Part 13

Lucy Baines, attended by Josiah Briggs's wife Halima, was taking the air on the outskirts of Hangodi. She had had a baby in the previous July, and was still weak and anaemic. The confinement had been a difficult one, as it was a little premature, owing to Lucy having been frightened by a hyena. A medical missionary had been in hurried attendance, and kind Mrs. Stott had come fifty miles to act as an amateur midwife. But the child died soon after its birth, and Lucy, for the first fortnight, had been delirious. If her child had lived her whole outlook might have changed and brightened. As it was----

John had rigged up a kind of machila--I can't explain a second time what a machila is--a compromise between a palanquin and a hammock--and this could be taken out on short journeys by two strong porters. With this and her pupil-teacher, Halima, in attendance, Lucy was wont to make little afternoon pilgrimages along the red paths on the outskirts of the Hangodi plateau.

At this and that shady spot she would leave her machila languidly, sit on a camp stool and pick flowers and examine them: or she would practise her Swahili and Kagulu with Halima and question this woman--greatly devoted to her--on native manners and customs, or native legends. The two porters would squat at a respectful distance, or if told they would not be wanted for half an hour, would stroll off to the nearest native village.

On this particular day in September they came running back in great excitement to say a white man's _safari_ was approaching. It could be seen in the plain below ... quite a small army of black men headed by one white man, coming in single file over the burnt grass.

Rumour had flown ahead of it ... as it did in Africa, in pre-telegraph days. The white man was a great English consul coming to make a treaty with Ulunga, or coming to fight the Arabs, or to turn the Wa-dachi out of the country and to place Nguru under the Woman chief of the English. Mbogo the chief had already run up his English flag....

Lucy's heart stood still and she sat on her camp stool too much overcome to remain standing. Could it ... be ... Roger?

Halima fumbled in her basket and produced a restorative. Presently Lucy rose to her feet and said in a decisive tone:

"Take me to meet the white man...."

They met about three miles from the Mission Station. Seeing the machila approaching, heralded by the boastful singing of its carriers, anxious to do their mistress honour, Brentham had got off his riding donkey and handed it to a follower carrying his sporting rifle.. He walked to meet the unknown person swaying in the jaunty advance of the delighted porters. The machila stopped. Lucy emerged from it, then overcome with dizziness sank down by the wayside. Quickly he had raised her, unthinkingly and instinctively their arms were round each other.... "My dearest girl! You are safe then? Your station has not been attacked?"

"My darling _Roger_! you have come for me ... take, oh, _take_ me away!"

Thus they spoke instinctively in continuation of thoughts long sanctioned by their inner consciousness, but never outwardly expressed. There were no listeners who could understand what the avowals meant. Nevertheless they hastened to resume a correct parlance as between old acquaintances and nothing more.

"I think," said Lucy, "you had better send one or two spare men on ahead with a brief note to my husband saying you will be arriving at our station in about an hour, that you met me on the road and will bring me on with you. This will give our people time to--to--plan where to put you all. There won't be room for everybody inside the stockade. Then when you've sent off the note we can rest for half an hour or so in that piece of shade, where there are the euphorbias and the fig trees, and I shan't feel quite so shaky. I've been rather ill--I'll tell you all about it when you've sent off the note."

Roger scribbled the message on a leaf out of his road-book.

"There is our station," said Lucy, "about two miles off, on that great spur that comes out from the mountain. You can see the white houses and the red brick chapel and the glint of the corrugated iron. And away to the--well, I s'pose it's the south--is the chief Mbogo's principal village--all those little brown huts...."

The two impatient messengers scarcely waited for this information but bounded off to deliver their message and find some resting-place for the caravan, extenuated as it was with the long, hot march.

Lucy took Roger's arm--how it thrilled her, how like an impossible dream come true!--and followed by Halima and the machila reached the patch of blue shade made by a group of candelabra euphorbias and fig trees with thick glossy leaves and pendent branches. The ground underneath was absolutely clear of any cover for snakes and was whitish with the ashes of many a cooking fire, lit here by caravans arriving at evening and preferring to postpone their interviews with Chief Mbogo--sometimes a rapacious gentleman over his dues--till the morning light.

