The Message

The Hausa sergeant was puzzled in more ways than one. He heard his officer talking English to an Arab, he heard the unmistakable crackling of rifles fully equal to those with which he and the others were armed, and he was unable to account for the delay in the attack.

Enjoining on his men the necessity of keeping well within the shadow, he crept along close to the wall until he stood by Colville’s side. He was about to ask permission to make a reconnaissance, and thus force the enemy to reveal themselves, when an incident almost without precedent in bush warfare took place.

The indiscriminate firing stopped, the wild–beast noises died away into absolute silence, and a strip of white cotton suddenly became visible in one of the many gaps in the stockade. It was held stationary for a moment, then a native warrior stepped boldly forth into the moonlight. His magnificent physique was enhanced by the war trappings that decked his head, breast, and loins, and he strode forward with the lithe movements of a man in perfect training. When he entered the compound, it was seen that he carried a white flag on a lance. He meant to parley, and such a departure from the savage methods of a semi–cannibal tribe was hitherto unheard of. Usually, an unprotected party of Europeans, whether missionaries or traders, are butchered without mercy if found within the zone of tribal foray.

“By gad,” muttered Colville, “they’re going to offer terms!”

“I think I can guess what the terms will be,” said Warden. “There’s a woman in the case, Jimmie – something new in a bush campaign, eh?”

The subaltern did not understand the curious undertone of grim irony in the remark; but he was aware of it and made no reply. The black warrior had halted. His wonderfully developed sense of hearing warned him that some one not in the house was speaking, and the voices could come from no other place than the gloomy recess beneath the veranda.

“O Hume!” he cried loudly. “I fit for palaver.”

Colville half expected that Warden would answer for Hume. He was mistaken. His senior leaned back against the wall of the store, and folded his arms with the air of a man who meant to abide by a settlement in whose discussion he can take no part.

The negro, though trusting to his vague conception of a code of honor that he associated with fighting against white men, came no nearer.

“O Hume!” he cried again, “open dem door one–time, an’ hear what I fit for say.”

In the strange hush succeeding the frenzied uproar that announced the presence of a host of armed natives, the envoy’s words were clearly audible to the five people in the upper rooms. Hume came out, followed by Bambuk.

“Who are you and what do you want?” said the missionary. “Why do you come to me at night, and threaten the lives of my friends and myself in this manner?”

“I done tell you if Bambuk lib. I no fit for long palaver.”

At this, the interpreter leaned over the rail of the veranda.

“You are Loanda, I think?” he said, using the vernacular.

“Yes,” was the reply. “Tell the white man that the lives of himself and his wife will be spared, and they will be taken in safety to the frontier, if the English girl now in their house is handed over to us at once. She, too, will be well treated. One whom she knows, Miguel Figuero, awaits her at Oku. He is our friend, so she need have no fear. I, Loanda, say it, and that which I say is done.”

Bambuk translated this astounding request literally. Evelyn heard every word, and she alone grasped their terrible import. She appeared in the doorway, white–faced, with eyes that terror had made almost distraught.

“Miguel Figuero!” repeated the bewildered Hume. “Isn’t that the name of the Portuguese rascal you have told us of, Miss Dane?”

“Yes,” she said, and her voice was tense with the effort to keep it from breaking. “He is in league with the men of Oku. I knew it, and Captain Warden warned the authorities at home about him, but no one here would listen. Oh, Mr. Hume, it is a dreadful thing to say, but rather than fall into that man’s power I would kill myself.”

“You surely don’t imagine that we would agree to those terms, do you?”

Hume was almost indignant, but Evelyn flung herself on her knees and lifted her clasped hands in agony to the star–studded sky.

“What else can I do?” she wailed. “My life is broken. I have nothing left to live for. If I refuse this offer of peace, it means that all your lives are forfeit – yours and your wife’s, and Lord Fairholme’s, and those of the officer and men who came here in the launch from Ibi. Tell him I agree. I will go to this man. But make the chief promise to spare you and the others. I must know first that you are safe. Then – O God, pardon me! – then – I – ”

“My dear girl – which of us would purchase a few more hours of life at such a price?”

