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

by Herbert Strang

The manufacture of gunpowder having proved successful, it was a comparatively easy matter to make slugs for the muskets. Every scrap of old iron, brass, copper, lead, in the place was utilized for this purpose, and at last the musketeers were provided with sufficient ammunition, Tom considered, to last them through a month's brisk fighting.

Having brought them into something like order, he next set about the equipment of an equal force of pikemen. He had read something of the good service done by pikemen in the wars of the seventeenth century, and he was indeed amazed to find how details that had lain unnoticed in his mind now came crowding to his recollection. He got his men to cut strong staffs, sixteen feet long, from the forest trees, and to each he fixed, by means of a thin plate of iron four feet long, a lozenge-shaped pike-head, made by the Bairo smiths under his direction. Thus the head could not be accidentally broken off, or cut off by the Arabs' scimitars. The men so armed he trained to act with the musketeers. In close fighting order the musketeers were drawn up in two ranks, the front rank kneeling, the rear rank standing, while the pikemen stood behind, their pikes projecting in front of the musketeers. In charging, the pikemen led the way, supported by the musketeers with bayonets or clubbed muskets.

Tom was, of course, entirely in the dark as to where the expected engagement was to be fought--whether in the forest, in the open outside the village, or again behind the stockade; but he was determined to be prepared for any contingency. Ill-armed as his force was, he recognized that he might have to fight a defensive campaign for a time, trusting to wear the enemy out, and to seize a favourable opportunity for taking the offensive. It was a risky policy with a negro force; he could place full reliance only on the pikemen and musketeers; the great body of the allies was little better than a rabble, and man for man less dependable, because less used to regular fighting, than the Arab auxiliaries. But he hoped that his special troops would be sufficiently well drilled to give a good account of themselves if fighting took place in the open, while in the forest the others could certainly harass the enemy, probably cut off his supplies, ambush him, and attack him at a disadvantage.

All this time Tom had been gleaning various items of information as to the routes by which the enemy might be expected to come. There was, of course, the path through the forest, along which he himself had been carried to the village, but he learnt that there were two other possible ways, to the west and east of the direct route. These, however, would involve the crossing of at least two broad rivers, and the rainy season being barely over, the streams would be so swollen as to render fording impossible.

He would gladly have fortified the approaches to the village had this been possible, but after carefully weighing the pros and cons he reluctantly decided that he must be content to extemporize stockades when the approach of the Arabs was announced. Until the peril was imminent he could not count upon sufficient assistance from his allies to enable him to construct defensive works on all the paths by which the expected invasion might be made, and his own troops were clearly insufficient for the purpose.

The long-awaited signal came at length. On the night of November 28, a date which Tom carefully marked in the pocket-diary he had obtained from Herr Schwab, the faint taps of a drum were heard far away to the north. A few minutes later a distinct roll came from the nearest post. At distances of six and three miles the signal drummers had passed on the message received by them from posts farther afield. Reading the message by the prearranged code, Tom made out that a small force had been sighted sixty miles from the village. Surmising that this was merely the advance-guard, he calculated that the main body would take at least five or six days to arrive, and he resolved to wait until the morning before calling up his levies.

Soon after daybreak a courier came panting into the village, and announced that the line of runners had transmitted to him the news that a huge force of Arabs was advancing along the forest-path a mile or two in the rear of the advance-guard.

The village drummers were at once called on to signal the news to the allied chiefs, and runners were despatched to them all confirming the intelligence. The chiefs were each to send their women and children into Mwonga under a small escort, with not less than six weeks' supply of food. The warriors who were used to forest fighting were to muster at the edge of the forest, and await orders from Kuboko. The remainder, men of the plain, with no special skill in woodcraft, and dreading the forest as an unknown region of unimaginable terrors, were to concentrate to the north-east of the village, and hold themselves in readiness to move in any direction at a moment's notice. By making forced marches, all the fighting-men of the allies had arrived at their appointed places by the morning of the next day. It was a glorious morning, and, looking round from the village on the eager host, their spear-heads glittering in the sunlight, Tom drew good augury, and felt his heart leap within him.

His force numbered four thousand one hundred all told, and as yet he was wholly without definite information of the size of the Arab army. It was important that every possible means should be taken of worrying and reducing the enemy while marching through the forest, encumbered, as no doubt they were, with carriers and baggage. They included, Tom felt sure, a very large number of men armed with rifles and muskets, but their superiority in this respect would be to a great extent neutralized among the trees. His first care, therefore, was to despatch five hundred of his best forest-fighters, divided into twenty bands of twenty-five each, into the forest, to dig pits, plant stakes, and employ every device known to them to delay and harass the advance. They were not to penetrate into the forest for more than thirty miles from their base, in order that they might be easily supplied with food, and readily recalled if need arose.

Tom's next step was to arrange with the katikiro for the defence of the village against a possible flanking attack. He could not be sure that the line of the advance now signalled would be the line of the real attack; for all he knew, the Arabs might divide their force, advance in two directions, and, while making a feint in their immediate front, throw all their strength upon the village, hoping to take it unawares. The katikiro during the last few weeks had proved himself one of the most intelligent and persevering of all Tom's lieutenants, and Tom had complete confidence that his courage and determination would not fail at the critical moment. To him, therefore, he entrusted the defence of the village. He gave him a thousand of the plainsmen, of whom sixty were armed with muskets, and also the whole of the cadet corps, who, being young and hot-headed, he thought would be all the better for the restraint of the stockade. The force was, he knew, quite inadequate to hold the extensive line of fortifications if the place was seriously assaulted; but it could, he hoped, hold its own behind the stockade for a day or two, allowing time for Tom himself to return to its assistance.