Tom Burnaby Part 39

"Where's Tom?" he cried, without waiting to greet Major Lister, who, like his former chief, had won a step in rank. "Why isn't he here to meet us?"

"Impossible, sir," said Lister laconically. "How d'e do, Sir John?"

"Glad to see you, Lister. You remember Miss Barkworth?" The major bowed. "We're all anxious, of course. Where is the boy? how is he?"

"Ah! you don't know then? Of course; you couldn't have got Corney's letter before you started. It was the padre who found Tom. On the day Corney sent you the cable he had got a pencilled note from the padre, brought here by train from Kisumu, where it had been carried by a native in a canoe round the Nyanza. I have it in my pocket."

He took out of his pocket-book a small, crumpled, dirty note, and handed it to Sir John, who translated aloud the almost illegible writing: "I have just found Tom Burnaby. He is badly wounded. I am taking him, as soon as he can be moved, to Bukoba."

They were all walking now towards the hotel, and a painful silence fell upon the group as they heard the brief message.

"I suppose Corney started at once?" said Sir John.

"Oh yes! He caught the first train. Your cable arrived just before he left, and he asked me to a.s.sure you he would do everything he could."

"Of course he would. And you have heard nothing since?"

"Not a word."

"Why Bukoba, do you think? Wouldn't Entebbe have been a more natural point to make for?"

"There's nothing to show where the padre wrote from, but I take it that Bukoba is the nearest point on the Nyanza. The padre knows the German commandant, and has probably arranged with him."

"Ah! it is trying, this suspense; but I suppose we shall get an explanation before long."

"Before long! I should think so," cried Mr. Barkworth. "Burnaby, I'm going across to Bukoba; start to-morrow morning. Never imagined the boy'd be wounded--badly wounded, the padre says. This is terrible, terrible!"

"I guessed you would go on," said Lister, "and wired to Port Florence, as soon as your boat was signalled, to fix a launch for you. We may find a reply at the hotel."

"Thanks, Lister," said Sir John. "Yes, I shall go on to-morrow."

It was a sad and silent party on the hotel veranda that evening. Sir John was almost angry with the doctor for not cabling the whole of the padre's message, though on reflection he saw that he had been spared three weeks of intolerable anxiety. It was a keen disappointment to them all to meet, instead of Tom himself, a messenger of bad news, and they were all disinclined to talk. Mr. Barkworth did indeed find some relief from his anxiety in opening his mind to a Monsieur Armand Desjardins whom he met in the smoking-room. He poured out a recital of Tom's heroic deeds, drawing freely upon his imagination to fill up the gaps, until he had worked the impressionable Frenchman into a fit of enthusiasm. Monsieur Desjardins was a 'functionary' of course, and a journalist to boot, and he seized on Mr. Barkworth as an abundant reservoir of 'copy'. He went down to see the party off when they left next morning, and said to Lilian, to whom he had been specially attentive:

"I burn with envy to see dis Monsieur Tom; truly he is a hero, and I go to put him in a book. Good-bye, mees! you spik French? Oui, je m'en souviens. Eh bien, mademoiselle, vos beaux yeux vont guerir bientot le jeune malade, n'est-ce-pas? Hein?"

"What's that, what's that?" exclaimed Mr. Barkworth suspiciously.

"Nothing, Father," said Lilian with a blush. "Monsieur Desjardins is pleased to be complimentary."

"Well, it's a good thing he don't do it in English, for compliments in English just sound--piffle, humbug! Train's off; good-bye, Mossoo!"

On reaching Port Florence the travellers found that a launch was waiting for them. They embarked without delay, and reached Bukoba on the third evening after leaving Mombasa. The German commandant--no longer Captain Stumpff, who, like so many of his kind, had carried things a little too far and been recalled three months before--put his bungalow at their disposal, and told them that a runner had come in that very afternoon with the news that Father Cheva.s.se was only a day's march distant, and was bringing the wounded Englishman in a litter. Dr. O'Brien had gone into the interior with an escort of German native soldiers as soon as he learnt where to find the padre, and all the information brought back by them was that he had found the Englishman under the missionary's care in a large native camp. Mr. Barkworth was for starting at once to meet the returning wanderer, but was persuaded to restrain his impatience and accept the German officer's hospitality.

Next day, an hour before sunset, Sir John, sitting with Mr. Barkworth and Lilian on the veranda of the bungalow, heard faintly in the distance the regular thump, thump of drums.

"At last!" he exclaimed, and, getting up, looked eagerly towards the hills. The sound became every moment more distinctly audible, forming now, as it were, a ground ba.s.s to strains of song which came fitfully on light gusts of wind, in strange harmony with the fading light, the red glory beyond the hills, and the sombre shadows of the distant trees.