“But you do not understand,” she blazed forth. “If the death of one can save many why shouldn’t the one die? We can’t hope to resist these men; there are thousands of them. And unless I fall by my own hand, they may capture me unharmed after you have given your lives uselessly in my defense. Oh, pity me and pray for me, but do not let me be responsible for the slaughter of the few friends I possess in the world!”

She could no longer restrain her tears. The dark blue dome that typified the heaven to which she looked for mercy was blotted out of sight. She cowered as though from a blow, and wept pitifully. Then a voice rang out from the compound directly in front of where she knelt. As the opening syllables reached her ears, though she understood no word that was uttered, her surcharged brain harbored a new dread, for the man who was speaking spoke in Warden’s voice – Warden, whom she had learned to regard as dead these months past. Of course, grief and fear had driven her mad! She swept away the tears that blurred her vision, and peered through the rails of the veranda, but she saw only a cloaked Arab who had stepped forth into the moonlight, and was now addressing stern warnings to the amazed Loanda. And fantasy played her distracted senses another strange trick. The face of the native chief was plainly visible. She watched its expression change from sheer wonderment to baffled rage, and it seemed to her that it was not Loanda who glowered at the Arab who harangued him, but the scowling mask carved on the gourd by Domenico Garcia.

Oh, yes, she was truly mad. She realized it herself, but the others would never suspect it. Then the persistence of the notion brought relief to her aching heart. A kindly delirium might carry her through the ordeal that lay before her. She no longer feared insanity, rather did she welcome it, and now was her chance to act while she was brave and would not flinch from that which she conceived was her duty.

But why was that tall Arab still talking in Warden’s voice, and why did the stalwart savage seem to threaten him with furious gesture? Even while she was gazing between the wooden bars of the railing, she saw Loanda grasp his spear menacingly, whereupon the Arab laughed – how like it was to Warden’s laugh of good–natured raillery! – and a couple of Hausa soldiers appeared, with rifles held suggestively, as men hold shotguns when they expect a rabbit to scuttle out of a spinney.

Again, being still under the spell of that sudden lunacy, she heard the Arab say in English, and more amazingly than ever in Warden’s very tones:

“Now, Jimmie! Four paces to the front in open order – every man – quick!”

An English officer and several soldiers came out into the open. After one glance of sheer astonishment, the Oku chief turned and stalked away towards the bush. He did not deign to hurry, but his lithe springy gait soon carried him into the somber shadows. The dramatic silence that followed was broken by the man in an officer’s uniform.

“By gad, Warden, you did that splendidly,” he said. “I should never have thought of it. Do you think it will work?”

“For to–night, perhaps. One never knows just how the native mind will look at a thing. It gave Loanda a positive shock when he was really convinced that a British officer was not only present at most of M’Wanga’s war palavers, but had thrown out of gear every field gun in his precious battery. He would not tell me where M’Wanga is now, but I hardly think they will attack us in earnest before consulting him.”

“I am inclined to believe you have knocked the bottom out of the whole bally business,” said Colville jubilantly. “They are scared to death of you, Warden. You are the first man who had the opportunity to bust up the Oku ju–ju, and, by Jove, didn’t you take it?”

But Colville was wrong. The weird hoot of an owl came from the bush, a drum tapped out a signal, and instantly the forest became alive with vivid jets of light. The negroes had begun their fusillade again, and this time they meant to kill, not to frighten. Bullets whistled past the house, imbedded themselves in the stout timbers, tore huge splinters from beams, and hurled shingles from the roof. It seemed to be a miracle that every person in or near the building was not struck instantly, but the opening volley sent the Hausas to cover beneath the veranda, where they were told to lie flat on the ground behind the protecting supports. To reply to the enemy’s fire would be merely a waste of precious ammunition, and the men carried only a small quantity in their bandoliers. The time to fire was when every shot would be effective. Rarely will untrained savages press home an attack when their foremost warriors fall. The Hausas, negroes themselves, had been taught this in many a bush skirmish, and they had absolute confidence in their white leaders, for, by this time, the rumor had gone round that the man in Arab clothing was the well–known deputy commissioner of the Brass River, under whom some of them had fought in the sister protectorate.

