Tom Burnaby Part 22

Big Medicine

Barega's Village--The Cavern in the Cliff--Mutterings--Under a Cloud--The Bell and the Basket--A Challenge--In the Lists--A Palpable Hit--Vae Victis

For twenty-four hours Tom lay stark and motionless in one position, the flush in his cheeks and his quick breathing showing that he was still alive. Then, as the morning sunlight entered by the narrow doorway, he opened his eyes. Mbutu was in the act of spreading new and fragrant gra.s.s upon the floor.

"Mbutu!" came a faint voice from the settle. The boy flung down the gra.s.s and ran to his master.

"I am terribly hungry," said Tom.

Mbutu looked for a moment incredulous.

"I am indeed. I think I shall get well after all."

"Neyanzi-ge!" cried Mbutu with a shout of joy, his emotion finding expression in his native tongue. "Neyanzi-ge! I praise too much, sah!

I fank too much!"

He was indeed bubbling, over with thankfulness. He went out of the hut and joyously spread the good news. In a few moments the whole camp knew that the muzungu was recovering. The chief ordered Bugandanwe, the big drum, to be struck, and arranged a spear-dance for the evening. A goat was instantly killed to make fresh soup, and some of the spearmen who had carried Tom to the village brought him voluntary offerings of bananas and sweet-potatoes. Even at this moment of excitement the chief displayed an amount of tact which, characteristic as it is of his race, seemed in strange disaccord with the European idea of the negro. He refrained from visiting Tom, and strictly commanded that no one except Mbutu, not even the katikiro, should go inside the hut on any pretence until the invalid's recovery was a.s.sured. As for the katikiro himself, he beamed on everybody, and, observing the dark look on the face of the medicine-man, whose prestige was bound to suffer somewhat from the failure of his prediction, he smiled still more broadly. He had no love for Mabruki, and, being a man of shrewd sense, nourished a strong suspicion that he was a humbug; but being also a discreet man, he was very careful never to give verbal expression to his thought.

From that time Tom grew slowly better. At first his limbs seemed paralysed, and he suffered intense pain from bed-sores; but the good food and Mbutu's careful nursing worked improvement day by day. He was soon strong enough to receive short visits from Barega and Msala, and on the tenth day was so far recovered as to have himself carried out before the sun was hot into the fresh air, well wrapped up in leopard and antelope skins, and sheltered by an awning. A week later he first ventured to walk, leaning on Mbutu's arm, and he laughed with something of his old light-heartedness when he saw what thin sticks his legs had become. The few paces from his bed to the outside of the hut seemed a matter of immense labour. But new strength came daily, and in three weeks he was strong enough to walk una.s.sisted through the village.

Those three weeks had not been wasted. He got Mbutu to teach him the language, and was intensely amused at the chief's gasp of amazement at being one day addressed in his own tongue. He obtained also a great stock of information about the habits and customs of the people.

Remembering his long-standing promise to gratify Mbutu's appet.i.te for stories, he drew on his memory for tales of war and adventure, and found that nothing pleased the boy better than the old, old story of the fight between the Pigmies and the Cranes. In return, Mbutu told him legends of the country: the meaning of the Hyena's cry; why the Leopard catches his victim by the throat; and how the Hare outwitted the Elephant. And Tom at last heard the story of the Uncle and the Crocodile.

The village itself, with its surroundings, was a subject of considerable interest for Tom. From Mbutu he had learnt that a Bahima village usually contained some twenty huts, with a total population of perhaps a hundred and fifty. But Barega, as the place was called after the name of its chief, was by comparison quite a large town. It was built upon a gentle slope, rising from the north gate, by which Tom had entered, for some five hundred yards up a hill-side. On its north-eastern boundary, extending for some hundred and fifty yards, there was a sheer precipice about two hundred and fifty feet deep, partly overhanging a large open s.p.a.ce of prairie-like land. Through the centre of the village meandered a clear streamlet two feet broad, flowing gently downward from south-west to north-east, and escaping in a light cascade over the precipice. About sixteen yards before it reached its outlet, the brook pa.s.sed through a large reservoir sunk six feet in the ground, in which the water was always fresh and pure because of its constant flow. The chief's hut, a round structure of sticks and wattles, plastered with bluish clay ornamented with designs in white kaolin, stood amid a ring-fence in the centre of the village, and in an adjoining courtyard a perennial spring bubbled up, joining the streamlet outside the fence.

The katikiro's hut, where Tom was located, was placed a few yards from the chief's, and the rest of the thatched dwellings were arranged in two streets round the whole circuit of the village. A thick and well-kept stockade encircled the place, broken by only two gates, north and south.

There were some four hundred huts in all, and the population consisted of about five hundred of the aristocratic Bahima, whose only occupation was tending cattle and hunting, and nearly fifteen hundred menial Bairo, who grew what crops were required, chiefly for their own consumption, and also took part in the larger hunting-expeditions.