Whilst Brentham's cook was preparing a cup of tea, Lucy poured forth tumultuously her story of the chief happenings of the past six months. Brentham said in reply that she must have gone through a beastly time; but she might now take heart. He had come with definite instructions to take her away to the coast and her husband too, if the men-folk agreed. "Any other English woman at the station?" he inquired.

Lucy told him there was Ann Jamblin, but did not think the present moment the right one in which to expatiate on the irritating side of Ann's disposition. Moreover now that she was going back to England, why run down Ann? If Ann stayed behind, as she was convinced she would do, she might be a great comfort to John. "Don't think it odd of me," finished Lucy, "if when we reach the station I go straight to my house and to bed. I feel really too much shaken to take part in any discussion. I would much sooner you settled everything with John. I'm sure he won't oppose my going."

When Brentham reached Hangodi he was introduced to Ann, who listened to his polite phrases rather impatiently and seemed a little incredulous about any danger from Arab attacks. What exercised her mind, she said frankly, was how to keep the hundred men of his caravan from too close contact with her twenty or thirty maidens who lived in--what it was hoped was--"maiden meditation, fancy free," within the stockaded boundaries of the Mission Station. The local young manhood of the near-by Ulunga villages was supposed to stand too much in awe of Ann and to obey too strictly their chief's prohibition of interference with the young women of the Mission to annoy them with any amorous advances; but already Ann thought she had seen bold glances cast at her pupils--whom she was training to be Christian wives of Christian husbands--by the love-famished stalwarts of the caravan; and a coy recognition of this admiration on the part of the plump "Big-geru." To ease her apprehensions the men were soon all drafted off to billets in the native villages a mile away. To Brentham and his personal servants were alotted the Boys' School and the Chapel for their accommodation, the Consul being told that under all the circumstances of his visit there could be no thought of sacrilege in his using the House of God as a dwelling-place.

Brentham had told them as soon as he arrived that he was charged with instructions to escort all the white _personnel_ of Hangodi to some safe place on the coast whilst this war between Arabs and Germans was going on. He had started from Medinat-al-barkah and had with great difficulty and by making the utmost use of the British flag and of the presence of British war vessels off the coast, pushed his way past the insurgent Arabs and Waswahili that were attacking the German strongholds.

By forced marches he had reached the mission stations of Uluguru and Usagara, and had advised the retreat of the older men and all the white women towards the Kilwa coast, not at present in revolt. He left them still undecided whether or not to take his advice, but he had furnished them with a reinforcement of porters and arms.

There was no time to lose, so he was now hurrying on to Ulunga and Ugogo to put the same proposition before the members of the East African Mission, except that the safest route to the coast must now be a great detour towards Kilimanjaro.

Whatever the men decided to do, the women should at any rate come away with him. He would proceed westward and try to pick up the Stotts; then with his stout-hearted Wanyamwezi soldier-porters they would all find a way round the routes and villages dominated by the Arabs and Wangwana[#] and reach the coast at Mvita, where there was a British Consulate and where British gunboats were lying off the Arab town. But time was precious. Already he had heard that bands of plundering Wangwana and Ruga-ruga[#] were approaching Ugogo from the west.

[#] Wangwana was the general term in the East African interior by which the "Black Arabs," the Muhammadan Arabized negroes, were known.

[#] Ruga-ruga was the name given to war-like negroes--not necessarily Muhammadans, armed by the Arabs with flint-lock guns and sent to raid and ravish those tribes which rebelled against the slave-traders.

"How long can you give us?" said the anguished John, torn between his sense of duty regarding his wife and his extreme reluctance to abandon his Mission Station to certain destruction.

"Well, not more than forty-eight hours."

