TOM MAKES A DIVERSION.
Before he had collected his muddled wits he was surprised to hear that he was under arrest, and found himself on his way with two of the Arabs to the jail hut, under guard of two of his own askaris. Tom, wondering how long the man's stupefaction would last, followed to the hut, ordered Mirambo to be released, and the door to be shut and bolted.
As he turned away, he saw one of the overseers bolting across the parade ground in the direction of the gate.
"After him, Mwesa," he cried, and the boy, who had followed him like a shadow, instantly darted after the runaway, accompanied by a troop of his fellow negroes. The Arab, whose whip had formerly been a terror to them, was chased across the plantation, and, just as he reached the gate, was seized by a score of sinewy hands and hauled back with yells of triumphant glee, to join the other prisoners in the lock-up. Tom, with Mwesa as interpreter, ordered Mirambo to collect all the men on the parade ground, and there wait for him. Then, astonished and a little intimidated by his own success, he hurried to the bungalow. Reinecke was expected to return that evening. It was now past noon; within the next five or six hours there must be some hard thinking if this unexpected development was to be turned to the best account.
[CHAPTER VIII--REINECKE RETURNS]
At the bungalow the native servants received Tom with smiles of welcome. It seemed that Reinecke had given out that his guest had gone away only for a time; that the war, a distant and unreal thing to them, could have turned apparent friends into enemies was as yet beyond their comprehension. Quickly and cheerfully they prepared a meal; and while Tom enjoyed food that, after the experiences of the past weeks, was incredible luxury, he bent all his wits to the solution of the amazing problem with which he was now faced.
Here he was, within a few minutes transformed from a fugitive and a wanderer into the absolute master of several hundreds of negroes. His lightest word would be law to them. The simple people were incapable of perceiving how precarious was his authority; to them he was just the m'sungu whom they admired and who had at a stroke altered the conditions of their existence.
The sergeant and three of the Arabs were for the present safely locked up. The remaining overseers, somewhere in hiding, could not leave the plantation, the gate being locked, to give warning to Reinecke on his homeward way of what had occurred. The askaris, always submissive to authority, probably took the newcomer for a German officer, and supposed the sergeant to have been guilty of some fault. And as for the negroes, there were something over a hundred able-bodied men who before long would have been askaris in the German service--unwilling recruits, but, in spite of their difficulties with drill, the raw material of excellent soldiers. That, at any rate, must be prevented.
How? Only by the immediate migration of the whole community. "A large order," thought Tom, knitting his brows. Yet not so difficult as it first appeared. These negroes had no possessions that they valued except their cooking-pots. Their natural life was the free open existence of the forest and the plain; they could build themselves huts in a day, and needed no furniture. The implements of their plantation work would be useful to them until they had made for themselves bows and arrows. A race of hunters, they would not want for food; besides, there were the plantation stores which could be conveyed away.
But in what direction could they go? Bismarckburg was only twenty miles distant; some ten miles nearer was the road to Neu Langenburg, no doubt studded with German military posts, and patrolled. As soon as the mutiny became known, a force would be dispatched from Bismarckburg, or a telegram sent along the road warning any troops that might be moving up for the projected attack on Abercorn. Thus a migration into British territory would be impossible. The Wahehe country was far to the north, within the German boundaries; there could be no safety for them there. For the moment the problem seemed to be, to find a temporary refuge in some spot difficult of access, where the people might dwell in comparative security until the course of events became clear.