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Turning for a second to make sure that the children were not listening, he drew near and whispered:
“Oku man make war ju–ju. Him say all black people lib for bush, or dem King of Oku nail ebery one to tree w’en he burn mission.”
Bambuk could speak far better English than that. The fact that he had reverted so thoroughly to the jargon of the krooboy proved the extent of his fear.
Hume affected to make light of the witch–doctor and his threats.
“Go and tell him to stop his nonsense”, he said. “Say I have a bale of cotton here which I brought especially from Lagos as a present for King M’Wanga.”
But before Bambuk could descend the broad flight of steps leading from the veranda, the fetish performance was at an end and its chief actor had rushed off among the trees.
Evelyn felt a chill run through her body, though the air was hot and vapor–laden.
“Is M’Wagna the name of the King of Oku?” she asked.
“I believe so. I have been absent nearly eight months, as you are aware, but I haven’t heard of any change in the local dynasty.”
“Do you think it likely that he has ever visited England?”
“Most improbable,” said Hume. “He is an absolute savage. I have seen him only once, and I should be sorry to think that my life depended on his good will. But why did you imagine he might have been in England?”
“Because a native of that name came there with two others last August.”
“We have been visited by ju–ju men before, Charles,” put in Mrs. Hume.
“Yes. Generally they come begging for something they want – usually drugs – which they pretend to concoct themselves out of a snake’s liver or the gizzard of a bird. Don’t lay too much stress on Bambuk’s fright. He is a chicken–hearted fellow at the best. If there is really any likelihood of a native disturbance I shall send him with you and Miss Dane down the river – ”
“I shall not go without you, dear,” said Mrs. Hume.
“Nor I – unless both of you come,” answered Evelyn.
Hume laughed constrainedly.
“You will both obey orders, I hope,” he said, but he did not urge the matter further at the moment.
They were eating their evening meal when the distant tapping of a drum caught their ears. It was not the rhythmical beating of a tom–tom by some musically–inclined bushman. It much more closely resembled the dot and dash code of the Morse alphabet, or that variant of it which Private Thomas Atkins, in a spasm of genius, christened “Umty–iddy.“ Heard in the stillness of the forest, with not a breath of air stirring the leaves of the tallest trees, and even the tawny river murmuring in so low a note that it was inaudible from the mission–house, this irregular drum–beating had a depressing, almost a sinister effect. It jarred on the nerves. It suggested the unseen and therefore the terrible. At all costs they must find out what it signified.
Bambuk was summoned. He was even more distraught than during the fetish performance of two hours earlier.
“Dem Oku drum play Custom tune,” he explained. “Dem Custom mean – ”
“Do you savvy what they are saying?” broke in Hume sharply. He did not imagine that his wife had discussed the habits of native potentates with her youthful helper, and even she herself did not know the full extent of the excesses, the sheer lust of bloodshed, hidden under a harmless–sounding word.
“Savvy plenty. Dem drum made of monkey–skin – p’haps other kind of skin – an’ dem ju–ju man say: ‘Come, come! Make sharp dem knife! Come! Load dem gun! Come, den, come! Dem ribber (river) run red wid blood!’ Den dey nail some men to tree an’ make dance.”
The missionary did not check his assistant’s recital. It was best that the women should at least understand the peril in which they were placed. The compound held not more than fifty able–bodied men, and the only arms they possessed were native weapons. Hume’s influence depended wholly on his skill in treating the ailments of the people and his patience in teaching their children not only the rudiments of English but the simpler forms of handicraft. His experience as an African missioner was not of long standing, but from the outset he had consistently refused to own any firearm more deadly than a shotgun. Hitherto he had regarded the Upper Benuë region as a settled and fairly prosperous one. His cherished day–dream was that before he died he might see the pioneer settlement at Kadana transmuted into a well–equipped college and training school, whence Christianity and science might spread their light throughout that part of Africa. It shocked him now to think that all his work might be submerged under a wave of fanaticism, yet he clung to the hope that the warlike preparations of the men of Oku might mean nothing more serious than a tribal quarrel. This had happened once before, and he stepped in as arbitrator. By a liberal distribution of presents, including the whole of the mission stock of wine and brandy, he sent away both parties highly gratified with both his award and his method of arriving at it.
