Tom Willoughby's Scouts Part 4

Tom was glad enough to take him at his word. While the fruit-picking was going on, there was nothing for him to learn, and Reinecke had been so ungracious lately that companionship was impossible. So he went occasionally into the woods alone, never straying more than a mile or two from the plantation, and taking even more pleasure in quietly watching the smaller animals--the tree-lizards, chameleons, iguanas--than in shooting pigeons or teal. His hope of big-game hunting was apparently to remain unrealised.

One day on returning he found Reinecke in a particularly good humour.

"I have had a visit to-day from a high German officer, Major von Rudenheim," he said: "an excellent soldier. He came on the boat with you, of course: did you have the pleasure of conversing with him?"

"No. He seemed to me too much of what we call a big pot."

"True: our German officers are very much above civilians. In any case, however--you are not aware that I hold the rank of Captain of Landwehr?

So we met, as it were, on equal terms, though he is a step higher in rank. And I have another piece of news for you. Eland have been seen near that small lake where we shot buck with Captain Goltermann, you remember. Would you like to add elands' horns to your trophies?"

"I should indeed," replied Tom, again wavering in his estimate of Reinecke. "He really isn't a bad sort at times," he thought.

Next morning happened to be mail day, and as Reinecke had letters to write, Tom feared that he was to be disappointed. But the German was again in excellent temper.

"You can start without me," he said. "I shall be through with my letters in an hour or so, and I'll follow you and meet you near the edge of the lake--you remember, by that fallen tree where we ate our lunch.

Don't startle the game away: it will be a little practice in stalking for you. I'll bring the men along with me."

Tom set off, determined to show that the woodcraft he had picked up during the past few weeks was not inconsiderable. He reached the appointed spot, and ventured to cast about in various directions, without, however, finding any traces of the eland. Returning to the rendezvous, he was there joined by Reinecke, alone.

"I'm afraid the bird has flown," he said ruefully. "I haven't seen a sign of them."

"I will show you," replied Reinecke with a smile. "We shall have to stalk them, and we'll see what we can do without Mirambo's a.s.sistance.

He'll bring up some men presently to carry home the game."

He set off along a faint native track, so long disused and so much overgrown that Tom by himself would hardly have discovered it. They pushed their way through the vegetation, and after about a quarter of an hour Reinecke whispered to Tom to stop and be careful to make no noise.

"We ought to find our quarry in a glade just ahead," he said. "I'll go on: follow when I call."

He disappeared among the undergrowth. In a few minutes Tom heard a shot, then a faint call, and hurried eagerly on. The track widened a little, and Tom was quickening his steps when he suddenly felt the earth give way beneath his feet, and next moment found himself lying at the bottom of a deep pit, amidst a litter of earth and brushwood, and conscious of a sharp pain in the calf of his left leg. Almost stunned by the fall, he lay for a moment or two scarcely able to realise what had happened. Then he shouted for help.

There was no answer. All was silent except for the hum of insects and the rustling of some small animals which his sudden descent upon their lair had disturbed. He shouted again, more loudly; then, supposing that his voice from the depth of the pit had not penetrated to Reinecke's ears through the vegetation above, he reached for his rifle, which lay beside him, and fired a couple of shots into the air. Not yet seriously uneasy, he stooped to see what caused the pain in his leg, and found that it had been gashed by one of some half-dozen sharp-pointed stakes that were planted in the bottom of the pit.

"A native game-pit," he thought. "Reinecke might have warned me."

Standing up, he discovered that his right ankle was sprained.

"They'll have to carry me home," he thought, "and the sooner the better; the stuff here must have been rotting for years. I wish to goodness Reinecke would come."

Once more he shouted, then tried to scale the wall of the pit; but this was perpendicular, and it was evidently a case of cutting notches in it--a tiresome job to a man who could scarcely stand. It struck him that he had better bind up the gash in his leg as well as he could. When the men came he would get them to carry him to the lake and bathe the wound.

How lucky it was that he had escaped with only one wound, and that in no vital spot! Looking at that ugly array of spikes, he shuddered at the thought of the hideous injuries they might have inflicted.

