Having now a pretty clear idea of the course of events, Tom returned to the village, where the people were holding high festivities in honour of the great victory. Tom did not check the mirth of the non-combatants, but he gathered the fighting-men together and told them gravely that the hardest fight of all was still before them. A few minutes after his return Msala came to him boiling with rage.
"Mabruki is gone!" he said. "While I was away he gathered his basket and bell and piles of charms and fetish-grass, and went away towards the setting sun. Many men saw him go, but they feared his evil eye and the might of his magic, and none dared to stay him."
"Well, we are rid of a villain, and I am spared the necessity of employing a hangman."
"A hangman!" cried the indignant katikiro. "I would myself have cut off his head, though all his devils plagued me for ever after."
"Msala," said Tom gravely, "that sort of thing will not do. Have I been with you so long, and yet you are ignorant of the true way of justice? You will think better of it when your anger has passed away, my friend."
Msala was silent.
"Now, we have no time to waste," Tom went on. "We have had a little rest, and there is the great fight before us in the forest. We must have the men back from the burning mountain. Mbutu, I will send your brother for them. He will go to the volcano and bring back the eight hundred men there. On reaching the village they must rest for a short time; then, Msala, you will send six hundred of them on with all speed northwards, along with two hundred fresh men. The rest will remain with you to defend the village."
This having been arranged, soon after twelve o'clock Tom led his men out towards the north. He had expected a messenger to come in with news from the force he had left in the forest, and he could not but regard his non-arrival as an indication that the men were at least holding their own. After a march of nearly five hours he reached the largest block-house, which stood two miles from the edge of the forest. He found that, though firing had been heard in the distance, no message had been received from the front, and after his troops had made a rapid meal he hurried on.
He had not gone far before he heard irregular firing ahead. Hastening his pace he soon saw, amid the scrub and thin copses at the extreme edge of the forest, scattered bodies of men approaching in the direction of the block-house. Keen as his eyesight was, he could not distinguish whether the men were friends or foes, but some of his own troops at once exclaimed that they were Bahima. The men he had left in the forest were evidently, then, retreating, but the firing showed that they were retiring slowly, fighting, as he had commanded them, every inch of the way. He at once made dispositions to prevent a rout, and to give his men a strong position to retire upon. Sending out a small body of picked men to rally the retreating troops, he ordered the seventy spademen he had with him to throw up a rough breastwork behind which the musketeers might take secure aim. The work was only half-completed when loud shouts, with the boom-boom of trade guns and the sharper crack of rifles, showed that the Arabs were pressing hard upon the retreating Bahima. Suddenly a larger body of men emerged in confusion from the dense scrub, followed closely by another body evidently in hot pursuit. The retreat would soon have become a rout, for the Bahima were outflanked and outnumbered, and the Arabs, assured of victory, were pressing hard upon them, with exultant cries, and the manifest determination, as soon as the whole of their force had debouched, to finish the struggle with a crushing charge. But the opportune arrival of the small rallying force sent forward by Tom enabled the retreating troops to draw off in comparatively good order. The reinforcements occupied a small copse on the extreme right of the Arab advance, and from this place of vantage they poured in so harassing a fire that the enemy, taken by surprise and fearing a trap, halted, undecided whether to press forward or retire, in the meantime taking what cover the ground afforded. The few minutes' respite was all that was needed to enable Tom to withdraw his discomfited troops behind the breastwork, and when the Arabs made up their minds to clear the copse they found it deserted. They then showed some disposition to advance against Tom's main position, but, meeting a sharp musketry fire, they changed their minds and prepared to form a camp, from which Tom concluded that they had decided to postpone their attack in force until they had surveyed the ground and taken a rest.
It was now past five o'clock, and little more than half an hour of daylight was left. The Arabs had had a hard day's work. They had found the ford so stoutly defended that a passage at that point was impossible, and they had had to march for some miles before they found another fordable place, and then to cut their way through dense forest, harassed all along by the persistent Bahima. Thus they were much in need of rest. To attack by night, moreover, is foreign to all the Arab's habits and traditions, and Tom recognized thankfully that he had the whole night in which to prepare for the fateful conflict.