“There are war–drums beating in more than one place,” said Evelyn, who was listening in silence to the spasmodic tap–tap, tap–tap–tap, tap, that voiced the dirge translated by Bambuk.
“Ah, you have hit on my unspoken thought,” cried Hume. “Come, now, Bambuk, are you not enlarging your story somewhat? Two chiefs make war–palaver; isn’t that the explanation?”
“Dem Oku drum,” repeated the native, “all Oku drum. Dey call for Custom to–night.”
“What exactly is Custom, Charles?” said Mrs. Hume.
“Unfortunately, it means in this instance an offering of human sacrifice.”
He saw no help for it. They must know, sooner or later, and his soul turned sick at the thought of his wife and this gentle girl who had thrown in her lot with theirs falling into the clutches of the fetish–maddened bushmen. Each minute he grew more assured that some unusual movement was taking place among the surrounding tribes. Even to his untutored ear there was a marked similarity in the drumming, and he determined that the two women should go down the river in the mission canoe as soon as the moon rose. A crew of eight men could take them to the nearest constabulary post, and within twenty–four hours a steam launch would bring back an armed body of Hausas officered by an Englishman. Till then, he would trust to Providence for the safety of the people under his care. That he himself could desert the mission never entered his mind. Not only would the settlement break up in direst confusion the moment his back was turned, but the society’s houses and stores would be looted and destroyed, and the work of years swept away in a single night.
He was considering what excuse would serve to get the women on board the canoe, when the splash of paddles close at hand stirred all four to sudden excitement. It was Bambuk who read instantly the meaning of this unexpected sound. He rushed out, yelling words that proved how soon the veneer of civilization can wear off the West African negro. Soon he came back, looking sick with fear.
“Dem dam pagan nigger make off in dem canoe,” he almost screamed. “Dey savvy plenty too much bushman lib. We all be killed one–time.”
Even Evelyn, new to the country and its ways, realized what this meant. The river was their only highway. There were native tracks in plenty through the dense forest, but to march along any one of them while a hostile force was lying across every path was to court immediate disaster. By running away from a peril which was only passive as yet, they made it active. On the river they might escape; in the bush they could not travel a mile except on native sufferance.
Hume tried bravely to minimize the force of this unlooked–for blow. It was true the fugitives might be expected to carry the alarm to the police post, but until the following night it was quite impossible for succor to reach Kadana. And now they must all stand or fall by the mission.
“I did not think any of our men would be such cowards,” he said with quiet sadness. “Let us go and pacify the others. When all is said and done, we have harmed no one in Oku territory, but given relief to many who were in pain. I still believe that this scare is unwarranted, and our presence among our people will tend to calm them.”
A minute later he was sorry he had not gone alone. Every hut in the compound was empty. Nearly two hundred men, women, and children had fled into the bush, preferring to obey the order of the ju–ju man rather than defy him by remaining in the mission. Bambuk had not been taken into their confidence because he was originally a Foulah Mohammedan. The colony at Kadana was precisely what Bambuk had called its members in his rage, for the Mohammedan negro looks down upon his “pagan“ brethren with supreme contempt. In a crisis such as that which now threatened to engulf the mission, these nice distinctions of class and creed are apt to spring into startling prominence.
Hume faced the situation gallantly.
“Another illusion shattered,” he sighed. “Most certainly I did not expect that all my people would desert me at the first hint of danger. But we must make the best of it. Even now I cannot believe that the king of Oku – if it really is he who has created this disturbance – can contemplate an attack on Europeans. He has many faults, but he is not a fool, and he knows quite well how swift and complete would be his punishment if he interfered with us.”
Mrs. Hume accepted her husband’s views, and tried to look at matters with the same optimism. Evelyn, curiously enough, was better informed than even their native companion as to the serious nature of the outbreak. She was convinced that Warden’s theory was correct. Some stronger influence than a mere tribal émeute lay behind those horrible drumbeats. The authorities had been completely hoodwinked. In her heart of hearts she feared that Kadana shared its deadly peril that night with many a stronger trading–post and station down the river.
