Would they have to drill?
Tom smiled. He had watched recruits in barrack-yards in Germany, and he made a shrewd guess that the African askari did not find the German drill-sergeant a very gentle taskmaster.
"You may have to do my drill," he said. "You don't know what that is? Then you had better stay a few days and look on while I drill the Wahehe. If you don't like it, you shall be free to go."
The askari's artless question drew Tom's thoughts to a survey of his position. He had brought the people away. For the present, apparently, they were safe. What course was he to lay down for them and for himself? He was handicapped by ignorance of what was happening on the border forty miles away. From a remark let fall by Reinecke during that unforgettable dinner in the bungalow he surmised that the British in Northern Rhodesia were likely to be on the defensive at the opening of the campaign. The Germans, he knew, had a much larger military force on the frontier, and from what Reinecke had said, they were energetically raising new levies among the natives. It would be unlike the British, an extraordinary break-away from their traditions, if they were not taken by surprise, not slow in waking up, not tenacious and successful when fully aroused.
Tom's conclusion was that he must sit tight. He might try to open up communications with the British, with a view either to a dash across the frontier, or to joining them if they should advance into German territory. Meanwhile, though for some reason unknown the small force that had followed him up had drawn off, he was virtually besieged. His first task, then, was to put his position into as thorough a state of defence as was possible, and to establish such order among the little community as would further his ultimate design.
"And I've got all my work cut out," he thought, somewhat drearily. Then he smiled as he remembered his brother. "Wouldn't Bob grin! By George, though, if we're at war Bob will want to be in it! Of course he will! The business will go to pot. What a rum world it is!"
[CHAPTER XI--TOM'S NEW ALLIES]
The more Tom thought over the probabilities of the case, the less likely it appeared to him that the Germans, if engaged in serious operations on the frontier, would spare a force for dealing immediately with mutineers who might be rounded up at leisure. At the same time the situation was so uncertain that he could not afford to neglect the opportunity of preparing for a possible attack. It was equally important that he should get timely notice of the enemy's approach, and that could be secured only by starting an efficient system of scouting. As soon as he had dealt with the askaris, therefore, he got Mirambo to choose a dozen active and trustworthy young men, and arranged that they should go out in parties of six on alternate days, to reconnoitre as much ground south of the nullah as they could cover between dawn and dark. He could not yet entrust them with rifles uncontrolled: they had no other arms than the agricultural implements; but while the first six were absent, the second could fashion wooden spears which would suffice for protection against wild animals. There were no villages in the immediate neighbourhood of the nullah, or between that and the plantation, so that collisions with hostile tribes were scarcely to be feared.
Tom then passed to the consideration of the problem of the camp. Accompanied by Mirambo and Mwesa he explored the whole length or the nullah between the bend and the lake, a distance of perhaps half a mile. The width varied a good deal; the sides were almost perpendicular; and the stream, being the outflow from an upland lake, descended in a series of cascades. At present there was little volume of water; but in a couple of months, with the opening of the rainy season, the level of the lake would rise, and what was now a trickling rivulet might become a raging torrent. Tom hoped that by that time his occupation of the nullah would be at an end. Preparing for the worst, however, he came to the conclusion that the ground on either side of the stream would be an insecure camping-place, and decided to plant his temporary village around the spot where he and Mwesa had found a refuge a few days before. It was in the heart of a wood, where the nullah broadened out to more than three times its average width, and was defended on the northern side by the lake. The building of huts would take a considerable time, because the wood must be cleared of beasts, and the able-bodied men must be employed in completing the defences lower down the nullah; but certain parts of the work could be done by the younger women and the elder children.
While some of the people were engaged in preparing this ex tempore village, Tom set others to strengthen the barricade across the nullah. As he watched them, it occurred to him that the position would gain in security if he used the stream to form a moat, and he at once started two gangs digging at the extreme ends of the breastwork, a foot or two in front of it. At the close of the next day the moat was finished--a ditch six feet broad by four deep, extending right across the nullah except where the stream flowed in the centre. A man might easily leap over it, but his leap would land him amid the branches of the trees. It would be useful in checking a rush, especially if it were unnoticed until the enemy were actually upon it; and when, on its farther side, a number of low bushes and clumps of long grass had been planted, Tom found by experiment that the water was not seen until he came within half a dozen yards of it.