"Why! Because in England they're all too busy making money to attend to such things—making money, sorr, or fighting tooth and nail about education, or dreaming about football. Now if Ireland had Home Rule——"
"No politics, Barney! I don't agree with you. I'm as sure as I'm alive that if the people at home really knew how abominably the natives are treated—knew about the floggings and maimings and murders, they'd make such an outcry that either King Leopold would be forced to change his policy, or some one would step in and manage things for him. If only England and America would join hands!"
When Elbel had completed his new camp, he resumed the work far up the hill which the sortie had interrupted. Jack was still at a loss to understand what the Belgian's scheme was, and he was prevented from finding out, by the fact that every night a strong body was left on guard, as he knew by the many camp fires at the top of the ridge.
One afternoon, however, the secret was explained. One of the men placed on the look-out at the north-eastern blockhouse reported that he saw a stream of water rushing down the hill. Jack hastened to the spot with his field-glass, and was somewhat alarmed to see that the man's information was correct; water was certainly streaming down over the rocky ground, making a course that seemingly would bring it right against the fort wall.
"He's going to flood us out!" thought Jack. "He must have built an embankment across the new course of the river."
This was a manoeuvre which he had not foreseen, and one which it seemed impossible to counter. The water, gathering impetus as it flowed down the hill, would almost infallibly undermine the wall, even if it had not force enough to wash it away altogether. But as he watched, for the moment so much taken aback that he could not think of anything to be done, his consternation was changed to amusement, for about two hundred yards up the hill the water made a swerve to his right, and flowed with increasing rapidity in that direction. The slope was such that, instead of coming straight down as Elbel had evidently expected, the stream, finding the easiest course, took at this point a trend to the south-east. After all it would only wash the blockhouse on which Jack stood.
Jack instantly saw what he ought to do. Running down to the base of the stockade, he summoned a large body of workers, and set some of them to dismantle the blockhouse, the remainder to pull down the wall and build it up again several feet behind its former position, and in such a way that instead of forming the angle of a square it lay across, making a line parallel with the course of the stream.
They had hardly got to work before the full body of water was upon them. But so many men were employed, and they moved so rapidly, that only one or two logs were carried away by the current, the solidly built blockhouse serving as a dam and protecting the workers behind. The main stream fell with a roar over the steep slope on the edge of which the blockhouse stood—a slope only less precipitous than that of the cataract, now a thing of the past, at the opposite corner of the fort.
Only a few minutes later a tremendous outcry was heard from the direction of Elbel's new camp. For a moment it startled Jack. Had the enemy taken advantage of the sudden flood to organize an attack in force? But the thought had hardly crossed his mind when he burst into laughter, causing his workers to pause and look round in astonishment.
"A magnificent idea!" he said to Barney. "D'you see what has happened? The silly fellow is flooding his own camp!"