THE MAN WHO DID THE RIGHT THING (continued 4)

Spencer can't have been wholly bad, because though they had many a private tiff and unheard wrangle, this woman stuck by him and made a career for him. Brentham, in writing to his sister, gave too unfair a description of Spencer. He omitted to notice that though his knowledge of law was so imperfect as to throw doubt on the efficacy of the examinations which then admitted to the Bar, he had at any rate acquired some knowledge of shorthand, and certain of the qualities necessary to playing private secretary to an important personage. So that Sir Godfrey preferred greatly the retention of Bazzard as his lieutenant at Unguja, rather than the slightly gloomy and excessively well-informed Brentham.

There came at this time rumour after rumour that the Arabs of the Zangian coast were preparing to rise in force not only against the Germans but against all white men. They were concerting measures in common with the Arabs of Mombasa, of Tanganyika, Nyasa and the Upper Congo to expel all white men from East Africa and found a great Slave-holding empire which might link up with the victoriously anti-European Mahdi of the Sudan. Sir Godfrey Dewburn did not clothe his Memorandum of instructions to Brentham in exactly these comprehensive and grandiloquent terms, derived from a contemporaneous essay of my own, but he said:

"Look here, dear old chap. You know you are a bit of the fifth wheel to the coach here, on this potty little island. You've put me up to all the ropes, I'm well in the saddle. Now suppose you cut along to your own show? The mainland, hey? Go and round up those blasted Germans, don't you know? Of course, steer clear of quarrels—that'd never do. Be coldly polite, but see what they're up to and report to me—fully. Strikes me it's blowing up for a storm...."

So Brentham shipped himself and his indispensable retinue of Goanese cook, Swahili butler, and a nucleus of fifteen always dependable gunmen-porters of the stalwart Unyamwezi breed over to Medinat-al-barkah—the "Town of Blessings," on the Zangian coast: formerly the chief shipping port of slaves and now the head-quarters of the German Chartered Company which had succeeded to the authority of the Sultan of Unguja.

A few months afterwards, when he had organized a Consulate and an Indian clerical staff in an adapted, cleansed, and tidied Arab house, he received an urgent and confidential communication from Sir Godfrey:

"The F.O. is much perturbed by the reports of Arab risings against the German Company. Mvita seems to be quiet under Mackenzie. The various missionary societies are clamouring for information and some indication that H.M.G. realizes the seriousness of the situation. I have been instructed semi-officially by H. and M. that you should at once proceed inland with a sufficiently strong caravan and visit the missionary stations within a radius of—say—three hundred miles of Medina, assisting the white people to repair to safe positions on the coast, especial care being taken to bring away their women and children. You know far better what to do than I, who am a new comer to East Africa. So, carte blanche. Do your best. Good luck and chin-chin.

"Lady Dewburn, who has just come out, is dying to put her feet on a maned lion skin when she gets out of bed. So if you've any luck shooting, 'Then you'll remember me!'

"Yours,

"GODFREY DEWBURN."

In consequence of these instructions you can picture such events as these occurring at the end of September, 1888.

Lucy Baines, attended by Josiah Briggs's wife Halima, was taking the air on the outskirts of Hangodi. She had had a baby in the previous July, and was still weak and anaemic. The confinement had been a difficult one, as it was a little premature, owing to Lucy having been frightened by a hyena. A medical missionary had been in hurried attendance, and kind Mrs. Stott had come fifty miles to act as an amateur midwife. But the child died soon after its birth, and Lucy, for the first fortnight, had been delirious. If her child had lived her whole outlook might have changed and brightened. As it was——

John had rigged up a kind of machila—I can't explain a second time what a machila is—a compromise between a palanquin and a hammock—and this could be taken out on short journeys by two strong porters. With this and her pupil-teacher, Halima, in attendance, Lucy was wont to make little afternoon pilgrimages along the red paths on the outskirts of the Hangodi plateau.

At this and that shady spot she would leave her machila languidly, sit on a camp stool and pick flowers and examine them: or she would practise her Swahili and Kagulu with Halima and question this woman—greatly devoted to her—on native manners and customs, or native legends. The two porters would squat at a respectful distance, or if told they would not be wanted for half an hour, would stroll off to the nearest native village.

On this particular day in September they came running back in great excitement to say a white man's safari was approaching. It could be seen in the plain below ... quite a small army of black men headed by one white man, coming in single file over the burnt grass.

Rumour had flown ahead of it ... as it did in Africa, in pre-telegraph days. The white man was a great English consul coming to make a treaty with Ulunga, or coming to fight the Arabs, or to turn the Wa-dachi out of the country and to place Nguru under the Woman chief of the English. Mbogo the chief had already run up his English flag....

Lucy's heart stood still and she sat on her camp stool too much overcome to remain standing. Could it ... be ... Roger?

Halima fumbled in her basket and produced a restorative. Presently Lucy rose to her feet and said in a decisive tone:

"Take me to meet the white man...."

They met about three miles from the Mission Station. Seeing the machila approaching, heralded by the boastful singing of its carriers, anxious to do their mistress honour, Brentham had got off his riding donkey and handed it to a follower carrying his sporting rifle.. He walked to meet the unknown person swaying in the jaunty advance of the delighted porters. The machila stopped. Lucy emerged from it, then overcome with dizziness sank down by the wayside. Quickly he had raised her, unthinkingly and instinctively their arms were round each other.... "My dearest girl! You are safe then? Your station has not been attacked?"

"My darling Roger! you have come for me ... take, oh, take me away!"

Thus they spoke instinctively in continuation of thoughts long sanctioned by their inner consciousness, but never outwardly expressed. There were no listeners who could understand what the avowals meant. Nevertheless they hastened to resume a correct parlance as between old acquaintances and nothing more.

"I think," said Lucy, "you had better send one or two spare men on ahead with a brief note to my husband saying you will be arriving at our station in about an hour, that you met me on the road and will bring me on with you. This will give our people time to—to—plan where to put you all. There won't be room for everybody inside the stockade. Then when you've sent off the note we can rest for half an hour or so in that piece of shade, where there are the euphorbias and the fig trees, and I shan't feel quite so shaky. I've been rather ill—I'll tell you all about it when you've sent off the note."

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."

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 anæmia 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 dracæna 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.

"Ghastly, isn't it!" he went on. "I've just returned from a reconnaissance in which we rounded up three Masai youths—not warriors but the hulking boys that attend on the spearmen. Two men in my safari understand Masai and they are now trying to make out the story these boys tell. They evidently deny emphatically that the Stotts were killed. They keep pointing to the north-west as the direction in which they have gone, and say every now and then 'Irangi.' My interpreters infer that this place was attacked about a week ago by a party of Ruga-ruga coming from the Nyaturu country and travelling towards the coast. They besieged the station, and killed some of the Mission boys, but the Stotts apparently were not hurt. They defended themselves for some time, till a party of Masai came to their relief, and then the Ruga-ruga and 'black' Arabs were beaten off. Nevertheless the Stotts left the station afterwards and went away to the north-west with the Masai escorting them.... I want to see if I get on their tracks or if I can find any real natives who saw the attack.... You seem to have a head on your shoulders ... and an influence over the natives. I'll leave all but five of the men here under your orders. Already they're at work reconstructing the 'boma.' I propose skirmishing around and finding out also if the Arabs and Ruga-ruga are still in the neighbourhood. I'll be back before dark...."

