Chapter XIX: Tom’s Armada (1)

On the Trail--A Picked Force--Through the Great Forest--The Last of Mabruki--On the Lake Shore--Building a Flotilla--Floating Forts--The Island in the Lake--Forcing a Landing--A Parley--De Castro Expresses Himself--Preparing for the Attack--Mwonda the Dauntless--Fire and Sword--Rumaliza’s House--De Castro’s Last Shot

It was now one o’clock in the afternoon. For nine hours Tom and all his men had been afoot, engaged in one of the most arduous struggles that native Africa had known. The great fight so long anticipated was over; the dreaded power of Rumaliza, the centre of the hateful slave-traffic, was broken; Rumaliza himself, with his lieutenant Ahmed and many other of his principal coadjutors, lay on the field, and the shattered remnant of the force that left its distant stronghold in such warlike ardour and confidence was routed beyond hope of rallying. But Tom saw that his work was not yet completed. The fortress in the forest still remained. It was no doubt strongly garrisoned; the fugitives would naturally betake themselves thither; the survivors of De Castro’s force and De Castro himself would gather there, and in course of time, though they could never expect to recover their old strength and prestige, they might repair their disaster sufficiently to menace for years to come the security and happiness of the weaker tribes. "I must destroy their scorpions’ nest," said Tom to himself wearily; "when shall I see home again?"

He saw that his force was too much exhausted to carry operations further that day. Of less than four thousand men, at least five hundred lay dead and wounded; and their exertions had been so violent and so long-continued that the living and unwounded were fit for nothing but rest. Mbutu and the eight hundred who had so opportunely arrived with him were still apparently keeping up the pursuit, and it was impossible to make any detailed arrangements until they returned. Tom, therefore, sent off a messenger to the village with news of the victory, and with orders to the katikiro to bring up two hundred men with a stock of ammunition. He then went with a few of his body-guard to the Arabs’ camp, where their vast horde of slave carriers must now be dealt with.

He found that the slaves, at least five thousand in number, had risen and overpowered their guards, and were working havoc among the effects of their late masters. At Tom’s appearance they crowded round him, some of them recognizing him as the prisoner who had escaped months before from the clutches of Mustapha. The poor creatures were wild with delight at the discomfiture of the Arabs, and many of them threw themselves at Tom’s feet and vowed that they were his, body and soul, to do with as he pleased. Seeing on them unmistakeable evidences of terrible suffering during their recent march--open sores, mutilated features, scars and weals made by the lash--Tom lost all compassion for the Arabs who had perished in the fight, and was strengthened in his resolve to visit the Arab stronghold and there complete the work he had begun.

He ordered his men to knock off the chains from their necks and ankles, and those who were thus liberated to assist in the work with their fellows. He ordered them also to collect the ammunition, stores, and camp furniture and carry them to the zariba, and then to dig deep trenches and bury the dead. The slaves were suffering greatly from want of water, and Tom informed them of the stream two miles to the south, and allowed them to go and refresh themselves at it, commanding them to report themselves before nightfall at the zariba, where he intended to camp for the night.

Two hours later Mbutu returned, accompanied by a portion of his force. They gave a great shout when Tom welcomed them, and Mbutu, his face beaming with joy, informed his master of his recent movements. With a quickness for grasping a military situation with which Tom had not credited him, he had seen the importance of preventing any considerable concentration of the fugitives, and sent small bodies of men to the right and left to guard the approaches to the forest, and thus prevent any junction of the scattered bands of Arabs and Manyema who had spread out fanwise in the course of their retreat.

"You have done splendidly, Mbutu," said Tom, patting him on the shoulder. "But why were you so late in bringing up the eight hundred men? We were almost at our last gasp."

Mbutu explained that when his brother reached the volcano he found the eight hundred men in a state of great perplexity at the non-appearance of Kuboko. They had waited and waited, expecting to be engaged in some enterprise of moment, and when hour after hour passed away, and day followed day, without their receiving any orders, they had grown angry. Some of them had wandered miles away to the south of the mountain to see if there was anything in that direction that seemed to call for them. When Mboda appeared and ordered them to return, it took some time to collect the dispersed bands, and though they had made all haste, they had found it impossible to march with any great speed over the broken country between the volcano and the village. Mbutu had met them, indeed, a few miles north of the village, and had brought them on, with the fresh men drawn from the garrison, as rapidly as possible. He was thankful "too much, too much," he said, that he had arrived at such a critical moment. To save time, he had chosen to risk wading across the swamp in preference to taking the longer circuit round it through the forest.

"And you did well," said Tom. "If you had gone the farther way we should have been overpowered, I fear. It was a stroke of genius, Mbutu. The art of generalship is to know when to take risks. Some people call it luck, but I can’t see myself why luck should have such a happy knack of favouring the incapable."

Mbutu did not understand this speech, but he saw that his master was pleased with him, and he went with all cheerfulness and contentment to superintend the camping arrangements for the night, receiving willing assistance from Msala, who came up presently in a state of great delight, tempered by regret at his own enforced absence from the scene of the great battle. To please Mbutu, Tom then sent his brother Mboda with a small force into the forest to build a new stockade on the farther bank of the fordable stream, so as to block the way of any Arabs who might endeavour to retrace their steps over the central path.

