Tom Burnaby Part 4

"Well, you ought to know, padre. What's to be done, then? We can't let a fine fellow like Jack Burnaby be snuffed out by a parcel of heathens.

Suppose we tell the man in charge here--Captain Beaumont, isn't it?"

"Little use, I am afraid. Captain Beaumont doesn't understand the natives; and I fear he would scoff at Mbutu's story and refuse to believe it. The boy has an animus against the dago, you see."

"Why couldn't I go after the expedition myself along with Mbutu?" broke in Tom eagerly.

Mr. Barkworth looked dubiously at him, as though he half suspected for an instant that the story was got up for the occasion. But a glance at the young fellow's anxious face made him repent at once. He blew his nose again and said:

"I'm an old fool, h'm! Well now, let's talk it over."

A long and serious discussion ensued, in which Tom and Mr. Barkworth bore the greater part.

"Well, well," said Mr. Barkworth at length, "have your own way. Yes, my boy, you must go. You have a valid reason--the strongest motive anyone could have. And your uncle, sir--begad, if he takes you to task for disobedience, why, just refer him to me, and say that I'll get Tommy Bowles to ask a question in the House. I know him!"

"But how can Mr. Burnaby go after them?" put in Lilian. "They have taken all the launches, I know."

Mr. Barkworth's countenance fell.

"Whew!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "That's a facer! Never do to go on foot, Tom; never overtake 'em in time round the north sh.o.r.e. H'm!"

"I have a launch," said the missionary quietly. "Quite a small thing, steaming only a few knots. I am starting to-morrow to visit our station at Buk.u.mbi, at the other end of the Nyanza, and if Mr. Burnaby cares to come with me, I can take him on afterwards to the river for which the expedition is making."

"Couldn't you go straight across, sir?" asked Tom eagerly. "You see how important it is to lose no time."

"I am sorry I cannot. I have important letters from my superior to the father in charge of the mission, and I am bound to deliver them at once.

Besides, not much time will be lost. The launches are calling at Entebbe to pick up a draft of the King's African Rifles, so that we shall probably be only a day behind them, and you should overtake your uncle some days before he reaches the place where the fighting will begin."

"What's he say, Lilian?" said Mr. Barkworth in a stage whisper.

"Capital!" he cried, when she had briefly explained; "his head's clear enough for an Englishman's. Close with Mossoo's offer, Mr. Burnaby.

Ask the padre what time he starts, Lilian; for the life of me I never can think of the French for start."

"At eight in the morning," said the missionary. "If all goes well we shall cover a hundred miles before we anchor for the night."

"Well, now, that is what I call business. Now, Tom, you'll be ready at eight with this Booty, or whatever you call him, and I'll be there to see you off. Gad, if I hadn't a girl to drag me about I'd come too, though I'm sixty-three next week. Now, good-night, my boy, and G.o.d bless you!"

Tom gripped the old gentleman's hand warmly, and after wis.h.i.+ng Lilian good-bye, went off with the White Father to talk over their plans and trace out their route before turning in for the night.

CHAPTER III

On the Victoria Nyanza

Tom's First Crocodile--Night on the Nyanza--In German Africa--A Storm on the Lake--A Short Way with Hippos--Danger Ahead

Long before eight next morning Tom was down at the quay examining the launch in which he was to begin his pursuit of the expedition. His inspection made him feel rather unhappy.

"Why, she's nothing but a crazy old tub," he said to himself ruefully.

"Planks half-rotten, rudder stiff, and looks as though she hadn't seen paint for an age. Lucky this isn't open sea, for anything like dirty weather would just about finish her ramshackle engines. Well, let's hope for the best."

He returned to the bungalow, where with Mbutu's a.s.sistance he made his final preparations. These were not elaborate. The padre had advised him to travel as light as possible, taking merely a few articles of underclothing and other necessaries, with the addition of a couple of hundred beads and some yards of calico, the common articles of barter and sale in the interior, in case he had to purchase food from the natives during the final stage of his journey. Luckily there was a fair stock of these in the bungalow. Tom had of course discarded his straw hat long before, and now wore a white solah helmet, which could be relied on to protect him from the mid-day sun. He had found an old rifle of his uncle's, and a case of cartridges, which he thought it advisable to take. He ate a light breakfast of fried fowl capitally prepared by the Indian, gravely acknowledged his salaam, and then, giving Mbutu the baggage to carry, started for the quay.

The missionary was already on board, and steam was up, but there was no sign of Mr. Barkworth. Tom wondered whether he had forgotten his promise to see him off. Just as he was about to go on board, his genial friend appeared in the distance, hurrying at a great pace towards the quay, flouris.h.i.+ng a red bandana. Tom was surprised, and secretly not a little pleased, to see that Lilian was with her father.

"Here we are," cried the old gentleman, puffing and gasping as he came up. "All on board, h'm? Got everything you want? Now, whatever you do, don't get your feet wet! And look here, here's something I warrant you've forgotten. Writing-paper, eh? Ink too. Let us know how you get on. Any black 'll carry a letter for you for a few beads. My girl will have dragged me off to the ends of the earth long before you get back, but remember we're always home for Christmas. Glad to see you at the Orchard, Winterslow, any time. Now, then, good luck to you, and G.o.d save the King!"

Mr. Barkworth shoved a folding writing-case into Tom's left hand, gripped his right heartily, and waggled it up and down till he was tired.

"Good-bye, Mr. Burnaby!" said Lilian, "and I do hope you will succeed."