The unusual size of the village was explained by its situation. Being near the edge of the forest, within the range of the depredations of Arabs and pigmies, it had become, during the rule of Barega, a sort of harbour of refuge for people of kindred stock. Barega had won an immense reputation for miles around as a dauntless warrior; he had more than once inflicted trifling defeats on wandering bands of raiders; spearmen with their families had put themselves under his protection; and the consequence was that a number of people which, in other parts of Central Africa, might have been spread over fifteen square miles in scattered hamlets, was now collected on a s.p.a.ce not much more than a quarter of a mile square. The plantations were all, save for one large patch of bananas, on the north side, nearer the forest, while the cattle, huge herds of oxen, sheep, and goats, had their grazing-grounds to the south.

As he walked through the village, Tom met none but smiling faces.

Everybody seemed pleased that the rescuer of the chief was restored to health. Ere many days pa.s.sed, his usual escort was a throng of naked youngsters, who gazed with awe at his tall gaunt figure, and scampered off in a panic if he happened to turn round and look at them. Before long, however, his form lost its terrors, and he became the idol of all the children in the village. As he grew stronger, he was never tired of romping with them, showing them simple tricks, and finding endless amus.e.m.e.nt for himself in setting them to play at English games. "If games make men of us," he thought, "why not of black youngsters too?"

"'Pon my word, Mbutu," he said one day, "I believe I could make something of these little beggars if I had them for a year. Look at those little chaps over there, with sticks over their shoulders, marching exactly like a squad of recruits. Uncle Jack would go into fits if he saw them. I shall have some funny things to tell him by and by."

As he gained strength Tom made long excursions in the surrounding country. In these jaunts he was always attended by Mbutu, under whose tuition he made rapid progress in Central African woodcraft, and the thousand artifices with which semi-civilized man carries on his more or less successful struggle with the elemental forces of nature.

As a boy, crags and cliffs had always had a strange fascination for him; and for hours together, while still too weak to walk more than a few yards at a time, he would watch the birds circling around the spur at the north-eastern extremity of the village. He noticed that hundreds of these birds disappeared into a narrow cleft, which seemed from the base of the cliff to be no more than a couple of feet in height. For some days he was content to note the fact, but as his strength returned, he felt the impulse of a born cragsman to explore the cleft. It was clearly a hazardous undertaking, for the spot in question was some two hundred feet above the ground, and the face of the cliff was almost perpendicular. Above the cleft the precipice jutted out at a considerable angle, rendering any attempt to reach it from above impossible. There were, however, traces of a narrow ledge along the face of the cliff, running from the desired spot for some distance parallel with the ground, and then sweeping gently downwards to a point some fifty feet above the surface, where it suddenly ceased. Tom resolved to attempt the ascent, and not all the entreaties of Mbutu could turn him from his purpose. Armed with an improvised alpenstock, and a grappling-hook to aid him in clinging to the face of the cliff, he reached the ledge with some difficulty, owing to the loose nature of the soil. But once on the ledge his progress was more rapid, and in less than half an hour from the start he found himself at the entrance of an extensive cavern in the side of the cliff. The opening was, for the most part, hidden from view by a large ma.s.s of loose rock that had fallen from the roof. The slope of the cavern led upward, and although he soon found himself in darkness, Tom was surprised to find that the air was quite pure. At the expense of his s.h.i.+ns, he groped his way upwards, disturbing on the way innumerable bats and birds, which cannoned against him in a panic rush for the open air. After some thirty yards of toilsome progress he came to a sudden stop, discovering as he did so the reason why the cavern had none of the vault-like stuffiness which he a.s.sociated with many similar adventures at home. Through a cleft in the rock ahead filtered a thin beam of light, but there was no pa.s.sage even for Tom's lithe frame, wasted though it was by a month's illness. Tom was curious to know at what point of the cliff he had arrived, and, returning to the opening of the cavern, he made signs to Mbutu to betake himself to the hill overhead.

Again retracing his steps, Tom thrust his alpenstock through the narrow opening, and shouted to attract Mbutu's attention, to the complete discomfiture of the bolder spirits among the feathered inmates of the cavern, which had clung to their homes throughout this alarming episode.

Mbutu's quick ears easily caught the signal, and he had no difficulty in discovering the cleft, which proved to be only a few feet from the stockade. Tom then returned by the road he had come, well satisfied with this little adventure, which came as a welcome break in his enforced idleness.

A day or two after this, Tom said to Mbutu:

"The people here are exceedingly kind, and I have learnt a great deal that is extremely interesting; but we can't stay here for ever. I should think in another week I'll be strong enough to make tracks, eh?"

"Sure nuff, sah. Nyanza ober dar;" he pointed almost due east; "chief send men too; help sah 'long."

"As a sort of escort, you mean, for I don't want to be carried again. I shan't forget that time in the forest, Mbutu, nor how much I owe to you.

I feel years older, somehow; and, by the by, d'you think there's such a thing as a razor in the village? I can't see myself, having no looking-gla.s.s, but I feel that during that illness my face has got a trifle downy."

"No razor, sah; Bahima pluck hair out. Muzema-wa-taba do it for sah."