Next morning, before returning to the village, Tom sent eight hundred of his best men, divided into several bands under trusty leaders, to dog the fugitive Arabs. Some were to scour the country on the outskirts of the forest, others to penetrate the forest itself, press forward beyond the new stockade, and watch every narrow cross-track, every possible alley, so as effectually to bar the retreat of the Arabs except by long circuitous routes on which, as the news of their defeat spread, they would be exposed to the attacks of the tribes they had ill-treated and oppressed. These scouting bodies were to carry with them sufficient food for three days, and at the end of that time to return.

Tom’s march to the village was a triumphal progress. The people came out in their thousands to meet him, and in a great glad throng, amid the din of drums and loud songs of victory, escorted him to his head-quarters. Mwonga ordered several of his finest oxen to be killed for the victor’s feast, and extensive preparations were made for high jubilation. Tom could not but be sympathetic towards the people’s rejoicings, but he recognized the danger of their imagining that nothing remained to be done, and he determined at once to make the situation clear to them. Early in the afternoon he summoned all the chiefs to a council at some distance from the village, where they could deliberate without interrupting, or being interrupted by, the festal proceedings. When they were assembled he made a short address to them, in which he reviewed what had been accomplished, and clearly stated what had yet to be done.

"True, the Arabs are scattered," he said. "You have all done nobly. But many of your men have been killed; many of your women are widows and your children fatherless to-day. If your sacrifices, your toils, your wounds, are not to be useless, you must not stay your hands until this nest of venomous snakes is utterly destroyed. You must make one more effort, my brothers. It may not be a great one. The flower of the Arab army is destroyed; there cannot be more than a handful at their stronghold. Our successes hitherto will have encouraged you, and you will not fail to see that by one final blow you may destroy your enemies for ever. If, however, you let slip this opportunity, the Arabs will in time recover even from this great defeat, as they have recovered from defeats in the past, and by and by the old evil work of raiding for ivory and slaves will begin again. I myself will lead you to this Arab stronghold, and in a few weeks the impregnable fortress of which they boast shall be a heap of smoking ruins."

The majority of the chiefs shouted an instant assent to Kuboko’s proposal, but some murmured discontentedly, and declared that they had done enough; the Arab stronghold was far away, and they wished to get back to their own villages and resume their ordinary life. Tom accepted the position good-humouredly.

"Let those who wish to go to their homes go," he said. "I understand their feeling. I myself long ardently to see my own home again. Let them go, then; and I thank them for their brave and willing services. But for the rest--I ask you, brothers, shall we sacrifice a little more, and make the Arabs drink to the dregs the bitter cup they have so often brewed for you their victims?"

"We will! we will!" cried most of the chiefs.

"It is well. Now, we have a long march before us, my brothers, but ’tis a long track that has no end. We shall reach their stronghold; we shall capture it, and if perchance a great booty, stores of ivory stolen from you, should fall into our hands, I promise you it shall be divided among you in proportion to the number of men you severally furnish."

The prospect of booty, conjoined with their deep-seated hatred of the Arabs and their exultation at their recent victory, made the chiefs all eagerness to attempt the new enterprise. Many of the murmurers were now among the most anxious to volunteer, and Tom was intensely amused as they tried with every appearance of artlessness to explain away their previous reluctance. He went on to say that he would not need all their men; he asked for only twelve hundred fighting men and as many carriers. But both carriers and warriors must be of the very best; he needed men who were strong and active, and, above all, prompt to obey. He arranged with the chiefs to make a selection during the next few days from among their contingents, and was secretly pleased when he found, as the work of selection proceeded, that the men who were not picked went about with dejected faces, and openly envied their comrades’ good fortune.

From prisoners who had fallen into his hands Tom learnt that when the Arab force left, a garrison of about five hundred men remained in the island fortress. They were all Arabs, well armed, under the command of his old enemy Mustapha, and secure in their possession of a post which they deemed impregnable. Before he could reach it, Tom had no doubt that the garrison would be increased by the arrival of De Castro with the survivors from his luckless expedition, and also by a certain number of Rumaliza’s force, who would succeed in evading pursuit and escaping the perils of the forest. He might also have to reckon with the overdue raiding-party from the north. But even though the defenders of the fortress should number nearly a thousand, Tom was confident that twelve hundred of his disciplined and seasoned men would suffice to reduce the place.

Several days were spent in choosing men and collecting stores. Tom could not resist Msala’s plea to be allowed this time to take an active part by his side. Mwonda was one of his lieutenants as a matter of course, and Mbutu begged that his brother Mboda might accompany the expedition. There was no lack of arms and ammunition; the chief difficulty that faced Tom was that of provisioning his force during the march through the forest, which he expected, from information received from the prisoners, to occupy nearly a month. While the resources of the village and the surrounding country were being taxed to the uttermost, Tom sent a force of five hundred men into the forest to build a strong redoubt three days’ march within its borders, and arranged with one of his allies, the chief of a small village still farther in the forest, destroyed by the Arabs in their advance, to return and rebuild his village, with entrenchments and fortifications. Both these places he decided to make depots for large stores of grain, in order to reduce the work of the carriers with the expedition, and to form reserves in case of a check.

