious cry, between the call of a hyena and the howl of a wolf. In an instant, as it seemed, the two strangers were surrounded by a ring of natives, who in their haste had s.n.a.t.c.hed up as weapons whatever came first to hand.

Torches were soon on the scene, and by their light the amazed natives saw the disturbers of their repose: a tall white man, nearly six feet high, young, broad-shouldered, with thin, hairless face--thinned even by the anxieties of the last few days,--keen blue eyes, and firm lips; and a Muhima, some eight inches shorter than his master, his thick lips and woolly hair proclaiming his negro blood, but his eyes and brow and arched nose bespeaking a strain derived from a far-distant Egyptian ancestry. Englishman and Muhima, each with race marked in every line of his figure, stood facing the wondering villagers unflinchingly.

Then Mbutu began to explain, and Tom stood patiently for an hour while his follower lauded him to the skies, claimed for him qualities and connections of the most exalted n.o.bility, and demanded hospitality from the villagers in the name of the Great White King. They were visibly impressed, and talked away energetically among themselves. Then the chief came forward and said that he knew the servants of the Great White King were good brothers of his; he had seen some of them only the day before; but how was he to be sure that his white visitor was not one of the Wa-daki, whom he hated as he hated snakes and leopards? Tom was at first at a loss how to convince the chief of his British nationality.

Suddenly bethinking himself, he took out his pocket-book, in which he had a few postage-stamps. He tore off one, and showed it to the negro.

When Mbutu explained that the head on the stamp was the head of the Great White King, the chief was delighted; still more when Tom, wetting it, solemnly affixed it to his black arm. After that the enraptured chief announced that his own hut was freely at the disposition of the white man.

Tom's host was a villainous-looking savage, but he proved most hospitable. His hut contained nothing but a hard plank raised on short pegs from the earthen floor, a broken box, a small fire, and a general supply of insects. Mbutu explained that his master, whom he called his great chief, was tired and wished to sleep, but that first he must have a meal, and would purchase a young fowl. That was instantly forthcoming, and in a few minutes Mbutu had prepared an excellent supper of grilled chicken, unleavened millet-cakes, and tea unsweetened, but qualified with cow's milk.

On the following morning Tom sent Mbutu to summon the chief to a palaver. That solemn function lasted for two hours, and Tom was on thorns till it was over. The talking was mainly between Mbutu and the chief, and Tom was amazed that so much eloquence had to be expended in giving and receiving so little information. All that he learnt was that the expedition had pa.s.sed within a couple of miles of the village soon after sunrise on the previous day, and that it was proceeding due west, to punish the Arabs and the Manyema. The chief was very emphatic on this point; he declared that the Arabs and their allies deserved all they would get, for they had made themselves a terror for miles round, treating the natives with frightful cruelty, lopping off hands and feet, slitting noses, killing outright, sometimes in wanton devilry, sometimes as punishment for trivial offences. The expedition had bought a few sheep and goats, and paid for them, but "not nuff", as Mbutu interpreted to his master, adding, however, that no native chief would ever admit himself satisfied: "black chief all same for one".

Tom was delighted to hear that his uncle was only a day's march in front of him. Discovering that the route lay for miles over gra.s.s country, gradually rising until it entered a mountainous region, he inferred that the British force would now be moving at a slow rate, which increased his chances of overtaking it soon. With a march overland before him, he felt the advisability of having a weapon of some sort in case of emergency, and asked the chief through Mbutu if he had a rifle to sell.

The chief produced a very old and rusty weapon, with some cartridges, and Tom grimaced when, on trying a shot, he found himself thrown backward by the unexpected force of its kick. He accepted it in default of a better, and left Mbutu to settle the price.