Part 17 (1/2)
”Mum!”
Civilities being thus completed, they got to business. The prisoner recited the story with which he had been prompted, so glibly that a white man might have doubted its veracity. He said that he brought good news. The brave warriors (meaning Juma's party), under their brave leader, had sacked the msungu's farm and the neighbouring village, and made much plunder, so vast a quant.i.ty, indeed, that they were exhausted in carrying it. He had been sent in advance to order thirty men to issue forth and help the weary warriors in conveying their spoils up the bluff.
”It is dark,” said the sentry.
”It is the leader's command,” was the reply. ”He will be like a raging lion if you delay.”
Another voice was heard within the fort. In a few moments the sentry cried--
”We come.”
”Ah!” said the prisoner.
”Ah!” echoed the sentry.
Then, before the garrison could issue from the gate and lay the bridge across the gap, the prisoner cried that he would hasten back and inform Juma that the men were coming. He turned, and followed John along the causeway until they reached the sh.o.r.e. Then the two hurried across the open to rejoin the ambushed party. The prisoner, who had borne up stoically hitherto, collapsed with pain before they reached the wood; and John, alarmed lest his stratagem should be defeated at a moment when success seemed a.s.sured, set the man upon his back and ran into shelter.
A few minutes afterwards he saw a line of men, headed by a Swahili in a white garment, come across the causeway from the fort, and turn to the right along the path leading to the bluff. John was tingling with excitement. All was going well: would his luck hold? The men's voices faded away in the distance. He gave them ten minutes; then bidding his men follow him closely, he ran down to the sh.o.r.e, and on to the causeway. As he expected, the bridge had been left spanning the gap in readiness for the laden safari. Waiting only to see that the men were close at his heels, John dashed over the last few feet, straight into the fort. A dozen men were squatting in a group about a small fire in the middle of the compound. They looked up as they heard the tread of men, but before they could spring to their feet, before, indeed, their slow minds suspected that anything was amiss, they were bowled over by the rush of twenty st.u.r.dy savages with a white man at their head, and lay in shaking terror on the ground, howling for mercy.
John had ordered his men to do no killing. They were surprised, but obeyed. Shouting for silence, he called to the panic-stricken garrison to march out of the fort. They sprang up and fled like a flock of terrified sheep, out of the gate and along the causeway, yelling as they ran. When the last was gone, and none but his own men were left in the place, John caught up the bridge and drew it in. The capture of the stronghold had taken three minutes.
CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH--Juma is Reinforced
Flushed with his bloodless victory, John ordered his men to make up the fire, and set two to watch at the gate; then, carrying a roughly-formed torch, he proceeded to an examination of the stronghold which was so imposing to the native imagination. It was a poor enough place estimated from a European point of view. It consisted simply of a circular s.p.a.ce on a low mound about thirty yards in diameter, enclosed by a rude stone wall rather less than the height of a man. The island itself was an irregular oval. At the eastern end the wall came to within a foot or two of its sh.o.r.e; north and south the interval was little greater, the ground sloping steeply down to the edge of the pool.
Westward it fell away less rapidly, though even here the angle was considerable. The island was no more than sixty yards at its greatest length, and from forty to fifty in breadth. The bridge sloped up from the end of the causeway to the gate, which was itself some feet lower than the ground within the fort. Just within it, on each side, a canoe was laid against the wall. Within the enclosure were a number of gra.s.s huts, set at intervals of a few yards apart.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Pool]
Having surveyed the place as well as he could by the uncertain light of his torch, John searched the huts. He found in the largest of them, which he guessed to be Juma's, two of his rifles, a number of old muskets, a miscellaneous collection of cartridges, most of which would not fit the rifles, shot of all shapes and sizes, one or two old swords, and a curious a.s.sortment of articles, mostly useless, which Juma and his men had no doubt purloined when on safari. Among them were broken boots, a fancy waistcoat in tatters, several condensed milk tins, some pewter spoons, a field-gla.s.s case, and an empty whisky bottle. These things, valueless to a European, would be treasure untold to the natives, and John was glad that his promise of loot would not be nullified. There was also a fair quant.i.ty of grain food, but no meat.
”I think I'm a bit of a fool,” said John to himself, when he had seen all there was to be seen. ”What have I come for after all? I've got back our property, to be sure; but what then? I can't demolish the fort before Juma arrives. I can't go back at once, because the men couldn't stand it. It looks as if I shall have to hold the place, for a day at least; and if those beggars come up in any numbers and manage to cross the pool I shall be pretty hard put to it to defend a hundred yards of wall. Ah well! I'm in for it now. The best thing I can do is to get out as soon as possible.”
He arranged for a watch to be kept up during the remainder of the night, and then threw himself down on the ground near the fire, not to sleep, for the negro is an untrustworthy sentry, but to turn things over in his mind. He remembered the store of ivory which Bill wished to recover, and would have been willing to help the old man; but when he considered the matter he concluded that it would be sheer lunacy to venture with his handful of men into the country of a tribe that had been strong enough to annihilate a large and well-armed Arab safari. There was no reason to suppose that the ”bad men” were any less powerful now than they had been then.
”And suppose I got the ivory,” he thought, ”how the d.i.c.kens could I carry it? The men have got quite enough to carry, what with the loot here and the things left with Charley. Judging by the weight of billiard b.a.l.l.s a single tusk of ivory would be a pretty heavy load for two or three men, and we might be two or three weeks getting back. Bill will be upset, without a doubt, but I can't help that. A good rest, and then start for home: that's my ticket.”
Pondering further, he came to the conclusion that there might after all not be the need for haste that he had at first imagined. Juma's men were thoroughly disheartened, no doubt; the garrison at the fort had been turned adrift; they had lost the greater part of their firearms and ammunition and all their stores of food, and it was probable that for the present they would have enough to do to find subsistence without wasting their energies in attacking either him or Ferrier. His own men had been marching or fighting, with only a few hours' sleep, for two days; a long rest was necessary for them; so he decided, before he fell into a half-doze from which the least sound would have roused him, that he might look forward to spending a day or two in the fort before he need set off to rejoin Ferrier.
At dawn he was up, and went to the gate to look round. None of the enemy were in sight, except his wounded prisoner, whom he saw hobbling across the causeway. In the excitement of the attack he had clean forgotten the man, who, he remembered with compunction, must have been all night in the wood, hungry, a prey to terror and pain. He let down the bridge and admitted him at once.
”Let me look at your leg,” he said.
Removing the bandages, he saw that it was a case for desperate remedies.
”You must let me cut the bullet out,” he said.
The man made no objection. John opened his knife and carefully washed the sharpest blade; then ordered two of the men to hold the patient, and began to probe the wound as gently as he could. The bullet was imbedded in the flesh where there was no danger of his severing an artery. He soon found the bullet, and setting his teeth, started the first surgical operation of his life. He had a steady hand: the man lay inert as a log, without wincing or even groaning; and in a few minutes he had extracted the bullet, feeling a vast admiration for the big fellow's fort.i.tude. Having bathed and bound up the leg, he gave the man some food, and saw him in a few minutes fall asleep. John drew a good augury from this little incident. The man had sought him, and not his own master; John took it, perhaps superst.i.tiously, as an indication that he, and not Juma, would, as he put it, ”come out on top.”
He sent out Bill, with one of the men, to look for the enemy. They returned early in the afternoon, reporting that they had failed to see either the men who had been ejected from the fort, or the larger party under Juma's command. Bill judged from the tracks that the former had scattered, some to the south to meet their friends, others to the east.