"Good riddance," thought Tom. "I hope I have seen the last of him."
[CHAPTER X--A BREATHING SPACE]
On arriving at the entrance to the nullah, Tom found that Mirambo had already herded the women and children beyond the first bend, something less than a quarter of a mile away, and was superintending the bestowal of the stores still farther up, on natural ledges in the steep bank.
At the southern extremity the nullah was about sixty yards wide. In the middle a shallow stream rippled over the rocky bottom, disappearing in places beneath tangled masses of vegetation. Trees of many kinds grew on the steep walls, acacias and euphorbias predominating, and on both sides of the stream there were many patches of scrub, mimosa, and thorn, rendering the passage by no means easy. But these natural obstacles must be supplemented by art if the place was to be made even tolerably secure, and Tom lost no time in putting the necessary works in operation.
He first posted a score of riflemen in the scrub about two hundred yards south of the nullah, putting Mirambo in charge of them, with orders to fire one volley if the enemy appeared, and then to withdraw. Next he set all available men to clear away, with the tools brought from the plantation, all the bush that grew thickly in front of the entrance, in order to give a field of fire. The negroes, many of whom had been employed in clearing the ground for the plantation, were experts at the job, and when more than a hundred men work with a will the result is almost magical. In half an hour the space was free from every stump and root.
Allowing them a few minutes for rest, during which the men who had shared in his delaying action delighted the rest with very tall stories of their prowess, he set them to fell a number of trees with which to construct a barricade across the entrance. While they were thus engaged, Mwesa came to him.
"Haroun say want speak, sah."
"Haroun is one of the overseers, isn't he? Well, bring him down."
Mwesa soon returned with one of the prisoners, whom Tom knew by sight--a tall, lean Arab, with strongly marked features and piercing eyes. Addressing Tom very humbly in broken German, he begged to be allowed to take service with him. He had not been long in Reinecke's pay; indeed, he had been reluctant to accept employment with the German; nay more, he had actually been forced to do so, for he was headman of an Arab village on the Great Lake, and his village would have been destroyed if he had not obeyed the call of the German "big master."
Tom did not much like the look of the man, but, true to Mr. Barkworth's counsel to "keep an open mind," he decided not to stand on mere prejudice; and after learning from Mwesa that the Wahehe had nothing against this latest comer among the overseers, he accepted the Arab's offer, and instructed him to superintend the erection of the barricade.