Tom Willoughby's Scouts Part 16

Never before had Tom been alone in the bush. On the few occasions when he had gone shooting alone, during his sojourn in Reinecke's bungalow, he had always followed well-defined tracks. Since then, Mwesa or Mirambo or some other native had been with him. But now he had no guide, and he was seized with a feeling of helplessness. Rain had begun to fall, and the obscure sky could not be read for the points of the compa.s.s. Brushwood grew to his knees; thorn bushes threw out tentacles that caught at his clothes and tore his flesh. Dodging obstructions, he sometimes found that he had only worsened his plight, and was forced to tear a way for himself at the cost of bleeding hands. Rarely he came to open s.p.a.ces; then he quickened his pace, though his wet boots dragged heavily upon his feet. Once, in crossing a gra.s.sy glade, he sank over his ankles in mora.s.s, and swerved hastily into the bush again, to avoid being engulfed.

Presently, stopping to rest, he thought he heard voices, and hoped that they came from his own men. He dared not call, nor even move towards them, until he was sure whether they were friends or foes. The voices came nearer. At all costs he must learn who the speakers were, and he sprang up into a leafy tree from which he might get a view of the country around. Spying out cautiously through the foliage, he saw a band of men pushing their way up a bush-covered slope not a hundred yards from his perch. Through the heavy rain he could not at first distinguish them; but as they approached he recognised the deserter, Haroun, leading a couple of askaris. Behind them, out of the bush, emerged Reinecke with his arm in a sling, a younger officer by his side, and a line of askaris following in single file. He shrank back into the tree, dreading lest they should pa.s.s immediately beneath him and some sharp-eyed man discover him. But they topped the slope some distance away and pa.s.sed out of sight.

"I have come in the right direction," he thought. "They must be bound for the nullah."

Waiting a little, to make sure that no more of the enemy were coming, he slipped down from the tree, and with infinite caution followed in their track. If this led indeed towards the nullah, he would presently be on ground that he knew, and might circ.u.mvent them and arrive first. He felt somewhat perplexed. The Arab Haroun had certainly betrayed him: why, then, had Reinecke set out with no more than thirty or forty men?

Had Haroun so little respect for the defences of the nullah as to imagine that they could be stormed by so small a force? Had Reinecke so much contempt for his ability to train the negroes as to believe that forty askaris were more than a match for three times their number as well armed as themselves? He set his lips grimly: if such were their ideas, he would promise them a rough disillusionment.

For some time he followed them up, always with the greatest caution. At length the sound of voices ahead told him that they had halted. He stopped at once. The rain had almost ceased. In a few seconds he heard a rustling and the squelching of boots not far in front of him, and he dived into the bush at the side of the track and watched. Two askaris tramped past him, in the direction from which they had come. They walked unconcernedly: no suspicion of his presence had brought them back.

What, then, was their errand?

Reinecke's party was still halted. Tom heard now and then the lower tones of the Germans mingling with the high-pitched voices of the askaris. What were they waiting for? After perhaps twenty minutes voices came from the other direction. The two askaris reappeared, followed by a string of native porters, some carrying what appeared to be the material of a tent; others, boxes and bales of provisions; others, lumps of freshly killed meat. The explanation of the delay flashed upon Tom. The game he had killed had been cut up; the two askaris had been sent back to hasten the march of the porters. "I might have been nabbed," Tom thought.

When the porters joined the waiting askaris, a German voice gave the order to march. After a short interval Tom emerged from his place of concealment and followed. On reaching the spot on which they had halted, he found that it was skirted by a track evidently made not long before--almost certainly the path by which his men had come from the nullah that morning. To his surprise, Reinecke and his party, instead of pursuing this track, as they might have been expected to do if their destination was the nullah, had swerved northward and marched through the pathless scrub.

Tom was standing at the angle between the two tracks, hesitating whether to follow the enemy or to take the shortest cut home, when a rustle among the bush behind him caused him to face round quickly, revolver in hand. His eyes fell not on an enemy, but on the ever-smiling countenance of Mwesa.

"Savvy me find sah all right," said the boy, quietly.

"You saw Reinecke?" asked Tom.

Mwesa nodded.

"Haroun too, sah. Him no eat up: how him get away?"

"The sentries must have been napping, I suppose. But how did you come to find me here?"