Ann: "You'd much better give up such a wild-goose chase as looking for the Stotts. Make for Kilimanjaro and the Mvita coast with Lucy. We've got mission stations in Taita and at Jomvu, near Mvita, where you could place her in comparative safety. I'd much rather return to Hangodi instead of floundering about in the wilderness, mad with thirst and unable to wash. I'm only a drag on you with my women porters whom your men can't leave alone—I daren't take my eyes off them. Lucy'll soon be well enough to ride your donkey—which I'm at present using. If the Arabs haven't plundered the Wagogo or if there are Masai bands in the neighbourhood you could easily buy a few donkeys—Masai breed, you know. They're quickly broken in to riding, especially with your Maskat donkey to show 'em how. And then you could travel much quicker. I don't think you'll have trouble with the Arabs farther north. It's a Masai country, and the Masai and the Muhammadans are at daggers drawn...."

Brentham (hesitating): "No. I don't think I ought to let you go ... I ..." (His thoughts were saying: "Let her go. She's a tiresome termagant, she, with her fifteen women porters who'll cause the deuce-and-all of a lot of trouble before we've gone far. It would be lovely to have a long journey back to the coast with Lucy. Of course I'd respect her. I should simply treat her as a sister" ... and his pulses quickened)....

Ann: "Let me go? I'm my own mistress and not going to be ordered about by anybody. If I choose to go back, I'll go, even if I have to walk all the way. But there! I don't want to be tiresome. You go off on your prospecting and leave Lucy in my charge. I'll promise not to do a bolt till you return—and whenever I promise, I keep my promise."

(Lucy came up at this juncture and was told rather impatiently by Ann the dilemma in which the three of them were placed.) Captain Brentham turned away, called up his headman, gave him instructions, and finally went off with five gunmen and the three Masai youths. These were put in a good humour by being crammed with broiled meat and rice, the latter a food they had never tasted before, but accepted without demur at the hands of the godlike white man.

Ann, thus placed in authority, set to work to carry out her plans. She had the interior of the station circle cleaned as much as possible of half-burnt house material, and gathered together what remained in the ruins of books, clothes, trade goods. The looting had evidently been very hurried, and no doubt the Stotts had conveyed some things with them on their retreat. Lucy, sharply ordered by Ann not to over-exert herself, sat in the shade in a deck chair, very apprehensive as to the future and worried that Roger should have gone away.

The news that white people were back at Burungi—as this station was called—penetrated quickly through this seemingly deserted region. So often in Africa there occurs this wireless telegraphy, really due perhaps to the lurking here and there in the brush and herbage of invisible natives, observing what goes on and bounding away noiselessly to carry the news to other prowlers. In the afternoon when Ann within the thorn enclosure had made things a little more tidy and presentable there appeared in the middle distance numbers of Wagogo warriors gazing at the new arrivals with kindly neutrality, occasionally calling out friendly, deprecatory greetings. Encouraged by Ann's answering shouts in Kagulu they approached the "boma," and even ventured within the camp enclosure, squatting then on their heels to exchange information. Their confidence was sealed by little gifts of tobacco. The attack on the Mission Station was described. The white people had been taken by surprise, but had held their own till the Wagogo and Masai came to their assistance. The Ruga-ruga shot fire-arrows in among the thatched roofs and set fire to some of the houses. They even broke in through one part of the "boma," but three of them were killed by the white man's people.

The fight had lasted half-a-day and one day. Then the Wangwana had drawn off—to the south. Two days more and the white people had gone—there were the white man—"Sitoto," they called him—and the white woman chief—she was a great "doctor"—and three white children ... they had all gone off with a party of the Masai—to the north somewhere. The Masai had sold them donkeys to ride. Some Wagogo had gone with them. It was perhaps four days since they went away. No! the Wagogo had not plundered the white man's place. They were frightened to come there because of the white man's "medicine." ...

"Then how did you get that?" said Ann, pointing to a soiled white petticoat which an elderly man wore over one shoulder and across his chest.

"That? That had been given him by the white woman herself for running to summon the Masai." ...

"See here," said Ann, in fragmentary Kagulu. "You've got donkeys—Masai donkeys—among you. The Ruga-ruga have not raided you. You bring me here three good strong donkeys and I will buy them for a good price: white cloth, brass rings, iron wire, red cloth and gunpowder."

They conferred among themselves and thought they might produce three donkeys—for a price.

"Well, then fetch them—at once. Otherwise the big white man, the great chief of all the white men on the coast, the Balozi, will believe you helped to plunder this station and make you give up the property you've stolen." ...

Roger returned late that evening in brilliant moonlight to find that Ann had purchased with his trade goods three good stout grey asses with broad shoulder stripes. One she reserved for herself, the other two she transferred to Brentham. They would serve for him to ride and also provide his Goanese cook with a mount. [This Portuguese-Indian was a very poor marcher and much inclined to fever; yet in some ways the second most important person of the caravan, decent cooking being such an enormous help to good health in Africa.] Lucy, who had grown much stronger for this change and excitement, could ride the Maskat donkey and her hammock men could return to Hangodi with some of Ann's loads.

Ann would further borrow five of Brentham's gun-men to escort her and her fifteen women-porters—her Big-geru—back to Hangodi. She had also engaged at extravagant pay a dozen of the Wagogo, fleet of foot and brave hunters. These, armed with their long-bladed spears, would guide and precede her little party, scaring away the wild beasts by their cries. Lions and rhinoceroses were distinctly a danger to be reckoned with.... By forced marching, especially at night, Ann would be back at Hangodi in two days. It was therefore unwise to miss a single moonlight night as the moon would soon be on the wane. The Ruga-ruga and Wangwana never attacked at night, and if they were anywhere in the neighbourhood—which the Wagogo scouts would soon find out—the party would hide in the daylight hours.

Meantime Brentham and Lucy could remain encamped at Burungi awaiting the return of Ann's escort. If the message was "All's well," they could start off for the coast by the roundabout northern route....

"You seem to be a very capable woman," said Brentham, "as well as being an obstinate one. I agree to your plan, though I have a presentiment I may regret it. If you change your mind and come back I shan't reproach you for being fickle. And besides, you may bring us later news. I must in any case stay here for a few days to prepare for the big march. I must shoot game and have a lot of 'biltong'[#] made for the men...."

[#] Strips of lean meat dried in the sun and thus preserved for a considerable time in dry weather.

"I'm glad you agree," said Ann. "I know I shall be in the right place at Hangodi—for many reasons. As it is, I've already had an idea. The Stotts seem to have been saved by the Masai. The Masai that our Walunga people call 'Wahumba' are on good terms with us. We brought about peace between them and Mbogo. They come to our station to trade and we have cured several of their wounded men from bad lion bites. We will send messengers to the Humba Masai asking for a large war party of spearmen to await down below in the plains any attack by the Arabs. I think the mere knowledge the Masai are there will keep the Arabs from coming near Ulunga."

So the next morning Ann rode off at five o'clock astride her Masai donkey, on which some makeshift arrangement of padded cloths had been tied by way of saddle. Her buxom Big-geru hoisted their light loads and struck up a Moody and Sankey hymn translated by Ann into Kagulu. The grinning Wanyamwezi gunmen brought up the rear, and the wild, unclothed Wagogo with fantastic ostrich feather or zebra-mane head-dresses dashed on ahead, whooping and leaping and shouting their determination to scare away the beasts of the field from the white woman-chief who talked like a man.

