CHAPTER VIII

A RECONNAISSANCE

The hut allotted to the four white men, like all the others in the inner enclosure, was built of logs, and in shape resembled an expanded sentry-box. It had no furniture except a few grass mats laid upon the earthen floor, and a clumsy rack of sticks, containing some crude platters of clay, and a couple of heavy wooden clubs. Worn out by their recent experiences, the occupants slept soundly through their first night as the chief's guests, only disturbed at intervals by the visitations of cockroaches which the darkness drew from crevices in the walls.

Next morning they were given a breakfast of bananas and nuts, and water brought to them in long bamboo stalks, which had been cleaned of their partitions except at the end.

'We are not supposed to wash,' remarked Trentham, 'and we can't shave; before long we shall all be as hairy as Meek.'

Meek looked apologetic, and Grinson passed a hand over his cheeks and chin, already dark with stubble.

'A regular Jack ashore, sir,' he said, 'and no barber round the corner. What is to be will be, and I only hope I make a better show than Ephraim; his whiskers ain't much of an ornament, I must say.'

'I ought to have shaved young,' sighed Meek. ''Tis too late now, Mr. Grinson.'

'Truly, Ephraim, you 've lost your chance, poor lad. But you might look worse, that's one comfort.'

While they were at breakfast the man who had interpreted on the previous day came with a message from the chief. They were free to move about the enclosure, but the gate was forbidden them.

'We 're prisoners, then,' said Hoole.

'I fancy he doesn't trust the cannibals outside,' said Trentham. 'For the present I dare say we are safer where we are. But I don't know how we are to kill time.'

'Here you are, sir,' said Grinson, producing a greasy pack of cards. 'A rubber or two 'll be good for the digestion. Ephraim plays a good hand, though you might not think it.'

While they were playing cards a man came from the chief's house and looked in on them through the doorway. His shadow caused them to glance up, and Hoole and Trentham recognised him as the patrician leader of the party from whom they had rescued Hahn. They wondered whether the recognition was mutual, feeling that it might go hardly with them if they were known; but the man, after a prolonged stare of curiosity, departed without giving any sign of suspicion. It came out afterwards that his party, finding the chimney blocked, had had to wait for the ebb tide and then walk for some miles along the shore before they reached a practicable path up the cliffs. They had then returned to the chimney, removed the obstruction from its top, and sought to track the fugitives; but they had lost the trail in the forest.

Several days passed--days of tedium and growing irritation. The prisoners were given regular meals of bananas, sweet potatoes, and other roots, sometimes a bird or a pig; but movement beyond the stockade was still interdicted. They saw nothing of the chief, and one day, when Trentham sent him a message, asking that they might be allowed to go out and see what the Germans were doing, the answer was that he was sick, and could not attend to them until he was out and about again. Hoole suggested that it was a diplomatic illness, but the sight of the hideously painted figure of the tribal medicine-man going every day into the chief's house seemed to show that the reason given was genuine.

One afternoon there were signs of much excitement in the village. From beyond the stockade came a babel of voices; a man admitted through the gate gave those within some news which appeared to agitate them, and a few minutes after he had entered the chief's house the interpreter came running to the hut, and said that the chief wished to see the 'white man fella' at once.

'Release at last!' said Trentham when he returned. Alone of the four, Meek showed no sign of pleasure.

'The old fellow is in a pretty bad way,' Trentham went on. 'The medicine-man was chanting incantations over him, and he looked pathetically resigned. He had just heard bad news. It appears that his son, whose name I understood to be Flanso--a corruption of Francois, I fancy--went out yesterday with a small scouting party, and had just got through that burnt village when they were surprised by a number of white men and collared; only the messenger escaped. Among the party was Kafulu, the head-man of the natives outside, and it's to that fact we owe our chance. I offered to go out and see if I could discover what had become of the prisoners, anticipating the chief's request. He jumped at it, and told me that the cannibals outside, when they understand what our errand is, won't do us any harm. But only you and I are to go, Hoole; the others must remain as hostages.'

'A dirty trick, sir,' said Meek. 'As sure as your back is turned, they 'll eat me; I know they will.'

'Don't you take on, Ephraim,' said Grinson. ''Tis true I 'd rather go with the gentlemen, but I 'll protect you, me lad. Before they eat you, they 'll have to cook my goose.'

