John was reduced to despair.
"Silly fellas, sure 'nuff, sah!" he said in dudgeon. "Dey no good—too much fools, all same!"
An idea occurred to Challis. Knowing from his past experience with the Hausas how keenly negroes enter into competition one with another, he ordered John to explain that, if the men kept the line, he would give prizes to the best spearmen as soon as they reached the fort, and make them his own bodyguard.
After the men had gathered into a crowd and squabbled noisily for several minutes, this offer had the desired effect. They allowed themselves to be formed into a line, which, however, all John's efforts could not prevent from gradually assuming a crescent shape. Then, one by one, after several failures to make them act in turn, they threw their spears at the word of command. In this way, Challis selected the twenty men whose cast was the longest and straightest, and they immediately rushed across to the spectators to proclaim their merits.
By this time Challis was very tired.
"Drilling my platoon in the O.T.C. was nothing to this," he said to himself. "How in the world can I make anything of them in a fortnight?"
But after rest and food, he was ready to tackle the work again, and he took heart when he found that the negroes were much more amenable.
The spirit of emulation he had excited among them lightened the task. Every man seemed anxious to win praise from the white man. The idea had got abroad among them that the exercises to which he put them were so much "white man's medicine," something that would have a mystic efficacy when they came in contact with the enemy. As this idea implied unquestioning faith, it was all that Challis required.
He was careful not to keep them too long at one thing. When they had at last seized the idea of a straight line, though still far from successful in achieving it, he set the twenty selected spearmen to compete among themselves, and devoted his attention to the sixty less proficient.
These he determined to turn into pikemen. He got them to cut longer shafts for their spear heads and to sharpen the lower end, so that by the close of the day they were provided with serviceable pikes eight feet long.