As they went on their way, Tom asked the chief through Mbutu to tell his own story. He was nothing loth, and at once began a narrative which beguiled more than an hour of weary walking. It was often interrupted by questions from Mbutu, who, as he translated, mingled comments and explanatory remarks with the chief's own statements. Stripped of these annotations, and rendered into straightforward English, it ran somewhat as follows:--
"You ask me for my story? Know then, O white man, that I am Barega, a chief among chiefs, owning no man lord. Not of a handful of men and a few hundred cattle am I chief; no, I am Barega; many chiefs own my sway; my rule extends over ten times thirty Bahima, great hunters all of them, and multitudes of Bairo like the stars of heaven. No menial delvers of the soil are we Bahima; no, we tend countless herds of cattle and goats, whose flesh we eat and milk we drink. And I--I am Barega, a mighty chief. The Bugandanwe is mine--the king-drum handed down from my father's fathers through a hundred years, whose sound strikes terror into the souls of our enemies, and even disquiets Magaso himself, the devil that haunts our groves and feasts on our bananas. Bananas!--I eat them not; my meat is the flesh of oxen, sheep, and goats; but the Bairo eat them, the Bairo our servants, whose blood is not our blood, nor their ways our ways.
"Know this, O white man, son of the Great King, for thou didst find me a prisoner, and 'tis not well that thou shouldst think me one of the common people, born of slaves. No, I am a mighty chief. Four years have I ruled my tribe, and there are none like them in all the earth for strength or wealth, for skill in hunting or prowess in war. My father had many sons, but out of them all he chose me to rule after him. True, I have an elder brother, Murasi is his name; and a younger brother, Mwonga; but Murasi is a reed, a straw blown hither and thither by the breath of Mabruki, my medicine-man, who quaffs lakes of museru and then weeps rivers of tears. As for Mwonga, he is but a boy, and him I keep as my chief mutuma, head of the fifty boys who guard my dwelling and fulfil my behest, and whom I train in arms and all manly doing. Murasi I did not slay; no, nor does he languish in the prison where he lies; he is fed with good food and wine. The white man wonders? True, other chiefs would have slain him, but I am merciful, I do but keep him in prison. Were Murasi free, he would plot against me, work mischief among my people, try to rob me of my hut and place. He must not be free; it is I, Barega, that say it.
"I was a prisoner with the Arabs--cats, jackals, beasts unfit to herd with the Bahima's dogs! I hide my face; it shames me to have been their captive. And yet it was no shame; if any man cries shame, I say he lies. I was far from my village, hunting great elephants. Twenty of my best spearmen were with me, tall men and big of heart. We were far in the forest towards the setting sun, and one day we saw, in a glade beyond us, a herd of elephants with tusks longer than a man and whiter than milk. My men stretched their net and dug a pit, the skewers cunningly planted at the bottom, so that they might drive the animals therein and take them thus. But that, forsooth, is poor sport for a hunter like Barega. 'No, let us take them with our spears,' I said, 'and have true tales of a mighty killing to tell about our fires of winter nights.' Know, O white man, that we Bahima tell truth and no lies. So then did we stalk those noble animals, but they lifted up their trunks and smelt us, and straightway uttered a great voice and fled. But we are fleet of foot; no pot-bellied sluggards are we, like the Ankole; no, we are slim, and straight, and lithe of limb as thou seest; we are thy cousins, O white man! Swiftly then did we pursue the elephants; leopards could not have gone more silently. They forgot us, and stayed to rest and pluck the tender leaves at the ends of the branches. Not a word, not a cry. I was in front of my men; the chief must ever show the way. I marked the prince and lord of the elephants and said: 'He is mine; let no man touch him.' I poised my spear; I flung it with aim swift and sure; it smote behind the ear; the beast fell. Ere he could rise, another spear, and another, from this same right hand pierced him, and in a little he died.
