"There is one other thing," Tom continued. "The Arabs, if they come in the large numbers that we expect, will range the country far and wide for food. Then I recommend you, if at this late season of the year you have still any of your crops unreaped, or any of your food-roots in the ground, to gather in all that you can, and dig deep pits in secret places, and there store your harvest. It is not well that we should feed the Arabs."
The chiefs again showed by their grunts that they found Kuboko's recommendation good.
"Now I want you, when you return to your own villages, to call up all the petty chiefs who look up to you, the chiefs of tens and twenties and thirties, and explain to them what we have talked about to-day. If they agree to come in with us, you will bring them to a grand palaver on this same hillside eight days from now. Every man will carry his arms, and come equipped as for war."
Tom was thoroughly tired out when he got back to the village. He had intended to write, in one of the note-books he had obtained from Schwab, a brief jotting of recent events, for future reference, but he put off that till next morning. When morning came, however, he was too anxious to begin his experiments in powder-making to spend any time in penning records. He had a large quantity of crude sulphur and saltpetre to refine, and he was by no means sure that with the rough apparatus at hand he would be successful. That could easily be tested, and he at once set about his preparations for the task.
He got a number of large earthen pots of all shapes and sizes, and broke up the rough dirty rolls of sulphur into these. Then he heated them gently over slow fires, and found, as he had hoped, that the earthy impurities gradually settled at the bottom, leaving the pure sulphur, a liquid like treacle, at the top. This he ladled off into clean vessels.
So far so good. The next thing was the saltpetre which had been collected by the women. This also he put into vessels, and dissolved the crude solid in water. Raising the mixture to the boiling-point, he allowed it to cool gradually, and watched for the result. The pure saltpetre was deposited in a solid crystalline mass at the bottom.
Here then were two of the necessary constituents; the third was easily obtained, for the katikiro had admirably carried out his instructions, and had personally superintended the cutting and carrying of an immense quantity of splendid wood from the forest, which was easily converted into charcoal by heating it in closed vessels.
Nothing now remained but to mix these ingredients.
"We must take care it isn't bang! soosh! black man all dead," said Tom to Mbutu, who, with all the other officials, was taking the keenest interest in the experiments. "I think we had better build a shed half a mile away, so that if there is an explosion it will do no harm except to me and you and my assistants."
"Sah no go," said Mbutu. "Me go; make bang stuff; blow up; all same for one."