It was a fine day in December, a week after the battle, when the expedition started. Tom was convinced that in point of physique no finer force ever set out on any military enterprise. During the week all that good food and regular drill could do had been done to bring the men into perfect condition, and, looking at their well-developed muscular frames and clear bright eyes, Tom felt proud to command them.

The redoubt was already built and stocked when the column reached it at the end of the third day’s march. Two days later, on reaching the native chief’s village, Tom was surprised to see what progress had been made with its reconstruction. Men, women, and children were hard at work, running up grass huts and stockading the whole enceinte. When the force resumed their march next morning, Tom felt that the expedition was beginning in earnest.

Then began the long march towards the Arab fortress, a march to which Tom always looked back with mingled pleasure and pain. His previous acquaintance with the great Congo Forest had been made in a time of such stress, anxiety, and illness that he had missed many things which now, as he marched with a large confident force of warriors, he had more leisure to notice. The column was led by a company of pioneers to clear the path where it was overgrown with creepers and bush. Then came a company of musketeers, followed by pikemen, among whom Tom kept his place, accompanied by the ever-faithful Mbutu. Behind these trudged the carriers, strong straight men with no lumber about them, tramping along steadily beneath their burdens, poking fun at each other and at the men in front of them, laughing at any slight mishap that occurred during their progress. After these came the rest of the force, the officers placed among the men at intervals, big Mwonda being in command of the rearguard. The march began each day at 6.30 and continued until 11, when the column halted for dinner and rest; it was resumed at 12.30, and ended about 4 o’clock, to allow time for forming a camp before dark, and for stragglers to rejoin. Ten miles a day was the longest distance that could be traversed through the denser undergrowth, and Tom learnt from the Arab prisoners whom he had brought with him as guides that, allowing for delays caused by rivers to be crossed, felled trees to clamber over, detours to be made to avoid other obstacles, it would take him nearly three weeks to reach the lake in the midst of which the island-fortress stood.

Tom realized now for the first time what the worst difficulties of forest marching were. The ground was rank with vegetable corruption, the atmosphere with exhalations from myriads of dead insects, leaves, plants. At every pace his head, neck, arms, or clothes were caught by a tough creeper, a calamus thorn, a coarse brier, or a giant thistle-like plant, scratching and rending whatever portion they hooked on. Innumerable insects lent their aid to embarrass and worry him, especially the polished black ants, which dropped upon him from the leaves of trees as he passed, and inflicted bites worse than the wasp’s sting, till his skin was swollen up in large white blisters. Yellow ants and termites also seemed to have an insatiable appetite, nibbling, gnawing, prowling all day long. There was the mantis, too, a strange insect five inches long, gaunt, weird, mysterious; and numbers of ladybirds, their brilliant red spotted with black. Tom heard the rustling of millions of tiny wings, the garrulous chirp of crickets, the buzz of ant-lions, the dull roar of bull-frogs. And over all the lower sounds was the crackle of twigs, the crash of falling branches, the creaking of the huge, thick-clad stems as they were brushed by the wind. There were leopard-scratches on the boles; a genet cat was occasionally seen; rhinoceroses and crocodiles were met at the broader streams; Tom was told several marvellous stories of the incredible strength of the sokos; once or twice some of his men assured him that they had caught sight of pigmies, who instantly disappeared as soon as they were observed. They gave no sign of hostility, and Tom congratulated himself on the fact that his saving of the pigmy woman’s child seemed to have won for him the freedom of the forest.

There was very little to indicate that the path had already been traversed by a large Arab force. Occasionally the advance-guard came upon the remains of a human body, sometimes a mere skeleton with chains still about the neck and ankles--some poor slave left by the Arabs to die of starvation or by the more merciful agency of the wild beasts that haunted the forest shades. The native habit was to walk round these horrible obstructions in the path, but Tom had ordered his men to remove them into the forest.

On the sixth day of the march his foremost pioneer came running back to him in great excitement. He had come upon a dead body lying across the path, and he declared positively that it was the corpse of Mabruki.

Tom was at first incredulous, but on reaching the spot he saw that the figure stretched on the path was unmistakeably that of the medicine-man. He lay face downwards, and innumerable insects were already at work on his body; but he could not have been dead long, for there was no sign of mutilation by any wild beast. One of the men turned the body over, and then Tom saw a pigmy spear transfixing the traitor’s breast. The weapon was evidently poisoned, for the twisted limbs and contorted features indicated that the hapless man had tasted death in one of its most terrible forms.

"Put him out of sight!" said Tom, shuddering as he passed on. He surmised that on escaping from the village to avoid the penalty due to his treason, Mabruki had struck due north and had used his knowledge of the forest to make his way by side tracks into the depths far from the main path. He had struck into that path when all fear of meeting Tom’s men was gone, and then, while on his way to join the Arabs, or perhaps to foist his false magic upon some lesser chief, he had met with swift death at the hands of the Bambute.

