Samba: A Story of the Rubber Slaves of the Congo

by Herbert Strang

CHAPTER XVI

The House by the Water

With characteristic energy, Jack next day set about the work in earnest. He posted sentinels several miles down the river and on the only forest paths by which a force was likely to approach, to give him timely notice if the enemy appeared. Then, with as many men as he could muster, and a great number of women, he hastened to the waterfall, and began the work of clearing the ground. He had decided to start from the site of the proposed settlement and work outwards, so that the crops would be as much as possible under the protection of the camp: it would never do to raise a harvest for the enemy to reap.

He placed Mboyo, Samba's father, in command of all his own people who had turned up, and of such people from other tribes as now came dropping in daily, the news of the white men who helped the negroes and feared not Bula Matadi having by this time spread abroad in the land. Every new contingent of fugitives brought a fresh tale of outrage, causing Jack to persevere under the discouragements with which he met, and to vow that he would do all in his power to protect the poor people who looked to him for succour. What the ultimate result of his action would be he did not stay to consider. It was enough for him that a work of urgent need lay ready to his hand.

He did not blink the fact that he and his followers were now in reality in revolt against the constituted authorities of the Free State. Elbel, it was true, was only a servant of a concessionnaire company, vested with certain trading and taxing privileges; but government as understood in the Free State was conducted by the delegation of powers from the central authority to private or corporate trading concerns. How far the powers of such a man as Elbel really extended in point of law Jack did not know. But he had been driven into his present position by a series of events in the face of which he could not find that any other course of action than the one he had adopted was open to him. And while he recognized fully the essential weakness of his position, however well fortified he might regard himself on grounds of humanity, he faced boldly what seemed the likeliest immediate consequence of his actions—the return of Elbel in force.

Meanwhile he was beginning to be a little concerned at not hearing from Mr. Martindale. It was many weeks since his last note had arrived. Jack was not yet seriously anxious about his uncle's non-appearance in person, for he could easily conceive that delays might occur in the prosecution of his business in strange places and among strange people, and when he reflected he came to the conclusion that Mr. Martindale might naturally hesitate to send many messengers. They were very expensive, having to come so many hundreds of miles, and moreover there was always a chance that a letter might miscarry. The Congo was not too safe a highway; the Free State methods had not been such as to instil a respect for "law" among the victims of its rule. Jack knew full well that if a messenger from his uncle fell into Elbel's hands, he would not be allowed to proceed. It was possible that Mr. Martindale's purchase of rifles, and their destination, had been discovered; and the idea that he might be involved in some trouble with the courts made Jack feel uneasy at times.

But he was so extremely busy that he had little leisure for speculation of any kind. The work of clearing the ground proceeded with wonderful rapidity.

"They talk about the negro being lazy," he remarked one day to Barney; "he doesn't look like it now."

"Ah, sorr, they say the same about my counthrymen. Perhaps the truth is the same in Ireland as 'tis here. For why are the niggers here not lazy, sorr? Just because you'd explained to them what the work's for, and they know they'll get the good uv it. There may be scuts uv spalpeens that won't work at any time for anything or anybody at all. 'Tis they I'd use that chicotte on, sorr; but I don't see any here, to be sure."

When enough ground had been cleared and sowed to furnish a considerable crop, Jack turned the whole of his available force on to the work of building the entrenched camp. Imbona had welcomed with gratitude and enthusiasm the suggestion that the new settlement should be made large enough to contain the whole population of his villages in case of need; and his men having discontinued their unprofitable search for rubber when the forest guards disappeared, he could employ them almost all in the work. For Jack did not recognize the prescriptive right of the men to leave all the field work, when the clearing had been done, to the women, as is the invariable negro custom. Whether in the fields or on the new defences, he insisted on all taking a share.

