After long negotiations, Boyes managed to bring the whole of the leading chiefs of the nation together in friendly conference. The fact that they all hated one another like poison may explain some slight delay, for the white man’s purpose was nothing less than a solemn treaty of blood-brotherhood with them all.
The ceremony began with the cutting into small pieces of a sheep’s heart and liver, these being toasted upon a skewer, making a mutton Kabob. Olomondo, chief of the Wanderobo, a nation of hunters, then took a sharp arrow with which he cut into the flesh of each Blood-Brother just above the heart. The Kabob was then passed round, and each chief, taking a piece of meat, rubbed it in his own blood and gave it to his neighbor to be eaten. When Boyes had eaten blood of all the chiefs, and all had eaten his, the peace was sealed which made him in practise king of the Kikuyu. He was able at last to take a holiday, and spent some months out hunting among the Wanderobo.
While the Kikuyu nation as a whole fed out of the white chief’s hand, he still had the witch doctors for his enemies, and one very powerful sorcerer caused the Chinga tribes to murder three Goa Portuguese. These Eurasian traders, wearing European dress, were mistaken for white men, and their death showed the natives that it would be quite possible to kill Boyes, who was now returning toward civilization with an immense load of ivory. Boyes came along in a hurry, riding ahead of his slow caravan with only four attendants and these he presently distanced, galloping along a path between two hedges among the fields of a friendly tribe—straight into a deadly native ambush. Then the mule shied out of the path, bolted across the fields and saved his life. Of the four attendants behind, two were speared. Moreover the whole country was wild with excitement, and five thousand fighting men were marching against Boyes. He camped, fenced his position and stood to arms all night, short of ammunition, put to the last, the greatest of many tests. Once more his nerves were overstrung, the delay terrified him, the silence appalled him waiting for dawn, and death. And as usual he treated the natives to a new kind of surprise, taking his tiny force against the enemy’s camp: “They had not thought it necessary to put any sentries out.”
“Here,” says Boyes, “we found the warriors still drinking and feasting, sitting round their fires, so engrossed in their plans for my downfall that they entirely failed to notice our approach; so, stealthily creeping up till we were close behind them, we prepared to complete our surprise.... Not a sound had betrayed our advance, and they were still quite ignorant of our presence almost in the midst of them. The echoing crack of my rifle, which was to be the signal for the general attack, was immediately drowned in the roar of the other guns as my men poured in a volley that could not fail to be effective at that short range, while accompanying the leaden missiles was a cloud of arrows sent by that part of my force which was not armed with rifles. The effect of this unexpected onslaught was electrical, the savages starting up with yells of terror in a state of utter panic. Being taken so completely by surprise, they could not at first realize what had happened, and the place was for a few minutes a pandemonium of howling niggers, who rushed about in the faint light of the camp-fires, jostling each other and stumbling over the bodies of those who had fallen at the first volley, but quite unable to see who had attacked them; while, before they had recovered from the first shock of surprise, my men had reloaded, and again a shower of bullets and arrows carried death into the seething, disorganized mass. This volley completed the rout, and without waiting a moment longer the whole crowd rushed pell-mell into the bush, not a savage who could get away, remaining in the clearing, and the victory was complete.”
It had taken Boyes a year to fight his way to that kingdom which had no throne, and for another eighteen months of a thankless reign he dealt with famine, smallpox and other worries until one day there came two Englishmen, official tenderfeet, into that big wild land which Boyes had tamed. They came to take possession, but instead of bringing Boyes an appointment as commissioner for King Edward they made him prisoner in presence of his retinue of a thousand followers, and sent him to escort himself down-country charged with “dacoity,” murder, flying the Union Jack, cheeking officials, and being a commercial bounder. At Mombasa there was a comedy of imprisonment, a farce of trial, an apology from the judge, but never a word of thanks to the boyish adventurer who had tamed half a million savages until they were prepared to enter the British Peace.
XXVII
A. D. 1898 JOURNEY OF EWART GROGAN
From the Right Honorable Cecil Rhodes to Ewart S. Grogan in the year 1900:—
“I must say I envy you, for you have done that which has been for centuries the ambition of every explorer, namely, to walk through Africa from South to North. The amusement of the whole thing is that a youth from Cambridge during his vacation should have succeeded in doing that which the ponderous explorers of the world have failed to accomplish. There is a distinct humor in the whole thing. It makes me the more certain that we shall complete the telegraph and railway, for surely I am not going to be beaten by the legs of a Cambridge undergraduate.”
It took death himself to beat Rhodes. Two years after that letter was written news went out through the army in South Africa that he was dead. We were stunned; we felt too sick to fight. For a moment the guns were hushed, and silence fell on the veldt after years of war. That silence was the herald of lasting peace for British Africa, united by stronger bonds than rail or telegraph.
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