CHAPTER XI

THE HAPPY VALLEY

Roger, left alone with Lucy, resolved he would "do the right thing," clenched his teeth so to speak on the vow. He was the more fiercely determined to act honourably because he felt himself to be fighting against her own weakness of fibre, against her overpowering inclination as well as his own. Her attractiveness for him had greatly increased since the renewal of their comradeship. In the early days of the acquaintance, though her prettiness and virginal charm were appealing, she had the naïveté and insipidity of an inexperienced girl which soon weary a man of the world who tires of the relation between master and pupil. Now she was a married woman; tempered, rendered more subtle by suffering and experience of mankind, who was readier to express her feelings through her eyes and her reticence than by direct speech. She talked less unreflectingly, and the things she said were more due to her own observation and reasoning than second-hand opinions picked up from other people.

Ann, in the week in which he had seen the two women together, had been just the right foil to throw up Lucy's charming femininity, her refinement in dress and appearance and in the tones of her voice. Ann by contrast was an impudent self-assertive virago with the worth at best of a good drudge. After a year and a half's absence from Europe he made this rediscovery of Lucy, set against a background of Savage Africa—coarse landscapes, jagged rocks, unwieldy trees, bush conflagrations, naked men, wild beasts just kept at bay. (On moonlight nights they could actually descry the grey-white forms of lions and hyenas padding noiselessly round the precincts of their boma.) These violent incongruities made her seem to him a being of exquisite refinement and yet of physical charm. Returning health, intense happiness, the dawning hope of a bright future were dispelling the anæmia and giving back to her face and neck the tinted white of a healthy skin, warmed in tone by a good circulation. There was a sparkle of animation in her violet eyes and a new lustre in her brown gold hair.

It would be a good thing for both, he felt, if he found the Stotts as soon as possible and induced them to join company in a march to the coast. His career—Yes, he must remember that. His career above all things. He must not be turned aside from his great ambitions by any woman. Yet he had missed fire over the Unguja appointment and wanted consolation elsewhere. It was rather weary always to be at work, in an office, or in the field: never to settle down to a honeymoon and the joys of domesticity. Perhaps he should have taken another line—the Colonial Office and administrative work, not the Foreign Office and adventurous diplomacy in Savage Africa.... He wanted to explore, create, and then administer a great African Empire, tasks infinitely above the mean capacity of a Godfrey Dewburn or a Spencer Bazzard. Why could he not now—straight away—plunge into the vast unknown which lay before him to the north, to the north-west? Where had Stanley disappeared to? What had become of Emin? What was happening in Uganda since the death of Mutesa? What unsolved mysteries lay west of the Victoria Nyanza, north of Tanganyika, south of the Bahr-al-ghazal? Should he take Lucy to his heart, throw conventions and commissions to the winds, and start away with her on a wonderful journey of discovery, leaving the world and the Rev. John Baines to say what they liked, and covering his private treachery by his amazing discoveries?

Nonsense! Why, Queen Victoria would never overlook this act of adultery. He might discover twenty lakes and name them all after princes of her family or annex gold mines and pipes of diamonds and she would refuse the accolade, and Society at her bidding would close its ranks against the dishonoured missionary's wife. Besides, he had barely enough trade goods with which to pay his way back to the coast, especially by a round-about route. The African soon looks coldly on the god-like white man if he has no more beads, cloth, copper wire, knives, and gun-caps with which to pay road dues, "customs" or good-will presents.

And his armed porters? They were only engaged for a six-months' safari. They must be fed and paid or they would desert.... He must put all this nonsense out of his head—take a few pills, a little bromide—tire himself out every day big game shooting or scouting till the men sent with Ann Jamblin returned with their news.

If he took all this exercise, he would not lie awake at night in his hot tent, under his mosquito curtain longing, aching to go to Lucy's quarters and say, "I love you: let us fight against it no longer. We may all be dead a month hence."

To guard against such impulses he had insisted on Halima's sleeping on an Unguja mat in her mistress's tent, and had surrounded the tent with a square of reed fence which gave her a greater degree of privacy than the wretched tent afforded. Within this there was space for a bathroom and a "sitting-room," a shaded retreat to which she could retire for a siesta or a confabulation with Halima who was still giving instruction in Swahili. Outside this "harim"—as his men who constructed it certainly took it to be—there was a "baraza" common to them both: a thatched shelter open all round. Here the camp table was placed for meals.

Roger determined to shut Lucy out of his thoughts as much as possible, to think only for the day, for the dangers by which they were surrounded, the hundred risks which attended their ever getting back to civilization.... As soon as they could reach the coast he would send Lucy to England and return to his Consulate at Medinat-al-barkah.... Of course, should John Baines die of fever—missionaries often did—or—if—he were killed? ... Suppose his station really was attacked...? But then, again, such thoughts as these were of the order of David's when he hankered after Bathsheba....

And then Lucy, again, Lucy might die of fever—she scarcely seemed cut out for an African life, which is why he had begun pitying her.....

"I've had perfectly splendid sport to-day," said Roger, standing before Lucy's "baraza" where the camp table was laid for tea. "I've shot a rhino—they're cutting it up now—two hartebeests, and two impala. That'll give us all the 'biltong' we can carry. I'm filthily dirty, as you can see—ash and charcoal from the burnt bush, and sweat—God! It has been sweltering!—and the run after that—and from that—rhino! No. I'm not wounded—there's no need for emotion—but the rhino as he charged—and I doubled—squirted blood over me from his nostrils—I must look like a fighting chimney sweep—I'll go and have a bath and then you shall give me tea."

"Don't be long," said Lucy. "There's such lots to talk about. Your men have come back from Hangodi with a note to me from John! He says so far 'all's well.' And two Masai, Halima says, are waiting to see you. They keep saying 'Sitoto,' which means, I suppose, some news about the Stotts' whereabouts. How exciting it's all getting. I am enjoying it!"

"Halima" (to her maid): "Waambia watu wa mpishi tunataka chai, marra moja!"

Four days afterwards, everything being ready for the fresh venture into the unknown, loads lightened and tightened, and the biltong sufficiently dry to be tied on top of the loads (imparting a disagreeable smell of a butcher's shop to the caravan as it passed in single file), they set out with Masai guides to find the Stotts. They travelled over the water-parting from the rivers flowing to the Indian Ocean to those that ended in vague marshes and bitter lakes. They climbed great escarpments and descended into broad valleys between high cliffs and found themselves amongst strange peoples, chiefly pastoral, keepers of great herds of sleek, humped cattle, of dwarf African goats and fat-tailed sheep.

The first of these, the Warangi, were fortunately allied in speech to the Wagogo—so could be communicated with. They were a truculent lot, inclined to make trouble with strangers. They seemed on this occasion, however, too much excited over affairs of their own to be much interested in the arrival of white folk, whom they had probably never seen before except in the form of pale-faced Arabs. They replied briefly that a white man and woman and their children had preceded Brentham's party by a few days—when the moon was still at the full. They were accompanied by a band of Masai with whom the Warangi were friends....

"Are there any Arabs here?" asked Brentham through his interpreter. "Waalabu?" No! They came sometimes to buy ivory, but on their last visit they had tried to carry off some Rangi people as slaves, and if they showed their faces again in Burangi, they would be driven away.

"Then what are you all so excited about?"

They replied it was an affair of their clan, of the people who lived in these villages. Their young married men had gone out this dry season to kill elephants as was their custom, but had returned after three months with no luck at all: hardly a tusk worth looking at, very little meat, and two men killed by the elephants. There could be but one explanation for this. Their wives had been unfaithful to them as soon as their backs were turned. It was well known that if a wife and husband were separated and the wife was unfaithful, a misfortune at once fell on the husband. Consequently the custom of their tribe in such cases was to burn the guilty women on large pyres of brushwood. These pyres were now finished—the white man could see them there along the bank of the river.... Presently the adulterous ladies whose husbands had returned from the luckless elephant-shoot would be led out, tied to the brushwood bundles, and set on fire. He might stay and witness the imposing spectacle if he chose. They learnt that he too was accompanied by a wife—a white woman. It might be a moral lesson to her—if white women were ever unfaithful....