The greatest difficulty he encountered in the construction of his new camp was the want of materials. The country in the immediate vicinity of the waterfall was only sparsely wooded, and too much time and labour would be consumed in hauling logs from the forest below. But he found a large copse bordering the stream, higher up, and here he felled the trees, floating the logs down to the side of his settlement, not without difficulty, owing to the narrow tortuous bed. These, however, proved quite insufficient for the construction of a thick and impenetrable stockade round the whole circuit of the chosen site. Jack therefore determined to use the boulders that lay in the course of the stream, thus unawares making his camp a cross between an Afghan stone sangar and a log fort, such as were built by the pioneers and fur-traders of the American west. The labour of transporting the heavy boulders to the site of the settlement was very great; but the heart of the labourers being, as Barney had said, in their work, they toiled ungrudgingly, and, with the ingenuity that the negro often unexpectedly displays, they proved very fertile in simple labour-saving devices.

The fort was built on the left bank of the stream just above the cataract, so that the steep cliffs formed an effective defence to its southern side. Before falling over the precipice, the stream ran through a gully some twelve feet deep. The western side of the fort rested on the gully, and was thus with difficulty accessible in this quarter. Only on the north and east was it necessary to provide strong defensive works. These faces were each about a hundred yards long. At the western extremity of the northern face, where it rested on the stream, Jack placed a solid blockhouse of logs. He constructed a similar blockhouse at the eastern extremity of this face, and a third at the south-east corner where the stone wall abutted on the precipice. All three blockhouses were constructed as bastions, so as to enfilade the northern and eastern faces.

When the outer defences were thus completed, the negroes were set to work to build the necessary habitations within. Hundreds of tall stems, thousands of climbers, vines, and creepers, piles of palm and phrynia leaves, were collected, and in an amazingly short time the space so lately bare was covered with neat huts built in native fashion for the negroes, with three more substantial dwellings, somewhat apart from the rest, for Mr. Martindale, Jack, and Barney. A wide open space was left in the middle. At one point a great heap of boulders was collected for repairing the wall if necessary; and Jack placed his ammunition securely in an underground magazine.

In two months from the departure of Elbel Jack was able to transfer his stores to the new settlement. The crops in the cultivated area were already far advanced. Jack was amazed to see how quickly in this teeming soil the bare brown face of the earth became covered with the tender shoots of green, and how rapid was the progress to full maturity. Clearly the new village, to which the natives had given the name Ilombekabasi, "the house by the water," would be in no straits for its food supply.

It was Barney who suggested a doubt about the water. Jack found him as a rule a good commentator, but a poor originator; he could very prettily embroider an idea, but very rarely had an idea of his own. But on this occasion he had a flash of insight.

"By the powers, sorr," he said one morning, as Jack and he were walking along the stream, "I do remimber just this very minute two lines uv poethry, out uv a poethry book I was made to learn whin I was a bhoy an' they talked uv sendin' me in for 'zamination by the Intermaydiate Board. It never come to anything, to be sure, because by the time I was old enough to sit for the 'zamination I was too old, sorr."

"Well, what are the lines?"

'"Water, water iverywhere,
An' not a dhrop to dhrink.'"

'Twas about some poor sailor man that shot a bird at sea, an 'twas a holy bird, an' whin 'twas dead the wind did not blow, an' the sailors dropped down dead, an' ghosts came aboard, an' the sky was like a hot copper, an' this poor divil uv a fellow was alone, all, all alone, as the book said, wid the dead bird slung round his neck, an' his lips parched, an' water all about, but as salt as a herring, so that he couldn't drink it; bedad, sorr, I remimber how mighty bad I felt meself whin my ould tacher—rest his sowl!—read out those lines in a sort uv whisper, an' me lips went as dhry as an old boot, sorr."

The idea, you perceive, was by this time pretty well smothered under its embroidery.

"You mean that the enemy might try to divert the stream if they attacked our camp?"

"'Tis the very marrow uv it, sorr, an' mighty aisy it would be. Sure there are plenty uv boulders left, an' they could make a dam that would turn this stream at the narrow part above, an' niver a blessed dhrop uv dhrink should we get."

"You're right, Barney. We must be prepared for anything. Let us go and look round."

Strolling up stream, they came, within a short distance of the spot where inspiration had flashed upon Barney, to a small spring bubbling up near the river bank.