Bambuk, quieting down from his earlier paroxysms of fear, seemed to await his certain doom with a dignified fatalism. Even when he heard the thud of paddles on the sluggish waters of the river he announced the fact laconically.
“Bush man lib!” he muttered.
Perhaps the white faces blanched somewhat, and hearts beat a trifle faster, but Hume alone spoke.
“Where?” he asked.
“On ribber – in dem war canoe.”
They strained their ears, and soon caught the measured plashing. Then Mrs Hume began to weep. Evelyn knelt by her side in mute sympathy. She was too dazed to find relief in tears. For the moment she seemed to be passing through a torturing dream from which she would soon awake. Hume, who had gone to the door, came to his wife.
“Don’t cry, Mary,” he said. “That does no good – and – it breaks my heart. I have not abandoned hope. God can save us even yet. Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.”
His voice was strong and self–reliant. Even Bambuk glanced at him with a kind of awe, and thought, it may be, that the creed he had tried dimly to understand was nobler than the mere stoicism that was the natural outcome of his own fantastic beliefs. The negro was stupid with terror, or he could not have failed to distinguish the steady hum of an engine running at half speed.
And so they waited, while the thud of the paddles came nearer, until at last the bow of a heavy craft crashed into the foliage overhanging the bank, and they were rapt into a heaven of relief by hearing an English voice.
“Hello, there!” it shouted. “Is this the Kadana Mission?”
Mrs. Hume straightway fainted, but Evelyn was there to tend her, and Hume rushed down to the landing–place. The gleam of a moon rising over some low hills was beginning to make luminous the river mist. He was able dimly to note the difference between the pith hats of two Europeans and the smart round caps of a number of Hausa policemen. And, though a man of peace, he found the glint of rifle barrels singularly comforting.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Well,” said he who had spoken in the first instance, “I am Lieutenant Colville of the constabulary, but I have brought with me the Earl of Fairholme. Have you a lady named Dane, Miss Evelyn Dane, staying with you?”
Hume, who wanted to fall on his knees and offer thanks to Providence, managed to say that Evelyn Dane was certainly at Kadana at that moment.
“Ah, that’s the ticket!” said another voice. “I suppose you can put us up for the night? Any sort of shake–down will do, so long as we get away from this beastly river. Sleepin’ on board gives one the jim–jams, eh, what?”
CHAPTER XV
WHEREIN ONE SURPRISE BEGETS MANY
Colville leaped ashore. Without appearing to hurry, he was quickly by Hume’s side and asking in an undertone:
“Why has this war–drumming started? I heard it an hour ago down stream. Our engine was not running well, so the men got the paddles to work and we cracked on at top speed.”
“I do not know,” said the missionary, who was more anxious at the moment to reassure the women than to answer questions.
“But is there any bush fighting going on? Everything was reported to be all right when I left Ibi.”
“May heaven be praised that you were prompted to visit us! My wife, Miss Dane, our interpreter and myself – four out of two hundred – alone remain in the mission. Some of our people stole the canoe and made off, and every other native in the compound has gone into the bush. When we heard your paddles just now we thought that the war canoes of the King of Oku were approaching. But please come with me to the house. The mere sight of your uniform will show the ladies that our danger is at an end.”
Colville was young, but he was old in experience. He had also learned the exceeding wisdom of repressing opinions that were not called for.
“Wait a few seconds,” he said. “Here is Lord Fairholme. But for his urgent wish to visit Miss Dane, we should not have been in Kadana to–night. Hello! Who the dev – what canoe is that?”
Even while he was speaking, another craft shot out from the dense layer of mist that hid the surface of the river. Though the trees on the opposite bank were clearly visible in the ever–spreading moonlight, the Benuë itself was invisible. A Hausa sergeant challenged from the launch, and the reply came in his own tongue. A small native boat, propelled by two paddles, grated on a strip of shingle, and an Arab and a negro stepped ashore.
By this time, Fairholme had joined Colville and had been introduced to Hume. The Arab, hardly waiting an instant for a response to a curt inquiry, stalked towards them. He was a tall man, gaunt but wiry, and he carried himself with the listless air of one barely convalescent after a severe illness.
But there was no trace of listlessness in his voice. He singled out Colville immediately as the officer in charge of the party, and addressed him in the Hausa language.