Sir John unstrapped his field-gla.s.s, and, looking through it, saw the head of a procession emerge from a belt of wood nearly a mile away. The trees stood out black against the crimson sky; the pale green above was deepening to a blue; and the sounds came more distinctly to the ear--a few notes ascending and descending by curious intervals, the same phrase being repeated again and again in the same low solemn chant, swelling and dying on the breeze. Mr. Barkworth had let his cigar go out, and was walking up and down the veranda like a caged lion. Lilian sat motionless in her chair, her fingers tightly intertwined, her cheeks pale. Not a word was spoken; the only sounds were the light swish of the ripples on the sh.o.r.e, the hum from the woods and marshes preluding the dark, and the ever-approaching song with its melancholy dirge-like accompaniment of drums. The three watchers on the veranda were tense with anxiety. Was it a funeral march? Was Tom coming back to them only for burial?

The procession drew nearer and nearer. It was possible now to distinguish the figures with the naked eye. A drummer walked at the head; behind him there were four negroes bearing a litter covered with an awning; and yes, it was the tall figure of the padre walking at one side. Behind, as far as the eye could reach, stretched a long line of black forms, marching in single file, keeping step to the drums, and singing their monotonous song, that now came low in tone but immense in volume, like a sonorous emanation from the splendid sky. Nearer and nearer; and now the figure of the doctor could be seen behind the litter, and Mbutu by his side. Nearer still; and then, at a few yards'

distance from the bungalow, the drums ceased to beat, the voices fell like a breaking wave, the rearmost of the column continuing to sing for some seconds after the foremost had stopped. There was a great silence.

The sun's rim had just dipped below the purple horizon. The doctor came forward, and at the same moment the princ.i.p.al drummer gave a signal tap, and a thousand stalwart negroes, armed with musket, spear, and pike, formed up in a half-circle about the litter. Sir John stepped down from the veranda; the litter was brought to meet him. Removing the awning, the doctor showed him a thin, pale, wasted form, with large bright eyes gazing eagerly out into the dusk, which the commandant had now illuminated with a number of flaring torches. Tom's face broke into a glad contented smile as he saw his uncle looking down upon him.

"Uncle Jack!" he whispered.

The older man murmured a word or two--no one heard them--and laid his hand gently upon his nephew's. Then, too deeply moved for speech, he turned and walked beside the litter as it was borne towards the bungalow.

Mr. Barkworth had been blowing his nose violently, and more than once he lifted his spectacles and rubbed them with quite unnecessary vigour. As the litter approached he took Lilian by the hand.

"Come inside, my dear," he said hurriedly. "Not good for him to see too many at once, you know. Uncle enough for to-night. He looks very ill.

Glad we have him, though. Thank G.o.d, thank G.o.d!"

When the doctor had settled the invalid comfortably for the night, Mr.

Barkworth waylaid him.

"Will he get over it?" he asked anxiously.

"Indeed and he will. He has had a narrow shave, but I think he will do.

The const.i.tution of a horse, sorr--thorough-bred, nothing spavined, no broken wind, sound everywhere."

"Where was he? What has he been doing all these months?"

"Faith, I have not got to the bottom of it yet; but so far as I can make out he has been administering a corner of the Congo Free State, raising a regular army, smas.h.i.+ng the slave-trade, and taching the negroes something of the blessings of civilization. I mean it, bedad; the padre tould me all he knew, but sure there's a deal more to be tould yet.--Have ye got a cigar, Mr. Barkworth? I forgot my case, and have been wearying for one for three weeks. Hark'e! Those blacks outside are beginning a hullabaloo. I must put a stop to that. Come and see what they're after."

The host of natives who had solemnly escorted Kuboko to the sh.o.r.e of the Great Lake had begun to build fires in the neighbourhood of the bungalow in preparation for camping. The German commandant made a wry face when he saw their intention, and had already sent some of his men to order them to a more convenient distance. The awed silence with which they had looked on at the greeting between Kuboko and his friends had given place to chattering and laughing and singing, and the doctor took pains to impress upon them that the noise would disturb Kuboko's rest. His expostulation was effectual; they ate their evening meal in comparative silence.

It was long past midnight before any of the Europeans retired to rest.

Seated in the largest room of the German commandant's bungalow, Sir John Burnaby and his party listened while the padre told of his discovery of Tom. Never before had Mr. Barkworth so keenly felt the drawbacks he suffered through want of familiarity with French. He would not allow the padre's story to be interrupted by any attempt at interpretation, but listened with a painful effort to follow it, and got Lilian, tired as she was, to give it privately in outline afterwards. But he there and then vowed that one of his first duties on reaching home would be to agitate for the compulsory teaching of conversational French, and decided to found a prize at his old school for proficiency in the subject.