"Here's water, Barney," said Jack. "It rather suggests that we'd find water inside the camp if we sank a well."

"True, sorr; but I'm thinking that would need a terrible deal uv diggin'."

"Still it may have to be done. We can't use this spring; it's a hundred yards at least away from the stockade—too far to come, under fire from Albini rifles."

"And we couldn't make it run into the camp, sorr, more's the pity."

"Stop a bit. I don't know that we couldn't. We might make a conduit."

"What might that be, sorr?"

"A pipe. It would have to be underground."

"And if we got a pipe, an' could lay it, the marks uv the diggin' would bethray us. Don't the streets uv London prove it whin the County Council has been taking up the drains?"

"Unless we could cover them in some way. That might be managed. A greater difficulty is the natives. They've worked very well, but we don't know yet how far they can be trusted; and if they knew of this water-pipe we propose, they might blab the secret and undo all our work."

"And where's the pipe, sorr? There are no gas pipes or drain pipes in this haythen counthry."

"No, but there are plenty of bamboos. We could make an excellent pipe of them. The digging is the difficulty. We can't get the natives to do it without giving our plan away, and we can't do it ourselves for the same reason. I shall have to think this out, Barney."

"Sleep on it, sorr. Begorra, I remimber two more lines from that same poetry book—

'Sleep, sleep, it is a blessed thing
Beloved from pole to pole';

an' no wonder at all, for many a time I've gone to me bed bothered about wan thing or another, and bedad, the morn's morn 'twas all as clear as the blessed daylight, sorr."

"Well, I'll sleep on it, Barney, and let you know to-morrow what the result is."

It was close thought, however, before he fell asleep that gave Jack the solution of the problem. All the natives now knew that the object of the white man's presence here was to search for gold; they knew also that to obtain the gold the soil had to be excavated. Why not turn their knowledge to good account? Instead of laying his conduit in a direct line from the spring to the nearest point of the stockade, he would lay it along, or rather in, the side of the gully; it would thus be more likely to escape observation, and the disturbed ground could be planted with quick-growing creepers or covered up with boulders. As a blind to the natives, he would have a number of excavations made at the edge of the gully, both above and below the waterfall, and one of these could be used for the bamboo pipe without anybody being the wiser save the few who must necessarily be in the secret.

Next morning, accordingly, Jack, under pretence of continuing the search for gold, set the men to make a series of shallow excavations. Most of these were cut below the cataract, and, using the prospector's pan, Jack obtained what he hoped his uncle would consider good results from the soil. He carefully noted the places along the exposed bed of the stream in which the best returns were found. But the excavations were abandoned one by one, and attention was not unduly directed to any of them.

One of the excavations above the waterfall was the channel for the conduit. Jack carried it from within a few yards of the spring to a spot near the north-west blockhouse, overlooking the gully. At one time it seemed that his plan would be wrecked, literally upon a rock, for a huge mass of stone of almost granite hardness was met with a little less than half-way from the spring. But Jack was relieved to find soft earth beneath it, and the obstacle was turned by sinking the conduit at this place some feet below the usual level.

At a short distance from the blockhouse, within the stockade, Jack set the men to excavate a large tank, with a surface outlet over the cataract; and from the bottom of the tank he drove a tunnel, just large enough to accommodate a bamboo pipe, to the nearest point of the gully.

The tank was an object of great curiosity to the natives, both those who had dug it and those who looked on. The children amused themselves by jumping in and out until the bottom became so deep as to make that sport dangerous; their elders congregated at the edge, chattering among themselves, some suggesting that it was intended as a storehouse for grain, others, as a grave in which to bury Elobela and his men when they were killed in the fight that all expected.

Meanwhile Jack had taken two of the natives into his confidence. They were Mboyo and Samba. The former was silent by nature and habit. Samba would have torn out his tongue rather than divulge any secret of his master's. Jack entrusted to them the construction of the conduit. He knew enough of their language by this time to be able to explain what he wanted without Lepoko's assistance, and they quickly seized his idea. Working by themselves in a bamboo plantation at Ilola, they selected stalks of slightly different thickness which would fit into one another; and Jack found that by carefully packing the joints with earth from the peaty swamp, he could make a pipe of the required length practically free from leakage.