“You would better bring your men ashore, run the launch as far up the bank as possible, and barricade yourself in the strongest building available,” he said. “The men of Oku are out. Three of their war canoes are stationed at the bend in the river and their occupants are armed with Mannlicher rifles. Escape that way is impossible. Your only chance is to hold this post as long as Allah permits. I shall try to pass the blockading canoes and reach Ibi, though I fear it will be too late.”
Colville hardly knew at which he was most amazed, the commanding tone of this haggard son of the desert or the astounding news he brought.
“Say, then, hadji,” he cried, half ironically, “What plague has broken out in Oku that the whole line of the Benuë should be threatened.”
“The chief plague is that of blindness among officers who fail to see the pits dug for them by crafty natives,” was the stern answer. “I speak truly, young master. You have half an hour, at best an hour, in which to make preparations.”
“But these war canoes you speak of – they are not at the bend; I have just come up stream.”
“They passed but now. You did not see them for the mist. I accompanied them.”
“Why did I not hear them?”
“They drifted down quietly lest they should arouse the mission.”
“And yet you came here? Why?”
“To warn the mission people. Hurry, I pray you, and waste no time in useless talk.”
“Oh, I say, Colville,” broke in Fairholme who understood no word of this dialogue and wondered why the English officer should permit an Arab to detain him, “can’t Mr. Hume take me to Miss Dane? If she is as sick of this rotten river as I am she’ll be jolly glad to see me.”
“Certainly,” said Colville. “I shall follow you soon. This chap seems to be able to explain matters, so I must remain here a few minutes.”
Hume, eager to get away, led Fairholme in the direction of the house. The young soldier felt a strong hand grasp his shoulder, and an English voice whispered:
“Colville, don’t you know me?”
They were standing in a cleared space where the moonbeams gave some degree of light. The Arab had pushed back his burnous, revealing a worn, handsome face, tanned brown with exposure. Though the characteristic traits of his supposed race are the heavy lip, and the hawk–like nose, this man was straight–nosed and thin–lipped. He was cadaverous enough, but no Arab.
Colville did more than gaze, he actually gaped at the other. There was no mistaking the cultured accent of an English gentleman, and yet – the thing could not be; he fancied he was bewitched.
“My dear Jimmie, have I changed so much, then, since last we played snooker together in the club?”
“Well, I’m blessed!” muttered Colville, or to be candid, he used the subaltern’s variant of the phrase.
“You soon will be if you don’t do as I tell you,” came the emphatic assurance. “But before I go, for I must give the people at Ibi a chance – though it is a thousand to one I shall be too late – who is the lady your friend inquired about?”
Colville wanted to say so much that he found but few words. He could only gasp:
“My dear Warden – didn’t you hear?”
“I heard her name, of course, but it cannot be a lady of the same name in whom I was once interested. Still, it is an odd thing it should be mentioned to–night, and in this place. Who is she?”
“Oh, d – n it all!” groaned Colville, “how could any poor devil guess he was in for this sort of stew when he started from Ibi yesterday!”
“I assure you we are wasting precious time, Jimmie. Perhaps it is my fault, but the question was a natural one under the circumstances. Tell your men it is all right, or they may want to prevent my departure; they understand those drums, you know. My only hope of success in case I am stopped at the bend is to keep up the pretense that I am a special envoy from the emirs in the interior. Some day, if we win through this business, I shall have a fine yarn for you. Good–by!”
“But look here, old chap, I can’t let you slip away like that. Confound it! I don’t know what to say, but the plain truth is best, perhaps. The girl you were engaged to, Miss Evelyn Dane, is inside the mission–house now, this minute, and the man I brought from Ibi is the Earl of Fairholme. He told me all about you on the way up. He’s a decent sort, and he is wild over Miss Dane. But it is only fair to add – ”
A series of blood–curdling yells and a volley of musketry that lit the bush with spurts of flame put an abrupt end to Colville’s qualifying sentence. He was so taken aback by the extraordinary coincidence that Warden should arrive at Kadana almost at the same instant as the man who had come there with the avowed intent of taking Evelyn Dane home to England as his wife, that for one bemused second he failed to grasp the imminence or extent of the native onslaught.
