_John_ (shortly and decidedly): "You can't remain. I've already told you why. In this matter you must bow to my authority. Lucy in any case is too ill to stay here--under these circumstances--and it is common humanity that you should not let her travel alone to the coast. When our anxiety is over, you and she can come back...." (Ann: "Thank you for nothing!") "Well, sir, you shall know our definite decision in the morning. Meantime you must be tired, very tired indeed. We thank you heartily for coming to our assistance. I'm sure you'd like now to retire." (Brentham withdraws.) "Brethren, before we separate let us put our case before God, that He may guide us aright...."
The next morning the decisive answer tendered to the Consul was that the men would remain and defend their station. Sisters Baines and Jamblin should return to the coast with Consul Brentham.
Lucy forgot all about her anaemia and weak back and tendency to dizziness in an excited packing up of necessaries for the journey. She would not have to take with her more than her clothes and a few invalid's provisions and appliances. She felt terribly elated, wildly happy at times. No thought of danger entered her head--how could it, with Roger as escort? At the same time, the sight of poor John's silent grief--too deep for words--smote her with reproachfulness; and Ann's scornful observation of her moments of sparkling gaiety seemed sinister.
The situation was eased by Brentham taking John away for three hours to confer with Chief Mbogo and his counsellors. Mbogo was sure he could drive off any number of Arabs or Wangwana if they came to attack his villages or the Mission Station. He would send out word to the Masai. The Masai were now his friends through the peace-making of the missionaries: they hated the Arabs and the "coast people," and said they would side with the Whites. At the same time he accepted gratefully Brentham's present of ten Snider rifles and two loads of ammunition. Another ten rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition were added to the armoury of the Mission Station, as well as two revolvers, one of which Ann took over, for her own defence on the road or that of her "Big-geru."
Brentham also tendered some expert advice to the Chief on the subject of entrenchments round his stronghold. The Mission Station already possessed a pretty strong stockade and a moat outside it. A few years previously attacks from any quarter might be expected--Muhammadan slave-traders, impulsive Masai, thievish Wagogo. If the first rush could be checked the attack was seldom persisted in.
The Consul's _safari_ as it passed down the western slopes of the Ulunga Hills[#] must have looked quite imposing to the natives who watched its departure behind their dracaena and euphorbia hedges. First marched Brentham himself with a stout staff and with his gun-carrier at his heels. Then came the caravan headman and guide, the Mwinyi-mpara or Kiongozi, as he was styled. He carried a small British ensign and was followed by twenty-five armed porters with Brentham's personal loads, each, however, with a Snider rifle and a neat uniform of cotton vest and breeches. Next followed Ann Jamblin, riding astride the Consul's Maskat donkey, every now and then glancing back on her fifteen Amazon porters, the pick of her Big-geru class who carried their mistress's effects in bundles on their woolly heads. Behind them was Lucy in her machila, its long pole borne on the shoulders of two strapping Walunga, with a relief crew behind of four other men of fine musculature. After that followed about fifty porters poising on their heads the heavier baggage--bundles of tents, bedding, water-tight tin boxes, bags of rice, bales of cloth, boxes of beads, cases of ammunition, cooking implements. Trotting by the side of this long file of men were two milch goats, bleating and baaing, but thoroughly enjoying the journey; they were intended to provide milk for the ladies' tea. One of the two was a special pet of Lucy's. To look after the goats was a little naked Mgogo boy--a released slave--who ran and frolicked with them, and kept the porters amused by his impudent mimicry of the white people. Lastly in the rear of the caravan was a guard of ten gunmen without loads to embarrass their quick movements.
[#] Ulunga was the southern portion of a country called "Ngulu" or "Nguru."
Brentham and his charges were bound for the Stotts' station of Burungi, three or four days' journey--say, fifty miles--to the west. Lucy felt already many degrees better in health, though she thought it only decent to conceal her returning vigour and new-found animation. The picnic meals by the road side stimulated her appetite; her eye took pleasure in the changes of scenery, the new panoramas of plain and wilderness that unfolded themselves as she was swayingly borne along. Ann seemed sombre and preoccupied, as though noting land-marks for after recognition. Occasionally she pointed to this and that feature in the landscape and asked her Big-geru for its native name.
The very hot weather which closes the dry season made itself felt, so that the start from Hangodi had been begun in the early morning twilight, and each succeeding morning they took to the road at 5.30. They jogged along, with an occasional five minutes', rest, till half-past ten or until about that time they had found a stream valley or a water hole which contained water not too bad for cooking purposes. Then the caravan halted for the day in such shade as might be found, and the march was not resumed till 5 p.m.
Owing to the brilliancy of the moonlight it might be continued well into the night. During the long mid-day halt, the Goanese cook, aided by Halima and several porters and Brentham's Swahili butler, would prepare really very creditable little meals, and after eating the travellers would lie on unfolded deck chairs in some piece of shade where the hard ground had been swept clear of snakes, insects or scorpions. Brentham, if the heat were not too scorching, might wander with a shot-gun near by to try for the chance of a guinea-fowl or francolin or tiny antelope.
At four o'clock they had tea with goat's milk; and at five resumed their journey. The tents were pitched by moonlight and the beds made by the light of a candle lantern. Toilet processes were very summary; there was all too little water to wash in and the travellers must just sleep in their clothes and put any ideas of effective ablutions out of their heads till they reached the water supply at the Stotts' station. The night camp was hastily surrounded by a thorn hedge cut from the acacia trees, and big fires were lighted to keep off lions and hyenas. Blacks and whites had to sleep in close proximity and the treasured goats and donkey in the middle of the circle of loads.
The country they marched over--a northward extension of the "Mkunda mkali" or "Bitter waste"--was at first steppe-like, then rocky and rising in a series of escarpments. Almost its only trees seemed to be flat-topped acacias, without leafage at this season, glistening in the blazing sun and studded with long white thorns. The thin grass was mostly burnt; nevertheless it was frequented by much game, and the land was apparently devoid of human inhabitants. Brentham, always obsessed by the fear of food scarcity, but hardly liking to absent himself from the line of march and his following caravan, started each morning a few minutes ahead of the rest and walked in advance as a pioneer, with his gun-carrier at his elbow. In this way he sometimes brought down, close to the path, an inquisitive Grant's gazelle or hartebeest; or a zebra out of the many herds which closed up to espy the distant concourse of men and then dissolved into a cloud of dust at the report of the gun. Even at this lean season of the year the male zebras were in good condition. Their yellow fat and juicy, sickly-sweet flesh delighted the hungry porters.
On the early morning of the fourth day, the expedition passed a few parched native plantations and one or two burnt huts and, as the sun rose, marched into the irregular circle of the Stott station, across a half-dry water-course, and found no human being to greet it. Silence and partially burnt buildings of clay and thatch, torn paper, vultures on the scorched trees, broken crockery, scraps of cloth, one or two pools of dried blood, empty cartridge-cases, and the torn sacking and splintered boards of packing-cases.
"This is pretty ghastly, Miss Jamblin," said Brentham, returning to the hastily-cleaned camp amid the ruins of the Mission Station.
Lucy, feeling she could do nothing to help and had better not look at the caked patches of dried blood which the porters were removing, had withdrawn herself to a folding chair placed by Halima under the thin shade of a fire-scorched tree. Ann was examining the vestiges of the Stott property which the looters had left behind: school books and primers in the Swahili language, empty ink-pots, broken slates, enamelled iron plates and some substantial tables of native timber, too heavy for either the fugitives or their enemies to carry away. Ann's white solar "topi" and white dress were already smudged and sooted from the burnt wood and thatch.