Never before had Tom been alone in the bush. On the few occasions when
he had gone shooting alone, during his sojourn in Reinecke's bungalow,
he had always followed well-defined tracks. Since then, Mwesa or
Mirambo or some other native had been with him. But now he had no
guide, and he was seized with a feeling of helplessness. Rain had begun
to fall, and the obscure sky could not be read for the points of the
compass. Brushwood grew to his knees; thorn bushes threw out tentacles
that caught at his clothes and tore his flesh. Dodging obstructions, he
sometimes found that he had only worsened his plight, and was forced to
tear a way for himself at the cost of bleeding hands. Rarely he came to
open spaces; then he quickened his pace, though his wet boots dragged
heavily upon his feet. Once, in crossing a grassy glade, he sank over
his ankles in morass, and swerved hastily into the bush again, to avoid
being engulfed.
Presently, stopping to rest, he thought he heard voices, and hoped that
they came from his own men. He dared not call, nor even move towards
them, until he was sure whether they were friends or foes. The voices
came nearer. At all costs he must learn who the speakers were, and he
sprang up into a leafy tree from which he might get a view of the
country around. Spying out cautiously through the foliage, he saw a band
of men pushing their way up a bush-covered slope not a hundred yards
from his perch. Through the heavy rain he could not at first
distinguish them; but as they approached he recognised the deserter,
Haroun, leading a couple of askaris. Behind them, out of the bush,
emerged Reinecke with his arm in a sling, a younger officer by his side,
and a line of askaris following in single file. He shrank back into the
tree, dreading lest they should pass immediately beneath him and some
sharp-eyed man discover him. But they topped the slope some distance
away and passed out of sight.
"I have come in the right direction," he thought. "They must be bound
for the nullah."
Waiting a little, to make sure that no more of the enemy were coming, he
slipped down from the tree, and with infinite caution followed in their
track. If this led indeed towards the nullah, he would presently be on
ground that he knew, and might circumvent them and arrive first. He
felt somewhat perplexed. The Arab Haroun had certainly betrayed him:
why, then, had Reinecke set out with no more than thirty or forty men?
Had Haroun so little respect for the defences of the nullah as to
imagine that they could be stormed by so small a force? Had Reinecke so
much contempt for his ability to train the negroes as to believe that
forty askaris were more than a match for three times their number as
well armed as themselves? He set his lips grimly: if such were their
ideas, he would promise them a rough disillusionment.
For some time he followed them up, always with the greatest caution. At
length the sound of voices ahead told him that they had halted. He
stopped at once. The rain had almost ceased. In a few seconds he heard
a rustling and the squelching of boots not far in front of him, and he
dived into the bush at the side of the track and watched. Two askaris
tramped past him, in the direction from which they had come. They walked
unconcernedly: no suspicion of his presence had brought them back.
What, then, was their errand?
Reinecke's party was still halted. Tom heard now and then the lower
tones of the Germans mingling with the high-pitched voices of the
askaris. What were they waiting for? After perhaps twenty minutes
voices came from the other direction. The two askaris reappeared,
followed by a string of native porters, some carrying what appeared to
be the material of a tent; others, boxes and bales of provisions;
others, lumps of freshly killed meat. The explanation of the delay
flashed upon Tom. The game he had killed had been cut up; the two
askaris had been sent back to hasten the march of the porters. "I might
have been nabbed," Tom thought.
When the porters joined the waiting askaris, a German voice gave the
order to march. After a short interval Tom emerged from his place of
concealment and followed. On reaching the spot on which they had
halted, he found that it was skirted by a track evidently made not long
before--almost certainly the path by which his men had come from the
nullah that morning. To his surprise, Reinecke and his party, instead of
pursuing this track, as they might have been expected to do if their
destination was the nullah, had swerved northward and marched through
the pathless scrub.
Tom was standing at the angle between the two tracks, hesitating whether
to follow the enemy or to take the shortest cut home, when a rustle
among the bush behind him caused him to face round quickly, revolver in
hand. His eyes fell not on an enemy, but on the ever-smiling
countenance of Mwesa.
"Savvy me find sah all right," said the boy, quietly.
"You saw Reinecke?" asked Tom.
Mwesa nodded.
"Haroun too, sah. Him no eat up: how him get away?"
"The sentries must have been napping, I suppose. But how did you come
to find me here?"