Roger begged the Warangi to spare the women this time. By and bye he would come back to them and explain the whole mystery of luck in sport and the ensuring of an accurate aim, perhaps give them a "medicine," to produce the result they wanted. But meantime he assured them that if they burnt so much as one woman's little finger a terrible curse would fall on the land.

Lucy asked what all this talk was about, and he replied: "Oh, nothing very important—big game shooting." She was preoccupied with pleasanter subjects, the greater coolness of the air now that they had ascended to a higher level, the new green grass of the coming spring, and her own greatly improved health....

"If all goes well," said Roger, "we ought to reach the place where the Stotts are in two long days' march."

"Shall we? I'm rather sorry, as though something was going to break our delicious dream. I should like to go on and on like this for a year...."

"And what about my official duties? I, too, am enjoying this to the full, but I am worried about whether I have done the right thing.... With a desire to please every one all round I sometimes fancy I have embarked on a perilous adventure.... However we must hope for the best. Of course all this is absolutely new ground. I ought to be earning a Geographical medal; instead of which I shall only get an official rebuke.... Did you notice that we seem to have entered a new watershed?"

Lucy: "Although I taught Geography at school, I never really understood what a 'watershed' was. What is it?"

Roger: "I suppose it means the area in which all the waters flow to the same receptacle—a sea, a lake, a marsh. We've just left a river which was flowing steadily to the south, to some unknown end. We rode up a small rise, and now, see, the gathering streams are all flowing northwards. The Masai say these brooks unite farther on to form a river which ends in a lake. Think of that, Lucy! We shall discover a new lake! It ought to be called 'Lake Lucy.'..."

Lucy (blushing): "Oh no, indeed, I should feel quite uncomfortable if I were made so prominent.... But the country seems to get lovelier and lovelier...."

The new streams to which Roger referred irrigated a broad and even expanse of fertile plain sloping gently to the north, and seeming to terminate at the base of gigantic cliffs or lofty mountains which surrounded this valley on three sides. They could only make out dimly the forms of the highest mountains because of the dry-season haze, but they seemed like the craters of volcanoes. Riding to the top of an isolated hillock Roger obtained confirmation of the guides' story. The valley ended in a lake of respectable size.

The grassy flats between the converging rivulets swarmed with big game which showed comparatively little fear of man and might be seen grazing with herds of the natives' cattle. A succession of exclamations, half wonderment, half fear, came from Lucy.

"Oh! ... I ... say! ... I thought those were great tree trunks till they moved, but ... they're..."

"They're giraffes, by Jove! I wonder whether I ought to bring one down? Better not ... might delay us ... and I don't know how the natives 'ud take it...."

A herd of six or seven stately giraffes suspended their browsing on the upper branches of an acacia tree, and gazed at them with their liquid eyes, flicking their satiny bodies with tails that terminated in large black tassels.

"O-oh!'" came from Lucy, as she reined in her donkey. "Look at those things over there! Like houses or great rocks, but they're moving too!"

She pointed with her riding whip to some grey bulks in the middle distance which, as they swished through the herbage, showed here and there a gleam of polished tusks.

"Shoot! Master, shoot!" exclaimed the Wanyamwezi.... "Elephants, Master!" But Roger called for silence and held his hand. Supposing the elephants charged down on Lucy? And then he did not know how the sounds of guns would be received in this new country, what the unknown natives might think, and lastly, perhaps there was beginning to dawn on him an appreciation of what this spectacle meant: a piece of absolutely unspoiled Africa, not yet ravaged by the white man or the native hunter, armed with the white man's weapons. His caravan had plenty of dried meat. They should not break the charm of the Happy Valley—the phrase came suddenly into his mind, some dim remembrance of Dr. Samuel Johnson's ponderous romance.

As they advanced northwards the scenes grew more idyllic. Herds of gnus, hartebeests, elands, and zebras, intermingled with reed buck and impala, alternately stared in immobility, then dashed off in clouds of yellow dust, and once more stood at gaze. Gazelles with glossy black, annulated horns and bodies brilliant in colour—golden-red, black-banded, and snowy-white below—cropped the turf a few yards from the faintly marked track which the caravan was following; and though the bucks lifted their heads to observe this advancing file of human beings they scarcely moved away more than a few yards.

The Valley was not entirely given up to wild life, though it seemed likely that it was only used by man as a pasture ground, and that he preferred the higher country, the hillocks on either side of the plain, for his habitations, out of the way of floods and swamps. But large herds of cattle browsed among antelopes and zebra and were watched over by herdsmen who displayed singularly little curiosity over this first invasion of the Happy Valley by the white man. The Stotts who had preceded Roger and Lucy seemed to have satisfied their curiosity, once and for all. These cattle-tenders were different in physical type to the ordinary Bantu Negro. They were tall; gracefully, slenderly built; and reminded Brentham of Somalis, though their head-hair was close-cropped. Such women as were met showed no sign of fear. They were clad in ample garments of dressed leather. But the men had all the gallant nakedness of the Masai—a skin cape over the shoulders, otherwise only ivory arm-rings and metal-chain necklaces.

The Masai guides occasionally plucked handfuls of grass and exhibited them to the groups of herdsmen as a testimony to the peaceful intentions of the white man's caravan. This voucher was further confirmed by the returning band of Masai who had escorted the Stotts to this Arcadia and were now returning to northern Nguru. They exchanged musical salutations with Roger's guides and told them the "Sitoto" were camped in a village one day's further journey to the north, near the shores of the lake.

"That's all right," said Roger, his mind greatly relieved. "Then let's give our safari a half-holiday and take things easy. We'll pitch our camp on that knoll. How delightful is this short green turf after the miles and miles of burnt grass we've passed through. The spring has begun here a month earlier than in the lower-lying country. I expect the high mountains to the north have attracted the rains, though it's only October. Have you noticed, also, since we entered this valley we've had no mosquitoes? I wonder why? Something p'raps they don't like in the water, or not enough long grass?..."

As soon as the camp was finished, the pastoral people brought them rich, sweet milk for sale, in tightly-woven grass receptacles, in calabashes, or clay pots. Sometimes this milk had a smoky taste from the rough methods by which the milk pots were cleansed. But it was as sweet as a nut and seemed to Lucy, who had long been deprived of milk, except doled out in small quantities for tea, incomparably delicious as a thirst-quencher. And these Egyptian-like people—so often showing a Pharaonic profile and speaking a language which Roger afterwards declared not very far removed from Gala—also traded in honey, honey flavoured with the scent of the acacia blossoms, appearing now as golden fluff on the awakening trees.

The next day, the seventh since they left Burungi, Brentham's caravan came into full view of the lake, its shores lined with dense ranks of pinkish-white flamingoes. To the south-east was a native village of long, continuous "tembe" houses, arranged more or less in parallelograms, or hollow squares, enclosing for each family or group a turfy space where the cattle passed the night and family life was carried on in the open air and in security.