"Brethren," said John, "we must meet in conference and decide this. Sister Lucy has retired to bed--I advised her to do so. She has left it to me to settle what she had better do. But for the rest of us, let us meet after supper in the mess house and talk it over. You, sir," he said, to the worn and weary-looking Brentham--who, whatever he might appear in Lucy's eyes as paladin and parfit gentill knight, was streaked with black and brown after having ridden and walked through the charred herbage of the burnt plains still smoking with their dry-season bush fires--"You, sir, would like a rest and a wash and a meal. Shall I show you your quarters?..."

When the little party met in conclave, how unreal the threat of war and violence seemed! The open square of the station was bathed in silver moonlight from a moon three-quarters full; there was the distant twanging of a native guitar played by some musical porter; a village dog sent up a complacent howl or two; a goat-sucker churred; a laugh came from the Big-geru's quarters.

John, not without a hope the Consul might be exaggerating their danger, said: "Brethren and Sister Jamblin, each of you shall speak in turn, but as I am regarded as your leader I will give my opinion first. I have decided that my wife shall leave with the Consul for the coast, perhaps even for England, unless she recovers her health and things quiet down. Cruelly hard as it is for me to part with her, I feel it is the right thing to do. As for me, it is also the right thing that I should stop here till all danger is over and my place can be taken by some one else. Sister Jamblin must go with Lucy." (Ann murmured she would do nothing of the kind.) "Yes, Ann; I must insist. Lucy could not possibly travel alone--it is not to be thought of...."

_Ann_: "Why, she can take Halima----"

"I say," continued John, wiping the perspiration from his heated face, "it is not to be thought of. As an unmarried woman, Ann, you could not remain here with us men----" (Ann: "Pooh, nonsense!") "Supposing we were really attacked by the Arabs and we men were killed, I dare not think what might be your fate! Brother Bayley, what do you say?"

_Bayley_: "Why, that I'll stay with you."

_Anderson_: "And I say the same. You've both spoken like jolly good Englishmen. And--er--let's trust in the Lord, brethren. _He'll_ see us through, He won't leave His servants in the lurch. To think of all the work we've put into this place and all the money what's been spent on it! What are we going to do with our trade goods if we cut and run? The Consul can't load himself up with them--and our ivory and gum copal..."

_Brentham_: "I might mention here I can only spare about twenty-five porters for the whole five of you. We must travel as lightly as possible, especially if the Stotts want help. They have young children, I believe."

_Anderson_: "Then I vote we stop. Let the women go. It wouldn't be right to expose them to the risk.... Ann, what do you say?"

_Ann_: "I say this. Let Sister Baines go to the coast. She's always ailing and would only be a drag on us if we were hard-pressed. But for my part I stay with the men, at any rate till things have calmed down. _I'm_ not afraid. I'll soon learn to handle a rifle, and I'm pretty good at dressing wounds. And there's my class of girls. It'd pretty nigh break my heart if I went away and they came to grief after all that training I've given them--to make them good wives some day."

_John_ (shortly and decidedly): "You can't remain. I've already told you why. In this matter you must bow to my authority. Lucy in any case is too ill to stay here--under these circumstances--and it is common humanity that you should not let her travel alone to the coast. When our anxiety is over, you and she can come back...." (Ann: "Thank you for nothing!") "Well, sir, you shall know our definite decision in the morning. Meantime you must be tired, very tired indeed. We thank you heartily for coming to our assistance. I'm sure you'd like now to retire." (Brentham withdraws.) "Brethren, before we separate let us put our case before God, that He may guide us aright...."

The next morning the decisive answer tendered to the Consul was that the men would remain and defend their station. Sisters Baines and Jamblin should return to the coast with Consul Brentham.

Lucy forgot all about her anaemia and weak back and tendency to dizziness in an excited packing up of necessaries for the journey. She would not have to take with her more than her clothes and a few invalid's provisions and appliances. She felt terribly elated, wildly happy at times. No thought of danger entered her head--how could it, with Roger as escort? At the same time, the sight of poor John's silent grief--too deep for words--smote her with reproachfulness; and Ann's scornful observation of her moments of sparkling gaiety seemed sinister.

The situation was eased by Brentham taking John away for three hours to confer with Chief Mbogo and his counsellors. Mbogo was sure he could drive off any number of Arabs or Wangwana if they came to attack his villages or the Mission Station. He would send out word to the Masai. The Masai were now his friends through the peace-making of the missionaries: they hated the Arabs and the "coast people," and said they would side with the Whites. At the same time he accepted gratefully Brentham's present of ten Snider rifles and two loads of ammunition. Another ten rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition were added to the armoury of the Mission Station, as well as two revolvers, one of which Ann took over, for her own defence on the road or that of her "Big-geru."

Brentham also tendered some expert advice to the Chief on the subject of entrenchments round his stronghold. The Mission Station already possessed a pretty strong stockade and a moat outside it. A few years previously attacks from any quarter might be expected--Muhammadan slave-traders, impulsive Masai, thievish Wagogo. If the first rush could be checked the attack was seldom persisted in.

The Consul's _safari_ as it passed down the western slopes of the Ulunga Hills[#] must have looked quite imposing to the natives who watched its departure behind their dracaena and euphorbia hedges. First marched Brentham himself with a stout staff and with his gun-carrier at his heels. Then came the caravan headman and guide, the Mwinyi-mpara or Kiongozi, as he was styled. He carried a small British ensign and was followed by twenty-five armed porters with Brentham's personal loads, each, however, with a Snider rifle and a neat uniform of cotton vest and breeches. Next followed Ann Jamblin, riding astride the Consul's Maskat donkey, every now and then glancing back on her fifteen Amazon porters, the pick of her Big-geru class who carried their mistress's effects in bundles on their woolly heads. Behind them was Lucy in her machila, its long pole borne on the shoulders of two strapping Walunga, with a relief crew behind of four other men of fine musculature. After that followed about fifty porters poising on their heads the heavier baggage--bundles of tents, bedding, water-tight tin boxes, bags of rice, bales of cloth, boxes of beads, cases of ammunition, cooking implements. Trotting by the side of this long file of men were two milch goats, bleating and baaing, but thoroughly enjoying the journey; they were intended to provide milk for the ladies' tea. One of the two was a special pet of Lucy's. To look after the goats was a little naked Mgogo boy--a released slave--who ran and frolicked with them, and kept the porters amused by his impudent mimicry of the white people. Lastly in the rear of the caravan was a guard of ten gunmen without loads to embarrass their quick movements.

[#] Ulunga was the southern portion of a country called "Ngulu" or "Nguru."

Brentham and his charges were bound for the Stotts' station of Burungi, three or four days' journey--say, fifty miles--to the west. Lucy felt already many degrees better in health, though she thought it only decent to conceal her returning vigour and new-found animation. The picnic meals by the road side stimulated her appetite; her eye took pleasure in the changes of scenery, the new panoramas of plain and wilderness that unfolded themselves as she was swayingly borne along. Ann seemed sombre and preoccupied, as though noting land-marks for after recognition. Occasionally she pointed to this and that feature in the landscape and asked her Big-geru for its native name.

The very hot weather which closes the dry season made itself felt, so that the start from Hangodi had been begun in the early morning twilight, and each succeeding morning they took to the road at 5.30. They jogged along, with an occasional five minutes', rest, till half-past ten or until about that time they had found a stream valley or a water hole which contained water not too bad for cooking purposes. Then the caravan halted for the day in such shade as might be found, and the march was not resumed till 5 p.m.

Owing to the brilliancy of the moonlight it might be continued well into the night. During the long mid-day halt, the Goanese cook, aided by Halima and several porters and Brentham's Swahili butler, would prepare really very creditable little meals, and after eating the travellers would lie on unfolded deck chairs in some piece of shade where the hard ground had been swept clear of snakes, insects or scorpions. Brentham, if the heat were not too scorching, might wander with a shot-gun near by to try for the chance of a guinea-fowl or francolin or tiny antelope.

At four o'clock they had tea with goat's milk; and at five resumed their journey. The tents were pitched by moonlight and the beds made by the light of a candle lantern. Toilet processes were very summary; there was all too little water to wash in and the travellers must just sleep in their clothes and put any ideas of effective ablutions out of their heads till they reached the water supply at the Stotts' station. The night camp was hastily surrounded by a thorn hedge cut from the acacia trees, and big fires were lighted to keep off lions and hyenas. Blacks and whites had to sleep in close proximity and the treasured goats and donkey in the middle of the circle of loads.

The country they marched over--a northward extension of the "Mkunda mkali" or "Bitter waste"--was at first steppe-like, then rocky and rising in a series of escarpments. Almost its only trees seemed to be flat-topped acacias, without leafage at this season, glistening in the blazing sun and studded with long white thorns. The thin grass was mostly burnt; nevertheless it was frequented by much game, and the land was apparently devoid of human inhabitants. Brentham, always obsessed by the fear of food scarcity, but hardly liking to absent himself from the line of march and his following caravan, started each morning a few minutes ahead of the rest and walked in advance as a pioneer, with his gun-carrier at his elbow. In this way he sometimes brought down, close to the path, an inquisitive Grant's gazelle or hartebeest; or a zebra out of the many herds which closed up to espy the distant concourse of men and then dissolved into a cloud of dust at the report of the gun. Even at this lean season of the year the male zebras were in good condition. Their yellow fat and juicy, sickly-sweet flesh delighted the hungry porters.

On the early morning of the fourth day, the expedition passed a few parched native plantations and one or two burnt huts and, as the sun rose, marched into the irregular circle of the Stott station, across a half-dry water-course, and found no human being to greet it. Silence and partially burnt buildings of clay and thatch, torn paper, vultures on the scorched trees, broken crockery, scraps of cloth, one or two pools of dried blood, empty cartridge-cases, and the torn sacking and splintered boards of packing-cases.

"This is pretty ghastly, Miss Jamblin," said Brentham, returning to the hastily-cleaned camp amid the ruins of the Mission Station.

Lucy, feeling she could do nothing to help and had better not look at the caked patches of dried blood which the porters were removing, had withdrawn herself to a folding chair placed by Halima under the thin shade of a fire-scorched tree. Ann was examining the vestiges of the Stott property which the looters had left behind: school books and primers in the Swahili language, empty ink-pots, broken slates, enamelled iron plates and some substantial tables of native timber, too heavy for either the fugitives or their enemies to carry away. Ann's white solar "topi" and white dress were already smudged and sooted from the burnt wood and thatch.

"Ghastly, isn't it!" he went on. "I've just returned from a reconnaissance in which we rounded up three Masai youths--not warriors but the hulking boys that attend on the spearmen. Two men in my _safari_ understand Masai and they are now trying to make out the story these boys tell. They evidently deny emphatically that the Stotts were killed. They keep pointing to the north-west as the direction in which they have gone, and say every now and then 'Irangi.' My interpreters infer that this place was attacked about a week ago by a party of Ruga-ruga coming from the Nyaturu country and travelling towards the coast. They besieged the station, and killed some of the Mission boys, but the Stotts apparently were not hurt. They defended themselves for some time, till a party of Masai came to their relief, and then the Ruga-ruga and 'black' Arabs were beaten off. Nevertheless the Stotts left the station afterwards and went away to the north-west with the Masai escorting them.... I want to see if I get on their tracks or if I can find any real natives who saw the attack.... You seem to have a head on your shoulders ... and an influence over the natives. I'll leave all but five of the men here under your orders. Already they're at work reconstructing the 'boma.' I propose skirmishing around and finding out also if the Arabs and Ruga-ruga are still in the neighbourhood. I'll be back before dark...."