"Me hear shoot," he said. "Me run find sah: rhino no matter. Sah gone: ebery one gone--all 'cept fellas what cut up nudder rhino. Ah! Mwesa savvy all same. Me run back dis way: savvy sah come dis way bimeby."

Tom reflected that the boy's optimism had been justified by a lucky accident.

"Where are the men?" he asked.

"No savvy, sah. 'Spect dey all run home quick."

"I hope so. Now, these Germans--I thought they were going to our nullah, but it seems that they are not. What is their game? Any suggestion, Mwesa?"

Mwesa did not understand the word, but he tried to look as if he did.

Tom, however, did not expect from him any explanation of Reinecke's movements: he was trying to puzzle out one for himself. The sides of the nullah were too precipitous to afford an entrance: and though the enemy might do a little damage by firing from the top down into the camp, that could easily be defeated by moving the people to well-covered places where shots could not reach them. As a means of capturing the position such a course was absurd. Yet Reinecke could hardly intend a mere reconnoitring expedition: his men were equipped as for fighting, and it appeared from the amount of baggage carried by the porters that he expected to camp for at least one night.

Unable to guess at the German's design, Tom came to the conclusion that, even at the cost of a certain uneasiness among his people, he had better follow up the enemy, and see for himself the direction of their march: that might throw some light on their object. With Mwesa he set off in their tracks, keeping a good look-out ahead for laggards, and stopping frequently to listen.

It was just after one o'clock. Tom was both tired and hungry. His clothes were sodden, and the atmosphere was like that of a Turkish bath.

The track wound in and out through the scrub, and presently among forest trees; and it had evidently been traversed before, for no one absolutely strange to the country could have found so well the easiest pa.s.sage through the scrub.

After walking for nearly two hours, at so slow a pace that no more than four miles could have been covered, Tom found that the track led through the middle of a wooded ravine, which trended, as nearly as he could judge, to the north-east. The ground sloped gradually upwards, and in the distance Tom detected the march of the enemy by the swaying of the bushes and tall gra.s.s through which they pa.s.sed.

He advanced with still greater caution, and well it was that he did so, for in a few minutes the path emerged into a narrow rocky defile, only spa.r.s.ely covered with vegetation, and here two askaris were posted as sentries. A little beyond them the porters had laid down their loads.

Looking out from behind a screen of bushes, Tom saw the askaris and their German officers marching ahead.

Avoiding the sentries by plunging into the bush that skirted the defile, Tom and the negro lad hurried on after the enemy. Well screened by the foliage, they could afford to quicken their pace until they overtook them, and thenceforward kept pace with them. After about ten minutes they discovered that the party had again halted. The men were sitting on boulders and slabs of rock: the German lieutenant sat a little apart.

Reinecke and the Arab had disappeared.

Then Tom noticed that the defile seemed to end in the air, as if it had arrived at the brink of a cliff. Creeping cautiously through the bush above the narrow path, they came to the top of the rise and looked over.

It was not a cliff, as Tom had supposed; but a somewhat steep and rocky slope, dotted here and there with patches of coa.r.s.e scrub. Down this slope two figures were moving: Haroun the Arab led, Reinecke was only a few paces behind him.

When they came to the foot of the slope they halted, and talked somewhat excitedly together. Haroun pointed forward and downward; Reinecke stooped, looked over the edge of the slope, shook his head and apparently flew into a rage. Thereupon the Arab went alone over the brink, descended slowly, and pa.s.sed out of the watchers' sight. Reinecke sat down in a fissure, in the att.i.tude of waiting.

Tom had observed these movements at first with nothing more than a certain impersonal curiosity; but a suspicion of their meaning began to dawn when Haroun disappeared. The air was misty; from the spot where he crouched nothing was visible beyond the margin of the slope except the grey sky. But Reinecke, where he sat, evidently saw something more.

Every now and again he bent over, following the progress of the Arab, and also, as it appeared, taking much interest in the scene below.

"We are above the nullah," thought Tom. "That fellow Haroun must have discovered a way out and in. Our position is to be turned. My word!"

Some twenty minutes pa.s.sed. Haroun's head reappeared at the edge of the slope. He spoke to Reinecke volubly, using his hands in free gestures, as though demonstrating a point. The German appeared to be convinced.

