As for Africa, he took it for granted that German possessions would soon be wiped off the map. It would have been difficult for a true-born Englishman to think otherwise. All that he wished and hoped for was that he might reach Rhodesia before the last act was played.
When about ten days had slipped away, and even Mwesa had nothing to occupy him except the daily search for food, Tom began to fidget for news. He was still unable to walk without pain; inaction irked him, and ignorance of what was going on at the plantation and beyond gave him a fit of the blues. His despondency did not escape the keen eyes of the negro, who at last asked what was troubling him.
"I want to know things, Mwesa," he answered: "what Reinecke is doing, whether fighting has already begun--all sorts of things. And I want to get away from here and join my own people."
The boy's anxious expression cleared; his eyes brightened.
"Me go; one day, two, me come back tell sah," he said.
"Do you think you could go safely?"
Mwesa looked hurt at the suggestion. Had he not already stolen in and out of the plantation? Why should his master suppose that he could not do it again? He would set off at once, as soon as he had provided food and water for a day or two, and he would come back stuffed with news.
The boy was so eager that Tom let him go. He took nothing but his wallet and a knife. By nightfall he would reach the plantation. There he would learn all that was to be learnt from Mirambo: his master would be only one night alone.
It was not till the dense blackness of night brooding over the nullah deepened his feeling of solitude that Tom doubted whether he had done right. The boy might not return: who could tell what mischance might befall him? In daytime he might escape the many perils of the forest; but what if he were discovered in his furtive passage of the thorn fence and impressed into the ranks of the recruits? "Without Mwesa what will become of me?" The troublesome question gave Tom no rest as he lay in the hut, listening to the outer noises to which darkness adds mystery and horror. Alone, almost helpless, what could a white man do in the wilds of Africa? Tom was not ordinarily a victim to "nerves"; but the series of shocks he had recently suffered had quickened his imagination in proportion as it had reduced his physical vigour, and the sensations of that night were one long nightmare.
At dawn, limp and haggard, he got up, crawled out of the hut, and sat down with his back against a tree-trunk, listening for the return of the negro boy. He heard rustlings among the trees, the call of a quail, the snorting grunt of some animal prowling round the zariba. But neither rustle nor footfall caught his ear when Mwesa suddenly appeared at his side.