"Me hear shoot," he said. "Me run find sah: rhino no matter. Sah gone:
ebery one gone--all 'cept fellas what cut up nudder rhino. Ah! Mwesa
savvy all same. Me run back dis way: savvy sah come dis way bimeby."
Tom reflected that the boy's optimism had been justified by a lucky
accident.
"Where are the men?" he asked.
"No savvy, sah. 'Spect dey all run home quick."
"I hope so. Now, these Germans--I thought they were going to our
nullah, but it seems that they are not. What is their game? Any
suggestion, Mwesa?"
Mwesa did not understand the word, but he tried to look as if he did.
Tom, however, did not expect from him any explanation of Reinecke's
movements: he was trying to puzzle out one for himself. The sides of
the nullah were too precipitous to afford an entrance: and though the
enemy might do a little damage by firing from the top down into the
camp, that could easily be defeated by moving the people to well-covered
places where shots could not reach them. As a means of capturing the
position such a course was absurd. Yet Reinecke could hardly intend a
mere reconnoitring expedition: his men were equipped as for fighting,
and it appeared from the amount of baggage carried by the porters that
he expected to camp for at least one night.
Unable to guess at the German's design, Tom came to the conclusion that,
even at the cost of a certain uneasiness among his people, he had better
follow up the enemy, and see for himself the direction of their march:
that might throw some light on their object. With Mwesa he set off in
their tracks, keeping a good look-out ahead for laggards, and stopping
frequently to listen.
It was just after one o'clock. Tom was both tired and hungry. His
clothes were sodden, and the atmosphere was like that of a Turkish bath.
The track wound in and out through the scrub, and presently among forest
trees; and it had evidently been traversed before, for no one absolutely
strange to the country could have found so well the easiest passage
through the scrub.
After walking for nearly two hours, at so slow a pace that no more than
four miles could have been covered, Tom found that the track led through
the middle of a wooded ravine, which trended, as nearly as he could
judge, to the north-east. The ground sloped gradually upwards, and in
the distance Tom detected the march of the enemy by the swaying of the
bushes and tall grass through which they passed.
He advanced with still greater caution, and well it was that he did so,
for in a few minutes the path emerged into a narrow rocky defile, only
sparsely covered with vegetation, and here two askaris were posted as
sentries. A little beyond them the porters had laid down their loads.
Looking out from behind a screen of bushes, Tom saw the askaris and
their German officers marching ahead.
Avoiding the sentries by plunging into the bush that skirted the defile,
Tom and the negro lad hurried on after the enemy. Well screened by the
foliage, they could afford to quicken their pace until they overtook
them, and thenceforward kept pace with them. After about ten minutes
they discovered that the party had again halted. The men were sitting on
boulders and slabs of rock: the German lieutenant sat a little apart.
Reinecke and the Arab had disappeared.
Then Tom noticed that the defile seemed to end in the air, as if it had
arrived at the brink of a cliff. Creeping cautiously through the bush
above the narrow path, they came to the top of the rise and looked over.
It was not a cliff, as Tom had supposed; but a somewhat steep and rocky
slope, dotted here and there with patches of coarse scrub. Down this
slope two figures were moving: Haroun the Arab led, Reinecke was only a
few paces behind him.
When they came to the foot of the slope they halted, and talked somewhat
excitedly together. Haroun pointed forward and downward; Reinecke
stooped, looked over the edge of the slope, shook his head and
apparently flew into a rage. Thereupon the Arab went alone over the
brink, descended slowly, and passed out of the watchers' sight. Reinecke
sat down in a fissure, in the attitude of waiting.
Tom had observed these movements at first with nothing more than a
certain impersonal curiosity; but a suspicion of their meaning began to
dawn when Haroun disappeared. The air was misty; from the spot where he
crouched nothing was visible beyond the margin of the slope except the
grey sky. But Reinecke, where he sat, evidently saw something more.
Every now and again he bent over, following the progress of the Arab,
and also, as it appeared, taking much interest in the scene below.
"We are above the nullah," thought Tom. "That fellow Haroun must have
discovered a way out and in. Our position is to be turned. My word!"
Some twenty minutes passed. Haroun's head reappeared at the edge of the
slope. He spoke to Reinecke volubly, using his hands in free gestures,
as though demonstrating a point. The German appeared to be convinced.
He got up, stepped over the edge with the aid of the Arab's hand, and
followed the man slowly out of sight.