“Good man!” replied Bertram. “I meant to get a stock of that myself. . . .”
He ate some chocolate, drank of the cold tea with which the excellent Ali had filled his water-bottle, and felt better.
After an hour’s rest he gave the order to fall in, the headmen of the porters got their respective gangs loaded up again, and the safari wound snake-like from the glade along the narrow path once more, Bertram at its head. He felt he was becoming a tactical soldier as he sent a lance-naik to go the round of the sentries and bid them stand fast until the rear-guard had disappeared into the jungle, when they were to rejoin it.
On tramped the safari, hour after hour, with occasional halts where the track widened, or the jungle, for a brief space, gave way to forest or dambo. Suddenly the head of the column emerged from the denser jungle into an undulating country of thicket, glade, scrub, and forest. Bertram saw the smoke of campfires far away to the left; and with one accord the porters commenced to beat their loads, drum-wise, with their safari sticks as they burst into some tribal chant or pæan of rejoicing. The convoy had reached Butindi in safety.
CHAPTER XV
Butindi
Half a mile beyond a village of the tiniest huts—built for themselves by the Kavirondo porters, and suggesting beehives rather than human habitations—Bertram beheld the entrenched and stockaded boma, zariba, or fort, that was to be his home for some months.
At that distance, it looked like a solid square of grass huts and tents, surrounded by a high wall. He guessed each side to be about two hundred yards in length. It stood in a clearing which gave a field of fire of some three hundred yards in every direction.
Halting the advance-guard, he formed it up from single file into fours; and, taking his kit from Ali, resumed it. Giving the order to march at “attention,” he approached the boma, above the entrance to which an officer was watching him through field-glasses.
Halting his men at the plank which crossed the trench, he bade them “stand easy,” and, leaving them in charge of a Havildar, crossed the little bridge and approached the gateway which faced sideways instead of outwards, and was so narrow that only one person at a time could pass through it.
Between the trench and the wall of the boma was a space some ten yards in width, wherein a number of small men in blue uniform, who resembled neither Indians nor Africans, were employed upon the off-duty duties of the soldier—cleaning rifles and accoutrements, chopping wood, rolling puttees, preparing food, washing clothing, and pursuing trains of thought or insects.