Tom Willoughby's Scouts: A Story of the War in German East Africa
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CHAPTER XIII--HUNTED
Major von Rudenheim's surmise that "the cub" had been busy was correct:Tom had never before been so fully occupied, and, as he afterwardsconfessed, he had never been happier in his life.
The northern end of the nullah had now the appearance of a prosperousnative village. Tom had felt certain misgivings on the score ofcleanliness and health; but he found that the Wahehe, like all tribesthat inhabit inland and mountainous districts, away from the corruptinginfluences of the coast, were tidy and orderly, and under the authorityof their old chief, Mirambo, the people settled down to a comfortableexistence. The one drawback was the limited range of movement; but evenin this respect the people were little worse off than they had been onthe plantation, and their rooted belief that before long the Germanswould be utterly driven from the country gave them bright hopes for thefuture. Moreover, the women and children in a native village rarelystray far from their homes, and as for the men, they had movementenough.
To begin with, Tom organised a regular body of scouts, incorporatingsome of his own men with those furnished by his new ally, M'setu. Alwayskeeping in mind his alternative ultimate designs, either to trek intoBritish territory or to hold his ground until the British overran theborder, he determined, when the scouts became proficient, to patrol thewhole country between the nullah and the Neu Langenburg road. Thedefeat of the Germans at Abercorn was very heartening: clearly they werenot to have the easy conquest that Reinecke had apparently expected. Atthe same time, it was only too likely that their preparations were muchmore advanced than the British, and he could not hope that the Germanswould yield the largest and most precious of their colonial possessionswithout a bitter struggle. It was also certain that the enemy would atsome time or other make a serious effort to crush this mutiny; andwhile, in such a vast and well wooded country, he could not havecommanded every possible avenue of approach even with ten times as manymen as were available for scouting, he would at least make reasonablysure that any movement of the enemy on the main tracks should bereported to him.
At first he sent out one of the Wahehe with each of M'setu's men, andpractised them in watching the movements of small parties of M'setu'speople within a few miles of the nullah. Presently, in order to increasethe number of his fighting-men, he accustomed M'setu's men to scoutalone. By degrees he extended their field of operations until at lengthhe had established a definite chain, or rather network, ofscouting-posts commanding the principal tracks from Bismarckburg, andespecially the main frontier road to Neu Langenburg. Within a month noenemy force or convoy could move along the frontier without Tom'shearing of it.
The reports were at first brought to him by runners, and reached himmany hours late. Could he not devise some means of saving time andexertion alike? He remembered having read, in a book of travels, howthe natives of the mountainous interior of New Guinea were accustomed toshout news from height to height. The hills to the south of his ownposition would lend themselves admirably to a similar system, and aftera few rather heart-breaking experiments he succeeded in teaching thenegroes to adopt this plan. Each prominent hill was given a name; theman stationed at any particular post had to shout the name to the next,and within a very few minutes Tom at the nullah learnt that a messagehad been dispatched by a scout perhaps forty miles away.
Meanwhile he practised the fighting-men in aiming and sighting and firediscipline, giving his commands by means of the whistle borrowed fromthe German sergeant. These exercises were performed, not only in thenullah, but on the ground cleared in front of the barricade and also inthe forest. His stock of ammunition would not allow of much targetpractice, and he ruefully owned that the greater part of the men couldnot be expected to become good marksmen. It was more profitable tospend time in giving them cohesion in simple field movements. Hedivided them into sections of sixteen, and got up sham fights in theforest: one party advancing, the other retiring. At first the men whosepart it was to retire refused to do so, and even came to blows with theattackers: why should they withdraw before men no better thanthemselves? But after a time they entered into the spirit of the game,and showed considerable aptitude.
Tom found the askaris useful in the course of his various exercises. Atfirst, when he practised his men in the nullah, the askaris looked onwith disdain, and roared with laughter at the mistakes made by thenegroes. But by degrees they grew interested; they commented amongthemselves on the contrast between the Englishman's patience and goodtemper and the rough treatment they had suffered at the hands of theirGerman drill sergeants. Tom, though he affected to disregard them, wasall the time keenly watching, and there came a moment when he suddenlyturned to them and asked for two volunteers to show the Wahehe thecorrect way of kneeling to take aim. As he had expected, they wereflattered; every man wished to serve as a model. For some days he didnot apply to them again, and noticed a certain restlessness anddisappointment among them. At length he allowed them to act regularlyas guides and markers, but did not admit them definitively to the ranksof his fighting-men until they came to him in a body and begged to betaken fully into his service. They were Sudanese, like the majority ofthe German native troops. Many of their people were fighting in theBritish ranks: they preferred his drill to the German; and they wereready to vow fidelity to him.
"What about pay?" asked Tom. "I have no money."
They replied that in the nullah they had no use for pay, but no doubt hewould pay them when he had the money--an English promise was good. Tomwas rather doubtful of the wisdom of trusting men who so suddenlychanged their allegiance, and he suspected that at the slightestset-back they would desert him. On the other hand, these trained menmight serve as good stiffening for his untried troops, and ultimately hedecided to incorporate them with the garrison of the nullah, but not toallow them to leave it until he had some clear proof of their loyalty.
As time went on, he became somewhat worried about two matters--theapproach of the rainy season, and the food supply. The foliage of allthe trees had turned red, a sure sign, according to Mwesa, that therains were at hand. The lake would fill, the stream would become muchswollen: would he be flooded out? What would be the effect of the dampupon his health and the health of the people? Hitherto there had beenno sickness except minor ailments, which he had treated with such drugsfrom Reinecke's stores as he knew the use of. Ague and malaria wereonly names to him, but they stood for something terrible--the moreterrible because unknown. He had a good stock of quinine, the greatstand-by, he understood, in tropical climates; he would watch for thefirst sign of fever, and then dose freely. Fortunately one of the Araboverseers had been accustomed to doctor the workers on the plantation,and this man was gratified by being appointed health officer to thecommunity.