"That's the chief's pipe-lighter, isn't it? No, thanks! let him continue lighting his master's pipe. Talking of that, since everybody smokes here, women included, I feel rather out of it without a pipe too; but really their tobacco is so--well, so intensely aromatic that I don't care to risk it. How that medicine-man scowls at me, by the way."

Mabruki had just pa.s.sed them. "I am extremely sorry to have been the unconscious means of upsetting his apple-cart; and I wish he'd see reason and make friends."

"No like medicine-man," said Mbutu hurriedly, looking over his shoulder at the strange figure departing.

"I wonder what he does in those little fetish-huts all round the village," added Tom. "Come now, d'you think he'd be pleased if I asked him for one of those wooden charms I've seen him gibbering over?"

"Nebber, nebber, sah," returned the boy earnestly. "Sah white man; no want dem things; sah laugh inside."

"Oh, it was only to please the man!--Here's our friend Msala coming. I wonder why the light of his countenance is gone for once."

The katikiro did indeed look unusually grave as he came up. In answer to Mbutu's enquiry, the regular formula "Is it well?" he replied that it was certainly not well, for he had just discovered that one of his best oxen, as well as two of the kasegara's, had died mysteriously during the night. He could not account for it; they had shown no signs of sickness, and none of the other animals were affected. The devil Magaso had hitherto confined his attentions to bananas; it seemed strange if he had suddenly become a destroyer of oxen. One of his Bairo herdsmen, said the katikiro, suggested that Muhoko, another evil spirit, had paid a flying visit to the village; but this suggestion he treated with scorn; he couldn't imagine a Bairo devil having the impudence to interfere with Bahima property. Altogether, the usually genial official was decidedly upset.

"Perhaps they've got poison somehow," said Tom.

Poison! It was unheard-of. The beasts would not of their own accord eat anything poisonous, and who should want to poison them?

"Perhaps someone has a grudge against you and the kasegara."

Against him, the katikiro! It was impossible. Wasn't he a friend to everyone, never bad-tempered, never greedy, never in anybody's way? The kasegara--oh! there might well be a grudge against him, for he thought a great deal too much of himself, talked a great deal too volubly at the village palavers, and had yet to learn that he was inferior to the katikiro after all.

"No doubt," said Tom, inwardly amused at the whole affair. "Some enemy of the kasegara, then, has paid him out by poisoning two of his cattle, and got rid of one of yours too, by mistake. All cats are gray in the dark, you know."

This explanation somewhat consoled the katikiro, when a Bahima equivalent for the proverb had been found; and then, with Mbutu's a.s.sistance, he engaged in animated conversation with Tom about the prime minister of the Great White King, whom he was very eager to emulate.

The death of the cattle pa.s.sed from Tom's mind, but two days later the whole camp was in an uproar at the discovery that no fewer than six other oxen had died in the same mysterious way. Tom, as he went with Mbutu for his daily walk round the village, was surprised to find that the people looked much less pleasantly on him than usual. The change was shown in more than looks. He beckoned to a handsome little boy of four, a special favourite of his, and the child was running to him when he was checked by a sharp call from his mother, who sent him howling into her hut.

"This looks as though we're outstaying our welcome, Mbutu," said Tom.

"Perhaps we had better arrange to start in a couple of days, when the chief gets back from the hunt. I think I'm strong enough to manage the journey if we don't have to hurry."

That night, soon after Mbutu had settled to sleep in his usual place just inside the doorway of his master's hut, he felt the stealthy touch of a hand upon his shoulder. He sprang up, wide awake in an instant.

It was the katikiro's voice that spoke to him, and asked him to come out for a little conversation. Surprised at his choosing such a time, Mbutu followed him to the hut in which he had for the time taken up his abode, and there, in low tones, Msala explained the mystery of the villagers'

changed att.i.tude.

It was due to the medicine-man, he said. That individual had been for some time doing all he could to stir up the people against the white man, but had met with little success, so confident were they that their chief would never have made a friend of a man likely to harm them. But the loss of the cattle had now given Mabruki a strong leverage. He had gone about among the villagers, declaring that the Buchwezi, the spirits of their ancestors, had revealed to him most positively that the white man was the cause of all their recent losses. The katikiro scouted the suggestion, and had determined to show his friendliness towards Tom by acquainting him with the origin of the hostile movement. He advised Mbutu to lose no time in getting his master away from the village, for if the infatuation got a thorough hold of the people, even the protection of the chief would be quite unable to save their lives.

Mbutu returned to the hut in a state of unconquerable nervousness.

After a sleepless night, he gave his master the information he had received.

"What bos.h.!.+" cried Tom, laughing. "What a fool the medicine-man must be! I don't see what he has to gain by putting this on to me.

Supposing he worked up the people to tear me to pieces, he couldn't get rid of Barega, and Murasi would be as far from being chief as ever."

"No, no, sah," said Mbutu, "him say sah kill oxen; berrah well. Chief say bosh; berrah well. Black men say no bosh; chief fool; white man him master; bad chief; must hab nudder chief. Oh yes! dat what medicine-man say!"

"I see; you mean he'll hit at the chief through me. Very well; we'll be off as soon as the chief returns; he shan't suffer loss of prestige through me."