Yours in the love of Jesus,ANN ANDERSON.P.S. I ought perhaps to be more business-like, in spite of feeling so ill, in case there is any trouble about wills and say that their names wereThomas Aldrich BayleyandJohn Bainesand that they died as near as I can reckon on October 29th, 1888. I haven't found any wills, but I am trying to get their effects together, though of course there is great confusion after the looting. I've also written a note for old Mrs. Bayley.From Mrs. Anderson, E.A.M., to Mrs. John Baines,c/o Mr. Callaway, Agent, East African Mission,Unguja.Mbogo's Village,Ulunga,November, 1888.DEAR LUCY,—I am beginning to write this as near as I can guess November 15, but I've got out in my dates and no wonder. I've also got a broken head—I expect a touch of concussion besides a scalp wound—and it is simple agony to write for long. My eyes hurt so. I must however try to tell you—and John's mother—what has happened, so I shall write a little every day if I am fit to and send these letters to the coast by the first chance. Ali bin Ferhani thinks he can manage a messenger later on who would cross into the British "sphere." I expect you got my first message sent by the Masai? In case you didn't or in case something happens to me and I can't finish a long letter, I'll tell you the plain facts first:John's dead, Bayley's dead, Josiah's dead. Anderson and I are wounded. I'm nearly well. The station is only partially destroyed. Now you know the worst.When I returned here from Burungi it was about the tenth of October, so far as we could keep count. John was very angry with me at first, for leaving you and for coming to live with three men and I a single woman. I well-nigh lost patience with him. But I said, Well ifthat'sall I'll marry one of you, I'll marry Ebenezer if he'll have me. Ebenezer Anderson didn't look overjoyed, but John said: That's all right; you came out to marry him, so the Mission expected, and you're only now fulfilling the contract. All right, I said, you're a minister of the Gospel, you could marry us at home, so you can do it here, only it won't be legal till we're re-married at the Consulate. But it'll be a marriage in God's eyes, which is the great thing. I felt reckless about it somehow. Of course I'm not going to live with Eb until all this trouble's over and everything is legal. Well, after that was done with, the country round seemed to be getting jumpy and Mbogo sent to say the Ruga-ruga under that Devil, Ayub, were coming to attack us, coming with lots of men and guns. So we sent out word to the Masai, and they turned up well. About three hundred spears. But after a bit they got tired of waiting, so went off somewhere else to do some raiding on their own account.Towards the end of October—perhaps it was the 28th—no sooner was our first bell rung for dressing—half-past five—than we heard the most unearthly yelling and a tremendous firing of guns. I just got my clothes and boots on anyhow and the men turned out in shirts and trousers and with their boots unlaced. The bullets were flying like hail above the stockade, first of all too high. We dared not go to peep through for fear of being shot. Well, John didn't lose his head one bit. He gave out the Sniders to all our Walunga who could use them, and he and Bayley and Anderson took up the posts they had settled beforehand.Then the Ruga-ruga made a rush almost up to the ditch which they seemed not to expect, and John and the men let them have it. Five or six were killed. After that Mbogo's Walunga came up and took them on the flank with guns and spears, and they didn't like it at all and withdrew for a spell. But I can't tell you everything—Perhaps some day I will if you ever care to hear it—I've got to write to John's mother as well as you.The fighting in the afternoon was chiefly between the Ruga-ruga and Mbogo's villages. I suppose they thought they'd better finishthemoff before they came again to us. They drove Mbogo's people out of all their villages except the big one near us, where Mbogo lives. This was higher up, and Mbogo and John had worked at its fortification on Captain Brentham's plan—it turned out to be much more easily defended than our place. Fortunately also the Ruga-ruga and the Arabs don't like fighting at night—Oh my headache, I must leave off for a bit....Well, during that night we worked like Trojans—Who were the Trojans and why did they work hard? You ought to know with your superior education. We dug out a square pit in the middle of the station and lined it with dry grass. In it we arranged chairs and mattresses so that we could rest and sleep here out of reach of the bullets. We also turned the Chapel into a living-house and store, because its brick walls and iron roof made it secure against fire and fairly safe from bullets.On the second day the Ruga-ruga, led on by Ayub, attacked us on the west side, where our stockade was weakest and where we were overlooked a little by that mound we used to call the Snakes's Hill. Brother Bayley was standing talking to me about some dressings he wanted for Josiah Briggs who had been shot in the foot, when suddenly he uttered a shriek, whirled round and fell at my feet. He died a few minutes afterwards. John was so infuriated at his death that in spite of my shouts to be careful, he climbed up to a look-out post and fired his double-barrelled sporting rifle at a group of Ruga-ruga on Snakes's Hill. Whilst he was stooping to reload a poisoned arrow struck him on the chest and penetrated his lung. A good many of the Ruga-ruga were Manyema savages, slaves of the Arabs, and they fought with bows and poisoned arrows. John scrambled down somehow on to the ground. Ebenezer Anderson helped me to carry him into the pit shelter and there we undressed him. He was streaming with blood and coughing up blood and fast losing consciousness. Somehow or other—oh, what a time it was!