While tying his handkerchief tightly round his leg he shouted from time to time. Was it possible that Reinecke had met with a similar misfortune? For the first time Tom felt really uneasy. Reinecke's call to him had been very faint, and had not been repeated. If they were both in the same predicament there was no hope of relief until the negroes came up from the plantation. To make sure of their not missing him, he shouted and fired at intervals, until almost all his cartridges were gone. Still there was no response.

He looked up the wall of the pit. It was eleven or twelve feet high.

If only he could raise himself high enough to get his arms on the edge, the rest would be easy. It should not take very long to cut a few notches in the earth: one of the spikes would form a serviceable tool.

He worked one out of the ground, and rose to his feet, wincing with the pain that shot through his sprained ankle. To his chagrin, the earth of the pit wall was friable. It crumbled as he drove the spike into it; so far from making a hole that would afford him a firm foothold, he succeeded only in breaking down a part of the wall.

"Fairly trapped," he thought, and sat down again to ease his aching legs.

His watch announced midday. The men ought to have arrived by this time.

They would carry food and drink, and he was very thirsty. The rendezvous was well known to them: surely they had not mistaken Reinecke's instructions. And then at last he was startled by a suspicion that sprang up suddenly in his mind--a suspicion so horrible that he strove to crush it. Reinecke might have lied to him about the vouchers; was he villain enough to have decoyed him deliberately to this cunningly concealed trap--deliberately schemed to clear finally out of his path the man whom he regarded as a stumbling-block on his way to fortune, the discoverer of his crimes?

The thought, terrible as it was, would not be stifled. Tom recalled the gradual changes in the German's manner--the descent from almost excessive cordiality to stiffness, sarcasm, positive rudeness: then the sudden return to geniality, the apparent eagerness to indulge his guest.

For the first time he was struck with the peculiar arrangements for the day's shooting expedition--the sending him on alone, the absence of gunbearers. This train of thought, once started, was carried on remorselessly by Tom's active imagination. Granted the man's intention of putting him out of the way, how easily one detail fitted into another! How naturally the Englishman's disappearance could be explained! It was known to every one on the plantation that he had sometimes gone shooting alone. Reinecke could say, and his statement could be corroborated, that his guest had started alone on this morning, he himself being engaged with correspondence. He had followed later, according to arrangement, but had failed to meet the Englishman at the appointed spot. He had searched for him, and after some days had found the poor fellow's remains at the bottom of an old, long disused game-pit. How plausible the story would be! Bob, thousands of miles away, would grieve: the story might get into the papers: people would read the paragraph, perhaps sigh, and pa.s.s on to a scandal nearer home, or to the latest news of the trouble in Ireland. In a few weeks Tom Willoughby would be only the shadow of a name.

Impatient with himself at the length his imagination had carried him, Tom shouted again, fired off another cartridge--the last but one. "I must keep one for emergencies," he thought. He made another attempt to cut holes in the wall, and threw the spike from him in disgust at the second failure. It occurred to him to heap up debris at the foot of the wall, to form a mounting block; but at the stirring of the putrid ma.s.s innumerable insects, beetles, reptiles, foul nameless things issued forth, causing him to shudder with loathing, and to shrink at actual pain from their bites and stings. Overcome with nausea, he retreated to a far corner where this creeping population had not been disturbed, and for a time, weary as he was, sickened by his increasing pain, he leant against the wall, rather than sit down again, until sheer fatigue compelled him to make an uneasy seat of his slanted rifle.

With the pa.s.sage of time his thirst became a torture, and the shouts he uttered ever and anon sounded cracked and harsh from his parched throat.

A sort of lethargy settled upon him: not a stoic resignation, a calm acquiescence in fate's decree, but a numbness of the senses and the mind. For a time he was scarcely conscious of pain, of the things moving at his feet, of the gradual cooling of the air as evening drew on. Then he roused himself with a start, and heedless of stings and the loathsome touch of obscene creatures, he gathered up heaps of rotted leaves and twigs and the litter that had fallen under him, and began with frantic energy to pile them against the wall. His weight crushed them into half their former bulk, and he fell exhausted on the futile pillar.