The tragic end of the medicine-man made a deep impression on the natives. Many of them had believed that he was invulnerable to everything but superior magic, such as Kuboko’s, and his death by so paltry a weapon as a pigmy’s spear destroyed the last shred of their faith in him. Hearing now for the first time the story of his treason, they were quick to connect his fate with his crime, and said among themselves that white man’s medicine certainly reached far and never failed.

Day followed day, and the march was little varied. Once or twice the column passed the sites of what had been small villages, now waste and desolate. The Arabs had burnt and destroyed every human habitation upon or near their path. There were streams here and there to be crossed, sometimes by fords, sometimes by tall trunks thrown across from bank to bank, once on a bridge consisting of a large tree submerged two feet below the surface. Whenever a temporary thinness in the foliage overhead allowed the sunlight to stream fully on the path, the spirits of the men seemed to respond, and they broke into song. Tom noticed the leader in these choruses, a tall handsome young fellow with a fine mellow voice, clearly a prime favourite with the men. His songs were composed on the spur of the moment, but they were picked up at once by his comrades, who raised the chorus in strange wild harmony, Tom had become so accustomed to the ingenuous adulation of the negroes that it no longer caused a pang to his modesty to hear himself made the subject of their pæans. One of their songs, roughly rendered in English, ran:--

"Sing, O friends, sing!
We are all warriors bold, and Kuboko is king.
Aha! Aha!
Strong is his arm and invincible; sing, brothers, sing!
Blithely we march. Ah! what will the enemy say?
On to the fortress; long is the way.
Then we will eat and drink, dance all the livelong day.
Aha! Aha!"

Thanks to the slow rate of marching, regulated by the pace of the carriers, to the good food-supply, and to the physical fitness of the men when they started, there had not been more than fifty cases of sickness in the column, when, after twenty days’ marching, Tom learnt from his prisoners that he was but half a day from the lake in which the Arab fort was situated. He pitched his camp that evening with even more care than usual, and gave strict orders that no member of the force was to stir beyond its bounds without permission. He sent forward a few scouts to reconnoitre, and one of these reported, on his return to camp, that he had caught sight of several Arabs making their way rapidly towards the lake.

"The enemy’s scouts!" thought Tom. "Well, we could not hope to surprise them."

He posted extra sentries that night, though he hardly expected an attack, and the hours of darkness passed without incident. By ten o’clock next morning, Tom, with the head of the column, had reached the lake side. It was a larger sheet of water than he had expected to see, extending as far as the eye could reach in a north-westerly direction, bordered to the very edge with dense forest and extensive banks of reeds. Some miles off, almost equidistant between the east and west shores, rose the island, a mass of dark green in the blue water. As the warriors came in sight of it they raised great shouts. Not one of them had seen it before, for the escape of a slave was an almost unknown event. Tom himself felt a strange thrill as he looked over the placid water and realized that that distant forest-covered islet was to be the scene of a stern fight. He stood gazing at it in silence, thinking of the long years during which it had been a hot-bed of cruelty and wrong, and he felt a thrill of joy at having attained the desire of his heart--the opportunity to strike at the head of the slave-dragon. "And," he said to himself, "please God, I will strike hard!"

No well-trodden path led to the lake side. The men had had to make a way for themselves through the underwood. On reaching the edge they came upon clear signs of human activity--a rough landing-stage of boards, litter and debris of all kinds. But no human being except Tom’s own men was in sight, nor, so far as could be ascertained, was any boat moored along the shore, though the banks of reeds might well conceal many craft.

"Mbutu," said Tom, "clamber up that tall tree and tell me what you see."

Mbutu, agile as a monkey, was soon swarming up a straight trunk.

"I see a boat!" he cried, when he came near the top. "Long, long way; go dis way"--he waved his arm from east to west. "Go from shore to island. Small canoe; four men. No more, sah."

Tom called up a prisoner, and, questioning him, learnt that the canoe was probably crossing at the shortest passage, requiring only half the time that would be taken from the point at which the expedition had struck the lake.

"Anything more to be seen, Mbutu?"

"No, sah, nuffin."

"Come down, then; we’ll have to do a little scouting."

A path ran round the lake close to the edge, narrow and much overgrown, but evidently leading to the spot from which the canoe had started for the island. Tom sent fifty of his best scouts, under Mboda, to explore this path.

"If you come across any canoes, seize them," he said. "Don’t fight if they are defended in force; they probably won’t be worth losing lives for."

While the scouts were gone he ordered the men to form an entrenched camp. For all he knew the enemy might be lurking in the forest ready to take advantage of any slip, any sign of unwariness; and until he had located the Arabs, and, if possible, discovered what their strength was, it was impossible to form definite plans for an attack on the fortress.

Towards dusk Mboda returned with his men and reported that the path grew wider and less obstructed as it bent northward. They had seen one canoe, manned by a crew of half a dozen Manyema, who had shipped their paddles and jeered when they caught sight of the scouts. The best marksmen among these had tried a shot at the canoe, which, though it had fallen short, had been sufficient to set the men hastily paddling towards the island. Mboda had tried to see exactly where their landing-place was, but the shore of the island appeared to be an impenetrable wall of jungle.