One of these enclosures had evidently been given over to the Stotts for a temporary home. And from out of it Mr. and Mrs. Stott might be descried, hurrying to meet the caravan. Before they could arrive, Roger halted his men and surveyed the whole scene before him from a grassy mound where he thought to pitch his camp. Projecting mountain buttresses shut in the valley and the lake, west, north and east. West and north these mountains almost overhung the flat lake shores in an abrupt escarpment, blue, without details, in the afternoon shadow. To the east of the lake, though there were great heights and in the north-east a hint of giant summits capped with snow, the rise was not so abrupt, more broken, and the rocks more arid, but vivid and variegated in colour—-red, yellow, greenish grey, purple black and creamy white. The mountains on the west were diversified with combes and glens, were carved, moulded, seamed with watercourses; embroidered and mantled with dark green forests. Where the lake was deep its waters were a pure cobalt, but its shallows were whitish-green with salt or soda, and the level shores from which the waters had retreated were greyish white, probably with the guano of the countless flamingoes, who had their nesting-stools some distance back from the water's edge. Herds of cattle browsed peacefully on the green water-meadows of the river-delta; nearer at hand flocks of black and white sheep mingled with half-shy gazelles of golden brown. Great Secretary birds—grey, black, and white—stalked through the herbage looking for snakes and lizards, knowing no fear of man in their honourable calling. Blue whorls of smoke arose from the fishermen's fires on the lake shore, where fish was being smoked on wooden frames. All this was irradiated by the yellow light of the westering sun. Before, the Stotts could reach them and break their silence of contentment, Roger turned to Lucy and said: "This is the Happy Valley!"

The Stotts were of course full of questions and wonderment. Mr. Stott was a middle-aged man of strong build, honest hazel eyes, clipped beard, tanned face and generally pleasing appearance. He had never before met either Lucy or Brentham, so Mrs. Stott had to make the introductions.

After these surprised and joyous greetings, an adjournment took place to the Stotts' quarters. Although they had only been about a week established here, in a portion of the village of Mwada lent them by the native chief, the practical and never defeated Stotts—-the born colonists, the realized Swiss Family Robinson—had already made themselves a new home in the wilderness. They had swept out and cleaned the "tembes," the continuous huts of wattle and daub, divided into many compartments, which enclosed the turfy square; and in the centre of their "compound" had erected a circular building of stout palm poles and grass that covered a swept space of ground. In the middle of this they had fashioned a table of reed-bundles fastened to upright posts and had manufactured rough forms and stools of hyphaene palm trunks. This was their "baraza" or reception-room, their eating-house, and shaded playground for their hardy children. Within the enclosed ground they kept their milch goats, sheep, and riding donkeys. Of these they had quite a troop, purchased from the Masai. These asses had proved most useful as beasts of burden for the transport of their loads, so that they almost managed without human porterage. Mr. Stott had constructed very practical pack saddles.

"Come along to our baraza," said genial Mrs. Stott. "Let us try and make you up some kind of a meal before we begin talking."

Roger gave a few directions about his own camping, a quarter of a mile distant, and then joined Lucy and the Stotts, who were walking to "our new mission station," as Mrs. Stott called it.

"You know we are never down-hearted; we know God orders everything for the best! I am sure He thought we were settling down too comfortably among the Wagogo, and so gave us a hint to press farther into the interior. Of course, when things quiet down: for either the Germans or the English must conquer East Africa: it would be sickening to leave the Arabs and Ruga-ruga in control—we shall build up again our Burungi station and put capable people in charge of it, people who'll get on well with the Wagogo.... They want a bit of managing. You see how well it would suit as a halt on the way to this wonderful country—What do you call it? 'The Happy Valley'? Yes, that shall be its name. How the Lord's ways are past finding out! I felt so sick at heart when we were leaving Burungi.... I'll tell you how it all happened. Our Masai friends had beaten off the Ruga-ruga, but the Wagogo thought they intended to return, probably with real Arabs in command. My husband is obliged to shoot game; otherwise we couldn't live, much less feed our people. They raided us chiefly for arms and ammunition.... We beat them off, but the Wagogo thought they would be sure to return—much stronger next time. So after thinking it over and putting our case before God in prayer we decided that night after the attack ceased, to spend the hours of darkness packing. The next morning we bought ten more donkeys from the Masai, besides the ten we had already, loaded them up and then said to our Masai friends—my husband speaks Masai pretty well: 'Now, can you guide us to some country where we can be safe from the Lajomba—their name for the Arabs—for a time?' And they led us here ... let us say, rather, they were God's agents in leading us here. Isn't this a wonderful country? We have never seen the like. Somehow we feel so safe here. You can't think of any enemy coming over those high mountains—one of them has snow on the summit—or over the cliffs. They can only come up the river valley. And to do that they must fight their way through the Rangi and Fiome peoples. The Rangi people speak a language like Chi-gogo, and so—oddly enough—do the fisher folk round this extraordinary lake. But the others don't look like ordinary Negroes. They are more like Somalis. And I can't make anything out of their language. But although they're different to the Masai they seem to have some kind of alliance with them, and they received us here as friends, because the Masai brought us. What a field for the Lord's work! And to think I almost doubted God when He let the Ruga-ruga attack Burungi!...

"But here we are, at our temporary home, and I must go to the cook-house and see about your meal. You won't mind native stuff, will you? You see we've lost most of our tinned provisions, and indeed we had been living on the country long before the Ruga-ruga attacked us. Like all the other missionaries of late we've had very few caravans from the coast."

Mr. Stott led the way to the "baraza" with its rough table of reed-bundles on a framework of sticks and its palm trunks to sit on.

The Stott children were playing on the dusty turf of the cleared ground in front of the baraza.

"I'm afraid you'll think our little 'uns rather uncared for," said Mr. Stott apologetically; "but my poor wife's had too much to do in our hurried flight and after we got here to spend much time on their clothing or even getting them clean!" The eldest of the three was a pretty boy with light flaxen hair and blue eyes, very tanned of skin, very grubby of face and hands. He wore a tattered smock and short breeches, vestiges of a "sailor suit." On his feet were cleverly made native sandals, as on those of his younger brother and little sister, whose legs and feet were otherwise naked, and the two smaller children had little on but a yard or two of calico wound round the waist. Lucy recognized in the youngest the solemn baby she had seen at Unguja playing with the large cockroaches; and said so.

"Yes," replied Mr. Stott. "Afraid of nothing, poor little mite. When the Ruga-ruga came I hurriedly built up a sort of zariba of boxes and stones, and put a tarpaulin over it and told the little 'uns to keep quiet; and there they were, all through the fighting. Mother and I would go and give 'em food every now and again, and Edgar here"—pointing to the boy—"'ud say, 'How's the fight going, Daddy?' And Edgar's bin a rare good boy since we came here, helping to tie these bundles of reeds and making himself useful. Our eldest's at home in Ireland with her grandmother—for her education. The next one we buried years ago in the Nguru country, and the very youngest—bless her—died of infantile diarrhoea last March at Burungi. That accounts for the six of 'em; and I'll lay there aren't many British children have had such an adventurous bringing-up, 'cept the young Livingstones and Moffats."

Mrs. Stott was now spreading a wrinkled, grey-white cloth over the reed table-top. And the children were up on their feet helping her and a native servant bring the meal from the cook-house to the baraza.

"We're giving you just the native ugali—porridge, you know," said Mrs. Stott, "but there's a lovely pot of fresh milk from the natives' cattle. Here's some honey in a calabash. Here are the rest of the scones we had for breakfast. I've made you some tea—rather weak, but it is so precious. And whilst you're tackling that I'm going to fry some fish we got from the lake this morning—bony, but very sweet."

During their meal Roger and Lucy tried to give in instalments a description of the extraordinary circumstances which had brought them here in company. Mrs. Stott, who had fetched her sewing so that she might not be wasting time (Mr. Stott had excused himself, having urgent work to do till the evening), looked a little puzzled and not quite acquiescent over Brentham's explanations.