Early next morning, Hoole and Trentham started with half a dozen of the chief's best men and the interpreter. Hoole had his revolver, Trentham a spear like those with which the escort were armed. They marched rapidly through the forest, reached the burnt village about midday, and found there the bodies of two of the scouting party, shot by the Germans. From this point they moved with great circumspection, the guide leading them through a maze of vegetation by a winding track that bore downhill, crossing narrow gullies and swift hill streams.

Late in the afternoon they entered a tract of country strewn with rounded boulders, which had no doubt been brought down in remote ages by glacial action from the mountain range in the interior. Here the ground sloped steeply to the edge of the cliffs, and they had a view far over the sea. Deprived of cover by the lack of vegetation, they bore away towards the forest on the right. Though they had approached by a different route, the white men now recognised the spot from which they had caught sight of the Raider lying in the cove below the cliffs. Half-way down the forest-clad slope Trentham called a halt.

'We know where we are now, Hoole,' he said, 'and I think we had better leave the natives here under cover while we go on by ourselves. They 'll be no good to us in reconnoitring, and the fewer the better on a job like this.'

He instructed the interpreter to remain with the men on guard, and if not rejoined by nightfall, to return to the village.

A very rough and narrow track led through the trees and scrub with which the whole face of the cliff was covered. The two men crept cautiously down this for some distance; then it occurred to Hoole that it would be safer to make a way of their own through the bush, for at some turn of the track they might suddenly meet some one ascending, or emerge unexpectedly into view from the beach. Accordingly they turned off to the right, and continued their course as quickly as possible under cover, moving parallel with the track.

Not many minutes had passed before they had reason to be glad that the precaution had occurred to Hoole in time. Less than a hundred yards below the spot where they had quitted the track they came to the edge of a space from which the vegetation had been cleared away. The path ran through this, and at one side of it stood a rough log hut where a German sailor, armed with a rifle, was standing on guard. Trentham, a little in advance of Hoole, was the first to catch sight of the man. He motioned to Hoole to halt, peered out for a few moments at the scene before him, then went back.

'There 's a sentry-post below,' he said in a low tone. 'The man's back was towards me; he was watching something going on below him. We shall have to creep round. It's pretty rough going; take care you don't slip.'

Keeping on the seaward side of the sentry, they wormed their way through the bush. With every step the descent became steeper, and they had to cling to branches and roots in order to keep their footing. The contour of the cliff hid them from the sentry, but the dislodging of a loose stone might at any moment betray their presence, and they let themselves down inch by inch with great care.

As they had noticed on the occasion of their previous visit, the cove in which the Raider lay was almost encircled. The cliff which they were now scaling jutted out in a kind of spit on the eastern side. When they finally reached its base they found themselves among a tangle of jagged rocks. The tide was coming in, and they realised from the banks of seaweed that the rocks were covered at the flood, and that they had little time to spare if their reconnaissance was to lead them much farther and they had to return by the same route.

After a precautionary glance seaward they began to make their way through the mass of rocks, clambering, springing from one to another, always careful not to expose themselves to the view of the sentry somewhere high up on their left. Presently, between two high rocks at the outer edge, they caught sight of blue water. Entering the gap, they looked out, and found that almost the whole of the cove was before them.

'She 's gone,' said Hoole.

The well-remembered vessel was no longer at her anchorage. No craft of any kind lay within the cove. But men were moving about the beach. To the left, near the base of the cliff, above high-water mark, were two large sheds; a little further on was a third shed, still larger. Between them the beach was covered with much miscellaneous litter, the nature of which the observers could not at present determine. What interested them most, and for a time puzzled them, was the sight of many dark figures working on a natural ledge some eighty feet above the sea level on the opposite side of the cove. They heard the sound of picks, and saw black men bringing baskets from a narrow tunnel in the cliff face, and emptying them on to the beach below. From the spot where the contents fell clouds of black dust rose high into the air. A white man was walking up and down the ledge, occasionally moving his right arm in a curiously jerky manner; and amid the other sounds came now and then rough shouts and sharp cracks.

'By George, Hoole!' exclaimed Trentham under his breath, 'that particular mystery is solved. They are working coal! There must be an outcrop in the cliff; of course they are not mining. The Raider can't rely on filling her bunkers from captures, apparently, or they wouldn't go to all this trouble.'