When the evening meal had been eaten, and the camp-fires were lit, Tom sent for his prisoners again and subjected them to a further interrogation. He learnt that the lake was fed by a small river flowing from the north-east, as well as by numerous rivulets at other points. The surplus water escaped on the left, where it formed a fairly large stream. The mouth of the river on the north-east was fringed with dense clumps of reeds.

"Since there are apparently no canoes to be captured we shall have to make some," said Tom to himself; "and that will take time. I hope our stock of food will last till we capture the Arabs’ stores. Dug-outs will be the easiest to make, I suppose. These men of mine have never made a canoe in their lives, I suspect. Msala," he said aloud to the katikiro, "could you make a canoe, do you think?"

Msala looked doubtful, but at length said that he thought he could if Kuboko would show him the way!

"Like the genius who had never played the fiddle, but thought he could if he tried!" thought Tom. "O wise man!" he said. "That’s a good answer. I’ll try to show you the way, though I’ve done nothing of the sort since I broke a dozen pen-knives carving a sailing-boat when I was a boy of twelve. The first question is, where are these canoes to be made, eh?"

Msala could give no assistance towards solving this problem, but Tom soon thought it out for himself. The outlet on the west was wide, the prisoner had said, and comparatively free from reeds. Operations there would run the risk of being disturbed, for no doubt the enemy possessed a considerable flotilla on the island. But the reeds at the mouth of the river on the north-east would serve as a screen, and a few sharpshooters carefully posted would easily defend the position against attack.

"That’s the place, evidently," said Tom. "To-morrow morning, Msala, we’ll start building our fleet. Now for sleep, my men--we must be up early in the morning."

Next day he ordered his men to build a block-house where he had emerged from the forest, so as to intercept any fugitive Arabs who might have found their way back to the lake, and to keep a general look-out. Leaving a garrison of two hundred men there, he started with the rest towards the north-east corner, which they reached after an arduous march of fifteen miles, the path having to be cut after they left the principal landing-stage opposite the eastern shore of the island. It happened to be a particularly bright and clear day, and at different points along the route Tom caught glimpses of the island, which enabled him to form a fairly good idea of its character and extent. He judged it to be about a mile long; it was covered with vegetation of the nature of jungle, tall forest-trees being conspicuously absent. The prisoners pointed out the exact spot, near the centre of the island, where the fort was situated, but so dense was the thicket that not a corner of it was visible. They explained that, while the forest-growth at the shore was allowed to remain in its pristine wildness, within this fringe and behind some plantations the ground had been cleared, and the fort, capable of containing two thousand men, had been built on a slight eminence in the very centre of the island. It consisted of a double row of palisades, fifteen feet in height, the exterior palisade being defended throughout its whole circuit by a glacis, with a slope of one foot in four.

"So there are two difficulties to surmount," thought Tom. "First, the difficulty of reaching the island and landing my men; then the difficulty of storming a fort defended by such high outworks and a glacis to boot. It’s a case of scaling-ladders as well as canoes. A great piece of luck that I thought of bringing so many artificers among the carriers."

When the force reached the mouth of the river, it was too late to begin the work of constructing canoes. Tom ordered his men to make an entrenched camp, and to throw up a special earthwork behind the screen of reeds, where a company of picked marksmen could easily defend the canoe-makers from attack. Early next morning Tom set all his men who had axes to fell the largest and straightest teak in the forest, a few hundred feet from the shore. When the trees were felled, another band of men was set to strip off the foliage and bark, and so quickly did they work that by nightfall a large number of huge logs lay ready for scooping out, varying in length from forty to sixty-five feet. Tom saw that he would need a fleet of about forty-five canoes if he intended to convey all his force to the island at one time, as would probably be necessary. He therefore selected the requisite number of trees himself, and while the carriers were felling these he instructed the warriors how to dig them out. He divided them into gangs of twenty to thirty, each gang to form one canoe crew, and he set these to fashion their own craft. He marked off equal lengths along the logs, and gave each man his own portion to scoop out with knife or pike-head, encouraging them to work hard by the promise of a reward to the man who finished his portion first. They all worked with a will, driving their tools into the wood with unfaltering zeal, and showing much interest in their novel work.

While the digging-out was in progress, Tom employed other men in making thwarts and rough paddles, and the best carpenters in constructing scaling-ladders. After ten days’ work he was in possession of forty-five dug-outs, with their due equipment of paddles, and fifty ladders ten feet high. The canoes were, of course, keelless, and Tom knew that they were bound to sway and roll with the slightest movement of the body; but fortunately there was little likelihood of their having to encounter rough weather, and he hoped that they would suffice to convey his men across the four miles separating the lake shore at this point from the island. "They’ll do as well as Napoleon’s flat-bottom boats, I expect," he thought; "or better, for his invasion never came off, and mine will."

