Tom Willoughby's Scouts Part 5

Mwesa, like others, had seen the Englishman start, unattended, with his gun. He had done so before: those who saw him go marked the fact as they marked all that he did, but thought no more about it--except Mwesa, who watched all day for his hero's return. He had noticed, moreover, the going and the coming of Reinecke, also with his gun; and he had been troubled when the German returned alone, and when at sunset the Englishman was still absent.

"The Leopard has killed," said Mirambo after an interval of gloomy silence.

Mwesa burst into tears.

When he left the hut later, after eating a bowl of manioc, he carried a long sharp knife. Stealing along behind the huts, he made his way in the darkness to a remote spot, climbed up into a tree, and disappeared.

Half an hour later he crept back to Mirambo's hut, restored the knife, which the man would have to account for next day, and then returned to his own lodging, and slipped in unperceived by his fellow inmates. His exit was prepared, but no negro travels willingly by night.

Next day, at the time when the negroes had their midday meal, he was about to make his escape from a place no longer endurable to him, when he caught sight of Reinecke leaving by the gate, again unattended.

Mwesa looked around; no one else was in sight. He shinned up the tree he had climbed the night before. A few minutes later he was running like a wild animal through the scrub outside the fence. He posted himself among the trees at a spot where he could not fail to see Reinecke as he left the gate. When the German had pa.s.sed, the negro followed him with the stealth of one come of a long line of hunters, tracking him over the course he had pursued on the previous day, without revealing himself by so much as a rustle among the leaves or the crack of a fallen twig.

As Reinecke approached the pit, no guardian spirit told him of the watcher whose eager face was looking at him out of a frame of green foliage, whose keen ears p.r.i.c.ked up as he heard his master speaking to some one below him. When the German, his eyes alight with malign triumph, turned to retrace his steps there was nothing to show that he had been found out; the face had disappeared. Nor could Reinecke suspect that he was dogged back to the plantation, and that when the gate had closed upon him, a negro lad, lithe as a young antelope, bounded back to the pit, and peered anxiously into the depths.

Tom had relapsed into a state of half-consciousness. He was roused by a voice, and looking up, saw a black shiny face gazing down upon him. Two rows of white teeth parted, two big eyes danced with delight when they saw the white man glance upward.

"Sah, sah!" called the voice.

"Who are you?" Tom murmured faintly.

"Me Mwesa, sah; me come back bimeby, you see."

The lad ran back into the forest. Tom lay as in a dream. Who was this negro that spoke negro's English, and had called him "sah"? He had never heard any of Reinecke's slaves use English, yet what negro in these parts could be other than one of Reinecke's slaves? Where had the boy gone? What was he going to do? Tom felt almost too weak and listless even to hope.

After what seemed a very long time the negro came back, carrying a long green rope which he had plaited from strands of creepers. His face beamed with excitement and joy. Making one end of the rope fast to a sapling that grew near the edge of the pit, he threw the other end down and laughed when he saw that a long coil lay at the bottom. Then he swarmed down until he stood over Tom, and exclaimed:

"Sah climb; all right now."

"Who are you?" Tom asked again.

"Me Mwesa. No talk now: talk bimeby. Dis bad place."

But climbing was easier said than done. Tom was amazed to find how weak he was after only twenty-four hours' confinement in the pit. "Have I so little staying power?" he thought. But twenty-four hours in heat and squalor, without food or water, with a wounded leg and a sprained ankle, and a mind racked with anxiety and foreboding, would have put a tax on the strongest.

He found himself unable to climb. Whereupon Mwesa knotted the rope about his waist, swarmed up the rope again, and hauled until sweat poured from his body. As soon as Tom was safely over the brink, the lad let himself down once more into the pit, and returned with Tom's rifle and a couple of the sharpened stakes.

"Come 'long, sah," he said: "me find place."

Tom allowed himself to be helped along, asking no questions, content for the present to have regained freedom after the horrors of the past twenty-four hours. Mwesa led him along the old native track, in the opposite direction from the plantation. Presently they came to a brook tumbling over rocks. Here he bathed his aching limbs and drank deep draughts.