"Here, children! You go now and help Brahimu and Kagavezi. Don't get into mischief. Keep out of the sun, don't pick up scorpions, and don't go outside the boma.... I'm an outspoken woman, you know, Lucy. I can't help saying I think you ought to have stuck by your husband."

"But I was so ill, Mrs. Stott, and John insisted on my going. Didn't he ... Captain Brentham?"

"He did really, Mrs. Stott. I had instructions to advise all the missionaries to leave their stations and return to the coast—indeed, I come here to you with that message, but I suppose you won't obey it?"

"Indeed I won't, Captain Brentham, though I thank you for your efforts to find us and help us. I do indeed. But wherever my husband is, there will I be too, unless he absolutely ordered me to go away.... And I saw it was the will of God that I should go."

"Well: that was what John did to me—absolutely ordered me to go," said Lucy, beginning to cry. "He ordered Ann to go with me. It isn't my fault—our fault—that Ann has gone back, in spite of John's positive commands. Ann never obeys any one. Oh dear, oh dear! what should I do ... I feel if I go back to that place I shall simply die ... and yet I shall lose your good opinion ... if I go to the coast with Captain Brentham...."

"Oh, I don't say that. I'm not one for passing judgments on my fellow creatures. It's between them and God. But look here, Captain Brentham: I don't want to keep you idle. I'll be bound there's a hundred things you want to see to in your camp. I'll keep Lucy with me. She and I are old friends, as you know. If you'd send over her loads and her native woman—let's see, what was her name? I remember how she nursed you when your poor baby came—and went—Halima? Yes. Well, send over everything that belongs to Lucy and her tent shall be pitched inside our boma whilst she stays here. She and I will talk things over a bit and then, maybe, we'll call you into consultation. I'm sure you want to do what's best for us all. What a strange place to meet in! The last time we spoke together was in your grand Arab house at Unguja and I was more than a bit afraid of you."

Mrs. Stott rose up from her sewing, walked with Brentham to the exit from the compound, and gazed across the outer greensward to the very blue lake, with its whitish rim of scum or salt. In the distance the blush-tint flamingoes flew with wings of black and scarlet in V formations, against an azure background of colossal mountains rising tier above tier; or, their glistening plumage showed up more effectively against the violet shadows of the western cliffs and wooded gorges bordering the lake, and still more strikingly when contrasted with the cobalt surface of the lake itself. Other flamingoes waded into the lake, filtering through their laminated beaks the minute organisms evidently abundant in its water. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of these birds stood in serried ranks along the curving, diverging shores. The rear ranks were composed of immature birds of dirty-white plumage streaked with brown; but these were masked by the front rows of adults, affectedly conscious of their beauty of plumage and outline. They exhibited a hundred mannerisms in their poses: lowered their kinky necks to dabble in the ooze, or raised them perpendicularly and "honked" to let the humans know they were on their guard (though never a man in these parts thought of harming them). Or they cleaned their backs with rosy coils of neck, stood on one vermilion leg and bent the other limb beneath the belly feathers. Or they fenced at each other with decurved bills of purple and red in make-believe petulance, and because life-conditions were so perfect that they had nothing whatever to grumble at.... Some Wambugwe canoes were approaching the lake shore with fish to sell to the white men. A considerable section of the flamingoes rose into the sky with a display of roseate tints against the blue ... then landed and folded their wings in assurance of safety.

"Yes," continued Mrs. Stott, "I little thought we should meet under circumstances like these. Aren't those flamingoes wonderful? Like a revelation of God—almost. I shall stay here if only to look after them. They shall be the roses in my garden. I shan't want any others. You see they're not afraid of man and they don't get in man's way. They aren't good to eat—much too fishy. And, as far as I can see, they don't eat fish; only mud, seemingly—shrimps, p'raps...."

"Well, Consul: come again at supper-time; and if I'm too stingy over my precious tea, at any rate I'll give you hot milk and pancakes and honey."

Left with Lucy, Mrs. Stott first took her to the washing hut and provided the means for a good bath and next lent her some garment of the dressing-gown order with which to clothe herself till her luggage and her attendant arrived.

"I'll tell you what I am going to advise Captain Brentham to do, Lucy," said Mrs. Stott. "Come what may, you'll be none the worse for a good rest here. This place is evidently far healthier than the lower country. The Consul shall bargain with your Masai guides to go as fast as they can back to Ulunga and find out what has happened at Hangodi. If things are still quiet there, the probability is they are going to remain quiet. In that case—if your husband does not absolutely forbid it, Captain Brentham ought to take you back to Hangodi and leave you there. He can then find his own way somehow to the place he lives at—Medina. If the messengers come back with bad news about the Arabs, or if John Baines positively vetoes your returning, then all you can do is to put yourself under the Consul's care and travel with him to Mvita ... unless you like to stop with me and live on country produce. I think we can—whilst you're waiting here—get in touch with the Masai beyond the mountains and by giving them a present induce them to guide you to the Kilimanjaro country, to one of the mission stations there—Evangelical or Methodist, don't matter which. After that all would be plain sailing, for I don't believe the Arabs of the British sphere are going to rise."

When in the evening of that day, by the light of a camp fire—they had practically no artificial light—Mrs. Stott put this plan before Roger, he promptly agreed. It would show he had done the right thing. It would go far to save Lucy's good name, especially among Mission folk. And it would give him nearly a month to stay and explore the Happy Valley. He had spent much of the day with James Stott helping him in his work on the embryo station, and Stott had told him of wonderful things he had seen or had gleaned from native information. There was the new lake to survey roughly; there was a paradise of big game to shoot in. Here Mrs. Stott intervened: "I hope you and my husband will go slow as regards shooting. I know we must have the meat and we're so nearly bankrupt at the coast that a few tusks of ivory would come in handy. But somehow I should like to think of this Happy Valley as a sort of preserved zoological gardens where all these innocent creatures of God's handiwork——"

"I shouldn't call a rhinoceros innocent, Mrs. Stott," said Roger, smoking his pipe with such contentment as he had not known for months—"I have rather a tender conscience about antelopes and zebras, but rhinos attack you absolutely unprovoked...."

Mrs. Stott: "Only because men began humbugging them first of all, long ago, I expect. However, if ever I lived to see our mission stations self-supporting and growing all the food they needed, I'd never let James fire another shot at the game."

The next morning the two Masai guides, well rewarded, started off with a package. It contained letters home from the Stotts, telling of their wonderful deliverance; a brief despatch from Captain Brentnam to H.M. Agent at Unguja, and letters to John Baines and Ann Jamblin. John was asked how things were going, and whether on second thoughts he would prefer Lucy to return to Hangodi, and if he could take the next opportunity of having the accompanying letters sent to the coast; and Ann was given—curtly—information as to Lucy's reaching the temporary station of the Stotts. However expansive the Stotts might be, within the compass of one sheet of paper, they said very little about the situation of the Happy Valley; and Brentham was still more reticent. Both no doubt for the same reason, that the Happy Valley was too good a proposition to be given away lightly to a greedy world. Mrs. Stott still hoped, despite concluded boundary conventions, it might be brought within the British sphere; Brentham did not want any other fellow to have a go at its big game or an examination of its alluring secrets till he had had a chance to return.

Whilst these letters were being carried to their destination by two lithe, naked men of red-brown skin, with hair done up in periwigs of twine soaped with mutton fat and the same red-ochre as coloured their sleek bodies, men who carried knobkerries in their waistcords and long-bladed spears in the right hand, great oval shields on the left arm, and who ran on sandalled feet a steady six miles an hour when they were on the road: Lucy and Roger disposed themselves to await patiently the news which—they felt—was to determine their fate.

