"So! You may go ... The man is a liar, Reinecke. You will find that there's nothing much wrong with his arm, if anything at all. All the same, that northern entrance is genuine enough, I think; and we must certainly catch your cub. But I don't think we'll hang him; he's the kind of man I like to make a prisoner of war."
[CHAPTER XIII--HUNTED]
Major von Rudenheim's surmise that "the cub" had been busy was correct: Tom had never before been so fully occupied, and, as he afterwards confessed, he had never been happier in his life.
The northern end of the nullah had now the appearance of a prosperous native village. Tom had felt certain misgivings on the score of cleanliness and health; but he found that the Wahehe, like all tribes that inhabit inland and mountainous districts, away from the corrupting influences of the coast, were tidy and orderly, and under the authority of their old chief, Mirambo, the people settled down to a comfortable existence. The one drawback was the limited range of movement; but even in this respect the people were little worse off than they had been on the plantation, and their rooted belief that before long the Germans would be utterly driven from the country gave them bright hopes for the future. Moreover, the women and children in a native village rarely stray far from their homes, and as for the men, they had movement enough.
To begin with, Tom organised a regular body of scouts, incorporating some of his own men with those furnished by his new ally, M'setu. Always keeping in mind his alternative ultimate designs, either to trek into British territory or to hold his ground until the British overran the border, he determined, when the scouts became proficient, to patrol the whole country between the nullah and the Neu Langenburg road. The defeat of the Germans at Abercorn was very heartening: clearly they were not to have the easy conquest that Reinecke had apparently expected. At the same time, it was only too likely that their preparations were much more advanced than the British, and he could not hope that the Germans would yield the largest and most precious of their colonial possessions without a bitter struggle. It was also certain that the enemy would at some time or other make a serious effort to crush this mutiny; and while, in such a vast and well wooded country, he could not have commanded every possible avenue of approach even with ten times as many men as were available for scouting, he would at least make reasonably sure that any movement of the enemy on the main tracks should be reported to him.
At first he sent out one of the Wahehe with each of M'setu's men, and practised them in watching the movements of small parties of M'setu's people within a few miles of the nullah. Presently, in order to increase the number of his fighting-men, he accustomed M'setu's men to scout alone. By degrees he extended their field of operations until at length he had established a definite chain, or rather network, of scouting-posts commanding the principal tracks from Bismarckburg, and especially the main frontier road to Neu Langenburg. Within a month no enemy force or convoy could move along the frontier without Tom's hearing of it.
The reports were at first brought to him by runners, and reached him many hours late. Could he not devise some means of saving time and exertion alike? He remembered having read, in a book of travels, how the natives of the mountainous interior of New Guinea were accustomed to shout news from height to height. The hills to the south of his own position would lend themselves admirably to a similar system, and after a few rather heart-breaking experiments he succeeded in teaching the negroes to adopt this plan. Each prominent hill was given a name; the man stationed at any particular post had to shout the name to the next, and within a very few minutes Tom at the nullah learnt that a message had been dispatched by a scout perhaps forty miles away.
Meanwhile he practised the fighting-men in aiming and sighting and fire discipline, giving his commands by means of the whistle borrowed from the German sergeant. These exercises were performed, not only in the nullah, but on the ground cleared in front of the barricade and also in the forest. His stock of ammunition would not allow of much target practice, and he ruefully owned that the greater part of the men could not be expected to become good marksmen. It was more profitable to spend time in giving them cohesion in simple field movements. He divided them into sections of sixteen, and got up sham fights in the forest: one party advancing, the other retiring. At first the men whose part it was to retire refused to do so, and even came to blows with the attackers: why should they withdraw before men no better than themselves? But after a time they entered into the spirit of the game, and showed considerable aptitude.
Tom found the askaris useful in the course of his various exercises. At first, when he practised his men in the nullah, the askaris looked on with disdain, and roared with laughter at the mistakes made by the negroes. But by degrees they grew interested; they commented among themselves on the contrast between the Englishman's patience and good temper and the rough treatment they had suffered at the hands of their German drill sergeants. Tom, though he affected to disregard them, was all the time keenly watching, and there came a moment when he suddenly turned to them and asked for two volunteers to show the Wahehe the correct way of kneeling to take aim. As he had expected, they were flattered; every man wished to serve as a model. For some days he did not apply to them again, and noticed a certain restlessness and disappointment among them. At length he allowed them to act regularly as guides and markers, but did not admit them definitively to the ranks of his fighting-men until they came to him in a body and begged to be taken fully into his service. They were Sudanese, like the majority of the German native troops. Many of their people were fighting in the British ranks: they preferred his drill to the German; and they were ready to vow fidelity to him.
"What about pay?" asked Tom. "I have no money."