With a heavy sigh, he ran his eye over the scene—the sullen, oily water, the ugly mangrove swamp of muddy, writhing roots and twisted, slimy trunks, the dense, brooding jungle, the grey, dull sky—all so unfriendly and uncomfortable, giving one such a homeless, helpless feeling. The Gurkhas were invisible. The Sherepur Sikhs sat in a tight-packed group around their piled arms and listened to the words of their Subedar, the men of the Hundred and Ninety-Ninth squatted in a double row along the front of the adobe building, and the Very Mixed Contingent was just a mob near the ration-dump, beside which Ali Suleiman stood on guard over his master’s kit. . . . Suppose there were a sudden attack? But there couldn’t be? An enemy could only approach down that narrow path in single file. The impenetrable jungle was his friend until he moved. Directly he marched off it would be his terrible foe, the host and concealer of a thousand ambushes.
He felt that he had discovered a military maxim on his own account. Impenetrable jungle is the friend of a force in position, and the enemy of a force on the march. . . . Anyhow, the Gurkhas were out in front as a line of sentry groups, and nothing could happen to the force until they had come into action. . . . Should he—
“Sahib! Ek Sahib ata hai. . . . Bahut hubshi log ata hain,” said a voice, and he sprang round, to see the Gurkha Subedar saluting.
What was that? “A sahib is coming. . . . Many African natives are coming!” . . . Then they were attacked after all! A German officer was leading a force of askaris of the Imperial African Rifles against them—those terrible Yaos and Swahilis whom the Germans had disciplined into a splendid army, and whom they permitted to loot and to slaughter after a successful fight. . . .
His mouth went dry and the backs of his knees felt loose and weak. He was conscious of a rush of blood to the heart and a painful, sinking sensation of the stomach. . . . It had come. . . . The hour of his first battle was upon him. . . .
He swallowed hard.
“Achcha, [101a] Subedar Sahib,” he said with seeming nonchalance, “shaitan-log ko maro. Achcha kam karo,”[101b] and turning to the Sherepur Sikhs, the Hundred and Ninety-Ninth and the Very Mixed Contingent bawled: “Fall in!” in a voice that made those worthies perform the order as quickly as ever they had done it in their lives.
“Dushman nahin hai, [101c] Sahib,” said the Gurkha Subedar—as he realised that Bertram had ordered him “to kill the devils”—and explained that the people who approached bore no weapons.
Hurrying forward with the Subedar to a bend in the path beyond the burnt-out native village, Bertram saw a white man clad in khaki shirt, shorts and puttees, with a large, thick “pig-sticker” solar-topi of pith and quilted khaki on his head, and a revolver and hunting-knife in his belt. Behind him followed an apparently endless column of unarmed negroes. Evidently these were friends—but there would be no harm in taking all precautions in case of a ruse.
“Be ready,” he said to the Subedar.