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

by Herbert Strang

The twenty Bahima began to dig a passage through the debris. Not a word was spoken. The din in the village was beginning to lull. Tom despatched Mbutu with the request that the noise should be kept up. The baskets of earth, as they were filled, were carried to the stockade and emptied on the inside. The work went on as rapidly as possible in the darkness, the men toiling with unabated zeal, sure that Kuboko, the man of big medicine, must have some excellent plan in view. Meanwhile the chief, finding the Arabs pressing close, and their rifle fire, erratic as it was, becoming dangerous, had withdrawn his sortie-party into the village; but the drums still maintained a tremendous din that must have been heard in the still night air for many miles.

Rather more than two hours had gone, and only the first part of the task Tom had in his mind was completed. A clear passage ten feet wide had been cut from the summit of the cliff into the cavern. Ordering the panting negroes to sit down and rest, Tom walked back the twelve feet to the stockade, took a string of bush-rope from his pocket, and tying it to one of the palings, returned to his men. The straight line made by the string lay in the direction of the tank. Then he set the men to dig a trench along the line towards the stockade, making it ten feet wide and three deep. He ordered them to stop within a foot of the fencing, lest that should be loosened by the movement of the earth. This took another two hours, as nearly as Tom could judge. It was approaching three o'clock in the morning, and there was still much to be done before his arrangements were complete. Thinking it wise to defer the rest of his operations, for which light was absolutely necessary, he dismissed the men, returned to the village, and sent word to the chief that the weary drummers might now take their well-earned rest.

Then he unfolded his scheme to the wondering chief. The Arab camp at the foot of the precipice was, it was true, secure from missiles hurled over the spur; but it was immediately below the cavern. Tom's plan was to let the water from the full reservoir suddenly into the cavern, and he calculated that the force it gained as it plunged thence over the precipice would be sufficient to work havoc below. The reservoir was eighty yards long and sixty wide; its depth was more than six feet; the weight of the water it contained was thus some seven thousand tons. By the time this immense quantity, gathering impetus as it fell, reached the camp two hundred feet beneath its outlet, the dynamic energy it would have acquired would be tremendous. The plan threw Barega into wild excitement, and he was eager to see it carried out at once; but Tom smilingly informed him that there was work still to be done, and, thanking him for so admirably making a noise, advised him to retire to his hut and finish his broken sleep.

Next day the whole village knew that Kuboko had some terrifically big medicine in preparation, though none but the chief as yet knew what it was. Tom had many times to drive away the crowd of little half-starved children who came about him, looking up into his face with admiration and awe. There was still a trench to be dug from the reservoir to the stockade, but as the village was exposed to the Arabs on the upper ground to the south, no digging could be done during the day. Rain fell heavily, and Tom hoped almost against hope that it would cease before night, and that some glimmer of moonlight would enable him then to complete his preparations. During the day, however, he was not idle. He employed the same men who had so intelligently constructed his balista in making the rough semblance of the two doors of a river lock, each five feet wide and six feet deep. When finished, the edge of each was pierced with a red-hot bar of iron in three places at equal distances apart. Then the two doors were stitched together with bush rope through the holes, and the seam was covered with cloth well plastered with kaolin, the cloth being made to adhere to the wood with glue extracted from the bones of oxen. Wood was getting short in the village, but Tom, after some search, found four stout balks which he laid aside for future use.

Well pleased with his morning's work, he slept all the afternoon, and then, as soon as it was dark, set eight hundred men and women digging the trench to connect the tank with the trench outside the stockade. He placed them at various points along the line of twenty yards, so that the work might be quickly carried out, and nearest the tank left a bank three feet thick untouched. When the trench was so far complete, he let down at the end three feet from the tank the twin hatchway he had constructed, so that it completely blocked the channel, and shored it up with the four balks of timber, two to each panel. Round the lower end of these he got his men to fasten strong ropes, the other ends of which he tied to posts driven into the ground above.

