Tom Willoughby's Scouts Part 6

Mwesa was already skinning the rabbit, and Tom having a box of matches, the boy kindled a fire and prepared to cook a meal for his new master.

Meanwhile Tom took earnest thought for their future. Until he had recovered from his injuries it would be hopeless to attempt to reach Abercorn; but it struck him that to remain in his present position, only a few miles from the plantation, might be dangerous. Reinecke might revisit the pit, and finding it no longer tenanted, would almost certainly hunt for him in the neighbourhood. It was necessary to find a secure refuge where he could rest until he was able to undertake the journey. Almost as soon as the idea occurred to him, he remembered that he had pa.s.sed this way with Reinecke and Goltermann, on the day when he had first made distant acquaintance with crocodiles. The nullah and the lake in the hills lay a few miles to the east. The former, with its windings, its overhanging rocks, its patches of dense scrub, would furnish a safe hiding-place. Game was plentiful in the adjacent forest; the lake would be an unfailing water supply; and though he would have to guard against falling a prey to the reptiles that infested its sh.o.r.es, Mwesa's knowledge of their ways would no doubt serve him well. The neighbourhood was wholly uninhabited, and it was so far from the plantation that Reinecke and his people were unlikely to visit it.

Could he find it? Having gone there only once, before he had had any experience of forest travel, he knew that una.s.sisted he would have been completely at a loss. But he hoped that Mwesa would discover the track leading to it, and when, as he ate his dinner of roast rabbit, he mentioned the matter to the negro, the latter instantly started up and ran off in the direction Tom pointed out. In twenty minutes he was back, and declared with his invariable smile that he had found the track. He proceeded to dismantle the hut and to obliterate the traces of the fire; then, loading himself with their few possessions, he begged Tom to lean on him and make for their new home at once.

Tom limped along, anxious to reach the nullah before night. On the way Mwesa told him more about the morning's scene at the plantation.

Reinecke had boasted that the English were to be driven into the sea.

All their possessions would become the booty of the Germans, and the Wahehe, if they served him faithfully, should share in it. They had once been great warriors; now they would learn how to be askaris, and under German leadership do great deeds and ama.s.s great riches. The negroes had listened to him in silence; and only when he had left them did their sullen discontent find expression. They remembered that they had always fought against the Germans, not for them; and some of the elder men said they would rather fight against them again. But there was no open revolt; cowed by years of oppression, devoid of leadership, they could only accept their destiny.

With great difficulty Tom managed to drag himself along for two or three miles; then he declared that he could go no farther. It was already late in the afternoon. Mwesa at once constructed a temporary hut, and there they pa.s.sed the night.

Next morning, after again covering their tracks as completely as possible, they set off again. Even with Mwesa's support, Tom could only crawl along at the rate of little more than a mile an hour. The almost disused hunter's path was sometimes hard to find: here and there it was overgrown with thorns through which Mwesa had to cleave a way; and in the middle hours of the day the humid heat was so oppressive that Tom had to take long rests. Towards evening, however, they came suddenly upon a dip in the ground which Tom thought he recognised.

"Run ahead," he said to Mwesa, "and see if the nullah is in that direction."

The boy sprinted away, returning in a few minutes.

"All right, sah!" he cried. "All right ober dah."

They went on. Emerging from the forest, they crossed an expanse of scrub and came to the mouth of the nullah, which was like a deep cutting in the hills. A thin stream trickled down the middle: Tom could not doubt that the lake must be only a few hundred yards farther, and, in spite of his fatigue, he struggled on to make sure that he had reached his destination. There at last was the lake, still, not a breath of air bending the rushes on its banks, or stirring the trees on the island in the centre.

Mwesa had just time to rig up a slight shelter of branches near the margin of the lake before darkness fell. He cooked some manioc for Tom and himself; and when Tom sank into heavy sleep, the boy kept watch all night by the fire.

In the grey light of dawn, when Mwesa also was asleep, Tom was awakened by a rustling at the entrance of the rude hut, across which Mwesa had thrown a rough barrier of thorns as a defence against a chance marauder.

Starting up on his elbow, he saw dimly some dark shape apparently edging its way between the lower part of the barrier and the ground. For a moment or two he was unable to distinguish what it was; then he gave a sudden shout, seized the shot-gun which lay by his side, sprang to his feet and fired.

