The next morning the two Masai guides, well rewarded, started off with a package. It contained letters home from the Stotts, telling of their wonderful deliverance; a brief despatch from Captain Brentnam to H.M. Agent at Unguja, and letters to John Baines and Ann Jamblin. John was asked how things were going, and whether on second thoughts he would prefer Lucy to return to Hangodi, and if he could take the next opportunity of having the accompanying letters sent to the coast; and Ann was given—curtly—information as to Lucy's reaching the temporary station of the Stotts. However expansive the Stotts might be, within the compass of one sheet of paper, they said very little about the situation of the Happy Valley; and Brentham was still more reticent. Both no doubt for the same reason, that the Happy Valley was too good a proposition to be given away lightly to a greedy world. Mrs. Stott still hoped, despite concluded boundary conventions, it might be brought within the British sphere; Brentham did not want any other fellow to have a go at its big game or an examination of its alluring secrets till he had had a chance to return.
Whilst these letters were being carried to their destination by two lithe, naked men of red-brown skin, with hair done up in periwigs of twine soaped with mutton fat and the same red-ochre as coloured their sleek bodies, men who carried knobkerries in their waistcords and long-bladed spears in the right hand, great oval shields on the left arm, and who ran on sandalled feet a steady six miles an hour when they were on the road: Lucy and Roger disposed themselves to await patiently the news which—they felt—was to determine their fate.
Twenty days went by in the Happy Valley in blissful sameness. Lucy had her very limited wardrobe washed in the lake waters which had some oddly cleansing, blanching effect—something chemical which both Roger and Mr. Stott would discuss in muttered phrases. Lucy and Mrs. Stott together, with many a laugh at blunder or foiled hopes of success, at length succeeded in ironing the skirts and bodices and petticoats and linen with a parody of a flat-iron, made for them by a naked Elkonono blacksmith in a native forge.
Brentham and his Wanyamwezi porters helped Mr. Stott complete his new station. Or they organized great shooting parties which enriched Mr. Stott with ivory that he might some day sell, as against trade goods and tea; or they accumulated biltong for Roger's expedition, besides finding meat for the day-by-day food of these hungry Wanyamwezi. To meet Mrs. Stott's scruples and objections they had themselves paddled in Wambugwe canoes farther up the lake and shot elephants, zebras, buffaloes, antelopes, on the flats twenty miles to the north of the Stotts' station. Or they rode donkeys and travelled twenty miles southwards, back along the road they had come (and got faint, far-off rumours of men fighting, leagues and leagues away, which made them anxious).
Or they laid out plantations in the rich alluvial soil behind the station and fenced them in. There Mr. Stott could plant his poor remnant of English vegetable seeds, or with greater hope the maize, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, ground-nuts, beans, and manioc of the agricultural and fishing Bantu population.
Then, on the twenty-first day of this busy three weeks, the Masai messengers once more squatted before the Stotts' baraza. Silently one of them tendered to Mrs. Stott a little package of dried banana leaves, tied with some native fibre. Inside a fold of old newspaper and a makeshift envelope made out of a copy-book cover, on one half-sheet of dirty copy-book paper, Ann sent Lucy this message:
Mbogo's Village,
NOVEMBER SOMETHING OR OTHER, 1888.
DEAR LUCY,—
Your messengers arrived yesterday, but I had to keep them waiting for an answer and now they are impatient to go. The station has been attacked—I think it began at the end of October, but I am muddled about dates. John and Mr. Bayley were killed on the second day. Anderson and I are only wounded; we are recovering, though my headaches are awful. Josiah is dead, tell Halima. Help has come at last. But don't come back this way. The Ruga-ruga are all over Ugogo and there is fierce fighting in Nguru. The Masai fought splendidly on our side. Go on to the coast quick as you can, northern route. Can't write more now, but will send through more news to Unguja if I get the chance. Good-bye. John talked of nothing but you when he was dying. It's about broken my heart.