It was now, he judged, about eleven o'clock. The rain had ceased, and in three hours the new moon would rise. Dismissing the great body of the workers, with orders that a small gang of them should remain within call, he took the chief aside to make final arrangements. As the edge of the moon appeared over the horizon, Barega was to muster four hundred men at the south gate, and the katikiro two hundred at the north gate. Tom surmised that when the avalanche of water descended upon their camp, the Arabs would in their flight rush for safety to the higher ground on either side. They would probably be unarmed, and should fall an easy prey to the Bahima. Those who were encamped round the village and in the banana plantation would naturally run to the assistance of their friends, and would take the paths around the south end of the village. Three hundred of the four hundred Bahima there placed would take them in flank, the remaining hundred were to attack the fugitives from the camp, who would be assailed at the same time by the party from the north. Thinking out all these details carefully, Tom saw the possibility of a hitch should the Arabs become alarmed before he was ready; but he impressed upon Barega and the katikiro that they must entirely reverse the procedure of the previous night, and, instead of making as much din as possible, enjoin the strictest silence on their men.

It only remained to scoop out the earth left between the tank and the trench, and between the end of the outer trench and the stockade. Some ten feet of the fencing was quietly removed to facilitate operations; then the reserve gang was called up, and in about an hour the work was done. The scooping at the tank end was a delicate task, for Tom did not wish to lose any lives by drowning. The last thin wall of earth between the boards and the reservoir was pushed down with long poles, and the water, flowing into the trench, was checked by the hatchway. Beyond that there was a clear course through a channel five feet wide and six deep to the arch of the cavern, and that was perpendicularly above the camp. Tom sent Mbutu to see that the sortie-parties were ready, loosed the ends of the ropes about the posts, and placed four strong men at each. His arrangements were complete.

Now that the critical moment was so near at hand Tom's heart in spite of himself beat with almost audible thuds. There was the huge reservoir, the surface of the water just discernible, only a gentle ripple on its surface indicating its recent disturbance. In a few short moments that placid pond was to become an impetuous torrent, rushing downward with all the force of its seven thousand tons, nothing to check it, nothing to prevent it from dealing death to the men below. As his vivid imagination conjured up the scene at the base of the precipice, and contrasted it with the peaceful scene above, Tom felt a pang, a touch of pity and remorse, a shuddering reluctance to launch so many miserable wretches into eternity. But that inward vision dissolved, and another took its place. He saw once more the long caravan of slaves, the gaunt, chained figures, with the wild, hunted look, the terrible lash of their masters provoking shrieks answered by redoubled blows, the horrible mutilations inflicted on weak women and children. There rang in his ears once more the piteous cry of a poor slave woman who for some trivial offence was led away to be slaughtered: "Oh, my lord, oh, my master! Oh, my lord, oh, my master!" He felt a rush of hot blood to his face, a flush of shame that such things should be. He remembered that such treatment would be measured out to Barega's people if the Arabs captured the village, and thought with a solemn sense of awe of the strange chain of events which had made him so potent a factor in the life and safety of these black people. It was life against life--the Arabs were a pest--and he set his lips and hardened his heart.

Then, looking towards the horizon, he saw the ruddy horn of the moon emerging. Ten minutes passed; he could see dimly the outlines of the trees.

"Now!" he whispered, with an outward calm that gave no clue to his intense emotion. The sixteen men heaved at the ropes; the balks of timber fell; the weight of water falling on the unsupported hatchway drove it inwards; and in ten seconds more the torrent swept with a dull roar into the cavern. Then, with a crash that seemed to shake the cliff to its foundations, the enormous mass of loose rock hiding the mouth of the cavern was driven over the edge. Even above the roar and splash rose the cries of the hapless men beneath, and then from each end of the camp came, as though in mocking answer, the exultant shouts of the warriors hastening to assail their foe. A few rifle shots rang out, but the rush of the Bahima was irresistible. They were famished, they were fighting for their lives and liberty, and, dashing down the slopes to north and south, they fell without mercy or respite upon their shaken foes.