—we got the arrow-head out of the wound. I don't know even now how, for we were both of us bunglers and it had got partly wedged in the ribs. And we had to cut the poor dear about. Fortunately we had Bayley's instruments down with us in this pit. But I can't go into all these details. Shall I ever get this letter finished?Whilst we were attending to John we heard a tremendous shouting. It was the Humba war song—the Masai, you know. They had come at last to our assistance and taken the Ruga-ruga rather by surprise. But just before they made their rush up the hill, the Ruga-ruga had contrived to shoot arrows with flaming cotton soaked in oil on to our thatched roofs. Fire was spreading from building to building except the Chapel and the store. My Big-geru had lost their heads. Up to that time they had been so good. Our Walunga were trying to open the doors of the stockade and dash out into the open country. Then the Ruga-ruga would have broken in and all would have been up with us. Fortunately the charge of the Masai came at that very moment, when I was beginning to doubt if God had not forgotten us. They killed lots of the Ruga-ruga and would hack off their heads and throw them back into our stockade.Then the Ruga-ruga seemed to get reinforcements from the Ugogo direction—quite a large body of men, they say, led by two Arabs—the two Arabs whom John had got expelled a year ago by Mbogo for trading in slaves. They had got a small cannon and its noise and the landing of a stone cannon ball in the middle of a party of Masai gave them a fright, so that all of the Masai drew off from near our station and ran round to the high ground behind Mbogo's town. Once more it seemed as though nothing could save us. The Ruga-ruga fired stone balls at our stockade and seemed making up their minds to a rush.Ebenezer was just splendid at this time. I'm not sorry now I agreed to marry him, though the poor dear is still pretty bad and hardly right in his mind yet. But just at this critical moment he and Josiah and five of our men who knew how to handle guns kept up such a fire with the rifles that they shot down several of the big men among the enemy. Then poor Josiah was shot in the stomach and died an hour or two afterwards. Ebenezer got a splinter of wood in his eye—through a cannon ball striking a post near him, and he was put out of action for a bit. Meantime nothing more happened. There was a lull. The Ruga-ruga drew off out of sight.I could think of nothing but John all this time, though I had a feeling of being stunned and hurt myself. He recovered consciousness and talked of no one but you. I think he thought you were with him all the time, and I confessthathurt me. It was Lucy my darling, my own true wife—and I wondered whether youwere—and Lucy you've come back and now we'll go home together.... He didn't mention my nameonce, and I can't remember that he said a word about God. Perhaps he didn't know he was dying. Towards the last his body swelled dreadfully and he sank into a stupor. He must have died just about sunset. When he was going I seemed to be going too. I suppose I fainted, for when one of my Big-geru came down into the pit with some broth she'd made she set up a howling and a yelling saying we were both dead, that Bwana Fulata, as they called John, had taken me with him.My girls undressed me and found then that I had been wounded all the time. A slug or a rusty nail fired out of one of the guns had ripped across my shoulders and the back of my head and I'd never noticed it. It must have been when Eb and I were helping John down into the pit—I thought some one then had given me a push. And while I sat beside John the blood had soaked all the back of my bodice and caked quite hard. It's left a kind of blood-poisoning, but I'm getting over it. Only it causes these awful headaches. And poor Eb before the fighting finished got hit in the arm, and then from our clumsy attempts to extract the iron filings which had struck him he got blood-poisoning too, much worse than me. I can't say what his temperature went up to because I can't find any of our clinical thermometers, but to judge from his ravings it must have been pretty high.In the night following that second day, Mbogo came with a lot of his headmen and took us three away and all our Big-geru to inside his own village and put us in his women's quarters.He'sa white man if you like, under his skin. He was afraid we might all be burnt to death by the fire spreading inside our station. So we should have done. I lost my senses that night from weakness or shock or something. When I came to again I could hardly move my head for pain. But my girls bathed me and gave me wonderful potions of their own making and I was able to sit up. Mbogo came in, but spoke behind the door for modesty. What do you think of that in a black savage? A "Mshenzi"! Because he thought I might be undressed. But he said in Swahili: "Fear no more. Your friends are coming."The next morning I heard that Ali bin Ferhani, who'd been a friend of John's—you remember?