It was otherwise with Warden. Though his brain might well have reeled at the words he had just heard from a brother officer’s lips, the incessant watchfulness demanded by the life of the past five months had created in him a second nature. While his heart asked tumultuous questions and found no answer to any of them, his head dictated the steps that must be taken if they were to offer any sort of organized defense.
“Company! Attention!” he shouted. “Four men remain with the launch, keep steam up and shove off from the bank; all others follow to the mission. Double – March! Beni Kalli, run the canoe ashore and come!”
The loud command, proceeding apparently from their leader, though not in their leader’s voice, was promptly obeyed by the Hausas. They came running across the clearing, loading their rifles and fixing bayonets as they ran.
“Now, Colville, take hold!” said Warden coolly. “I’m afraid I startled you out of your wits, but they’re your men, not mine.”
The younger man needed no second bidding. Glad of the night that hid the scarlet in his face, he told the small squad to surround the mission–house. They would be less visible beneath the veranda than on it. Hume and Fairholme with two women in white dresses had rushed out at the first sound of firing, and they were painfully distinct in the light that came from a large lamp inside the room at the back.
“Shout to them to get inside, close the doors, and extinguish all lights,” said Warden, keeping close to Colville during the combined rush to gain the obscurity afforded by the heavy beams that supported the upper story.
Colville obeyed. He was honestly glad that a stronger man had taken control. His knowledge of the country told him that a most serious and far–spread rebellion was in progress. Rifles, not gas–pipe guns, were in the hands of a tribe famed for its fighting qualities. He had a dozen men, not counting the four in the launch, to meet the onset of as many thousands. He did not fear death, for he had faced it many times, but it was one thing to enter on a definite campaign, no matter what the odds, and quite another to find himself plunged into a seemingly hopeless fight in a time of profound peace, and at the close of an exhausting journey undertaken to oblige a sporting British peer.
He had to bellow his instructions twice before the alarmed occupants of the mission–house quitted the veranda. The sound of his own voice was helpful; it steadied him. It was in his natural tone that he growled to Warden:
“Fairholme admits that he is an ass, rather boasts of it, in fact, but I thought Hume would have more sense than to let the women stand there offering a clear target.”
“They are safe enough yet,” was the reply. “Their rooms face the river; the attack is coming from the bush.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to take to the river at once?”
“No, that means certain death. There are three canoes, and each has a Nordenfeldt mounted in its bows.”
“Good Lord, man, a Nordenfeldt!”
“Yes, and M’Wanga has a dozen 12–pounders in two batteries at Oku. Not that they will ever be of much use to him. I took care of that. But I failed utterly to get on board the canoes. They were moored in mid–stream, guarded day and night, and the guns were sheeted. Moreover, I have been out of gear nearly six weeks. This is a big business, Colville. How is it no one knew of what was going on?”
“There were rumors, but they died down. Forbes – ”
“Did they send Forbes in my place?”
“Yes.”
“That explains it. He is a capital fellow in an office. To ask him to unravel an Oku plot was to set a bat catching sparrows by daylight.”
They had plenty of time to discuss matters thus coolly. No West African fighting–man would demean himself by delivering an assault on an enemy’s position without a preliminary hubbub of yells and wild shooting. It is different when he is the defender. Then he will lie close as a partridge till the precise moment that his usually antiquated guns can most effectually belch forth a destroying blast of nails, iron scraps, pebbles, and broken glass and pottery.
But the seconds passed, and the minutes, and no horde of demoniac figures poured across the open compound. The shooting was incessant, yet no bullet struck the house, though not even an indifferent native marksmen could well avoid hitting a big building in which all the living–rooms were on the same floor as the veranda. The lower part of the structure served as a store.
The Hausa soldier–policemen, picked men of the West African Regiment, were trained not to fire without orders. They were far too few in number to line the stockade, which enclosed a space fully two acres in extent. In any case, the defense it afforded was worse than useless. The gates were jammed open by a year’s growth of herbage. In some instances, a passage had been made by the simple expedient of removing a whole section. It would demand many hours of labor by a hundred men to put the palisade in a serviceable condition. Hume’s effort was to establish a mission, not a fort, in this jungle outpost.