He got up, stepped over the edge with the aid of the Arab's hand, and followed the man slowly out of sight.

CHAPTER XV--THE BACK DOOR

"Run back and see if the askaris are still there," said Tom to Mwesa.

The lad darted away through the bush that clothed the top of the bank of the defile. Returning in a few minutes, he reported that the enemy had not stirred from their position.

"Then we will go on. Keep close to me."

They made their way carefully down the slope. At the bottom they peeped over. A narrow cleft zigzagged down the face of a steep cliff, for the most part bare rock, but with trees and bushes growing here and there where soil gave them roothold. This vegetation and the windings of the cleft hid Reinecke and the Arab from sight; but several hundred feet below they could just discern, through the mist, the still surface of an expanse of water.

Mwesa's eyes opened wide with surprise.

"Don't speak," whispered Tom. "Yes; I think it is our lake."

Reinecke's purpose was now clear to him. He acquitted his sentries of negligence. Haroun had evidently discovered a hitherto unsuspected means of egress from the nullah; on his information Reinecke had brought up his askaris to take the position in reverse, but before committing them to the enterprise had gone down to test the Arab's veracity. It would take him a long time to climb down the steep and rugged cleft, hampered as he must be by his wounded arm: still longer to climb up again. What would he do when he returned? Would he at once order the attack? Daylight would last just long enough: a night attack was impossible; no sane person would attempt to descend by so precipitous a path in darkness. Would he camp for the night, and attack with the dawn? It seemed to Tom that he would hardly wait unless delay were unavoidable, for there was the chance that rain would fall again, and a tropical storm that might continue for days would render his scheme hopeless. No doubt his decision would depend on the result of his observations below.

To what point in the nullah the cleft led, Tom had at present no knowledge. It might descend to the lake side, or wind away to some spot farther down. He thought rapidly over the courses open to him. He might make his way back through the ravine, plunge into the bush, and hurry along parallel with the nullah until he gained the entrance.

Thereby he might provide against the threatened attack and perhaps take measures for a counterstroke. But one consideration told heavily against this idea. At his best speed he could hardly expect to reach the barricade before dark, and meanwhile Reinecke, if he found the secret way so easy as Haroun had apparently declared, might have led his men into the nullah, taken the people by surprise, and overcome what resistance they were able to make without their leader.

What alternative was there? If Reinecke once rejoined the askaris waiting in the defile nothing could avail to check him. It was impossible to slip past him on the narrow cleft, and organise the defence while he returned for his men. Could he be prevented from returning? Without him the German lieutenant would probably hesitate to risk a plunge into the unknown. Tom thought that Mwesa and himself should be a match for Reinecke and the Arab; but if a cry or a shot reached the ears of the men waiting above, all would end in disaster.

The only chance of success seemed to lie in following Reinecke down the cleft and lying in wait for him at some spot where he could be taken at a disadvantage. Tom hurriedly whispered his plan to Mwesa, then stepped down into the cleft and began his careful descent.

The frequent windings of the narrow gully, the patches of vegetation, the boulders that stood up here and there, rendered detection from below unlikely; but Tom moved very warily, peering round every corner, every bush and rock, listening for voices or footsteps. The lower he and the negro descended, the more cautious they were. Once or twice Tom slipped, and had to catch at a tree or a shrub to prevent himself from slithering down. No such mishaps befell the barefooted negro, and Tom wished that his soles were so hardened as to enable him to discard his boots. Step by step they crept downward. Presently they caught sight of the opposite side of the nullah, a rugged precipice looming through the mist, with a portion of the lake cut off at its base. A little farther down Tom stopped suddenly. Twenty or thirty feet below him Reinecke and the Arab, side by side, were lying on a big rock that appeared to jut out from the cliff, and were peering down. No doubt they were hidden by the rock from the sight of the people below--how far below Tom could not tell, for the camp and the lowest stretch of the cleft were invisible to him.

Mwesa, clutching his knife, looked expectantly at his master. Tom could have shot the two men where they lay; but apart from a natural repugnance to killing them unawares, he knew that the sound of shots would rise to the party above and put them on the alert. Whatever he did must be done without noise.

Drawing Mwesa back, he led him some little distance up the cleft until he came to a shallow recess, partly concealed by a patch of bush. Here they could wait until the men below reached them in their upward climb.