Demoralized, leaderless, unarmed, the Arabs and Manyema below were rushing hither and thither like scared sheep, unable to act, unable to think. The force in the plantations above, catching the panic, scattered at the first onslaught of the Bahima, who, with spears and knives and every kind of weapon, were strewing the ground with dead. One little group, holding close together under their leader, came rushing across the path of the Bahima chief at the head of his men. Barega lifted his spear to strike, but the Arab leader, at four paces' distance, fired his pistol at him point-blank, and he fell. The next instant the Arab was transfixed with a dozen spears, but the gallant chief, shot through the breast, had fought his last fight. His men rushed on, pursuing the enemy with savage cries, and the chief, lifting himself painfully upon his elbow, saw that he was alone. A few seconds later, Tom, his task on the bluff finished, came hasting with Mbutu and his sixteen men to assist in the fight. Many bodies lay scattered prone on the ground, but among them he saw one man in a half-sitting posture.
"Kuboko! Kuboko, my brother!"
Tom heard the faint cry, started, and turned aside. He had but just time to grip the outstretched hand; then Barega heaved a sigh and died. Tom stood looking down at his dead friend, for, during the months they had been so strangely thrown together, he had come to look upon the simple, heathen African as a true friend. Thoughts of what he owed to the negro passed through his mind; he felt deeply sorry that Barega was never to enjoy the fruits of the victory for which they had worked together. "Poor fellow!" he murmured; then, gulping down the lump in his throat, he went on.
The tide of battle, if battle it could be called, had meanwhile rolled onwards. All unconscious of the death of their chief, the Bahima sped down into the plain, hunting the fugitives like wild beasts, tracking them in the moonlight like sleuth-hounds to places where they attempted to hide. There were no prisoners, none merely wounded; the Bahima did their fell work thoroughly. Right into the outskirts of the forest they kept up the chase till, tired of the work of slaughter, they began to straggle back to the village. All night long they continued to come in by twos and threes, some small parties even not arriving until after dawn.
The scene when daylight broke was gruesome beyond belief. The tent of the Arab chief lay half-buried beneath a mass of broken rock in the centre of a shallow pond. Many of the Arabs and Manyeina had perished by the avalanche of earth and water, and scores had fallen to the spears of the Bahima. The camp was half under water, and all kinds of articles were floating about or showing above the surface, among them several barrels which Tom guessed to be filled with gunpowder. Rifles, pistols, spears, a medley of weapons and implements, were scattered all around, and outside the immediate circle of devastation many boxes and bags of provisions lay uninjured.
Walking down to the scene, sick at heart, and yet convinced that he had only done his duty, Tom came, within about five hundred yards of the chief's tent, upon an enclosure in which some four hundred slaves were herded. It seemed that only by the merest chance could they have escaped the massacre. They had in reality been saved by their position. Their enclosure had been placed where it was so that the free movements of their masters round the village should not be impeded. Thus, while exposed to the wind and weather, they had been out of the direct line of the Bahima's onslaught. Being chained and fenced in, they had been unable to escape, and, indeed, their Manyema guards had stuck to their posts till the last, and only fled when dawn showed them the fate of their friends. Tom at once gave orders that the fetters on these men and women should be knocked off, and that they should be taken under a guard into the village. They could there be fed, and it might be decided subsequently what was to be done with them.
Tom then set a party of Bairo to recover from the water as many of the Arabs' effects as possible, and another to search the surrounding country for any traces of Hima cattle which had escaped the Arabs. He was about to order another gang to bury the dead, but remembered that the people who had died in the village before the arrival of the Arabs had not been buried, but taken out into the open to be eaten by the beasts of the field. Only the chief's body was usually buried, and all that was left of Barega had already been carried into the village to await solemn interment in the ground below his hut. Ordering the villagers to remove the dead to a distance, and to leave them exposed on the plain, Tom returned dead-beat to his hut, and threw himself down upon his couch.
CHAPTER XV: Arms and the Man
A Deputation--An Unexpected Honour--Msala Improves the Occasion--The Political Situation--First Steps--A Problem--Prospecting for Sulphur--Herr Schwab on His Travels--Made in Germany
The chief was buried at nightfall. A long framework of banana-stalks was constructed, on which his body was placed. It was then covered with several layers of bark-cloth provided by his wives, who had smeared their faces with kaolin, and taken off their necklaces, armlets, and other articles of adornment, exhibiting, besides these outward signs of mourning, a very real grief. Tom had a vague idea that at a chief's death his wives were slain and buried with him, and was greatly relieved to find that this was not the custom among the Bahima. A deep hole was dug beneath the hut, and there, after the recital of a sort of liturgy by the medicine-man, who had emerged from his retirement into a position of some importance again, Barega was consigned to his last home amid wailing and lamentation.