"Where are you taking me?" he asked.

"No savvy, sah: all right bimeby," replied the boy.

They started again. Mwesa kept carefully to the track, tracing it unerringly even where it was almost obliterated. The forest was thick all round, and Tom, at another time, might have felt uneasy at this apparently aimless wandering. Now, however, one way was as good as another, so long as it did not lead back to the plantation.

Mwesa had no doubt guessed that the track would sooner or later lead to a clearing. After more than an hour's painful walk, Tom found himself at the edge of what had once been an open s.p.a.ce, but was now an expanse covered with scrub and forest trees of recent growth.

"Stay dis place, sah," said the negro.

Tom was ready to stay anywhere. He sank down on the ground, and lay, resting and watching the further proceedings of his rescuer. The lad cut down a number of young pliable branches, trimmed them to the same length, and stuck them into the ground in a circle, at equal intervals apart, bending them at the top until all met. Then he wound long gra.s.ses and tendrils of creepers in and out around the whole circ.u.mference, until in a surprisingly short s.p.a.ce of time he had fashioned a rough and ready circular hut at the corner of the clearing, which was almost completely hidden by rank growths of vegetation. He smiled with pride in his handiwork when he invited Tom to enter.

"Come back bimeby," he cried, and darted away into the forest. When he returned he brought a wild gourd full of water and a handful of berries.

"No can get nuffin else," he said deprecatingly.

"They will do very well," said Tom, who indeed could have eaten sawdust after his long fast. "Now tell me who you are, and how you found me, and why you are helping me."

The smile that spread over the lad's face awoke in Tom a dormant memory.

Surely this was the boy who had rushed so eagerly to pick up his match-box a day or two after he had reached the plantation.

"Sah sabe Mwesa, Mwesa sabe sah," said the negro, happily.

"Save! What do you mean?"

"On boat, sah: German man kick, say frow me in water: sah pay cash, all right all same."

"Oh!" exclaimed Tom, feeling a touch of embarra.s.sment. That little unconsidered act of kindness had surely not won such devotion as to bring the boy into slavery for his sake? "Tell me about yourself," he said.

The negro's story, told in his strange English, took a long time in the telling, so roundabout was the course of the narrative, so much broken by explanations and c.u.mbered by trifling details. But the gist of it, as understood by Tom, was as follows--

Mwesa was the son of Miluma, once a notable chief of the Wahehe, and one of those who had sustained for a long time the resistance of his people to the Germans. At length he had fallen into the enemy's hands, and had been among the first batch of labourers who had cleared the ground for Reinecke's plantation. Miluma's wife and two of his children had died under their hardships, and the chief, left with Mwesa alone, had fled with the boy, and, more lucky than other negroes, had neither been recaptured nor killed in the forest. He had fallen in with an English trader, with whom he had taken service, accompanying him in his journeys through the country of the Great Lakes, and living at other times among his native household at Zanzibar. Mwesa, only a few years old at the period of the escape, had at first remained in Zanzibar during his father's absence, but at the age of twelve he, too, had travelled with the Englishman's caravan, and had picked up a smattering of English as well as of the dialects of the tribes through whose countries he had pa.s.sed.

Then his father died, the Englishman returned to Europe, and Mwesa, now seventeen, was left alone in the world. Having a little money in his possession, he bethought him of his uncle Mirambo, whose large family had prevented him from escaping at the same time as Miluma, and of whom his father had often spoken. He would return to the plantation, see if his uncle were yet alive, and perhaps help him, or any of his family who were still living, to escape with him to British territory. He took pa.s.sage in a dhow that was sailing down the lake, but the vessel had been blown ash.o.r.e, and the shipwrecked crew and pa.s.sengers robbed of all they possessed by predatory natives. Mwesa and one other had got away, and after an adventurous journey had arrived at Ujiji. Learning there that a steamer was expected at Kigoma, Mwesa had made his way to the port and smuggled himself on board.