Awakened by his shout, Mwesa had jumped up and come to his master's side. There was a violent commotion in the th.o.r.n.y barrier. Next moment the slight hut collapsed, and both occupants were half buried by the boughs. Extricating themselves from the tangle, they peered out at the interlaced branches of thorn. Nothing was to be seen.

"Wat dat noise, sah?" whispered Mwesa.

"I think I saw the snout of a crocodile," replied Tom.

Mwesa clicked in his throat, caught up his axe, and rushed out. But the crocodile had disappeared.

"He berry much 'fraid, sah," said the boy, when he came back. "Gun make him berry sick. He go tell no come dis way no more: oh no!"

CHAPTER VI--MWESA'S MISSION

Tom could not help laughing as he surveyed the ruins of Mwesa's little building, and the negro himself put his hands on his hips and roared with merriment.

"Silly fella tink all same proper house," he said, alluding to the crocodile. "Me show him."

It was clear that their first task, if they were to remain for any length of time in this spot, must be to construct a more substantial dwelling, and after a light breakfast they set forth to survey for a site. Tom found that his long tramp on the previous day had caused his injured ankle to swell, and he could only get along by hopping on his sound foot. Fortunately he had not far to go before lighting on a suitable situation in a spot above the sh.o.r.e of the lake, where a few isolated trees in the form of a rough circle enclosed a clear s.p.a.ce some twenty yards across. Here, after bathing his ankle and tying his handkerchief tightly about it, he sat down to watch Mwesa set about building him a "proper house."

The boy cut down with his axe a number of straight saplings, trimmed them, cut them to the same length, and then planted them in a circle in the centre of the s.p.a.ce. After a search along the banks of the stream he returned with a load of withies cut from tough creeping-plants. With these he bound the upright poles together: first in the middle, then two feet below, and finally the same distance above. He worked with such astonishing speed that early in the afternoon the framework of the new hut was complete, standing up like a cage or a circular crate. After a short rest he started on the roof. He gathered together a number of flexible saplings, which he laid down on the floor of the hut so that they radiated from the centre like the spokes of a wheel. Then he fastened the ends together, lifting the saplings one by one until the structure resembled the ribs of an inverted Chinese umbrella. When it was finished he drew the loose ends together, turned it upside down, and pushed it up through the open roof s.p.a.ce, the ends, when released, resting on the tops of the poles. The skeleton of the hut was complete.

Tom envied the boy's dexterity. All his measurements had been made with the eye alone, and Tom reflected that the work would have occupied a white artisan, provided with a foot rule, probably twice or thrice as long. Mwesa promised that another day's work would finish the job.

Next day he filled up the interstices between the poles with damp mud, which he carried in his wallet from the edge of the lake. He left a s.p.a.ce about three feet square at the entrance; and built up with mud, in the interior of the hut, a long bench some three feet high. The mud dried rapidly in the heat of the day, and when the bench had hardened, he mounted upon it, and wove long gra.s.ses in and out among the rods composing the roof, until this was fairly impervious. It would give slight protection against heavy rain, but the rainy season was not yet due, and Tom agreed that the hut would form a very serviceable shelter during the short time he expected to occupy it.

It occurred to him, however, to suggest a means of doubly securing themselves against intruders, human or other. The trees surrounding the open s.p.a.ce could be turned into an effective zariba by planting poles between them, and interlacing the poles with strands of p.r.i.c.kly thorn.

Mwesa fell in with the notion at once, but this was a much longer task than the construction of the hut had been, and in fact it occupied him off and on for nearly a week.

Meanwhile the food he had brought from the plantation had long been consumed, and he spent part of every day in snaring birds or small animals for the subsistence of himself and his master. It appeared that vegetable food was not to be obtained in this part of the country, and Tom grew somewhat uneasy as to the effect of an uninterrupted diet of flesh. He was uneasy, too, about his injuries. The wound caused by the spike was healing well, but the swelling of his ankle was but little reduced, and it gave him great pain to hobble even a few yards. It was clear that without the ministrations of his faithful and indefatigable boy he would starve.

