Tom Burnaby: A Story of Uganda and the Great Congo Forest

by Herbert Strang

"Then, Barega, do you at once select a hundred of your steadiest men for yourself, and a hundred also for me, so that all things may be ready when the enemy appears."

The arrangements were rapidly made. Every warrior in the village had his appointed place; a number of the cattle were brought in and tethered within the stockades, the rest were driven away to the south under the charge of armed herdsmen, who were instructed to elude the enemy to the best of their ability.

On the next day the force in the village was swelled by the accession of two separate bands of Ruanda, whose hamlets had been destroyed by the Arabs, and who had flocked to the protection of Barega. The same evening the last of the scouts came in, with the news that the enemy had been hastening their march and were bound to arrive next day. He put their numbers at five thousand, but Tom knew enough of the African character to be assured that this estimate was far in excess of the actual number, and he took the information very quietly.

Now that an attack was imminent, he advised Barega to call a mass-meeting of the inhabitants. Standing in the midst of the circle of negroes, whose kind treatment of him forbade their being called savages, he felt a deep sense of his responsibility, and spoke with special seriousness.

"Bahima and Bairo," he said, "you are all my brothers and sisters. I believe that I am doing right in helping you to defeat the enemy who has caused so much misery to you and to all your race. Please God, we shall defeat them. We must all do our best--some to give orders, others to obey. My sisters, you will stay with your children in the middle of the village. The Arabs will have fire-sticks, and there is no need for any of you to run into danger. Your husbands will defend you, and strike hard for their homes."

Speeches at greater length were delivered by the chief and the katikiro. The people were deeply impressed; never had they gone to war in any such way before; and Tom on his side was struck with their intelligence, and the eagerness they showed to follow instructions so novel to them. He was a little uncertain of the steadiness of the Bairo, who were more impetuous and less docile than the Bahima; but they had been divided into companies under Bahima officers, and Tom himself had put them through a little drill in the brief intervals left by their task of fortifying the village. All that he feared was that they might break out in wild rushes, after the undisciplined negro's manner, and leave the stockade insufficiently defended.

Next morning, just as light was breaking, the sentries gave word that the enemy was advancing. Tom, waked by Mbutu out of a long quiet sleep, hastened to his post at the southern gate. For days he had been hammering it home into the negroes' heads that silence was a strong weapon on their side, but the negro cannot change his nature in a week, and as soon as the news had run through the camp, the eager warriors came clamorously out of their huts to the stockade. Tom bade them keep out of sight, and the enemy, advancing rapidly in crescent-shaped formation stretching from south-east to north-west, must have believed that the noise was merely the usual morning bustle in a large village. On they came, Arabs mingled with Manyema, in perfect silence and fair order, confident of finding easy access to their expected prize. The horns of the crescent reached the trench; twenty men at each extremity stepped heedlessly on to it, and instantly they were in the water, floundering beyond their depth. Loud cries of dismay filled the air; the rest of the force halted in amazement, scarcely able in the faint light to perceive what had happened. Then the deep boom of a drum rolled from the village, over the precipice, into the wooded plain.

Instantly a thick cloud of missiles flew from the stockade, arrows whizzed, spears hurtled through the air. At the same moment, Tom, with his hundred, sallied out from the southern gate, the men raising a fierce whoop of exultation. From the northern gate, after a barely perceptible interval, came an answering cry; and within the stockade the warriors, hurling their weapons at the centre of the Arab line, added their shouts to the din. The confusion of the Arabs was too great to permit of their firing a volley; a few separate slugs fell among the Bahima, and ill-aimed spears struck down a few. But the troops of Tom and Barega were pressing hard upon the extremities of their line; they were driven in towards the centre. An attempt was made by their leaders to rank them in some sort of order, but the necessity of facing two ways at once baffled their efforts; the Bahima were upon them in a wild charge, and with cries of mingled fright and disappointment they broke and ran.

With yells of triumph the Bahima dashed in pursuit. But the sun was now peeping, large and red, over a distant ridge, and by its light Tom saw a fresh and well-ordered body of men advancing to the support of the fugitives. Divining that this was the Arab reserve, he ordered his drummer to beat the recall, at the very instant when the enemy, even at the risk of killing their own men, opened fire. The command was timely, for the Bahima, unaccustomed to the fire of muskets, already showed signs of trepidation. His drum was answered by the chief's, and the two bands retreated to their several gates, followed by the hostile force, their return being covered by a hot discharge of missiles from the stockade. After some hesitation, the enemy drew off to reconsider their plan of attack, pursued by a loud chorus of derisive yells.

Tom had not the heart to check the self congratulation of the people, who celebrated their victory with song and dance. Victorious, certainly, had they been, but Tom, cool in the midst of the excitement, had carefully scanned the opposing forces to estimate their strength, and he saw that Barega's warriors were greatly outnumbered. They were no more than six hundred fighting men all told, while the enemy, as nearly as he could tell, consisted of at least three times that number, some ninety of them being Arabs, and the rest Manyema. The success of the Bahima was evidently due solely to the surprise and confusion of the enemy, for, even with the advantage of the stockade, they could scarcely hope to outmatch a force so much larger, armed, moreover, as two hundred and fifty of them were, with muskets and rifles. The Bahima losses so far had been few; two men had been killed and five wounded, of whom two died later. Of the enemy, six Arabs and about thirty Manyema had been left upon the field, and others, doubtless, lay drowned at the bottom of the ditch. It was with some anxiety that Tom awaited the dawn of the next day. He passed a sleepless night, framing many conjectures as to the enemy's further operations, and thinking out plans for their discomfiture. But morning broke in silence; Tom wondered whether spear and shield were to remain idle. Looking over the stockade about ten o'clock, he saw a movement amid a clump of trees about half a mile up the slope to the south-west, and, carrying his eye downwards to the north-west, he observed similar evidences of activity in the thicker woods in that direction also. Before he had quite realized what this might portend, a large body of the enemy emerged from each clump, many of the men carrying what appeared to be a kind of trellis-work. Their object flashed instantly into Tom's mind; they were going to bridge the trench. Drums beat, and Bahima and Bairo rushed to the points threatened; but the enemy halted just out of range of their arrows, and, under cover of a phalanx of native shields, prepared to rush their extemporized bridge across the ditch.