The Message

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.

The Hausa sergeant was puzzled in more ways than one. He heard his officer talking English to an Arab, he heard the unmistakable crackling of rifles fully equal to those with which he and the others were armed, and he was unable to account for the delay in the attack.

Enjoining on his men the necessity of keeping well within the shadow, he crept along close to the wall until he stood by Colville’s side. He was about to ask permission to make a reconnaissance, and thus force the enemy to reveal themselves, when an incident almost without precedent in bush warfare took place.

The indiscriminate firing stopped, the wild–beast noises died away into absolute silence, and a strip of white cotton suddenly became visible in one of the many gaps in the stockade. It was held stationary for a moment, then a native warrior stepped boldly forth into the moonlight. His magnificent physique was enhanced by the war trappings that decked his head, breast, and loins, and he strode forward with the lithe movements of a man in perfect training. When he entered the compound, it was seen that he carried a white flag on a lance. He meant to parley, and such a departure from the savage methods of a semi–cannibal tribe was hitherto unheard of. Usually, an unprotected party of Europeans, whether missionaries or traders, are butchered without mercy if found within the zone of tribal foray.

“By gad,” muttered Colville, “they’re going to offer terms!”

“I think I can guess what the terms will be,” said Warden. “There’s a woman in the case, Jimmie – something new in a bush campaign, eh?”

The subaltern did not understand the curious undertone of grim irony in the remark; but he was aware of it and made no reply. The black warrior had halted. His wonderfully developed sense of hearing warned him that some one not in the house was speaking, and the voices could come from no other place than the gloomy recess beneath the veranda.

“O Hume!” he cried loudly. “I fit for palaver.”

Colville half expected that Warden would answer for Hume. He was mistaken. His senior leaned back against the wall of the store, and folded his arms with the air of a man who meant to abide by a settlement in whose discussion he can take no part.

The negro, though trusting to his vague conception of a code of honor that he associated with fighting against white men, came no nearer.

“O Hume!” he cried again, “open dem door one–time, an’ hear what I fit for say.”

In the strange hush succeeding the frenzied uproar that announced the presence of a host of armed natives, the envoy’s words were clearly audible to the five people in the upper rooms. Hume came out, followed by Bambuk.

“Who are you and what do you want?” said the missionary. “Why do you come to me at night, and threaten the lives of my friends and myself in this manner?”

“I done tell you if Bambuk lib. I no fit for long palaver.”

At this, the interpreter leaned over the rail of the veranda.

“You are Loanda, I think?” he said, using the vernacular.