It remained to lay the conduit in position. This task he reserved for himself and Barney, with the assistance of Mboyo and Samba. To avoid observation by the people, it was necessary to do the work at night. Accordingly one day Jack gave orders that no one was to leave the camp without permission after the evening meal was eaten. Immediately after sunset the four quickly issued from the gate in the northern wall of the fort, one at a time so as not to attract attention. Mboyo and Samba brought the sections of the pipe from the place where they had concealed them, and under Jack's direction they laid them along the gully, covering up each length of bamboo as it was placed. The trench having been already prepared, the actual labour involved was not great, the only difficulty being to remove as far as possible the traces of their operations. But it took time, and was impeded by the darkness, so that on the first night, after several hours of work, only the pipe had been laid, no connexion having yet been made with the tank or the spring.

The work was continued under similar conditions on the following night. A connexion having been made with the tank, it only remained to tap the spring. A hole, some three feet deep, was dug where the water bubbled up, and formed into a fairly water-tight chamber by lining it with stone chipped from the boulders. Into this one end of the conduit was carried. Then the hole was filled in, and covered with two heavy pieces of rock, placed in as natural and unstudied a position as possible. While this was being done by Mboyo and Samba, Jack and Barney dibbled the roots of sweet potato creepers into the soil along the whole length of the conduit, knowing that they would grow so rapidly that in a few weeks every trace of their work would be hidden by the foliage; moreover the plant would serve a double purpose.

The spring was a small one; nevertheless, by the time the night's task was completed, and the party returned to the camp, there were already two or three inches of water in the tank, and it was steadily rising. Barney was even more delighted than Jack.

"'Tis wonderful what a power uv good poethry can do in the world, sorr," he said. "An' sure the commissionaires uv education in the ould counthry would be proud men the day did they know that Barney O'Dowd, though he didn't pass his 'zamination, has made a mighty fine use uv the little poethry book."

Great was the surprise of the natives when they awoke next morning to see the mysterious tank full of water, and a tiny overflow trickling from it over the cataract. They discussed it for the whole of the day, inventing every explanation but the right one. The original spring had been so near the river and so inconspicuous that its disappearance was not noticed.

Jack felt a glow of satisfaction as he looked round on his work. Here was an orderly settlement, on an excellent natural site, defended by a stockade and wall impregnable save to artillery, with fresh clean huts, well-cultivated fields, and an inexhaustible water supply. It had involved much thought and care and toil; how amply they had been rewarded!

His men were now all transferred from their old settlement to the new one. Imbono's people still remained in their villages, not without reluctance. They knew that the gate of Ilombekabasi would always be open to them if danger threatened; but they felt the attractions of the place, and wished to migrate at once. And they were particularly jealous of the refugees. These people were strangers; why should they have better habitations and stronger defences than they themselves? Why were they permitted to remain in Imbono's country at all? Jack had much ado to keep the peace between the two parties. Quarrels were frequent, and that they did not develop into open strife was a tribute to Jack's diplomacy, and to the strange influence which Samba had acquired. The winning qualities which had captivated Mr. Martindale seemed to have a magical effect upon the people. The boy had always been a special pet among his own folks; his merry nature won the affection of Imbono's subjects also. Jack kept an observant eye upon him, and more than once saw him quietly approach a group where bickering and recrimination were going on, and by some grace of address, or some droll antic played with his inseparable companion Pat, turn frowns to smiles, and suspicion to good fellowship.

Among the inhabitants of Ilombekabasi was the Belgian sergeant rescued from the villagers in Ilola. He gave his parole not to attempt to escape, and indeed endured captivity patiently, for he knew not how far away his friends might be, and to wander alone in this forest country meant death. Jack sometimes talked with him, taking the opportunity of airing his French, and finding some little interest in sounding the man's views. At first the Belgian would not admit that the natives had any rights, or that there was anything particularly obnoxious in the system of administration. But he changed his mind one day when Jack put to him a personal question.