The work had not been carried on for ten days without molestation. Every day canoes came from the island, filled with armed men, evidently curious to learn what was going on out of sight. On the first day they paddled towards the mouth of the river, and Tom ordered his men behind the earthwork to allow them to approach well within gunshot, and then to let them have a sharp volley. The canoes came within fifty yards of the concealed marksmen without suspecting their danger, and at least half the men on board were hit when the Bahima opened fire. The survivors paddled away in frantic haste, and ever after that the canoes kept out of harm’s way, the Arabs contenting themselves with patrolling the lake, in cheerful assurance that their fortress was impregnable. All this time Tom sent scouting-parties regularly along the shore, from whom he learnt that at several points on the western side there were large clearings, which appeared to have been slave settlements, and he concluded that the slaves had either been withdrawn into the island or sent deeper into the forest.

His preparations so far being complete--and none too soon, for the stock of food was running low,--Tom decided to make a reconnaissance towards the island. He first tested some of his canoes on the river, out of sight from the Arabs, employing a few men who knew how to paddle, and found to his great pleasure that, though clumsy and incapable of being propelled swiftly, they rode the water fairly upright, and were safe enough in a calm. He therefore ordered his men to launch half a dozen of the canoes at the mouth of the river, and with these fully manned with riflemen he moved slowly towards the island. The movement was instantly observed; hardly a minute had elapsed before a fleet of twenty light, swift canoes, filled with armed Manyema, shot out from the island and made towards him. Recognizing that he could not hope to vie with them in speed, and that he could not approach the island so closely as he wished without running great risks, Tom ordered his men to paddle back, and regained his camp. A tremendous yell of delight from the Arabs’ canoes, ringing clear over the still water, bore witness to the enemy’s confidence, but Tom only smiled. He remembered reading, in one of Stanley’s books, an account of how that great explorer had defended some canoes from attack in precisely similar circumstances, and once more he found his recollection serve him well. He sent his men into the forest, some to cut long poles an inch thick, others to cut poles three inches thick and seven feet long, a third band to cut straight long trees four inches thick, and a fourth to remove the bark from all these and make bark-rope. While this was being done Tom selected three of the longest canoes, and had them drawn up parallel to one another near the water’s edge, and four feet apart. As the stripped trees were brought up they were laid across the canoes, and lashed firmly to the thwarts with the bark-rope. Then the seven-foot poles were lashed in an upright position to the thwarts of the outer canoes at the extreme edge, and the inch-thick rods were twisted in and out among these uprights, just as gipsies make baskets. After this, thin saplings were woven in through any remaining interstices, and at the end of the day the structure resembled a huge oblong stockade of basket-work, sixty-five feet long and twenty-seven feet wide. A gap having been cut in one of its faces, and a rough gate made, the contrivance was complete.

Next morning Tom went to a distance of three hundred yards and tried a shot at the stockade with one of his men’s rifles. The bullet penetrated the wall, but fell dead inside. He then ordered his men to collect reeds and large leaves from the toughest plants they could find, and with these to line the inside of the palisade. When this was done he tried another shot, and found that the bullet embedded itself in the lining. Delighted with the assurance that the structure was practically bullet-proof, he next instructed his men to make loopholes at intervals along the sides, and then ordered eight hundred of the carriers to haul and push the strange, awkward-looking fort to the water. He then sent sixty paddlers to take their places on the thwarts, and a hundred and fifty musketeers to find room among them. He was in some anxiety lest with its full complement of men the fort should be too heavy to float, but a few moments’ paddling convinced him that, unwieldy as it was, it would ride the water, though to propel it with any speed was out of the question. A great shout of applause burst from the onlookers as the floating fort moved a few yards towards the lake. Tom ordered it back, stepped on board, closed the gate, and started on his reconnaissance.

The warriors left on shore watched the progress of the strange craft across the lake. It went on slowly and steadily towards the island, and reached the middle of the channel before any sign of movement was made by the enemy. Then forty canoes swept out swiftly from the island’s green bank, and in one of the foremost, as it came more clearly in sight, Tom, spying through one of the loopholes, saw his old enemy De Castro. The canoes came on rapidly; when within four hundred yards they stopped dead, and the men on board of them opened fire. The worst marksman could hardly have missed so huge a target, and the exposed wall of the redoubt rang with the impact of hundreds of bullets, only a few of which penetrated, to fall quite harmlessly in the water between the canoes. Tom then ordered the paddlers to slew the fort round, so that it presented one of its longer sides to the enemy, and a few moments later a volley burst from the loopholes, doing considerable damage among the crowded craft of the Arabs. Seeing that the inventiveness of the English lad had once more proved too much for him, De Castro, with a curse, ordered his men to paddle back to the island, and Tom was left to make his reconnaissance unmolested.

Slowly the unwieldy mass moved round the island--slowly, steadily, like some uncouth leviathan. Even Tom’s own men on shore, who had seen it made, watched it with awe, and some of them cried out that it was a spirit in monstrous shape. As he circumnavigated the island, Tom kept a keen look-out towards it, and found that there were several possible landing-places, the shore being comparatively low. Deciding that the most convenient point of debarkation was a sparsely wooded tongue of land at the south-east corner, Tom made a careful mental note of the whole position, and returned to his own quarters, well satisfied with his day’s work.