Hume, who was cool as any soldier, seized Evelyn’s arm the instant that the first bullet crashed into the woodwork. Fairholme, too, who had recovered from the stupefying suddenness of what was, to him, a wholly unexpected sequel to a wearisome trip up a fever–laden river, ran forward to help, and the two men half carried the girl to the protection of the house.

But she had no thought of danger. Though it was dark inside the main living–room, she held them fast when they would have released her, and tried to read their very souls by a look.

“Did you hear?” she gasped. “That man – the Arab – who is he?.. The other called him Warden… Why should he do that?.. Was it not cruel of him?.. And why, why, did it seem to me that I heard Arthur’s voice?”

“Calm yourself, Miss Dane,” said the missionary quietly. “Providence at times adopts means not within mortal ken. I could not follow what was said to Loanda, but Bambuk tells me that, by some astounding chance, Captain Arthur Warden has not only crossed a large part of Africa, but has lived many weeks in Oku itself, and is now taking measures which will, I trust, by God’s mercy, secure our safety.”

A queer choking cry came from the girl’s parched throat.

“Then I am not mad?” she murmured. “He is really there! And he heard what I said – when – when I offered to go to Figuero?”

“Yes, of course he heard. It seemed to me it was on your account that he made himself known to the chief. But I do not yet understand exactly what happened. I only know that when first he spoke to Colville he used Arabic.”

“Yes, by gad,” put in Fairholme, finding an opening at last. “I thought he was a beastly native, an’ I cut in like a bloomin’ ass. Just my usual luck, Evelyn. The favorite got up in the last stride an’ pipped the outsider by a short head, eh, what?”

The earl’s happy–go–lucky method of expressing himself was singularly out of tune with his surroundings. Hume had closed the door, and the windows were already shuttered, so the darkness was now that of Pharaoh’s Egypt when Moses stretched forth his hand towards heaven. From without came the incessant crackling of musketry, and the maniacal howlings of negroes inspiring each other for the ultimate hand–to–hand fight; within, one heard the hysterical sobbing of Mrs. Hume, the mutterings of the Foulah servant, and the patter of small débris from walls and roof as the building shook under the sledge–hammer blows of bullets traveling at a high velocity. Luckily, as Warden had pointed out, the front of the mission–house faced the river, and there was no firing from that quarter as yet. The veranda was approached by a double staircase which mounted from each side and met at a small landing, whence half a dozen steps led to the level of the upper floor. As both sections of the stairs projected beyond the line of the building, their comparatively thin boards were being constantly ripped and split by the leaden missiles that hurtled in from both flanks.

It was spinning a coin with death for any one to descend either to right or left, yet that is what Evelyn did when Lord Fairholme’s bizarre explanation brought her back to the world which she had already quitted in imagination. Owing to the tomb–like blackness of the room, neither man was aware of her intent until the door was opened and she was speeding down the shattered stairs.

In her white dress she was a most conspicuous object. A pent–house roof shielded the stairs from sun and rain, but the moment she emerged into the moonlit compound she resembled some ethereal creature sent by the gods to still the wretched strife waged by foolish men. And, spirit–like, she passed unscathed through the hissing and biting rain of lead. She had but one thought, and it fluttered tremulously from her lips.

“Arthur!” she wailed, “Arthur! I am here!”

And again, “Arthur! Come to me! Why don’t you speak?.. It is I, Evelyn… Where are you? Oh, Arthur dear, answer me.”

Warden was lying by Colville’s side behind a main pillar at an angle of the house when he heard the girl’s rapt cry. Turning on an elbow, he saw her flitting past. He was up in an instant. Without spoken word he leaped out and clasped her in his arms.

Colville rose too.

“Oh, good Lord!” he muttered, “they will both be killed!”