'I guess it's the niggers get the trouble,' remarked Hoole. 'That fellow--in the distance he 's mighty like Halm--is making good play with his whip. You may bet your bottom dollar they snapped up Flanso and the rest to increase the number of their hands. Say, d' you hear that purr?'

He swung round and looked seaward, shading his eyes with his hands.

'There she is,' he exclaimed a few moments later. 'Skip behind the rock, Trentham; she 's diving right here.'

'The seaplane?'

'Yes. Can't you see her? She 's cut off her engines, making a very pretty swoop. See her now?'

'Yes; you 've better eyes than mine, Hoole.'

Hoole smiled. His eyes were fixed on the machine with an intense admiring interest.

'She blips,' he said, as the engine spluttered for a second or two. 'Now she 's cut off again. The pilot knows his job. I wonder where she 'll come down.'

Crouching behind the rocks they watched the seaplane as it made a circling movement, diving all the time, until it swept round and headed straight for the entrance to the cove. From a height of about two hundred feet it swooped down towards the sea, 'blipped' again, then descended lightly upon the surface, ran a few yards, and at last came to rest a little distance from the beach. Several bare-legged German sailors had already emerged from one of the nearer sheds. They waded into the water. Two of them carried the occupants of the seaplane on their backs to the shore, then returned to help their comrades to pull the machine in. It glided smoothly up the beach until it rested just below the sheds.

'Gliders all complete,' said Hoole.

'What do you mean?'

'They 've laid down boards on the beach; you can't see them from here. They are well greased, too, to judge by the speed the floats slid up them. Those Germans are pretty thorough, Trentham.'

'Where did you pick up all these details?' asked Trentham curiously.

'Oh, I 've seen that sort of thing once or twice before. But hadn't we better get back? There 's nothing more to be seen from this quarter, and I presume Flanso and his men are on that ledge yonder, or near about.'

'That farthest shed is the officers' quarters, by the look of it. The two airmen have just gone inside. We 've learnt the lie of the land and not much else, I 'm afraid. Can't we go a little farther along the shore, behind the rocks, and climb the cliff nearer the sheds?'

'We can try, but 'ware the sentry.'

They had not gone far, however, before the incoming tide forced them to leave the rocks and clamber up through the bushes. The ascent was even more difficult than the descent had been, and a miscalculation of the direction of the path on which this sentry-box stood almost led to their undoing. They had supposed that it ran fairly straight to the sheds from the point at which they had left it; but the nature of the ground had necessitated its being carried a good many yards farther along the cliff, and then it bent round and formed a loop, approaching the sheds in the same direction as Hoole and Trentham were now going. Unaware of this, they were slowly climbing when Trentham slipped, displacing a mass of loose earth which went rattling down the cliff. They were not greatly alarmed, thinking that the sentry was too far away to have heard the sound through the noise of the coal-tipping across the cove. But footsteps not far above them caused them to snuggle behind a thick bush. The rustle of movement above drew nearer. Through the bush they saw the sentry stepping cautiously down, and prodding the vegetation with his bayonet. Hoole fingered his revolver, but Trentham signed to him that if any weapon had to be used it must be the spear. The sentry, however, stopped ten or a dozen yards above them, then, apparently satisfied that the landslide was accidental, laboriously climbed up the cliff.

Much relieved, for violent measures would have been fatal to the success of their reconnaissance, the two men waited for a quarter of an hour or so, then struck up the cliff some distance to the left of the spot where the sentry had appeared, and wormed their way to the path, far beyond his box, by a wide circuit. It was almost dark by the time they rejoined the natives. They marched a few miles until night descended upon them; then they rested for a while, discussing the results of their expedition.

'I 'm afraid the chief will be disappointed at our returning without his son,' said Trentham, 'but I hope he 'll see reason. We couldn't possibly have rescued him.'

'Clearly not,' said Hoole. 'There wasn't time to discover exactly where the Germans keep their slaves. I guess we 'll have to reconnoitre again, from the other side, before we can see our way clear. The absence of the Raider would help us considerably, for there appeared to be only about half a dozen Germans on the spot. I wish I could have seen whether that fellow cracking the whip was Hahn.'

'Why?'

'Well, we don't owe the skunk a great deal; besides, he 's got my watch.'