There was a long pause. Each chief consulted with his own men. Then one of the three principal chiefs called for silence, and declared that Kuboko's words were good. A long and excited discussion ensued, until at length they agreed to Tom's proposal, provided the village could be sufficiently enlarged to contain all their dependents in case of need. Tom at once called for the services of a thousand men to extend the stockade, widen the ditch, and build new huts for the accommodation of the guests. This was also agreed to, and then Tom endeavoured to get an idea of what his total force of fighting-men would amount to. He took some time to question each chief as to the strength of his own contingent, and to make the necessary deductions due to their incurable love of boasting; but the number actually arrived at, including his own force of Bahima and Bairo, fell not far short of four thousand. Then the assembly broke up.
One of the lesser chiefs, during the latter part of the conference, had been looking with great interest at Mbutu, who stood by his master's side. He was a tall Muhima, lithe and strong, with an Egyptian cast of feature and the strange melancholy expression so characteristic of his race. Looking very puzzled, he edged gradually nearer to Mbutu, and, as Tom turned to go down the hill, took the young Muhima by both arms, and gazed searchingly into his face.
"What is it, Mbutu?" said Tom. "Come along."
"Mbutu!" ejaculated the chief; then smiled, and shook the boy's arms up and down excitedly, talking very rapidly and earnestly the while. Mbutu listened at first in fascinated amazement, but by and by his expression changed, he clasped the stranger's neck, and, turning to his master, said simply:
"Him my brudder, sah! Him Mboda!"
Then he explained. When his village had been raided and burned some years before, he had believed that he alone of the male population had escaped alive. He had seen his father and two brothers killed, and knew that the women would be carried into captivity. But it now appeared that a few of the younger men had evaded the clutches of the Arabs and got away into the forest, under the leadership of Mboda, his third brother, and that, when the danger was past, they had returned, built a village several miles west of the one that was burned, and gradually gathered about them a few men and women of their own stock. Of this small village Mboda was now chief, and he had been among the most eager to join the coalition against the enemy he had so good reason for hating.
The delight of the brothers at their unexpected meeting was so manifest that Tom invited Mboda to return to Mwonga and stay for a few days. Mboda eagerly accepted the invitation, and sent word to his village by one of his men.
On Tom's return to Mwonga, the operations arranged were immediately put in hand and pressed on in spite of the constant rains. When the new stockade was completed, the enclosure was more than half a mile square, and there was room for the temporary accommodation of fifteen thousand people. The hole in the wall of the reservoir was filled up, so that the supply of water needed by so vast a host might be kept as large as possible; and the defences were further strengthened by a solid earthen embankment impenetrable to bullets. Another measure of Tom's, at first the cause of much grief and dismay among the Bairo, was the levelling of the banana plantation on the south-east of the village. But when the news was carried round among the allies it made a vast impression. The chiefs recognized that not they alone were required to make sacrifices, but that the people of Mwonga themselves submitted even to the loss of a flourishing plantation at the bidding of Kuboko.
But all this Tom felt was but child's play to the work of training his men. He knew, from what he had read of operations in which native troops had been engaged, in the Soudan and Kumasi, for instance, how impulsive the negro is, how prone to get out of hand, how apt to fight "off his own bat", without the least idea of co-operation. It was hopeless to attempt the training of the whole body of his allies; it would take years of vigorous drill, and the constant attention of British non-commissioned officers, to eradicate these defects and implant new ideas and habits in the native. All that he could hope to do was to bring his own men, and especially the select body of two hundred and fifty, into something like order. He worked unsparingly. He got the men to fall in in double ranks, and arranged them according to their height, making them number and form fours in the good old way he remembered at school. When it came to "Left!" and "Right!" he had some trouble at first, and the operation of changing ranks was almost too much for the Bahima, not to speak of Tom's patience. Marking time presented no difficulty, and when the willing negroes had once learned the difference between right and left it was not long before the orders "Right form", "Left form", "Move to the right in fours", and the other mystic cries of the barrack-yard, were carried out with fair precision. All these military commands Tom gave in English, and he often smiled to think of the surprise which his uncle, or any other British officer, would feel if he were dumped down suddenly one day at Mwonga's village and heard the curt expressions of English drill bawled within the stockade.
The four hours' drill was kept up every day, and the monotony of it was compensated by the eagerness and aptness of his pupils. Before, they were a mob; now, they were gradually gaining the power to work together and becoming a serviceable force. This was strikingly shown in their volley-firing. After repeated efforts, Tom almost despaired of breaking the men of firing haphazard, anticipating the word of command, blazing with eyes shut in every possible direction. But patience won the day, and at last he was able to advance men against them in sham-fight to within twenty yards without a trigger being pulled before the word was given.