CHAPTER V--A FRIEND IN NEED

On the previous evening, when the day's work on the plantation was over and the workers had returned to their homes, a young negro left the large dwelling which he shared with a number of other unmarried men, and betook himself to the hut where Mirambo was supping with his family.

"Have you eaten already, Mwesa?" asked the old hunter.

"No. I am not hungry. He has not come back."

The lad's eyes were wide with anxiety. No one could have failed to notice how strongly he resembled Mushota, the slightly older lad squatting by his father's side.

"Has the Leopard come back?"

"He came back at midday. The Antelope will never come back."

"Why so, Mwesa?"

"There has been whipping to-day."

Mirambo's face clouded. There had been no whipping since the Antelope, as Tom Willoughby was known among the negroes, had come to the plantation. The Leopard was their name for Reinecke. The negro is very shrewd, and it had not needed certain information brought by Mwesa to make the people connect the cessation of corporal punishment with the presence of the young stranger. That information, however, given first to Mirambo, had spread through the whole community, and was talked of freely among themselves. But it had never reached the ears of the Arab overseers: oppression is always met by secrecy. Neither they nor Reinecke knew that the young negro who had marched from Bismarckburg among the porters, and had remained a willing worker on the plantation, was not the chance recruit he had seemed to be. The stowaway of the _Hedwig von Wissmann_ had come of set purpose; and when Reinecke sarcastically asked Tom whether he supposed his attractions accounted for the boy's staying on, he had unwittingly hit upon the truth. Mwesa had stayed as a starved and beaten dog will stay with one who has been kind to him.

Quite unaware of the interest he had excited among these simple negroes, Tom had been watched, all his movements commented on, from day to day. Whether by observation or by instinct the negroes knew that there was some intimate connection, obscure to them, between him and their taskmaster. They judged that the young Englishman was an object of respect or fear to the German, for Mwesa had told them that he was English and that the English did not whip their workers, except perhaps in punishment for crime. The Leopard had some reason for drawing in his claws.

Mwesa, like others, had seen the Englishman start, unattended, with his gun. He had done so before: those who saw him go marked the fact as they marked all that he did, but thought no more about it--except Mwesa, who watched all day for his hero's return. He had noticed, moreover, the going and the coming of Reinecke, also with his gun; and he had been troubled when the German returned alone, and when at sunset the Englishman was still absent.

"The Leopard has killed," said Mirambo after an interval of gloomy silence.

Mwesa burst into tears.

When he left the hut later, after eating a bowl of manioc, he carried a long sharp knife. Stealing along behind the huts, he made his way in the darkness to a remote spot, climbed up into a tree, and disappeared. Half an hour later he crept back to Mirambo's hut, restored the knife, which the man would have to account for next day, and then returned to his own lodging, and slipped in unperceived by his fellow inmates. His exit was prepared, but no negro travels willingly by night.

Next day, at the time when the negroes had their midday meal, he was about to make his escape from a place no longer endurable to him, when he caught sight of Reinecke leaving by the gate, again unattended. Mwesa looked around; no one else was in sight. He shinned up the tree he had climbed the night before. A few minutes later he was running like a wild animal through the scrub outside the fence. He posted himself among the trees at a spot where he could not fail to see Reinecke as he left the gate. When the German had passed, the negro followed him with the stealth of one come of a long line of hunters, tracking him over the course he had pursued on the previous day, without revealing himself by so much as a rustle among the leaves or the crack of a fallen twig.

As Reinecke approached the pit, no guardian spirit told him of the watcher whose eager face was looking at him out of a frame of green foliage, whose keen ears pricked up as he heard his master speaking to some one below him. When the German, his eyes alight with malign triumph, turned to retrace his steps there was nothing to show that he had been found out; the face had disappeared. Nor could Reinecke suspect that he was dogged back to the plantation, and that when the gate had closed upon him, a negro lad, lithe as a young antelope, bounded back to the pit, and peered anxiously into the depths.

Tom had relapsed into a state of half-consciousness. He was roused by a voice, and looking up, saw a black shiny face gazing down upon him. Two rows of white teeth parted, two big eyes danced with delight when they saw the white man glance upward.

"Sah, sah!" called the voice.

"Who are you?" Tom murmured faintly.

"Me Mwesa, sah; me come back bimeby, you see."

The lad ran back into the forest. Tom lay as in a dream. Who was this negro that spoke negro's English, and had called him "sah"? He had never heard any of Reinecke's slaves use English, yet what negro in these parts could be other than one of Reinecke's slaves? Where had the boy gone? What was he going to do? Tom felt almost too weak and listless even to hope.