Twenty days went by in the Happy Valley in blissful sameness. Lucy had her very limited wardrobe washed in the lake waters which had some oddly cleansing, blanching effect—something chemical which both Roger and Mr. Stott would discuss in muttered phrases. Lucy and Mrs. Stott together, with many a laugh at blunder or foiled hopes of success, at length succeeded in ironing the skirts and bodices and petticoats and linen with a parody of a flat-iron, made for them by a naked Elkonono blacksmith in a native forge.

Brentham and his Wanyamwezi porters helped Mr. Stott complete his new station. Or they organized great shooting parties which enriched Mr. Stott with ivory that he might some day sell, as against trade goods and tea; or they accumulated biltong for Roger's expedition, besides finding meat for the day-by-day food of these hungry Wanyamwezi. To meet Mrs. Stott's scruples and objections they had themselves paddled in Wambugwe canoes farther up the lake and shot elephants, zebras, buffaloes, antelopes, on the flats twenty miles to the north of the Stotts' station. Or they rode donkeys and travelled twenty miles southwards, back along the road they had come (and got faint, far-off rumours of men fighting, leagues and leagues away, which made them anxious).

Or they laid out plantations in the rich alluvial soil behind the station and fenced them in. There Mr. Stott could plant his poor remnant of English vegetable seeds, or with greater hope the maize, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, ground-nuts, beans, and manioc of the agricultural and fishing Bantu population.

Then, on the twenty-first day of this busy three weeks, the Masai messengers once more squatted before the Stotts' baraza. Silently one of them tendered to Mrs. Stott a little package of dried banana leaves, tied with some native fibre. Inside a fold of old newspaper and a makeshift envelope made out of a copy-book cover, on one half-sheet of dirty copy-book paper, Ann sent Lucy this message:

Mbogo's Village,

NOVEMBER SOMETHING OR OTHER, 1888.

DEAR LUCY,—

Your messengers arrived yesterday, but I had to keep them waiting for an answer and now they are impatient to go. The station has been attacked—I think it began at the end of October, but I am muddled about dates. John and Mr. Bayley were killed on the second day. Anderson and I are only wounded; we are recovering, though my headaches are awful. Josiah is dead, tell Halima. Help has come at last. But don't come back this way. The Ruga-ruga are all over Ugogo and there is fierce fighting in Nguru. The Masai fought splendidly on our side. Go on to the coast quick as you can, northern route. Can't write more now, but will send through more news to Unguja if I get the chance. Good-bye. John talked of nothing but you when he was dying. It's about broken my heart.

ANN JAMBLIN.

Lucy and Mrs. Stott looked at one another in horror and consternation as this note—written by a pencil that had been frequently moistened—fluttered to the ground from Lucy's nerveless fingers. She felt it was the only tribute to her husband's memory, to her real horror and remorse to assume a faintness she did not feel while Mrs. Stott led her dry-eyed to her tent and couch.

CHAPTER XII

THE ATTACK ON THE STATION

From Mrs. Anderson, E.A.M., to Mr. Callaway, Agent of East African Mission, Unguja.

Mbogo's Village,

Ulunga, Nguru, Novr. 30, 1888.

DEAR MR. CALLAWAY,—

You may have heard some rumour of what has happened to us here. You will find much of it described in the letter I have written to Mr. John Baines's mother. You can read this letter. Read it and then take notes. You have several clerks and none of them with a broken head like mine, I'll be bound, and plenty of good pens, ink and stationery. All I've got to write on is some old ruled exercise books and no envelopes. Well, make up some sort of a letter out of what I've written to Mrs. Baines senior, and then send it to the headquarters of the Mission in London; and post the letter to her, Mrs. Baines, Tilehurst, Reading. Tell them I'm recovering and I'm going to stay here till I am relieved and even perhaps afterwards, supposing I and my husband get quite well. You may be surprised at my change of surname, having known me as Miss Jamblin. Just before the attack on our station (Hangodi) occurred I went through a religious form of marriage with Mr. Ebenezer Anderson. Mrs. John Baines had gone away—her husband sent her off to the coast in the charge of Consul Brentham—and I did not think it right to stay at the Mission with three men and me unmarried; so I accepted Mr. Anderson's proposal. Mr. Baines married us, but as I supposed it wouldn't be legal without we were married again before the Consul at Unguja, we haven't lived together as man and wife, and won't till everything can be made right and proper. I only mention this in case either of us died.

You can also tell the big man at Unguja—Sir Godfrey Something—what has happened in case he cares to know. I don't suppose he does care. Those big pots always sneer at Nonconformist Missionaries. But I want him to know this. We should have all been killed and perhaps tortured and our station might have been utterly destroyed and our people carried off into slavery if it hadn't been first for the Masai, and most of all for an old Arab, Ali bin Ferhan—I think he spells his name. He's written it in Arabic on the piece of paper I enclose. He lives at Momoro, near the Lingani River. Well, for reasons too long to give he no sooner heard we were going to be attacked by the Ruga-ruga and the black Arabs (they were led by that limb of the Devil, Ayub bin Majidi, whom they nickname Mnazi-moja) than he came to our assistance. Mbogo and his people deserve a gold medal—not that any one will give it—they're only "Wa-shenzi" and we're only Nonconformists; they fought splendidly; but they were just giving way when this old Arab—just like a picture of Abraham he is—came up with a lot of his people armed with guns and carrying flags. And he called off the fighting. After that the Ruga-ruga and their leaders simply disappeared with all the plunder they could carry and we have been at peace ever since, with Ali bin Ferhani camped here and keeping guard over Ulunga. Ali doesn't like the Germans. He always wanted his beloved "Ekkels"—I suppose he means Sir James Eccles—to take the country for the English Queen. But he thinks bad will come if any white people are killed. He is so afraid the Germans will think he joined with the other Arabs that I now tell you all this, though every day I have a splitting headache. I really began this letter a week ago. I write a little every day, and now I think Ali will be able to get it sent through to the coast, to Mvita, perhaps.

The other letter—an exercise book tied up—is for Mrs. John Baines. I don't think any one ought to see it but herself. So please put it into an envelope and address it to her "To await arrival at Unguja." She started off for the Mvita coast with Captain Brentham a month ago. What's happened to her I don't know. I sent messengers to tell her her husband was dead.

I saw Mrs. Stott here last July when Mrs. John Baines had her premature confinement. Since then I only know that their station at Burungi was destroyed, but they got away safely somewhere else, where the Consul and Mrs. Baines afterwards found them.

Yours in the love of Jesus,

ANN ANDERSON.

P.S. I ought perhaps to be more business-like, in spite of feeling so ill, in case there is any trouble about wills and say that their names were Thomas Aldrich Bayley and John Baines and that they died as near as I can reckon on October 29th, 1888. I haven't found any wills, but I am trying to get their effects together, though of course there is great confusion after the looting. I've also written a note for old Mrs. Bayley.

From Mrs. Anderson, E.A.M., to Mrs. John Baines, c/o Mr. Callaway, Agent, East African Mission, Unguja.

Mbogo's Village,

Ulunga, November, 1888.