But fate had chosen for Warden a strange path to a woman’s love, and the fickle goddess shielded him now when he, all a–quiver with the thrill of holding Evelyn in his arms, clasped her tightly and ran with her up the rickety stairs. Even as he hurried to place her in shelter the bushmen had seen the white–robed apparition and concentrated their fire in that direction. Bullets spat against the ground, crashed through the flimsy wooden structure, and pierced their clothing many times – but neither was injured. A few seconds after she had passed through the door Evelyn was carried back again. But it was a fitting outcome of the madness that had fallen on the quiet mission–station that she should be blithely heedless of the mortal peril which both she and her lover had escaped. Even while death was missing them by a hair’s breadth, she began to tell Warden in broken phrases how she had never faltered in her belief that he would one day be restored to her, and that she had come to Africa and the Benuë strong in the conviction that they would meet there and nowhere else in the wide world.

All of this, and more, was delightfully inaccurate, but Evelyn believed it and the man who listened believed it, and love was more potent than cold reason, so cold reason was barred out among the shrieking hail of lead that had failed to secure its victims.

Yet their idyll was soon cut short. A red glare became visible through the chinks of door and windows, and Warden knew what it meant.

“They have set fire to the native huts,” he said. “They want to see where our men are stationed before they try a rush. I must go, sweetheart. Kiss me! If it is good–by, I shall die content, for I have passed through much tribulation ere this divine moment was vouchsafed.”

Not for all the gold in Africa would she prove herself unworthy of him in that supreme moment.

“Go, then!” she said. “Whether in life or death we shall not be separated again.”

Warden was at the door when some one sprang after him. In the growing light of the burning buildings he recognized Colville’s companion in the launch.

“I suppose I can count for one in the scrum,” said the stranger. “Evelyn promised to be my sister, old chap, an’ before we all go under I’ll d – n well down a nigger or two for the sake of the family. Can you spare a gun? I’m a good man at driven birds, an’ these black jokers are several sizes bigger than blackcock – eh, what?”

CHAPTER XVI

A FIVE MINUTES’ FIGHT

Fairholme was soon equipped with a rifle. He was crouching behind a wooden pillar close to Warden and Colville, when a Hausa who had incautiously exposed himself uttered a queer cough and pitched forward on his face, shot through the lungs. The earl took the man’s gun and bandolier, but noticed that none of the others were firing, though a number of black forms were dimly visible through the murk created by the smoke of the blazing huts.

Warden was watching him.

“You will soon get busy,” he said. “They are preparing for a rush. Pick out the leaders, the fellows wearing the gaudiest feathers, or carrying a leopard–skin slung across their shoulders.”

“You’re a funny lookin’ bird yourself,” chuckled Fairholme. “What price you for the Kingdom Come stakes when the niggers spot you? Every black son of a gun will want to add you to the bag.”

“That’s right, Warden,” put in Colville anxiously. “Chuck away that burnous, and stick on poor Toomba’s cap. Fairholme can pull it in with the clearing–rod.”

“No,” said Warden. “My Arab’s livery has served me in good stead thus far. I shall not abandon it until I can borrow the togs of civilization, if ever I need them. Hello, here they come!”

A slackening in the fusillade and a terrific outburst of yells showed that the enemy were breaking cover in force. In an instant the compound seemed to become alive with armed negroes, many of whom had already discarded their modern rifles for the more familiar matchet and spear.

Colville shouted something in the Hausa tongue, and his men, all but two, leaped to their feet. Firing with deadly accuracy at such a short range, they brought down a score of the foremost savages. Fairholme, imbued with the traditions of European warfare, naturally expected that the attack would be pressed home, so he set his teeth and resolved to enter the next world with a royal bodyguard. Remembering Warden’s instructions, he looked only for the most gorgeously decorated warriors, and found three including Loanda himself. Warden, who had secured the rifle of the second wounded Hausa, saw the earl bowl over a ju–ju man at sixty yards, no mean shooting at night in an atmosphere rapidly becoming smoke–laden.