After what seemed a very long time the negro came back, carrying a long green rope which he had plaited from strands of creepers. His face beamed with excitement and joy. Making one end of the rope fast to a sapling that grew near the edge of the pit, he threw the other end down and laughed when he saw that a long coil lay at the bottom. Then he swarmed down until he stood over Tom, and exclaimed:

"Sah climb; all right now."

"Who are you?" Tom asked again.

"Me Mwesa. No talk now: talk bimeby. Dis bad place."

But climbing was easier said than done. Tom was amazed to find how weak he was after only twenty-four hours' confinement in the pit. "Have I so little staying power?" he thought. But twenty-four hours in heat and squalor, without food or water, with a wounded leg and a sprained ankle, and a mind racked with anxiety and foreboding, would have put a tax on the strongest.

He found himself unable to climb. Whereupon Mwesa knotted the rope about his waist, swarmed up the rope again, and hauled until sweat poured from his body. As soon as Tom was safely over the brink, the lad let himself down once more into the pit, and returned with Tom's rifle and a couple of the sharpened stakes.

"Come 'long, sah," he said: "me find place."

Tom allowed himself to be helped along, asking no questions, content for the present to have regained freedom after the horrors of the past twenty-four hours. Mwesa led him along the old native track, in the opposite direction from the plantation. Presently they came to a brook tumbling over rocks. Here he bathed his aching limbs and drank deep draughts.

"Where are you taking me?" he asked.

"No savvy, sah: all right bimeby," replied the boy.

They started again. Mwesa kept carefully to the track, tracing it unerringly even where it was almost obliterated. The forest was thick all round, and Tom, at another time, might have felt uneasy at this apparently aimless wandering. Now, however, one way was as good as another, so long as it did not lead back to the plantation.

Mwesa had no doubt guessed that the track would sooner or later lead to a clearing. After more than an hour's painful walk, Tom found himself at the edge of what had once been an open space, but was now an expanse covered with scrub and forest trees of recent growth.

"Stay dis place, sah," said the negro.

Tom was ready to stay anywhere. He sank down on the ground, and lay, resting and watching the further proceedings of his rescuer. The lad cut down a number of young pliable branches, trimmed them to the same length, and stuck them into the ground in a circle, at equal intervals apart, bending them at the top until all met. Then he wound long grasses and tendrils of creepers in and out around the whole circumference, until in a surprisingly short space of time he had fashioned a rough and ready circular hut at the corner of the clearing, which was almost completely hidden by rank growths of vegetation. He smiled with pride in his handiwork when he invited Tom to enter.

"Come back bimeby," he cried, and darted away into the forest. When he returned he brought a wild gourd full of water and a handful of berries.

"No can get nuffin else," he said deprecatingly.

"They will do very well," said Tom, who indeed could have eaten sawdust after his long fast. "Now tell me who you are, and how you found me, and why you are helping me."

The smile that spread over the lad's face awoke in Tom a dormant memory. Surely this was the boy who had rushed so eagerly to pick up his match-box a day or two after he had reached the plantation.

"Sah sabe Mwesa, Mwesa sabe sah," said the negro, happily.

"Save! What do you mean?"

"On boat, sah: German man kick, say frow me in water: sah pay cash, all right all same."

"Oh!" exclaimed Tom, feeling a touch of embarrassment. That little unconsidered act of kindness had surely not won such devotion as to bring the boy into slavery for his sake? "Tell me about yourself," he said.

The negro's story, told in his strange English, took a long time in the telling, so roundabout was the course of the narrative, so much broken by explanations and cumbered by trifling details. But the gist of it, as understood by Tom, was as follows--

Mwesa was the son of Miluma, once a notable chief of the Wahehe, and one of those who had sustained for a long time the resistance of his people to the Germans. At length he had fallen into the enemy's hands, and had been among the first batch of labourers who had cleared the ground for Reinecke's plantation. Miluma's wife and two of his children had died under their hardships, and the chief, left with Mwesa alone, had fled with the boy, and, more lucky than other negroes, had neither been recaptured nor killed in the forest. He had fallen in with an English trader, with whom he had taken service, accompanying him in his journeys through the country of the Great Lakes, and living at other times among his native household at Zanzibar. Mwesa, only a few years old at the period of the escape, had at first remained in Zanzibar during his father's absence, but at the age of twelve he, too, had travelled with the Englishman's caravan, and had picked up a smattering of English as well as of the dialects of the tribes through whose countries he had passed.