Often as he lay at night, on rushes strewn upon the bench, listening to the cries of night-birds, the bark of distant hyaenas, the coughs of the crocodiles in the lake, the grunts and snarls of beasts that came prowling around the zariba, but never attempted to penetrate it, scared by the fire kept constantly burning within the enclosure--as he lay listening to these eerie sounds he pondered plans for the future. His dearest wish was to make his way to the frontier as soon as he was fit to travel, and to join the British forces which, he supposed, were gathering to resist the German invasion. The news that Germany and Britain were at war had scarcely surprised him. Recollections of what he had heard and seen during his year in Germany seemed to give corroboration enough. He remembered in particular one young German baroness, who had been to school at Cheltenham, and was continually boasting of what the Germans would do when "the Day" came. He remembered, too, how his father scoffed at the warnings of those who foretold that Germany was only awaiting an opportunity for making her tiger-spring, and how he and his brother had been rebuked for heeding the "alarmists." And now the Day had come at last. He wondered what spark had exploded the European powder-barrel, what pretext Germany had alleged for the attack which, he believed, she had long been secretly cherishing and preparing for. In the only letter he had received from England since his arrival, Bob had said nothing of trouble brewing.

Whatever the ostensible reason was, he had no doubt the war had sprung from Germany's l.u.s.t for world-power, and with the easy confidence which too many Englishmen felt in those early days, he believed that the British Navy would square accounts with the Germans before many months had pa.s.sed. He did not know that Germany had cast her gauntlet in the face of half the world, did not suspect that she had already set the bases of civilisation staggering.

As for Africa, he took it for granted that German possessions would soon be wiped off the map. It would have been difficult for a true-born Englishman to think otherwise. All that he wished and hoped for was that he might reach Rhodesia before the last act was played.

When about ten days had slipped away, and even Mwesa had nothing to occupy him except the daily search for food, Tom began to fidget for news. He was still unable to walk without pain; inaction irked him, and ignorance of what was going on at the plantation and beyond gave him a fit of the blues. His despondency did not escape the keen eyes of the negro, who at last asked what was troubling him.

"I want to know things, Mwesa," he answered: "what Reinecke is doing, whether fighting has already begun--all sorts of things. And I want to get away from here and join my own people."

The boy's anxious expression cleared; his eyes brightened.

"Me go; one day, two, me come back tell sah," he said.

"Do you think you could go safely?"

Mwesa looked hurt at the suggestion. Had he not already stolen in and out of the plantation? Why should his master suppose that he could not do it again? He would set off at once, as soon as he had provided food and water for a day or two, and he would come back stuffed with news.

The boy was so eager that Tom let him go. He took nothing but his wallet and a knife. By nightfall he would reach the plantation. There he would learn all that was to be learnt from Mirambo: his master would be only one night alone.

It was not till the dense blackness of night brooding over the nullah deepened his feeling of solitude that Tom doubted whether he had done right. The boy might not return: who could tell what mischance might befall him? In daytime he might escape the many perils of the forest; but what if he were discovered in his furtive pa.s.sage of the thorn fence and impressed into the ranks of the recruits? "Without Mwesa what will become of me?" The troublesome question gave Tom no rest as he lay in the hut, listening to the outer noises to which darkness adds mystery and horror. Alone, almost helpless, what could a white man do in the wilds of Africa? Tom was not ordinarily a victim to "nerves"; but the series of shocks he had recently suffered had quickened his imagination in proportion as it had reduced his physical vigour, and the sensations of that night were one long nightmare.

At dawn, limp and haggard, he got up, crawled out of the hut, and sat down with his back against a tree-trunk, listening for the return of the negro boy. He heard rustlings among the trees, the call of a quail, the snorting grunt of some animal prowling round the zariba. But neither rustle nor footfall caught his ear when Mwesa suddenly appeared at his side.

"Come back all right, sah," said the boy cheerfully.

"But how? I didn't hear you. How did you get in?"

"Climb tree, sah; come like snake."

He had dropped thus into the enclosure to avoid making a gap in the fence. As before, he came laden with food. Welcome as this was, Tom was more eager to have his tale of news; but before Mwesa would relate his discoveries, he produced from his wallet, with much show of mystery, a small bundle with a covering of leaves tied with gra.s.s thread.

Opening this with an expression of great solemnity, he displayed a lump of some substance olive-green in colour, and of the consistency of putty.

"Good medicine, sah. Mirambo my uncle: berry clebber pusson. Me make sah well."

Dropping to his knees he unwound the handkerchief from Tom's injured ankle, pinched off a small portion of the plastic medicament, and rubbed it gently over the joint, muttering strange words. It gradually softened to a greenish oil. When the joint was thoroughly anointed, the boy bound it again with the handkerchief, jumped up, and, smiling away his look of intent earnestness declared:

"Sah, one time better; two time better; t'ree time all same well."

Then he unslung from his shoulder a small iron cooking-pot, and sat down to tell his news.