Tom shook hands, lifted his hat, and stepped on board. The crazy engine made a great fl.u.s.ter as it sent the screw round; the launch sheered off, and Tom stood side by side with the padre, watching Mr. Barkworth waving his hat and Lilian her handkerchief until they were out of sight. After seeing that Mbutu was safe in the company of the native stoker, who formed the whole crew of the little vessel, Tom placed a camp-stool under the awning by the side of the missionary's deck-chair near the steering-wheel, and looked about him.

The launch was cutting its way slowly through the brown sluggish waters of Kavirondo Bay. The sh.o.r.e was flat and uninteresting, part bare rock, part rank marsh, spotted here and there with sacred ibises in their beautiful black-and-white plumage. At several points along the bank Tom saw a huge plant like an overgrown cabbage run to stalk, or rather to many stalks, sticking out of a short swollen stem, like the arms of a candelabra. This, the padre told him, was the candelabra euphorbia, a plant of which the natives stood very much in dread, because its juice was highly poisonous, and because it was so top-heavy and so loosely rooted that in a high wind it frequently toppled over, with damaging effect to anything that might be within its shade.

As they emerged from the bay into the open lake, the water changed its brown to a deep and beautiful blue, and the sh.o.r.e became more interesting. The lake here was fringed with a thick growth of rushes--long smooth green stems crowned by a mop-head of countless green filaments becoming ever finer and more silky towards the end. Amid the vegetation appeared the forms of whale-headed storks with yellow eyes, and gold-brown otters with white bellies darted in and out among the rushes. There was a light wind off-sh.o.r.e, and Tom had a distant view of many wild denizens of the lake country, which would otherwise have been alarmed by the throb of the engines. His companion lent him a field-gla.s.s, and for hours he revelled in the panorama of tropical life that pa.s.sed before his eyes. At one point he saw an antelope come down a wooded slope to the edge of the water. What seemed to be a green moss-covered log of wood lay almost hidden from the animal by the bulging bank. The antelope had just put his fore-feet into the water when the log moved, one end of it parted into two yawning jaws, and for the first time in his life Tom saw a crocodile in its native element.

The trembling antelope started back, just escaped the snap of the huge hungry jaws, and bounded back into the forest.

Tom could not resist the temptation to try a shot at the slimy reptile.

He took careful aim and fired. The crocodile slid off the half-submerged sand-bank on which it was basking, and disappeared in the water.

"Did I hit it, sir?" he asked eagerly.

"It is impossible to say. It may merely have been startled by the report, and we could only make sure by waiting to see if its body rises."

"And that, of course, we can't do," said Tom with a sigh.

The launch sped on and on, steaming now her full seven knots. Tom noticed that she was never very far from the land, and knowing, from his look at the map overnight, that Buk.u.mbi was almost in the centre of the southern sh.o.r.e, he wondered why the padre did not steer a more westerly course. He asked the question.

"Well," said the missionary, "it is partly custom and partly superst.i.tion, I suspect. Everyone is shy of sailing directly across from north to south or east to west. Many of our launches are hardly tight craft, as you see, and a storm would be a very serious matter in the open."

"But surely there are no storms on an inland lake?"

"There are indeed. The wind here sometimes lashes the water into waves as high as any you can see on the English Channel. Gales have blown the native dhows out into the open, and they have never returned. The natives, too, will tell you that a huge monster inhabits the waters near one of the many islands that stud the lake; there it lies in wait to suck their craft down. I have never seen it myself," he added with a smile, "but I once heard your Sir Harry Johnston say that he had looked into the matter, and was rather inclined to believe that the monster was a manatee."

Still they sailed on. After sixty miles or so they left British territory and came into German East Africa, and soon the tropical forest which had clothed the highlands sloping back from the sh.o.r.e, gave place to more level gra.s.sland, some of which was evidently under cultivation.

The sh.o.r.e was indented in many narrow creeks, and in one of these Tom saw a singular-looking canoe, at least fifty feet long, manned by a dozen naked Baganda. The keel of this, the padre told him, was a single tree-stem, the interior of which had been chipped out with axes and burnt out with fire. When the keel was finished, holes were bored in it at intervals with a red-hot iron spike; the planks for the sides were similarly pierced; and then wattles made of the rind of the raphia palm were pa.s.sed through the holes, and planks and keel were literally sewn together. All c.h.i.n.ks and holes were then stopped with grease, and the whole canoe, inside and out, was smeared with a coating of vermilion-coloured clay. The prow projected some feet beyond the nose of the boat, and sloped upwards from the water. The top of it, Tom observed, was decorated with a pair of horns, and connected with the beak by a rope from which hung a fringe of gra.s.s and filaments from the banana-tree. When the occupants of the canoe caught sight of the White Father, they struck their paddles into the water, and drove their slender craft rapidly towards the launch. But the padre made signs that he was in a great hurry and could not stop to speak to them, and after a time they desisted and paddled back to the sh.o.r.e.

"Though I believe they could have overtaken us if they chose," said the missionary. "I have known them propel their canoes at six or seven miles an hour."

"Mr. Barkworth would call them fine fellows," remarked Tom with a smile.

"I always had an idea that the natives of these parts were a puny, stunted set of people, but really those fellows in the canoe are splendid specimens."

The sun set, and the moon rose, and still the launch panted along. At last, when it was nearly ten o'clock, and the log showed close upon a hundred miles, the padre ran the boat into a wide creek, where he anch.o.r.ed for the night.

Tom looked weary and heavy-eyed when he greeted the missionary about six o'clock next morning.

"Your wild neighbours are rather too much for me," he said. "I did not sleep a wink till near daylight. Never in my life have I heard such weird noises."