Then his father died, the Englishman returned to Europe, and Mwesa, now seventeen, was left alone in the world. Having a little money in his possession, he bethought him of his uncle Mirambo, whose large family had prevented him from escaping at the same time as Miluma, and of whom his father had often spoken. He would return to the plantation, see if his uncle were yet alive, and perhaps help him, or any of his family who were still living, to escape with him to British territory. He took passage in a dhow that was sailing down the lake, but the vessel had been blown ashore, and the shipwrecked crew and passengers robbed of all they possessed by predatory natives. Mwesa and one other had got away, and after an adventurous journey had arrived at Ujiji. Learning there that a steamer was expected at Kigoma, Mwesa had made his way to the port and smuggled himself on board.

On arriving at Bismarckburg he had found that the young Englishman who had befriended him on board the vessel was going to the plantation which was his own goal, and had at once sought employment among the porters. It seemed to him that the presence of an Englishman was a good augury for the success of his mission. He had remained at the plantation, always on the watch; and it was not long before he suspected that Reinecke had a grudge against his benefactor. Slight signs that might have escaped the notice of anybody who had not a personal interest in the Englishman had betrayed to him and to Mirambo the real feelings of the German; and Mwesa had now a double motive: the rescue of his uncle and the care of the white man. For the sake of the latter uncle and nephew had concealed their relationship, awaiting the day when, as they expected, the Englishman would leave. On that day they, too, would go. But the crisis had come in an unforeseen manner. The disappearance of the Englishman and Reinecke's strange movements had intensified their suspicions, and Mwesa had stolen out to discover what the German had done with his guest.

Tom thanked the boy warmly for what he had done for him. He was a good deal troubled in mind, and passed many hours of the night in that grass hut in anxious meditation on his position. Mwesa had rescued him from a lingering death, but to what end? If it was true, as Reinecke had said, that Britain was at war with Germany, that already a German expedition against Rhodesia was in preparation, the immediate future was very black. He dared not go to Bismarckburg; the nearest British territory was forty or fifty miles away; how was it possible to accomplish so long a journey through difficult country and hostile people? At present, indeed, his injuries precluded even a much shorter journey. Until he should have fully recovered he must remain in hiding. How was he to subsist? There was game in the forest, no doubt plenty of vegetable food in the shape of berries and nuts, though only a native could distinguish the edible from the poisonous. Mwesa would help him--but Mwesa was himself a complication. Tom felt that, the boy having done so much for him, he was bound to consider the boy, and Mirambo; his lot seemed to be knit with theirs. It would not be just to appropriate Mwesa, and leave his relatives in the slavery from which the boy had come to deliver them. Yet how helpless he was to do anything either for them or for himself!

He fell asleep with these problems all unsolved. When he awoke the boy was gone. Tom supposed that he was seeking food, but as time slipped away and Mwesa did not return he grew uneasy. Then, however, common sense asserted itself. The boy who had already dared so much, who had built him a hut and brought him food, would not desert him. There must be some good reason for his absence.

A little after mid-day Mwesa came back, looking more pleased with himself than ever. A rabbit dangled from his waist; slung over one shoulder was a native grass bag stuffed with cassava; in one hand he carried an axe, in the other a sporting rifle, which Tom recognised as the property of Reinecke. Mwesa threw his load down, and emptying his bag, revealed, under the cassava roots, a number of cartridges. He chuckled with delight.

"You have been back to the plantation?" said Tom.

"Yes, sah: me go back; nobody see."

He went on to explain that there were strange doings at the plantation. Reinecke had called the negroes about him, and told them that war had broken out between England and Germany; that the Germans were going to seize all the English lands in Africa; that he himself was a great officer in the German army, and had been ordered to turn every able-bodied man into a soldier. The gathering of the crops being finished, such work as was necessary on the plantation must be done by the women and the older men. He was going to Bismarckburg to arrange for supplies of arms. During his absence the overseers would exercise the men.

Taking advantage of the excitement that followed this announcement, Mwesa had managed to possess himself of the articles with which he had come laden.

"Me now sah him boy," he said gleefully.

Tom looked at him with a ruminating eye. It was well to have a companion in this forest solitude, and he felt instinctively that Mwesa's fidelity might be relied on. But was he entitled to involve the boy in his own misfortunes, or to separate him from his new-found relatives? He reflected that the boy would be useful to him in helping him to find his way into British territory; and when Mwesa emphatically assured him that he was determined not to go back to the plantation, or to be drilled to fight against the English, he made up his mind to accept the service thus volunteered.

"Very well, Mwesa," he said, "you are my boy. Whatever comes, we will share it."

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 passed 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 shores, 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 unassisted 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 amass 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 passed 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 thorny 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!"