The food question was an even greater difficulty, for while all mightnot be sick, all must be fed. The provisions brought from theplantation were running low: and though these had been supplemented bysmall animals trapped in the forest and by occasional gifts from M'setu,these sources were too precarious to be relied on. In order to ease thesituation, Tom at last made a habit of going into the forest for a day'shunting once a week, leaving Mirambo in charge of the nullah. M'setu'speople were excellent beaters and knew the likeliest places for game;the Wahehe were born hunters; but he could not afford to let them usehis ammunition indiscriminately, and when they accompanied him they werearmed only with spears. Everything depended on his own gun. In thecourse of these shooting expeditions he brought down several head ofeland, hartebeest, and rhinoceros, the last being a special favouritewith the people. The game was cut up and carried home by his own men andby M'setu's people, who were sufficiently paid for their services by thepresent of certain portions of each day's bag.
It was after one of these expeditions that Tom had had to takedisciplinary measures with Haroun. The rationing system, after a littletrouble, had worked well. Moses had proved himself to be thoroughlyhonest, and every one had his fair share. After a time Moses began tosuspec
t that some one was pilfering. Small quantities of foodmysteriously disappeared. A watch was kept; Tom called the peopletogether and warned them that any one who acted against the commonwelfare must be punished; but the thief was not detected until, madebold by success, he forgot caution, and was caught red-handed by Moses.On returning from a day's shooting Tom learnt that the culprit was theArab who had volunteered his services on the first day at the nullah.In such a man the crime could not be taken lightly, and Tom ordered theman half a dozen strokes of the whip.
A few days afterwards Haroun disappeared. The sentries on guard day andnight at the barricade declared that the Arab had not passed them. Thenullah was searched; no trace of him could be found. Some of the peoplereported that, after the whipping, he had sulkily held himself aloof,and used to wander alone by the shore of the lake. At length it wasgenerally believed that he had fallen victim to a crocodile, and hisfate was a fruitful topic of conversation among the Wahehe.
One day, accompanied by Mwesa and some two-score beaters and carriers,Tom set off to shoot. The rains had just begun, and Mirambo had toldhim that with the filling and overflowing of the streams animals wouldcertainly be found on the swamps thus created. He had usually goneeither north or east, as being least likely to encounter enemies inthose directions. On this occasion, however, he struck to the west, inorder to reach low-lying ground where, according to M'setu's huntsmen,at this season of the year game was plentiful.
A couple of hours' march through the forest brought him to an extensivehollow, covered only with scrub and tall grass, and already showingsigns of becoming the impassable swamp which would result from a fewweeks' rain. The beaters, marching quietly ahead, soon made signs thatthey had sighted game, and presently, through the grass, Tom saw thelong dark form of a rhinoceros placidly browsing. Stealing round toleeward, he gradually approached the animal until he was within easyrange, fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing his quarry fall at thefirst shot.
The report of his rifle had startled another beast that was wallowing ina pool near by. It rose, sniffed around, then made off with lumberingbut rapid gait across the hollow towards a belt of woodland on higherground. Tom hurried in pursuit with his beaters, leaving Mwesa to guardthe animal he had already shot.
The chase was a long one. The rhinoceros, before it recovered from itsalarm, plunged through a long stretch of forest and scrub, and was foundat last resting in a narrow glade bordered on the further side by tallbushes. Again Tom brought down the beast, this time at his second shot.The natives, with cries of delight, were rushing forward to skin anddismember it for transport when, without warning, there came from thebushes beyond the sharp crack of several rifles, bullets sang throughthe air, and two of the beaters fell. The rest bolted into the bush oneither side, and Tom, a little less precipitately, was about to followthem when he saw a number of German askaris emerge from cover opposite,with Reinecke at their head.
Reinecke's eyes were already gleaming with triumph. He shouted a wordor two which Tom could not catch, and then fired his revolver. In faceof odds, Tom had already started to make good his escape: but when heheard the German's bullet whistle past him, he snatched out hisrevolver, wheeled round, and fired. Reinecke flung up his arm, stoppedshort, and yelled to the askaris at his heels. Tom sprinted across thefew yards of open ground, dashed into the bush, and ran, at firstblindly, for he heard the askaris close behind: one or two of them wereshooting at random in the hope of hitting him as he ran.
He was fleet of foot, and guessed that he could easily outstrip theaskaris, laden with their service packs. The danger was that he mightlose his way in the forest. All his men had disappeared; they wouldprobably find their way back to the nullah without difficulty. It wasimportant, however, that he should not be long behind them, for if theyshould report that he was captured or killed, the people might be seizedwith panic, and all his work be overthrown. He had left the glade at adifferent point from that at which he had entered it, and so could notfollow the track made by his men. But fortune favoured him. He had notpushed his way far among the trees when he struck a game track, alongwhich, if the askaris also did not discover it, he could make stillswifter progress than they, hindered by the bush.
Some few minutes later, the track brought him to a small stream: it hadno doubt been trodden by animals in quest of water. He jumped into thestream, ran a short distance in the same direction as the current, thenmade a long jump into a clump of low shrubs on the right bank. Replacingas well as he could the disarranged vegetation, so as to give no clue tohis pursuers, he plunged once more into the bush, in the hope of comingby and by upon a cross track that would lead towards the nullah.