On arriving at Bismarckburg he had found that the young Englishman who had befriended him on board the vessel was going to the plantation which was his own goal, and had at once sought employment among the porters.

It seemed to him that the presence of an Englishman was a good augury for the success of his mission. He had remained at the plantation, always on the watch; and it was not long before he suspected that Reinecke had a grudge against his benefactor. Slight signs that might have escaped the notice of anybody who had not a personal interest in the Englishman had betrayed to him and to Mirambo the real feelings of the German; and Mwesa had now a double motive: the rescue of his uncle and the care of the white man. For the sake of the latter uncle and nephew had concealed their relationship, awaiting the day when, as they expected, the Englishman would leave. On that day they, too, would go.

But the crisis had come in an unforeseen manner. The disappearance of the Englishman and Reinecke's strange movements had intensified their suspicions, and Mwesa had stolen out to discover what the German had done with his guest.

Tom thanked the boy warmly for what he had done for him. He was a good deal troubled in mind, and pa.s.sed many hours of the night in that gra.s.s hut in anxious meditation on his position. Mwesa had rescued him from a lingering death, but to what end? If it was true, as Reinecke had said, that Britain was at war with Germany, that already a German expedition against Rhodesia was in preparation, the immediate future was very black. He dared not go to Bismarckburg; the nearest British territory was forty or fifty miles away; how was it possible to accomplish so long a journey through difficult country and hostile people? At present, indeed, his injuries precluded even a much shorter journey. Until he should have fully recovered he must remain in hiding. How was he to subsist? There was game in the forest, no doubt plenty of vegetable food in the shape of berries and nuts, though only a native could distinguish the edible from the poisonous. Mwesa would help him--but Mwesa was himself a complication. Tom felt that, the boy having done so much for him, he was bound to consider the boy, and Mirambo; his lot seemed to be knit with theirs. It would not be just to appropriate Mwesa, and leave his relatives in the slavery from which the boy had come to deliver them. Yet how helpless he was to do anything either for them or for himself!

He fell asleep with these problems all unsolved. When he awoke the boy was gone. Tom supposed that he was seeking food, but as time slipped away and Mwesa did not return he grew uneasy. Then, however, common sense a.s.serted itself. The boy who had already dared so much, who had built him a hut and brought him food, would not desert him. There must be some good reason for his absence.

A little after mid-day Mwesa came back, looking more pleased with himself than ever. A rabbit dangled from his waist; slung over one shoulder was a native gra.s.s bag stuffed with ca.s.sava; in one hand he carried an axe, in the other a sporting rifle, which Tom recognised as the property of Reinecke. Mwesa threw his load down, and emptying his bag, revealed, under the ca.s.sava roots, a number of cartridges. He chuckled with delight.

"You have been back to the plantation?" said Tom.

"Yes, sah: me go back; n.o.body see."

He went on to explain that there were strange doings at the plantation.

Reinecke had called the negroes about him, and told them that war had broken out between England and Germany; that the Germans were going to seize all the English lands in Africa; that he himself was a great officer in the German army, and had been ordered to turn every able-bodied man into a soldier. The gathering of the crops being finished, such work as was necessary on the plantation must be done by the women and the older men. He was going to Bismarckburg to arrange for supplies of arms. During his absence the overseers would exercise the men.

Taking advantage of the excitement that followed this announcement, Mwesa had managed to possess himself of the articles with which he had come laden.

"Me now sah him boy," he said gleefully.

Tom looked at him with a ruminating eye. It was well to have a companion in this forest solitude, and he felt instinctively that Mwesa's fidelity might be relied on. But was he ent.i.tled to involve the boy in his own misfortunes, or to separate him from his new-found relatives? He reflected that the boy would be useful to him in helping him to find his way into British territory; and when Mwesa emphatically a.s.sured him that he was determined not to go back to the plantation, or to be drilled to fight against the English, he made up his mind to accept the service thus volunteered.

"Very well, Mwesa," he said, "you are my boy. Whatever comes, we will share it."