CHAPTER XITHE HAPPY VALLEYRoger, 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 wearyalwaysto 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! Ithasbeen sweltering!—and the run after that—andfromthat—rhino! No. I'm not wounded—there's no need for emotion—but the rhino as he charged—andIdoubled—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'ssuchlots 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.Howexciting it's all getting. Iamenjoying it!""Halima" (to her maid): "Waambia watu wa mpishi tunataka chai,marramoja!"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 ofthat, 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'regiraffes, 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. "Lookat 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 oursafaria 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: "Thisisthe 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 areneverdown-hearted; weknowGod 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 Englishmustconquer 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,thatshall be its name.Howthe Lord's ways arepastfinding out! I feltsosick 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 awonderfulcountry? We have never seen the like. Somehow we feel sosafehere. 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.Whata field for the Lord's work! And to think I almostdoubtedGod 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 nativeugali—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 tacklingthatI'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 soill, Mrs. Stott, and Johninsistedon 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—absolutelyorderedme 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'spositive commands. Ann never obeys any one. Oh dear, oh dear!whatshould 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 astrangeplace 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 flamingoeswonderful? Like a revelation of God—almost. I shall stay here if only to look after them.Theyshall 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 waysomehowto the place he lives at—Medina. If the messengers come back withbadnews about the Arabs, or if John Baines positively vetoes your returning,thenall 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 XIITHE ATTACK ON THE STATIONFrom 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.
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 wearyalwaysto 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! Ithasbeen sweltering!—and the run after that—andfromthat—rhino! No. I'm not wounded—there's no need for emotion—but the rhino as he charged—andIdoubled—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'ssuchlots 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.Howexciting it's all getting. Iamenjoying it!"
"Halima" (to her maid): "Waambia watu wa mpishi tunataka chai,marramoja!"
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 ofthat, 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'regiraffes, 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. "Lookat 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 oursafaria 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: "Thisisthe 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 areneverdown-hearted; weknowGod 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 Englishmustconquer 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,thatshall be its name.Howthe Lord's ways arepastfinding out! I feltsosick 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 awonderfulcountry? We have never seen the like. Somehow we feel sosafehere. 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.Whata field for the Lord's work! And to think I almostdoubtedGod 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 nativeugali—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 tacklingthatI'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 soill, Mrs. Stott, and Johninsistedon 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—absolutelyorderedme 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'spositive commands. Ann never obeys any one. Oh dear, oh dear!whatshould 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 astrangeplace 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 flamingoeswonderful? Like a revelation of God—almost. I shall stay here if only to look after them.Theyshall 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 waysomehowto the place he lives at—Medina. If the messengers come back withbadnews about the Arabs, or if John Baines positively vetoes your returning,thenall 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:
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.
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.