"Two other elephants had fallen to the spears of my men, the rest had fled. Then did we make a camp, and sat us down to rest by our spoils. The sun went down, and as we sang our hunting-song around our fire, behold! there came out of the forest, silently, like the servaline, a band of Arabs. Around us they made a ring, and with their loud fire-sticks they slew ten of my people. I sprang to my feet; not mine to flee; no, I hurled at them my last spear, and then a blazing brand snatched from the fire. See, there is the scar on my hand to-day--the mark of the fire. But they were more than we; they threw themselves upon me, and put their cursed ropes upon my hands and feet. Then they carried me and my ten men to a fortress many marches in the forest, and loaded me with the chains of slaves. Many days was I thus fettered; then, at the rising of the sun they came to me and said: 'Dog!'--woe is me, that I, Barega, was called a dog!--'take us to your village.' 'Pig!' I cried, 'I would rather die!' Then did they beat me with their whips till, in my pain, I called on Muhanga, the Mighty Spirit that upholds the sky and rules the thunder and rain, to slay me. Yet I bethought myself: 'They will not all come to my village till they have spied it out.' I know their ways. 'I will deceive them; I will lead them into the forest, and then Muhanga will send a storm, and I shall escape.' And then a band of them loosed me, and fettered me with other chains, and made me walk with them, my hands bound together, my two feet linked to a block of wood between them, so that I hobbled slowly and with pain.
"Then came we into the forest, by winding tracks that I knew well. Nine nights ago the sky opened, Muhanga threw his flaming spears and poured out his floods. The Arabs cursed Muhanga; I praised him in my heart. They crouched in hollow trees and in big bushes to escape the storm. 'Let the dog wash,' they said of me. But in the black darkness, when the thunder roared, I wrenched my hands apart till a link snapped, and then with my free hand tore at my ankle-chains until I had wrested one of them from the block. I could not cast off my fetters altogether; the storm began to abate, and I dared not stay. I ran and ran hard through the night, and for days and nights after, away, away, far from the tracks I knew. Woe is me! An evil spirit must have led mine enemy! To-day, when the sun rose, I saw them close upon me, but only four of them; the others, I make no doubt, were searching for me otherwhere in the forest. I ran from them, but the clank of my chains called them after me, and when I was nigh to falling, thou camest out of the forest, O white man, and smotest them even as Muhanga smiteth in his wrath, and didst save me, and I hold thee in my heart for ever. But they are many and will now pursue us; they will come with their whole band, and with their fire-sticks will seek us out, to kill me and all my people. Therefore let us make what haste we can, and in my village the white man shall live in peace; he shall see my wives and warriors and all my gathered store; he shall eat my best cattle and drink my newest milk and strongest wine till his cheeks are round and his muscles firm again. I, Barega, have said it."
Such was Barega's story. Tom had listened with an interest that for a time made him forget his feeling of intense weakness. He walked along as well as he could, stooping occasionally to avoid creepers, using his musket now as a staff, now as a means of fending off obstructions. But he felt that collapse ere long was inevitable, and all that he could hope for was that he might retain sufficient strength to reach the Bahima village before he broke down.
The collapse came on the second evening after their adventure with the Arabs. They had fed mainly on roots, and drunk from the rills they met at intervals along the track. Barega's woodcraft served them well when even Mbutu's was at fault, but all three were racked with the gnawing pains of hunger. Sores had broken out in several parts of Tom's body; his head was never free from pain; and on the evening of the second day, just as they stopped to find a camping-place for the night, he tottered, and would have fallen but for the ready support of Mbutu's arm.
"It's no good, Mbutu," he said, with an attempt to smile; "I'm done up. I can't hold out any longer."
"Soon get well, sah," said Mbutu, helping him tenderly to recline with his back against a tree. But the boy was in reality stricken with terror lest his master should die. He had recognized the dreaded signs of malaria, and there, in the midst of the forest, with no medicines at hand and no nourishing food, he feared that there would be but one end, and that speedily. Tom fell into a heavy sleep almost as soon as he lay down, and Mbutu held an anxious consultation with the chief. What could be done? They could carry the invalid between them, but progress would be slow, and he needed immediate attention, and above all, something to protect him from insects during the day. They were still at least three days' march from the village. Mbutu was almost in despair, when the chief made a suggestion. Let them build a grass hut, he said, at a reasonably safe distance from the track, and let Mbutu watch his master there while he himself hurried on alone to his village. They were not far from the edge of the forest, which was already becoming thinner. He would start at once for help, and could cover the distance to the village at a run in a night and a day.