The next two days were spent in constructing two similar floating redoubts, and in practising the men in paddling, for the majority of them were helpless on the water. Tom was loth to delay his attack, and feared that De Castro might make an attempt to escape. He therefore withdrew half the men from the block-house at the edge of the forest, and kept them, along with men from his force, constantly patrolling the shores of the lake, to watch for any movement from the island. His fears were groundless, as he afterwards discovered. De Castro did indeed suggest to Mustapha that the principal men should decamp with the treasure, leaving the fort to its fate, but the Arab curtly refused. He had sworn an oath on the Koran before Rumaliza’s departure to defend the treasure till the last, and he himself had a bone to pick with the audacious English youth who had tied him up with his own rope in his own hut. He was, besides, so positive that the enemy, even if he effected a landing, would fling himself in vain against the defences, that he scoffed at De Castro’s fears and taunted him with cowardice.

At dawn on a bright January day Tom set forth on his momentous enterprise. The three redoubts, each with two hundred men on board, led the way, followed by thirty canoes fully manned, these last containing the worst marksmen in the force. Tom half expected that the enemy, having already proved their helplessness against the floating forts, would make no attempt to oppose his landing; but he soon saw that his passage was not to be uncontested. Forty-five canoes came out to meet him. At a distance of a thousand yards the Arabs’ flotilla divided into two squadrons, and, rowing three strokes to the one of Tom’s paddlers, evidently intended to sweep behind the cumbrous redoubts and fall upon the canoes, a design which Tom at once took steps to defeat. He was himself in the centre redoubt. He ordered the other two to move off to right and left until there was a clear quarter of a mile between him and them. The formation of his flotilla had then roughly the shape of a bent bow, the three redoubts representing the arc and the canoes the angle formed by the stretched string. By thus extending his front, Tom compelled the Arabs to make a wide circuit. Even then they passed within range of the loopholed faces of the floating forts, and suffered severely from the merciless volleys poured out by the Bahima. Drawing out of range, they had just begun to converge behind the redoubts when Tom ordered these to stop, thus allowing time for his canoes behind to close up and pass between them. The position was now reversed, the bow being pointed in exactly the opposite direction, Tom’s canoes nearest the island, and the Arabs’ farthest away. Within his redoubt Tom could distinctly hear the wild threats and cries of De Castro as he ordered his men to swing round and paddle back to the island.

"He’s afraid we shall be there first," said Tom with a smile to Mbutu.

His move had completely disconcerted the enemy, who abandoned outright the attempt to delay the progress of the flotilla, and made off at full speed to the island. There most of the armed men disembarked, and the unarmed paddlers, with a few Arab marksmen as guard, withdrew the canoes towards the north.

Tom’s redoubt arrived without mishap off the spot selected for the landing, and was there met by a tremendous fusillade from the enemy concealed in the wood. Thanks to the stoutness of his palisade, he sustained no casualties, but it was evident that his men would suffer severely if they landed before the woods were cleared. He knew from his prisoners that thick copses stretched northwards and westwards from the tongue of land he had arrived at; about a hundred and fifty yards inland they gave place to plantations of pine-apples, bananas, and other fruits; then came another belt of wild woodland fifty yards deep. Judging from the hotness of the enemy’s fire that the woods coming down to the shore were full of marksmen, he decided that these must at once be cleared. He ordered the separate canoes to stand off for the present out of range, and then sent two of the redoubts northwards to hug the shore, and halt about a hundred yards up, while he had his own redoubt propelled for the same distance to the west. At a given signal, the men in the redoubts opened fire through the loopholes, their fire crossing over the south-east corner of the island, enfilading the copses that commanded the landing-place. After half an hour of this, Tom came to the conclusion, from the sudden cessation of the enemy’s fire, that they had abandoned their positions and fallen back into the belt of woodland nearer the fort. He therefore landed two hundred fighting-men from each of the two redoubts, unperceived by the Arabs, and sent one redoubt up coast northwards, and another to the west, to divert, if possible, the enemy’s attention from movements in their front. Then, running his own redoubt on to the tongue of land, he ordered the canoes in the offing to paddle up swiftly and disembark their men, retaining the men in his own redoubt to protect the landing-parties. But no attack was made; the landing was quickly effected. Tom then threw open the gate of his redoubt, disembarked his fighting-men, and sent the redoubt back to the mainland to fetch the scaling-ladders, and a supply of food and ammunition, including a number of fire-balls he had brought with him from the village.

He had now more than a thousand men safely on the island. As soon as they were formed up, he led eight hundred forward to penetrate the copse, and, after discovering by means of skirmishers that the movements of the redoubts had, as he hoped, drawn off a large body of the enemy from his front, he threw his men across the plantations and into the farther wood. There, after a sharp fight, in which his men distinguished themselves by the nimbleness with which they worked forward under cover of the trees, he had the satisfaction of seeing the Arabs bolt across the open space beyond, and enter the fort by the gate in the outer stockade. Between himself and the glacis the land was absolutely clear of trees.