"How would you, a Belgian, like it if some strange sovereign—the German emperor, say—came down upon you and compelled you to go into your woods and collect beech-nuts for him, paying you at the rate of a sou a day, or not at all, and thrashing or maiming or killing you if you did not collect enough?"

The question was unanswerable, and from that time the Belgian became a meditative man.

The refugees were gradually increasing in number. By the time the camp was finished Mboyo's command had grown to sixty men, with nearly as many women and twice as many children. All brought stories of the barbarous deeds of the rubber collectors; many bore in maimed limbs or scarred backs the personal evidences of the oppressors' cruelty. Jack was moved almost to tears one day. A fine-looking negro came into the camp carrying something wrapped in palm leaves, and asked to be taken to Lokolobolo. When brought before Jack he removed the wrappings, and, unutterable woe depicted on his face, displayed a tiny black hand and foot. His village had been raided, he said, and with his wife and children and a few others he had fled to the forest, where they lived on roots and leaves and nuts. The forest guards tracked them out. One day, when he was absent fishing, a brutal sentry came upon his wife as she was collecting leaves for the evening meal. He learnt from one of his friends what happened. Before the woman could escape the sentry shot her, and as she was only wounded, his "boys" chopped her with their knives till she died. Others of his hangers-on took the children; and when the father returned to the place where he had left them, he found the dead body of his wife, and one hand and foot, all that remained of his little ones from the cannibal feast.

It was incidents like these that stiffened Jack's back. He had crossed his Rubicon: the gate of Ilombekabasi stood open to all who chose to come. And they came steadily. For a time many of them were too weak to be useful members of the little society. But as with good food and freedom from care their strength increased, they began to be self-supporting, Mboyo employed them in attending to the crops and bringing new ground under cultivation. Several were artificers, and were useful in doing smith's or carpenter's work.

In addition to keeping the villagers employed, Jack set apart a portion of every day for military exercises. Every able-bodied man was armed; those for whom there were no rifles carried the native spears. When Boloko fled from Ilola he left a number of Albini rifles and a stock of ammunition behind. These Jack appropriated, so that his corps of riflemen now numbered sixty. He used his cartridges very sparingly, for his stock was not large, and he saw no possibility of replenishing it.

Now and again he arranged for a sham fight. One party of men was told off to storm the stockade, an equal party to defend it. No firearms were used on these occasions; the weapons employed were wooden poles with wadded ends. Such fights afforded excellent practice against a real attack, and not a little amusement and enjoyment to the natives, who entered into the spirit of them enthusiastically, and took the hard knocks and bruises with as much cheerfulness as schoolboys on a football field. These little operations were useful to Jack also. By their means he discovered the weak spots in his defences, and was able to strengthen them accordingly.

But he was now becoming seriously alarmed at Mr. Martindale's continued absence. Eight weeks had passed since his last letter came to hand, nearly five months since his departure. What could have happened? Jack could not think that his uncle had willingly left him so long to bear his heavy responsibility, and now that he had more leisure he could not prevent himself from imagining all kinds of mishaps and disasters. At last, when he was on the point of sending a special messenger down the river to make inquiries, a negro arrived at the settlement with a letter. He had come within a hundred and fifty miles of Ilombekabasi as a paddler on a white man's canoe; the remainder of the distance he had covered on foot. Jack opened the letter eagerly. It read:—

MY DEAR JACK,—

Sorry to leave you so long. Have been on my back with an attack of malaria; three weeks unconscious, they told me. No need to be anxious: I'm on the mend; soon be as fit as a riddle. Pretty weak, of course; malaria isn't exactly slathers of fun. It will be a fortnight or three weeks before I can start; then must travel slowly. Expect me somewhat over a month after you get this. I've been in a stew about you. Hope you've had no trouble. Can you stomach native food? Didn't forget your birthday. Got a present for you—quite a daisy.

Your affectionate uncle,
JOHN MARTINDALE.

P.S.—Got some hydraulic plant at Boma: a bargain.