Night came on. Alternately he dozed, and awoke to a sharpened keenness of apprehension. Now and then he heard noises above--the harsh persistent note of the nightjar, the hollow melancholy scale of the hornbill, the horrid whine of hyenas prowling in quest of prey and calling to one another with increasing frequency as the night stole towards dawn. A sudden raucous cry, apparently near at hand, caused him to seize the spike for defence in case some unwary beast should stumble into the pit. Once he beheld a pair of eyes, glaring with greenish light upon him from the brink. He uttered a hoa.r.s.e cry: the eyes disappeared: and he seemed to hear a creaking rustle among the trees above.

Slumber again sealed his senses, and when he awoke, the pale misty light of dawn threw green rays into his prison. His limbs were numb with cold. His dry throat gave forth only a whistling croak when he tried to shout. Scarcely able to move, he watched the mouth of the pit and the sunlight filtering through the foliage and dispersing the mist.

Listless, unconscious of the flight of time, he was just aware of the lengthening day as a sunbeam climbed down the side of his prison. All at once he was shaken into attention by a sound overhead, and while he was feebly trying to call, a shadow fell across the opening. A man's form appeared, and with a gasp of unutterable thankfulness he saw Reinecke peering down upon him. He struggled giddily to his feet: surely the bitterness of death was past.

But what was Reinecke saying? What words were these, that struck upon his ear in spasms, as it were?

"You came to spy ... enjoy your visit ... mad English ... war with Germany ... learn what it means to provoke the German."

He tried to collect his bewildered senses. It was Reinecke. What was he talking about? "Expedition to conquer Rhodesia ... months before I return ... a safe resting-place ... gather remains ... nothing but bones ... white bones."

Had Reinecke gone? The voice had ceased; the sunlight fell unchecked: and Tom, in a last flash of illumination before the darkness of unconsciousness enshrouded him, realised that Reinecke had betrayed him and had left him here to die.

CHAPTER V--A FRIEND IN NEED

On the previous evening, when the day's work on the plantation was over and the workers had returned to their homes, a young negro left the large dwelling which he shared with a number of other unmarried men, and betook himself to the hut where Mirambo was supping with his family.

"Have you eaten already, Mwesa?" asked the old hunter.

"No. I am not hungry. He has not come back."

The lad's eyes were wide with anxiety. No one could have failed to notice how strongly he resembled Mushota, the slightly older lad squatting by his father's side.

"Has the Leopard come back?"

"He came back at midday. The Antelope will never come back."

"Why so, Mwesa?"

"There has been whipping to-day."

Mirambo's face clouded. There had been no whipping since the Antelope, as Tom Willoughby was known among the negroes, had come to the plantation. The Leopard was their name for Reinecke. The negro is very shrewd, and it had not needed certain information brought by Mwesa to make the people connect the cessation of corporal punishment with the presence of the young stranger. That information, however, given first to Mirambo, had spread through the whole community, and was talked of freely among themselves. But it had never reached the ears of the Arab overseers: oppression is always met by secrecy. Neither they nor Reinecke knew that the young negro who had marched from Bismarckburg among the porters, and had remained a willing worker on the plantation, was not the chance recruit he had seemed to be. The stowaway of the _Hedwig von Wissmann_ had come of set purpose; and when Reinecke sarcastically asked Tom whether he supposed his attractions accounted for the boy's staying on, he had unwittingly hit upon the truth. Mwesa had stayed as a starved and beaten dog will stay with one who has been kind to him.

Quite unaware of the interest he had excited among these simple negroes, Tom had been watched, all his movements commented on, from day to day.

Whether by observation or by instinct the negroes knew that there was some intimate connection, obscure to them, between him and their taskmaster. They judged that the young Englishman was an object of respect or fear to the German, for Mwesa had told them that he was English and that the English did not whip their workers, except perhaps in punishment for crime. The Leopard had some reason for drawing in his claws.