"Dago man come close!"
Tom glanced round. The larger canoe was no more than three-quarters of a mile behind, and its crew gave a whoop of delight when they saw how they had gained on the other. The Portuguese stood up in the stern, and, raising his rifle to his shoulder, fired. Mbutu instinctively ducked, and it was well he did so, for the bullet flew by within an inch of his head and plumped into the water a few yards beyond. Tom's canoe then rounded a bend, and once more the pursuers were lost to view.
Half an hour later the two vessels were again in sight of each other, and now were scarcely half a mile apart. Another shot came whizzing through the air, and passed between the two Baganda nearest Mbutu. They gave a slight shudder as they heard its weird ping, and bent frantically to their paddles. Tom's mouth was set, and there came into his blue eyes the steely expression which had always given his school-fellows a feeling of expectancy and apprehension. He did not think of himself. He thought only of his uncle and the Portuguese, of how for his uncle's sake he must by hook or by crook evade the clutches of the conspirator behind. His feeling towards the pursuer was curiously impersonal, the same kind of feeling that he would have had towards a bowler at cricket--a skilled player to keep his eye on and beat if he could. He saw that but for some unforeseen accident he would be compelled to take to the woods within a very few minutes, and then, though he was resolved not to be captured, he would give little for his chances of reaching the expedition in time.
At this critical moment his eye lit on a tree overhanging the river, which had here narrowed to little more than a gorge between steep banks. It was light in the trunk, but very thick in foliage. A second glance showed him that the roots, protruding from loose red soil, were almost bare, and he instantly inferred that a recent storm, and probably the flooding of the river, had shaken their hold. A third glance as the canoe brought him nearer made it plain that, but for a rope-work of climbing plants which had woven itself about the trunk, the tree would have already fallen across the stream.
Tom saw here a bare chance of escape, and, with characteristic readiness to seize the merest semblance of an opportunity, he prepared to make the most of it. As the canoe shot along beneath the overhanging branches, he marked a small rivulet that cut a way through the bank just beyond the tree. In a ringing voice, careless now whether his pursuer heard him or not, he ordered the men to run the canoe ashore, then to follow him up the narrow watercourse with their axes. In half a minute he had swarmed up the bank; in another half the men's keen axes had torn away the climbing-plant supports. His men threw themselves en masse upon the trunk, and just as the enemy's canoe came within two hundred paces, the tree fell with a loud crash, and lay across from bank to bank, completely blocking the waterway with its tangle of boughs and leaves. Springing down the bank again, Tom and his panting crew jumped into the canoe, and were three hundred yards up-stream and nearly out of sight before the Portuguese had realized the impossibility of continuing the chase on the water. He wasted some minutes in a vain attempt to drag his craft over the obstruction, and a few more in flinging curses after Tom and firing at random over the tree; then he landed with his crew, and began to chase his quarry along the shore. But before he had run a quarter of a mile he found himself up to his knees in ooze, and, after floundering helplessly about for a time, he fired one vindictive shot and relinquished the pursuit.
Not till then did Tom allow his crew to relax their efforts.
"Easy all; you have done well!" he cried.
They shipped their paddles gladly. They were gasping for breath; the sinews of their arms stood out like whip-cord, and their streaming faces had taken on the livid hue that is the only paleness a black knows. Tom himself, after the tension of the last hour, felt limp and unstrung, and it was with a sigh of thankfulness that he heard Mbutu, interpreting one of the natives, inform him that the marshy flats at which they had arrived formed the eastern extremity of Lake Mazingo. The sun was just setting, and in the fast-gathering darkness he could descry the gigantic forms of hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses taking their evening bath in the mud.
Feeling assured that the surrounding swamp would effectually protect him from any nocturnal surprise on the part of the Portuguese, Tom gave orders to the men to make as good a meal as they could, and then to sleep in the canoe, taking turns to watch. For himself, he stayed his hunger with a few bananas that Mbutu had put aside for him, some biscuits, and a cake of unleavened millet produced by his thoughtful henchman. He examined the wounded man's arm, and gave it a fresh dressing; then, worn out by the anxieties and excitements of the day, he wrapped himself in his rug, gazed up at the benignant stars, and fell fast asleep.