Roger scribbled the message on a leaf out of his road-book.
"There is our station," said Lucy, "about two miles off, on that great spur that comes out from the mountain. You can see the white houses and the red brick chapel and the glint of the corrugated iron. And away to the--well, I s'pose it's the south--is the chief Mbogo's principal village--all those little brown huts...."
The two impatient messengers scarcely waited for this information but bounded off to deliver their message and find some resting-place for the caravan, extenuated as it was with the long, hot march.
Lucy took Roger's arm--how it thrilled her, how like an impossible dream come true!--and followed by Halima and the machila reached the patch of blue shade made by a group of candelabra euphorbias and fig trees with thick glossy leaves and pendent branches. The ground underneath was absolutely clear of any cover for snakes and was whitish with the ashes of many a cooking fire, lit here by caravans arriving at evening and preferring to postpone their interviews with Chief Mbogo--sometimes a rapacious gentleman over his dues--till the morning light.
Whilst Brentham's cook was preparing a cup of tea, Lucy poured forth tumultuously her story of the chief happenings of the past six months. Brentham said in reply that she must have gone through a beastly time; but she might now take heart. He had come with definite instructions to take her away to the coast and her husband too, if the men-folk agreed. "Any other English woman at the station?" he inquired.
Lucy told him there was Ann Jamblin, but did not think the present moment the right one in which to expatiate on the irritating side of Ann's disposition. Moreover now that she was going back to England, why run down Ann? If Ann stayed behind, as she was convinced she would do, she might be a great comfort to John. "Don't think it odd of me," finished Lucy, "if when we reach the station I go straight to my house and to bed. I feel really too much shaken to take part in any discussion. I would much sooner you settled everything with John. I'm sure he won't oppose my going."
When Brentham reached Hangodi he was introduced to Ann, who listened to his polite phrases rather impatiently and seemed a little incredulous about any danger from Arab attacks. What exercised her mind, she said frankly, was how to keep the hundred men of his caravan from too close contact with her twenty or thirty maidens who lived in--what it was hoped was--"maiden meditation, fancy free," within the stockaded boundaries of the Mission Station. The local young manhood of the near-by Ulunga villages was supposed to stand too much in awe of Ann and to obey too strictly their chief's prohibition of interference with the young women of the Mission to annoy them with any amorous advances; but already Ann thought she had seen bold glances cast at her pupils--whom she was training to be Christian wives of Christian husbands--by the love-famished stalwarts of the caravan; and a coy recognition of this admiration on the part of the plump "Big-geru." To ease her apprehensions the men were soon all drafted off to billets in the native villages a mile away. To Brentham and his personal servants were alotted the Boys' School and the Chapel for their accommodation, the Consul being told that under all the circumstances of his visit there could be no thought of sacrilege in his using the House of God as a dwelling-place.
Brentham had told them as soon as he arrived that he was charged with instructions to escort all the white _personnel_ of Hangodi to some safe place on the coast whilst this war between Arabs and Germans was going on. He had started from Medinat-al-barkah and had with great difficulty and by making the utmost use of the British flag and of the presence of British war vessels off the coast, pushed his way past the insurgent Arabs and Waswahili that were attacking the German strongholds.
By forced marches he had reached the mission stations of Uluguru and Usagara, and had advised the retreat of the older men and all the white women towards the Kilwa coast, not at present in revolt. He left them still undecided whether or not to take his advice, but he had furnished them with a reinforcement of porters and arms.
There was no time to lose, so he was now hurrying on to Ulunga and Ugogo to put the same proposition before the members of the East African Mission, except that the safest route to the coast must now be a great detour towards Kilimanjaro.
Whatever the men decided to do, the women should at any rate come away with him. He would proceed westward and try to pick up the Stotts; then with his stout-hearted Wanyamwezi soldier-porters they would all find a way round the routes and villages dominated by the Arabs and Wangwana[#] and reach the coast at Mvita, where there was a British Consulate and where British gunboats were lying off the Arab town. But time was precious. Already he had heard that bands of plundering Wangwana and Ruga-ruga[#] were approaching Ugogo from the west.
[#] Wangwana was the general term in the East African interior by which the "Black Arabs," the Muhammadan Arabized negroes, were known.
[#] Ruga-ruga was the name given to war-like negroes--not necessarily Muhammadans, armed by the Arabs with flint-lock guns and sent to raid and ravish those tribes which rebelled against the slave-traders.
"How long can you give us?" said the anguished John, torn between his sense of duty regarding his wife and his extreme reluctance to abandon his Mission Station to certain destruction.
"Well, not more than forty-eight hours."
"Brethren," said John, "we must meet in conference and decide this. Sister Lucy has retired to bed--I advised her to do so. She has left it to me to settle what she had better do. But for the rest of us, let us meet after supper in the mess house and talk it over. You, sir," he said, to the worn and weary-looking Brentham--who, whatever he might appear in Lucy's eyes as paladin and parfit gentill knight, was streaked with black and brown after having ridden and walked through the charred herbage of the burnt plains still smoking with their dry-season bush fires--"You, sir, would like a rest and a wash and a meal. Shall I show you your quarters?..."
When the little party met in conclave, how unreal the threat of war and violence seemed! The open square of the station was bathed in silver moonlight from a moon three-quarters full; there was the distant twanging of a native guitar played by some musical porter; a village dog sent up a complacent howl or two; a goat-sucker churred; a laugh came from the Big-geru's quarters.
John, not without a hope the Consul might be exaggerating their danger, said: "Brethren and Sister Jamblin, each of you shall speak in turn, but as I am regarded as your leader I will give my opinion first. I have decided that my wife shall leave with the Consul for the coast, perhaps even for England, unless she recovers her health and things quiet down. Cruelly hard as it is for me to part with her, I feel it is the right thing to do. As for me, it is also the right thing that I should stop here till all danger is over and my place can be taken by some one else. Sister Jamblin must go with Lucy." (Ann murmured she would do nothing of the kind.) "Yes, Ann; I must insist. Lucy could not possibly travel alone--it is not to be thought of...."
_Ann_: "Why, she can take Halima----"
"I say," continued John, wiping the perspiration from his heated face, "it is not to be thought of. As an unmarried woman, Ann, you could not remain here with us men----" (Ann: "Pooh, nonsense!") "Supposing we were really attacked by the Arabs and we men were killed, I dare not think what might be your fate! Brother Bayley, what do you say?"
_Bayley_: "Why, that I'll stay with you."
_Anderson_: "And I say the same. You've both spoken like jolly good Englishmen. And--er--let's trust in the Lord, brethren. _He'll_ see us through, He won't leave His servants in the lurch. To think of all the work we've put into this place and all the money what's been spent on it! What are we going to do with our trade goods if we cut and run? The Consul can't load himself up with them--and our ivory and gum copal..."
_Brentham_: "I might mention here I can only spare about twenty-five porters for the whole five of you. We must travel as lightly as possible, especially if the Stotts want help. They have young children, I believe."
_Anderson_: "Then I vote we stop. Let the women go. It wouldn't be right to expose them to the risk.... Ann, what do you say?"
_Ann_: "I say this. Let Sister Baines go to the coast. She's always ailing and would only be a drag on us if we were hard-pressed. But for my part I stay with the men, at any rate till things have calmed down. _I'm_ not afraid. I'll soon learn to handle a rifle, and I'm pretty good at dressing wounds. And there's my class of girls. It'd pretty nigh break my heart if I went away and they came to grief after all that training I've given them--to make them good wives some day."