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

by Herbert Strang

From the knoll, five hundred yards away, came the roll of a drum. Raising their weapons aloft and uttering a fierce war-cry, the three divisions of Arabs and Manyema sprang forward at the same moment upon the three sides of the zariba. The lesson taught by their former mishap had been well learned; this time they avoided the stakes at the corners, and charged in directions perpendicular to the three fronts. For the first hundred and fifty yards they fired as they came, and though, when well within range, they were met by a murderous discharge of bullets and grenades from the earthwork, they pressed on regardless of their many casualties, and within half a minute had reached the thorn-protected zariba.

Then began a desperate and mortal struggle. With the exception of the reserve, still held by Tom as in a leash within the inner entrenchment, every man was at grips with the enemy. Firearms were useless. It was pike and bayonet against scimitar, clubbed musket, and spear. So fierce was the onset that in many places the thorn hedge was cut or torn down, and through the gaps a wild horde of black and turbaned warriors struggled to force a way. The defenders had lost heavily during the enemy's advance, and Tom's anxious eye had noted many weak spots in the double rank of musketeers and pikemen. He himself stood in the middle of the square, to outward appearance impassive, the target for snap-shots still fired, when opportunity offered, by the assailants. A half-spent bullet struck him on the left forearm, inflicting a slight wound which he hardly felt. He mechanically took off his turban and handed it to one of his men to bind tightly about the arm, all the time having his eyes fixed on the thin line of troops fighting gallantly against such desperate odds. No detail of the fight escaped him. On the northern face the enemy were making but little headway; their force there consisted mainly of Manyema, and as yet the screen of mimosa and cactus was almost intact. But on the eastern face, where tall Arabs were led by the gigantic negro, the strength of the garrison was taxed to the uttermost. Most of the Arabs were attacking with scimitar in their right hand and clubbed musket in their left. At first the Bahima's long pikes, thrust out through interstices in the fence, were too much for them, but as the combat progressed they instinctively adapted their method of fighting to the new conditions. Approaching just out of reach of the pikes, they tempted the pikemen to lunge, and then with a sharp stroke of their keen blades either severed the head from the shaft or so weakened it as to render it useless. Tom saw the trick, and was about to give instructions how to meet it when he was delighted to perceive that his men, after one or two of them had been caught, had themselves seen how to avoid the danger by shortening their lunge. Even when the heads of their pikes were knocked off, however, they still made good use of the shafts, bringing them down with tremendous force upon the heads and bodies of all who came within reach.

Tom in the Breach

So far, though the Arabs fought like tigers, they had been kept outside the wall of the zariba. But suddenly, at the eastern face, a portion of the fencing collapsed as though it were made of paper. Through the gap instantly poured a gang of yelling Arabs headed by the negro captain, before whose huge two-handed sword pikemen and musketeers went over like grass before the mower.

"Bahima, with me!" shouted Tom, springing from his boulder, and dashing forward at the head of his reserve company to stem the torrent. He saw that there was not a moment to lose; if the breach was not instantly dammed the invading horde would carry all before them and sweep the garrison into the swamp.

Among the nine thousand men on that stricken field, Tom alone had, until this moment, been unarmed; but stooping now as he ran, he snatched from the ground the weapon of a dead musketeer, just in time to parry a sweeping stroke of the negro captain that fell upon his musket and cleft the wood to the barrel. He saw the look of exultation in the negro's fierce eyes, but the force of the blow caused the assailant to recoil; before he could recover, Tom was in under his guard and with the butt of the musket struck him square between the eyes. No skull but a negro's could have survived the force of the blow; he did not fall, but halted, dazed. His arm hung for a brief moment helpless at his side, and then Tom, dropping his broken musket, dealt him a body blow with the bare fist which from school experience he knew must be conclusive. The negro swayed, reeled, and dropped like a log; Tom was swept on over his prostrate body and saw him no more. The fight had occupied but a few seconds. Tom's men had thrown themselves furiously upon their opponents; the Arabs, missing the inspiriting presence and voice of their gigantic leader, faltered; in a few seconds more they were overpowered, and now tried to regain the outside of the square.

"Guard the gap, my men!" cried Tom, and seeing that there was no immediate danger of another irruption in this quarter he extricated himself from the mêlée, and made his way towards his post of observation to see how the fight was going elsewhere. Before he reached the centre he knew that the whole of his reserve was now engaged. Two breaks had been made on the southern face and one on the northern, and a small band of Manyema was threatening the flank of the defence by wading some yards into the swamp. On the south, as Tom knew by soundings that he had taken, the ooze was so deep that any man venturing into it would speedily be sucked down and submerged, but on the north there was a fordable though difficult approach, and it was important to repel this attack once for all. Calling, therefore, a few of his best musketeers, he stationed them at the north-western corner, and assured himself that by keeping up a steady fire there they could prevent a dangerous assault in that quarter.

Turning again, he saw, with a pang, that his force had already suffered very heavily. On every face of the zariba the ground was strewn with prone bodies, and it was a harrowing thought that, in the heat of the fight, nothing could be done for the wounded men, whose groans mingled with the yells of the combatants.

"Where is Mbutu?" was the unspoken question that ever and anon formed itself in Tom's mind. It was past nine o'clock; there had been ample time, surely, for the eight hundred men to arrive from the village, and Tom more than once looked anxiously towards the forest in the hope of seeing Mbutu appear with the reinforcements so urgently needed. Would he never come? On the knoll the five hundred Arabs were still held in reserve; so confused had been the contest hitherto that it must have been impossible for the Arab leaders to form a just idea as to how the fight was going; but they had seen at any rate that their men had not yet been driven away; and if they threw their reserve into the scale, as they might do at any moment, Tom felt that it would be impossible to maintain his ground.