“Well done, brother–in–law!” he cried, and in the throes of that deadly strife those two began a friendship not to be severed on this side of the great boundary. As the house was attacked simultaneously on three sides, Colville ran around it to tell each member of his tiny force to fall back on the staircase when hard pressed. The instruction was given not a second too soon. Trusting to their great numbers, the men of Oku came on boldly. They were first–rate soldiers in their own way, they anticipated an easy victory, and they were filled with the frenzied desire to use steel rather than lead. That is the bushman’s temperament; killing loses half its ferocious joy if he cannot “paint“ his weapon. This sheer lust of blood now served the little garrison in good stead. True, it exposed them to the combined onslaught of hundreds of sinewy negroes, but it saved them from the speedy extermination that must have been their lot were their assailants content to shoot them down at close quarters. In less than a minute after the stockade was passed by the enemy, Warden, Colville, Fairholme, Beni Kalli – who used an adze he stumbled across in the doorway of the store – the Hausa sergeant, and seven of the rank and file – twelve men all told – were in a half circle around the foot of the stairs, plying rifle and bayonet on a wall of black humanity. The very strength of the attacking force placed it at a disadvantage. The men in front were hindered by those who surged up in ever–increasing waves from the rear. Every shot fired by the defenders effected losses out of all proportion to the general run of wounds inflicted by musketry even in a hand–to–hand engagement. Though the wretched warriors who bore the brunt of the assault might have escaped bullet or butt or bayonet thrust, there was no dodging the withering blasts of powder which blinded and scorched them, and smote their naked limbs with strange buffets. The eerie yells of those who thought the mission had already fallen mingled with the screams of the wounded and the groans of the dying. The place reeked like a slaughter–house, and the corpses of those who were killed outright, or the maimed and writhing men who had sustained injuries which rendered them incapable of crawling out of that packed space, formed a veritable rampart around the defenders.

At this stage the loss of a skilled leader like Loanda made itself felt among his followers. He would either have set fire to the unprotected rear of the building or drawn off a part of his force and renewed the shooting from a flank. Any such diversion by a tithe of the warriors engaged would render the position immediately untenable by the three white men and the Hausas. When, at last, the flanking maneuver was attempted by half a dozen negroes who had extricated themselves unharmed from the press beneath the overhanging roof of the stairs, the disastrous effect of their strategy showed what might have been accomplished but for the smallness of their number. Colville fell, and the Hausa sergeant, and two men. A bullet plowed through Warden’s hair, and another ripped Fairholme’s coat and shirt, and grazed his breast, and these casualties resulted before the few men attempting the enfilade had fired two rounds per rifle.

Warden, alive to a danger that promised instant collapse, slung Colville across his shoulder and gave the order that the few who remained alive should fall back, still fighting steadily, until they had mounted the double stairs and gained the veranda.

There was no doubt in his mind that the end had come. His surprise had failed. He had hoped that the unexpected presence of the Hausas and a party of white people might damp the ardor of the men of Oku, who had looked forward to securing an easy prey in the mission, and who could not possibly have anticipated a stubborn resistance by troops whom they had learned to fear. In ninety–nine cases out of a hundred his belief would have been justified. That there was an exception now arose from the fact that the tribal witch–doctors had made much of the modern arms which the tribesmen possessed.

“You have the white man’s fetish,” they declared. “Hitherto our ju–ju has not prevailed against them. To–day you are invulnerable.”

Under European leaders this mistaken logic would not have caused a reversion to the method of combined attack so dear to the native warrior. Loanda and some of his lieutenants had already displayed their shrewdness by harping constantly on the necessity of depending more on the rifle and less on spear or matchet. They would never have permitted an advance in force if they were not certain of their ability to overpower the weak detachment of Hausas at the first rush. In a sense, it was Evelyn’s presence which brought about this decision. Their Portuguese ally had made such a point of her capture uninjured that they wished to gratify him, while there were other forcible reasons why they should not waste too many hours on the siege of a paltry place like the mission station.

Though the struggle thus far was short and sharp, the unhappy people within the walls were only too conscious of its developments. To their strained senses it seemed that at any moment the door must be burst open and they swept into the clutches of merciless savages. They could not tell who was living or dead. The incessant shooting and the howls and agonized cries of the negroes drowned all other sounds. Evelyn thought she heard Warden addressing some order to the Hausas, but she could not be sure. Hume, in whom the man was rapidly supplanting the missioner, wished to take a personal share in the defense, but his wife clung to him in an agony of terror, and implored him not to leave her. While trying to soothe the distracted woman he reflected that he would probably prove more of a hindrance than otherwise in the fighting line. If he used a gun at all it must be as a cudgel, for he did not even understand the mechanism of the breech–block.