DEAR LUCY,—

I am beginning to write this as near as I can guess November 15, but I've got out in my dates and no wonder. I've also got a broken head—I expect a touch of concussion besides a scalp wound—and it is simple agony to write for long. My eyes hurt so. I must however try to tell you—and John's mother—what has happened, so I shall write a little every day if I am fit to and send these letters to the coast by the first chance. Ali bin Ferhani thinks he can manage a messenger later on who would cross into the British "sphere." I expect you got my first message sent by the Masai? In case you didn't or in case something happens to me and I can't finish a long letter, I'll tell you the plain facts first: John's dead, Bayley's dead, Josiah's dead. Anderson and I are wounded. I'm nearly well. The station is only partially destroyed. Now you know the worst.

When I returned here from Burungi it was about the tenth of October, so far as we could keep count. John was very angry with me at first, for leaving you and for coming to live with three men and I a single woman. I well-nigh lost patience with him. But I said, Well if that's all I'll marry one of you, I'll marry Ebenezer if he'll have me. Ebenezer Anderson didn't look overjoyed, but John said: That's all right; you came out to marry him, so the Mission expected, and you're only now fulfilling the contract. All right, I said, you're a minister of the Gospel, you could marry us at home, so you can do it here, only it won't be legal till we're re-married at the Consulate. But it'll be a marriage in God's eyes, which is the great thing. I felt reckless about it somehow. Of course I'm not going to live with Eb until all this trouble's over and everything is legal. Well, after that was done with, the country round seemed to be getting jumpy and Mbogo sent to say the Ruga-ruga under that Devil, Ayub, were coming to attack us, coming with lots of men and guns. So we sent out word to the Masai, and they turned up well. About three hundred spears. But after a bit they got tired of waiting, so went off somewhere else to do some raiding on their own account.

Towards the end of October—perhaps it was the 28th—no sooner was our first bell rung for dressing—half-past five—than we heard the most unearthly yelling and a tremendous firing of guns. I just got my clothes and boots on anyhow and the men turned out in shirts and trousers and with their boots unlaced. The bullets were flying like hail above the stockade, first of all too high. We dared not go to peep through for fear of being shot. Well, John didn't lose his head one bit. He gave out the Sniders to all our Walunga who could use them, and he and Bayley and Anderson took up the posts they had settled beforehand.

Then the Ruga-ruga made a rush almost up to the ditch which they seemed not to expect, and John and the men let them have it. Five or six were killed. After that Mbogo's Walunga came up and took them on the flank with guns and spears, and they didn't like it at all and withdrew for a spell. But I can't tell you everything—Perhaps some day I will if you ever care to hear it—I've got to write to John's mother as well as you.

The fighting in the afternoon was chiefly between the Ruga-ruga and Mbogo's villages. I suppose they thought they'd better finish them off before they came again to us. They drove Mbogo's people out of all their villages except the big one near us, where Mbogo lives. This was higher up, and Mbogo and John had worked at its fortification on Captain Brentham's plan—it turned out to be much more easily defended than our place. Fortunately also the Ruga-ruga and the Arabs don't like fighting at night—Oh my headache, I must leave off for a bit....

Well, during that night we worked like Trojans—Who were the Trojans and why did they work hard? You ought to know with your superior education. We dug out a square pit in the middle of the station and lined it with dry grass. In it we arranged chairs and mattresses so that we could rest and sleep here out of reach of the bullets. We also turned the Chapel into a living-house and store, because its brick walls and iron roof made it secure against fire and fairly safe from bullets.

On the second day the Ruga-ruga, led on by Ayub, attacked us on the west side, where our stockade was weakest and where we were overlooked a little by that mound we used to call the Snakes's Hill. Brother Bayley was standing talking to me about some dressings he wanted for Josiah Briggs who had been shot in the foot, when suddenly he uttered a shriek, whirled round and fell at my feet. He died a few minutes afterwards. John was so infuriated at his death that in spite of my shouts to be careful, he climbed up to a look-out post and fired his double-barrelled sporting rifle at a group of Ruga-ruga on Snakes's Hill. Whilst he was stooping to reload a poisoned arrow struck him on the chest and penetrated his lung. A good many of the Ruga-ruga were Manyema savages, slaves of the Arabs, and they fought with bows and poisoned arrows. John scrambled down somehow on to the ground. Ebenezer Anderson helped me to carry him into the pit shelter and there we undressed him. He was streaming with blood and coughing up blood and fast losing consciousness. Somehow or other—oh, what a time it was!—we got the arrow-head out of the wound. I don't know even now how, for we were both of us bunglers and it had got partly wedged in the ribs. And we had to cut the poor dear about. Fortunately we had Bayley's instruments down with us in this pit. But I can't go into all these details. Shall I ever get this letter finished?

Whilst we were attending to John we heard a tremendous shouting. It was the Humba war song—the Masai, you know. They had come at last to our assistance and taken the Ruga-ruga rather by surprise. But just before they made their rush up the hill, the Ruga-ruga had contrived to shoot arrows with flaming cotton soaked in oil on to our thatched roofs. Fire was spreading from building to building except the Chapel and the store. My Big-geru had lost their heads. Up to that time they had been so good. Our Walunga were trying to open the doors of the stockade and dash out into the open country. Then the Ruga-ruga would have broken in and all would have been up with us. Fortunately the charge of the Masai came at that very moment, when I was beginning to doubt if God had not forgotten us. They killed lots of the Ruga-ruga and would hack off their heads and throw them back into our stockade.

Then the Ruga-ruga seemed to get reinforcements from the Ugogo direction—quite a large body of men, they say, led by two Arabs—the two Arabs whom John had got expelled a year ago by Mbogo for trading in slaves. They had got a small cannon and its noise and the landing of a stone cannon ball in the middle of a party of Masai gave them a fright, so that all of the Masai drew off from near our station and ran round to the high ground behind Mbogo's town. Once more it seemed as though nothing could save us. The Ruga-ruga fired stone balls at our stockade and seemed making up their minds to a rush.

Ebenezer was just splendid at this time. I'm not sorry now I agreed to marry him, though the poor dear is still pretty bad and hardly right in his mind yet. But just at this critical moment he and Josiah and five of our men who knew how to handle guns kept up such a fire with the rifles that they shot down several of the big men among the enemy. Then poor Josiah was shot in the stomach and died an hour or two afterwards. Ebenezer got a splinter of wood in his eye—through a cannon ball striking a post near him, and he was put out of action for a bit. Meantime nothing more happened. There was a lull. The Ruga-ruga drew off out of sight.

I could think of nothing but John all this time, though I had a feeling of being stunned and hurt myself. He recovered consciousness and talked of no one but you. I think he thought you were with him all the time, and I confess that hurt me. It was Lucy my darling, my own true wife—and I wondered whether you were—and Lucy you've come back and now we'll go home together.... He didn't mention my name once, and I can't remember that he said a word about God. Perhaps he didn't know he was dying. Towards the last his body swelled dreadfully and he sank into a stupor. He must have died just about sunset. When he was going I seemed to be going too. I suppose I fainted, for when one of my Big-geru came down into the pit with some broth she'd made she set up a howling and a yelling saying we were both dead, that Bwana Fulata, as they called John, had taken me with him.

My girls undressed me and found then that I had been wounded all the time. A slug or a rusty nail fired out of one of the guns had ripped across my shoulders and the back of my head and I'd never noticed it. It must have been when Eb and I were helping John down into the pit—I thought some one then had given me a push. And while I sat beside John the blood had soaked all the back of my bodice and caked quite hard. It's left a kind of blood-poisoning, but I'm getting over it. Only it causes these awful headaches. And poor Eb before the fighting finished got hit in the arm, and then from our clumsy attempts to extract the iron filings which had struck him he got blood-poisoning too, much worse than me. I can't say what his temperature went up to because I can't find any of our clinical thermometers, but to judge from his ravings it must have been pretty high.