There were three gates to the fort, as Tom had learnt from the prisoners, one at the north, one at the east, and the one at the south by which the Arabs had just entered. Before sunset he had formed an entrenched camp opposite the eastern gate, into which he drew the whole of his force. Next morning he sent one redoubt, accompanied by five canoes, each way round the island to search for the Arab flotilla, surmising that the enemy, fearing an assault in front, would not venture to despatch a sufficient force to protect their boats. It turned out as he hoped. The redoubts returned in the afternoon, and reported that the enemy’s canoes were found moored along the northern shore, under the charge of a mere handful of Manyema, who, when they saw the mysterious forts bearing remorselessly down upon them, did not wait to fire even one volley, but incontinently fled. Mwonda, who had been in command of the expedition, gleefully pointed to the long lines of canoes which he had brought back with him, towed by the redoubts and by the ten canoes which had accompanied them.

"Well done, Mwonda!" said Tom. "Now we will keep twenty of the captured canoes for our own use; the rest you can tow out into the lake and set on fire. We shall thus effectually prevent any of our enemy from escaping."

The men cheered wildly as they saw the blaze on the surface of the water, and clamoured to be led against the fort. But Tom called the katikiro, the kasegara, and other chief men to his side.

"My friends," he said to them, "I have come to beat the Arabs, as you know. But in the fights we have already had much blood has been shed. It would be right, I think, t avoid further loss of life, both among ourselves and among the enemy, for many of them, as you know, are Manyema, who only fight for the Arabs their masters, and would be incapable of mischief without their leaders. I propose, therefore, to invite Mustapha, the chief in command, to surrender."

Every member of the little council was absolutely averse to this unexpected proposal. Msala declared that he had come to kill Arabs; he would rather kill them in fair stand-up fight, but if they surrendered he would kill them all the same, so that no bloodshed would be saved among them at any rate.

"Msala," said Tom sternly, "you have ill learnt the lessons I have tried to teach you. If the Arabs surrender they shall not escape altogether, but they must not be killed. I should hand the leaders over to the Congo Free State to be tried by its courts, like the court of justice in our village, of which you are such an ornament, Msala. The rest of the enemy I should allow to go free, but without firearms, and thus incapable of doing further mischief."

The katikiro still raised objections, but Tom combated them one by one, and at last brought all the officials to agree to his proposal. Accordingly he called up Mboda, Mbutu’s brother, as one of the most intelligent of the men with him, and sent him forward under a white flag to the gate of the fort, with directions to ask for Mustapha himself, and to deliver to him in form the summons to surrender. The messenger returned in about half an hour. He had spoken with Mustapha, who was accompanied by a little dark man with evil face. Mustapha had at first refused to treat, but at De Castro’s request had at length agreed that a meeting should take place between the opposing leaders half-way between the camp and the fort. He proposed to come himself with two of his chief men, all unarmed, and he invited Kuboko to do likewise. Mboda had only just delivered this message when Mbutu broke in impetuously:

"Not go, sah," he said. "De Castro bad man; him come; him remember sah knock him down; him no friend; him no speak good words. Mustapha too; him tied; him berrah mad, oh yes! Not go, sah."

"Don’t be afraid, Mbutu. There is honour among thieves. They have themselves proposed to come without arms. We shall merely have a talk, and be done with it. Go back, Mboda, and say that I agree to the proposal, and will meet Mustapha and his friends in an hour’s time midway between our positions. Both sides, it is understood, will come unarmed."

An hour later Tom set off to the meeting, accompanied by Mwonda, and by Mboda as interpreter. He thought it well not to provoke the two hostile chiefs unnecessarily by bringing Mbutu before them, and Mbutu, much against his will, remained in the camp, his heart filled with misgiving. To relieve him, Tom said, just before he started:

"You can keep a sharp look-out, Mbutu, and if you do see any open movement of treachery, which for my part I do not expect, you will order a company of men to fire, taking care not to hit me or my friends, you know."

As he approached the meeting-place he saw three men issue from the gate of the fort. He looked at them with interest. There was his old enemy Mustapha, his opponent in single-handed fight, his captor, and his victim. By his side, dwarfed by the Arab’s giant frame, was De Castro, his red shirt and yellow breeches seeming all the more gaudy beside the white robes of the Arabs. The third figure--it was with a start that Tom recognized Mahmoud the hakim, who had befriended him to the utmost of his power during his short captivity months before. The two little groups met in the open field, and bowed ceremoniously, no outward sign of recognition passing between Tom and the other side. Curiously scanning the features of the Portuguese, Tom almost found it in his heart to pity him. His face was lined and haggard, its expression was fierce and darker than ever; the iron of disappointment and defeat had evidently entered deep into his soul. He eyed Tom with an insolent and malignant scowl, and kept clenching and unclenching his fists. Mustapha was much more composed, preserving the impassivity so characteristic of his race.

Tom wasted no time in preliminaries. He gave no explanation of his presence there at the head of a great force of armed Bahima; he courteously but plainly stated the terms he had come to propose--unconditional surrender, the leaders to be placed in the hands of the Free State Government, their followers to be disarmed and dismissed. If these terms were not accepted the fort would be stormed. Mustapha looked at him in silence for a moment; then his eyes flashed, and he cried: