CHAPTER XI--TOM'S NEW ALLIES

The more Tom thought over the probabilities of the case, the less likely it appeared to him that the Germans, if engaged in serious operations on the frontier, would spare a force for dealing immediately with mutineers who might be rounded up at leisure. At the same time the situation was so uncertain that he could not afford to neglect the opportunity of preparing for a possible attack. It was equally important that he should get timely notice of the enemy's approach, and that could be secured only by starting an efficient system of scouting. As soon as he had dealt with the askaris, therefore, he got Mirambo to choose a dozen active and trustworthy young men, and arranged that they should go out in parties of six on alternate days, to reconnoitre as much ground south of the nullah as they could cover between dawn and dark. He could not yet entrust them with rifles uncontrolled: they had no other arms than the agricultural implements; but while the first six were absent, the second could fashion wooden spears which would suffice for protection against wild animals. There were no villages in the immediate neighbourhood of the nullah, or between that and the plantation, so that collisions with hostile tribes were scarcely to be feared.

Tom then passed to the consideration of the problem of the camp. Accompanied by Mirambo and Mwesa he explored the whole length or the nullah between the bend and the lake, a distance of perhaps half a mile. The width varied a good deal; the sides were almost perpendicular; and the stream, being the outflow from an upland lake, descended in a series of cascades. At present there was little volume of water; but in a couple of months, with the opening of the rainy season, the level of the lake would rise, and what was now a trickling rivulet might become a raging torrent. Tom hoped that by that time his occupation of the nullah would be at an end. Preparing for the worst, however, he came to the conclusion that the ground on either side of the stream would be an insecure camping-place, and decided to plant his temporary village around the spot where he and Mwesa had found a refuge a few days before. It was in the heart of a wood, where the nullah broadened out to more than three times its average width, and was defended on the northern side by the lake. The building of huts would take a considerable time, because the wood must be cleared of beasts, and the able-bodied men must be employed in completing the defences lower down the nullah; but certain parts of the work could be done by the younger women and the elder children.

While some of the people were engaged in preparing this _ex tempore_ village, Tom set others to strengthen the barricade across the nullah. As he watched them, it occurred to him that the position would gain in security if he used the stream to form a moat, and he at once started two gangs digging at the extreme ends of the breastwork, a foot or two in front of it. At the close of the next day the moat was finished--a ditch six feet broad by four deep, extending right across the nullah except where the stream flowed in the centre. A man might easily leap over it, but his leap would land him amid the branches of the trees. It would be useful in checking a rush, especially if it were unnoticed until the enemy were actually upon it; and when, on its farther side, a number of low bushes and clumps of long grass had been planted, Tom found by experiment that the water was not seen until he came within half a dozen yards of it.

The defences of the slopes right and left then engaged Tom's attention. There were not enough trees on the spot to form effective barricades, and the only means of checking the enemy if they scaled the low heights was to dig trenches. The labour would be long and toilsome, for the ground must first be cleared of the brushwood; but in no other way could the enemy be prevented from swarming down into the nullah. At the end of a week the western and eastern slopes, for about thirty yards from the end of the nullah, were each scored with a deep trench, fortified with a parapet constructed of the earth that had been removed.

A second line of defence might be necessary, and for this there was no better position than the bend of the nullah, nearly half a mile to the north. The sides being here steep, almost perpendicular, it was impossible to haul trees from the forest above for a breastwork like that at the entrance; so Tom had the bed of the nullah cleared of cover for a space of about two hundred yards, and a trench with a strong parapet carried from side to side.

The work was still unfinished when one day the scouts, for the first time, reported that they had sighted the enemy. About ten miles away they had seen a band of young natives marching towards Bismarckburg in charge of a German officer and a small party of askaris. It seemed clear that these negroes were recruits for the German forces, and Tom, relying on the scouts' statement that the askaris were few in number, decided to make an attempt to prevent the natives from being turned into what Captain Goltermann had called "black Germans."

The party, when sighted, was marching very slowly, following a native path that wound through dense bush, and crossed the track between the plantation and the nullah. Tom calculated that if he started at once he would arrive at a position where he might ambush the enemy just before they reached the road to Bismarckburg. With his untrained men he could not risk a stand-up fight; but he hoped that the advantage of surprise, if the patrol was really so small as the scouts declared, would enable him to achieve his end without fighting.

Selecting twenty of the men who had been with him in his little action in the forest, he led them out, with Mwesa, and followed rapidly on the heels of the scouts. In about an hour and a half they came to the spot he had fixed on, and while he posted the men in the bush on both sides of the track, he sent the scouts to worm their way eastward and watch for the enemy. The interval before they returned was long enough for the men and himself to regain breath. It was perhaps half an hour later when they came quietly through the brushwood with news that the enemy were in sight.

At the place where Tom had posted himself the track ran fairly straight for more than a hundred yards, and he was able to take stock of the party with which he had to deal while it was still distant. First came two unarmed natives, evidently guides; then a German non-commissioned officer; behind him two German privates, followed by a string of negroes. The tail of the party was out of sight.

Seeing how few were the armed men at the head of the column, Tom instantly resolved on a bold course. His own men were concealed among the bushes; they had their orders. He stepped out on to the track, accompanied only by Mwesa, just before the negro guides reached him. They halted in surprise, and looked round towards the German thirty yards behind.

"Tell them to come on, Mwesa," said Tom.

The boy called to them, and they at once hastened on. Tom spoke to them in German, but they evidently did not understand him. Meanwhile the German sergeant had quickened his step, and hearing German on the lips of the stranger, he approached unsuspiciously, halted, clicked his heels together, and waited, as a well-trained subordinate will, for his superior to address him.

"Halt your men, Sergeant," said Tom.

The sergeant started. Quicker-witted than the sergeant whom Tom had so easily disposed of at the plantation, he detected a foreign accent in the stranger's speech. Tom gave him no time to consider.

"Your life depends on your keeping cool," he went on quickly. "Don't make a sound. Keep your arms still and face me. The bush on both sides is lined with troops who will fire at the slightest hostile movement. Halt your men."

The sergeant hesitated for the fraction of a second, then called to the privates a few yards away to pass word along the column.

"They are halted," he said; "but there is something I don't understand here." He looked incredulously around him. "I don't know who you are, but if you are bluffing----"

"Let me convince you."

Tom parted a clump of thick bush on one side of the track, disclosing a negro kneeling, with his rifle pointed straight at the German. In a bush on the other side, nearly opposite, he showed another man. Moving half-a-dozen paces down the track he revealed yet another man, finger on trigger, to the astonished sergeant.

"Your position is quite hopeless, you see," Tom went on. "You had better surrender quietly. Give me your revolver."

The German threw a glance over his shoulder at the privates, standing at the head of the column of negroes.

"At once! Don't hesitate!" said Tom. "Your men will be shot down if they attempt resistance. Your revolver."

The man handed over the weapon sullenly.

"Now tell those men of yours to come forward one at a time and lay their rifles down on the track in front of me. Don't say another word."

The sergeant gave the order. The men, with a look of mingled curiosity and wonderment, advanced, laid down their rifles, and at Tom's command walked a few yards along the track, then halted.

"Mwesa, go and tell those natives to come past me, slowly, and then turn into the bush and wait. Tell them nothing else.... You have men at the rear?" he added to the sergeant.

"Yes."

"Who are they?"

"Askaris."

"How many?"

"Twenty."

"Then when they come up behind the negroes you will give them the same order as you gave your Germans. Stand here by me."

The negroes, all strong young men, defiled past Tom in silence, their eyes wide with anxiety and dread. He counted sixty. In their rear came the twenty askaris. One by one they laid down their rifles and passed on, looking with surprise at their officer's glowering face.

"That is all?" asked Tom.

"All."

"Then we will go. Give me your whistle."

The sergeant unslung the whistle from his shoulder. Tom blew a shrill note, and his men started out of the bush and lined up on the track. The German cursed when he saw that they were less in number than his own men; Tom felt that he would have writhed had he known that none of them was trained. At the present moment he was lost in wonderment at the fact of a young white man, in German territory but clearly not a German, having at his command negroes who were just as clearly not German askaris, but possessed German rifles.

The order of the march home was quickly arranged. Half Tom's men went ahead, carrying the captured rifles. They were followed by the liberated natives, who, imagining that they had only exchanged one servitude for another, trudged on in gloomy silence. Tom's motive in not dismissing them at once was to link them to the British cause by means of the impression which he hoped they would gain from his defensive measures at the nullah, and he knew that they would break away the moment they realised that they were free. Behind them marched the askaris, then five more of his riflemen escorting the German privates. He kept the sergeant by his side, and the rear was brought up by Mwesa and the rest of his men.

The capture of a German prisoner gave Tom an opportunity of learning something of the course of events on the frontier. He considered how best to open up the subject with the sergeant, and decided that perfect frankness would probably serve him best.

"You are naturally surprised, Sergeant," he said, "at finding an Englishman on your side of the border."

"An Englishman!" growled the sergeant. "I thought you were a Belgian."

"Indeed! Are you at war with Belgium too?"

"There is no Belgium. It belongs now to the Kaiser."

"Dear me! I understand that Paris has fallen: you have therefore France and Britain against you; but Belgium--did she break her neutrality?

"I don't know anything about that; but I do know that Belgium and half France are now in our hands; your Navy is defeated; and London will soon be at our mercy."

"You make me tremble! And what about Abercorn?"

The sergeant blinked.

"London is rather far away," Tom went on. "I am much more deeply interested at present in places nearer at hand. You were going to attack Abercorn, I understood. No doubt you took it as easily as your troops took Paris."

The German's frown relieved Tom of his anxiety. Smiling, he continued:

"Come now, Sergeant, you may as well tell the truth, you know. You have nothing to lose by it. You found Abercorn a harder nut than you expected, eh?"

"You seem to know a lot," said the German gloomily. "Did you come across from Rhodesia?"

"No: I came from Kigoma on the _Hedwig von Wissmann_."

"Ach!"

"What is the matter?"

"There are always misfortunes; we can't win everything."

"You don't mean to say----"

"I mean to say that the other Wissmann boat, the _Hermann von Wissmann_, allowed itself to be surprised at Sphinxhaven on Nyassa."

"And was captured? Really we must take that as a set-off against your defeat of our Navy--in the North Sea, I suppose. But to come back to Abercorn."

"You know as well as I do that we were beaten off. The English were four to one: what else could be expected?"

"I see! That explains why you have been ranging the country for recruits. But I understood that your forces in East Africa hopelessly outnumbered the British."

"So they do, but not everywhere. In the north we have cut the Uganda Railway, captured Mombasa and Nairobi, and are sweeping the English into the sea."

"Well, they'll be quite at home there! It's our native element, you know. These successes must console you for your failure at Abercorn: they'll lighten your captivity, Sergeant."

"That is true," said the German, blind to irony. "And I shall not be your prisoner long."

"I hope not, I'm sure."

"It was a trick. You would never have beaten me in fair fight; and the English, when they win at all, only win by trickery. Everybody knows that."

"Trickery, and superior numbers, as at Abercorn! Don't you think the Kaiser had better throw up the sponge, then? It would save trouble."

The sergeant was so much horrified by the suggestion that he launched out into a violent denunciation of England and all things English, and painted a dismal picture of the dismembered British Empire. Tom let him run on: he had heard something like it in Germany, and had taken it then, as he took it now, as the raving of impotent envy. He would probably have listened to the German with less serenity had he known to what lengths the pitiless logic of militarism had carried the Kaiser's helots on the stricken fields of Europe.

They were welcomed at the nullah with shouts of joy by the people, who had thronged behind the barricade and on the slopes. Astonishment sat on the faces of the Germans when they were admitted by the single gateway and marched up the nullah, past the trench, to the village growing by the lake.

"You keep us here, with niggers?" said the sergeant.

"Yes: until I have the pleasure of escorting you to Abercorn," replied Tom. "You are white men: I don't want to have to tie you up: but I shall do so unless you give me your word not to attempt to escape."

To avoid the ignominy of being kept in bonds the Germans gave their parole readily enough. Tom arranged with Moses for their rations, then returned to the rescued negroes whom he had left under guard lower down. They, meanwhile, had been regaled with stories, freely embroidered, of what the m'sungu had done, and when he appeared among them their downcast expression had been replaced by looks of hope. He learnt from Mwesa that they had been collected from several villages to the eastward, near Lake Rukwa, some fifteen miles away. Mwesa brought to him a young negro whom he introduced as the son of M'setu, the chief of the largest of these villages.

"Tell them they can all go home," said Tom. "This young man may take his father a message from me. The Germans will no doubt raid the villages again for men. It is not likely I shall be able to help them a second time. M'setu, then, had better march away with all his people into British territory and remain there until the war is over."

The negroes laughed, leapt, embraced one another when they heard that they were free. Without delay they poured out through the gate and flocked away towards the east. Not even the chief's son stayed to thank their rescuer. But the incident had a strange sequel two days afterwards. About midday one of the scouts came running back to report that a large body of spearmen, led by a great chief, was marching through the forest in the direction of the nullah. They were not on a warlike expedition, for behind the chief three men led each a goat, which could only be intended as peace-offerings.

"Go and see who they are, Mwesa," said Tom. "They are not to come across the clearing until I know what they want."

Presently Mwesa returned, smiling with even more enjoyment than usual.

"Him M'setu, sah," he said: "come for talk with sah."

"Very well. Bring him along; he can come in with six of his men: the rest remain outside."

Mwesa ran back into the forest, and soon reappeared at the side of a powerful negro of middle age. A throng of negroes about a hundred strong followed him to the edge of the clearing. There at his order they squatted in a long line, and the chief himself, accompanied by his son and five other men--three of whom led milk-white goats bleating dolefully--marched at Mwesa's heels towards the gate, where Tom stood waiting.

"Him M'setu, sah," said Mwesa, by way of introduction.

Tom at once stepped forward and grasped the chief by the hand, an act which brought a smile of pleasure to the face of his six companions and a shout from the men watching intently two hundred yards away.

M'setu began to speak. After one sentence he paused, looking to Mwesa to interpret.

"Him say sah him fader and mudder," said Mwesa.

Tom acknowledged the compliment with a smile.

The chief began again, inquiring after Tom's health, the health of his father, mother, wife, children, cattle, and so on, until Tom felt rather overwhelmed by his politeness. By and by he came to business.

"Him say berry glad sah him good send back men all same. Him say bring goats for sah him pot, berry nice goats. Him say come alonga sah: what for? sah kill all dem Wadaki, so M'setu him came alonga sah kill Wadaki all same."

"You mean that I am to kill all the Germans, and he will come and help?"

"Dat just what M'setu say," said Mwesa, delighted that his master had understood him so well.

"Well, you must tell him that that's not my job. I couldn't rid the country of Germans if I tried, but the British will come across the border by and by and eat them all up. Tell him that."

M'setu's response was very long-winded. The gist of it was that he expected another recruiting visit from the Germans. He had heard that they had been thrown back across the border by the British, and was therefore not inclined to go to the trouble of removing all his people from their villages, but would rather stay and defend himself, with the assistance of the m'sungu, who had already rescued his young men.

Tom was a good deal perplexed how to deal with this ingenuous offer of an alliance. M'setu's warriors, armed only with spears, would be wiped out by a single machine-gun, and Tom could do nothing to help them: outside his nullah he would be as much at the Germans' mercy as they. On the other hand, the chief's men, familiar with a wider stretch of country than the Wahehe from the plantation, could do inestimable service as scouts, and might give him early warning of movements of which otherwise he would be unaware. Through Mwesa he explained as clearly as he could the difficulties of the situation, and in the upshot made an arrangement with M'setu by which the chief guaranteed to provide a company of skilled scouts, and Tom in his turn promised to lend assistance to M'setu if he was threatened, and in the last resort to give his people shelter in the nullah.

M'setu departed, well satisfied with the result of his interview.

"What time sah eat goats?" asked Mwesa.

"Eat them! I'm not going to eat them," said Tom. "Take them up to Moses and tell him to look after them. We'll have some milk by and by."