Father Cheva.s.se told how, as he was returning by easy stages from a visit to a mission-station at the upper end of Lake Tanganyika, he had heard vague rumours of battles fought far to the north between the Arabs and a confederation of negroes under the leaders.h.i.+p of a white man. As he proceeded, the stories became more and more circ.u.mstantial and the details more and more extraordinary. He learnt that the intrepid commander was quite young, a man of marvellous powers, able to turn lakes into engines of destruction, and to bring fire out of the heavens.

Such stories, even after he had made all allowances for the natives'

exuberant imagination, awakened his curiosity; and suddenly it occurred to him that, improbable as it seemed, the white man might be no other than the long-lost Tom. "Nothing British surprises me," he interpolated with a smile. He hastened his march, made diligent enquiry at every village through which he pa.s.sed, and by and by encountered people who had actually formed part of the confederacy and fought under the stranger's command. The information given by them did but strengthen his growing conviction, and when he at last, under the guidance of a Muhima, reached Mwonga's village, he was rejoiced to find that his surmise was correct. Almost the first person he saw on entering the stockade was Mbutu, who ran up to him, threw himself at his feet, and broke out into e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of delight mingled with entreaty. He was led to a hut in the centre of the village, and there saw Tom, lying on a couch covered with clean linen--Tom indeed, but the pale shadow of his former self.

Bit by bit the padre learnt from one and another the story of his deeds, from his capture by the Arabs to the final destruction of their island fortress. After that noteworthy event every vestige of the stronghold had been burnt or razed to the ground. A search was made for the treasure which rumour attributed to the Arabs, and beneath the flooring of Rumaliza's house, in cellars extending for many yards under the surface of the soil, had been discovered an immense h.o.a.rd, the acc.u.mulation of many years--hundreds of ivory tusks worth untold gold.

The few Arabs who had survived the fight had been sent eastwards under escort, and their Manyema dependants disbanded. Many of these threw in their lot with the conquerors. Then the Bahima force had started on its return journey, bringing the captured treasure in triumph to the village.

Tom's wound had become more and more painful, and though he tried at first to walk with his men, he found himself obliged, after one day, to give up the attempt, and was carried for the rest of the way in a litter. On the journey he had talked long and earnestly with the katikiro and other officials, suggesting and advising them as to their movements and the future government of the village in case he died. They had only reached the village two days before the missionary's arrival, and, at Mbutu's entreaty, the katikiro was arranging to despatch messengers to the sh.o.r.e of the Victoria Nyanza with a request for help.

The padre at once sent off one of his own attendants under a strong escort to Bukoba, the nearest European station, and the German commandant had forwarded the message immediately to Kisumu.

"My own knowledge and skill in surgery is but slight," added the missionary, "but I did what I could until our friend Dr. O'Brien arrived."

"He extracted the bullet," said the doctor; "capitally too. It was an ugly wound."

"And Tom bore the pain with marvellous fort.i.tude. Happily, he sank into unconsciousness before I had completed my task, and never so much as murmured when he awoke to the full sense of his agony and helplessness.

I made arrangements at once to convey him here, and the villagers, whose devotion to him transcends anything I have ever before seen in the natives, of their own accord organized the procession which you have just witnessed. We were already half-way here when Dr. O'Brien reached us, and his skill completed what my clumsier hands had begun. I have given you only a sketch of what this young hero has been able, under G.o.d's mercy, to accomplish; indeed, I am not able to fill in all the details, for Tom himself has been too ill to talk, and is, besides, very reticent about his own actions. One fact stands out pre-eminent, and no distrust of native stories can explain it away. He has stamped out a pestilent gang of slave-raiders, and may with a whole heart sing 'Magnificat!' And though we dare not be so sanguine as to expect that the lessons of self-sacrifice, courage, justice, brotherly kindness, he has by his example taught the natives, will never be effaced from their minds, yet they must bear fruit, and certainly he has prepared the way for me and my brethren, Catholic or Protestant. You have a nephew to be proud of, Sir John."

Next morning, the commandant, who had considerately effaced himself on the previous night, resumed his autocratic air, and told the a.s.sembled natives bluntly that he would be delighted to see the last of them. In their wholesome dread of the Wa-daki, they took the very broad hint and prepared to return to their remote wilds.

But before they departed they wished to take a formal farewell of the great muzungu who had taught them so much and saved them from their hereditary foe. Msala was deputed to seek an interview with Sir John, and he asked, with his usual eloquence, that Kuboko might be brought out to his sorrowing people, that they might look upon his face once more.

Sir John consulted the doctor, who pursed up his lips and looked doubtful, but confessed that Tom himself had asked that the people should not be allowed to go until he had seen them and bidden them good-bye. Accordingly, about eight o'clock in the morning, Tom was carried out in his litter and placed on the veranda, where he lay in the shade during the scene of farewell.