Tom Willoughby's Scouts: A Story of the War in German East Africa

by Herbert Strang

Then, urging Reinecke before him at the muzzle of his revolver (and the German seemed to be genuinely astonished at the rejection of his offer), Tom went out to his men. The askaris he ordered to join the ranks of the carriers, each man with a load. To the household servants were given light articles, such as candles, matches, paraffin, drugs. Among the supplies just brought from Bismarckburg were some cases of ammunition. These were entrusted to their original bearers. By the time the party was ready to start, the plantation had been pretty well ransacked of all portable and useful stores.

Darkness having now fallen, the column was headed by two men carrying lanterns. In turn came the porters, two more lantern bearers, the three Arab overseers under guard of riflemen, then Reinecke, followed immediately by Tom and Mwesa, and finally two lantern bearers. Apart from their use in lighting the way, the lanterns gave confidence to the natives, for whom a night march had nameless terrors.

So strange a procession, at dead of night--the lights flickering on the trees, the negroes chattering in loud tones to keep their courage up--must have startled the furred and feathered inhabitants of the forest. Birds clattered out of the foliage, insects swarmed around the lanterns; no four-footed beast came within sight.

It was about midnight when they arrived at the camp, pitched on one of those wide bare spaces which break the continuity of the upland forest. Fires had been kindled at several points of the circuit. Within was a scene of great confusion--women, children, and bales of goods lying helter-skelter. Hopeless of evolving order at this hour, Tom contented himself with posting three sections of six men each as sentries on the southern border of the camp, where alone danger might be feared. An attack seemed to him improbable. The plantation had been cleared of men; and even if the fugitive Germans and Arabs had succeeded in reaching a German post, there was little chance of an armed force coming up while night lasted. Nevertheless, the sense of responsibility and the need of keeping a close watch on Reinecke, whom, out of respect for the white man's dignity, he had left unbound, prevented Tom from getting any sleep. Indeed, few of all those there encamped, except the children, closed their eyes. The negroes, for all their weariness, talked excitedly, hour after hour, of the wonderful change that the m'sungu had wrought in their lives, and speculated on the fate in store for their late master. Watching them, Tom could not help questioning within himself whether he had done right, whether they would be able to defend and maintain their new-won freedom; but with the hopefulness of buoyant youth he dismissed his doubts, resolving that, so far as lay in him, nothing should be left undone to safeguard them. After all, British territory was only forty miles away.

An hour before dawn the camp was astir. Everybody was fed: then, just as light was stealing over the scene, the women and children were sent off under escort, scouting parties dispatched southward; the unarmed men gathered their loads and departed. Mirambo and a score of the elder men with rifles accompanied the latter, with orders not to allow the askaris to approach within half an hour's march of the nullah. They were to drop their loads at a convenient spot and return under guard for more. Tom remained at the camp, keeping the prisoners and the remainder of his armed men.

It was about two hours after the departure of the women: the carriers had not yet come back: when Tom heard a faint sharp sound from southward, which, unexpected as it was, he believed to be a rifle-shot. For some few minutes there was no repetition of the sound: then there came half a dozen cracks in succession, a little nearer--unmistakably the reports of rifles. Tom at once dispatched two men to follow in the track of the scouts and see what was happening. It seemed unlikely that a German force had already been dispatched in pursuit of him; but it was clearly necessary to be prepared for any contingency.

The shots had roused some excitement among the Wahehe; Reinecke and the Arabs did not disguise the spring of hope. Tom recognised that his men were ill-fitted to cope with trained troops, in the open or even in the bush. The nullah, on the other hand, about six miles away, offered many facilities for defence, and his plan had been to post his non-combatants far up towards the lake, and to employ the men to strengthen the position below. He had reckoned on being unmolested for a whole day, and the shots gave him not a little uneasiness. The progress of the laden carriers would necessarily be slow: it was essential that the enemy, if enemy it was, should be delayed at least until the stores had been safely conveyed to the nullah. He must fight and run.

Hoping that it might turn out to be a false alarm, he nevertheless sent forward a runner to urge the carriers to their utmost speed; then selected a score of the older men, who in their day had fought the Germans, and ordered all the rest to hurry on with as much as they could carry of the remaining stores. Mwesa he kept as interpreter.

As soon as the camping-place was clear, he sent Reinecke and the Arabs on, guarded by half a dozen men, and followed closely behind them with the rest of his party, to discover a suitable position for making a first stand if pursuers were really on his tracks. He had been marching less than half an hour through the forest when some of his scouts overtook him, and reported that a large force of askaris, under German officers, was pushing on at great speed. Knowing the hopelessness of getting from the natives a sound estimate of the enemy's numbers, he asked no questions, but pressed forward as rapidly as possible for another ten minutes. Then, on the further side of a comparatively clear space, about two hundred yards long and twice as wide, he saw a dense belt of trees, fringed by low bushes, which seemed to offer advantages for a delaying action. There he decided to await the enemy's arrival.

He looked at his watch. Allowing for the slow pace of the children and the laden men over difficult country, he calculated that the head of the straggling column had probably covered two-thirds of the distance to the nullah. It would be at least another hour before they reached its entrance, and a second hour before the people and the stores were far enough up to be out of harm's way. The question was, then, could he check the pursuit for two hours?