—had come with a big party of his followers, and hearing he was on his way the Ruga-ruga had bolted because they all respect him as a "Sheikh." He says he is going to stop here with his men till peace comes, or at any rate till white people take command here.Your Masai messengers came two days after Ali bin Ferhani had arrived, and I wrote with great difficulty the message I sent you and got the Big-geru to do it up for me. Some of them write quite nicely themselves now, but only in Kagulu.There's lots and lots more I could tell you if we ever meet again or I ever have time and plenty of paper. After the Ruga-ruga were gone and the fires were beaten out my Big-geru searched in the Chapel and the ruins of the school houses and found three copy-books and a stone bottle of ink and some pens. I've used nearly a copy-book each for you and John's mother and a bit of a one writing to Mr. Callaway and a short note to Mr. Bayley's mother. I haven't made a proper search yet, but I can't find any will left by John. I don't suppose he had much to leave you.You'd better go now and marry your Captain. It's the least he can do after compromising you, whether it was his fault or not. You never loved John as he deserved to be loved and you did wrong to become engaged to him, as his mother always said. If you hadn't been there he'd have married me. And we should have been happy as happy because I'd have slaved for him. I loved him from the time we first met, because he was kind and polite to me even though I was not well favoured. He never laughed at my hymns as you used to do. They may have been rubbish, but I meant well. In those days I was that religious it had to come out somehow. I said I loved the Lord and I did—I thought. I ain't so sure about it now. His ways are trulypast finding outand I've given up trying, though I shall stick to Mission work for John's sake. John would have said the coming of Ali bin Ferhani was providential, but why couldn't Providence have acted a bit sooner and saved John and Brother Bayley? I suppose we shall know some day....Well, good-bye, Lucy. Let me have a line to say you got this packet. I've no envelope to put it in.I was going to finish up with Yours in the love of Jesus, but I really don't know....ANN ANDERSON.P.S. If you ever get to England and back Reading way, give my love to the Miss Calthorps and go in and see my Uncle at the shop and say I'm trying to do my duty out here and he isn't to bother. I think perhaps you'd better not go near Mrs. Baines—John's mother. You never know how she'll take things. She was thatseton John.December1.Ali bin Ferhani's pretty sure to-day he can get these letters through, so off this goes. I forgot to say that we're going to bury John and Mr. Bayley side by side in the pit we dug in the middle of the station. Eb is not in a fit state to be consulted, though his temperature seems going down. But I've decided for him. As soon as I can get about without too much aches and pains I shall see it done. If you get home you might communicate with the East African Mission and arrange for a Stone to be sent out to be put up over the grave. Somehow it seems to me John wants to be buried there. It may bring good luck to Hangodi.ANN.CHAPTER XIIITHE RETURN TO UNGUJAUp the scarcely-discernible path they climbed, leaving the Happy Valley behind them; over the foothills and under cliff at the base of the northern escarpment, where the gaily flowering bushes in their early spring display gave way to tall forest trees, hung with lianas. The black Colobus monkeys with their white-plumed tails chattered and showed their teeth and flopped from branch to branch in the leafy canopy, not used to this tumultuous invasion of their solitudes. Then suddenly the escarpment rose like the wall of a Babel towering into Heaven. How could any way for human beings walking on two legs be found up these precipices? But despite its savagery there is scarcely one of Africa's fastnesses that has not been trodden by man, and although the practised route into the Happy Valley was from the south, and though its encompassing walls of cliff on either side and at the northern end of its lake seemed impassable, there were ways up and over them known to the Masai and Hamitic and Nilotic peoples of this sequestered rift valley.Up some suchVia malathe Masai guides were now leading Brentham's caravan, with little concern for the trepidation it caused. The white man and woman and the silently suffering Goanese cook had been obliged to descend from their donkeys and trudge with the porters. The donkeys, in fact, were sent to the rear of the procession, and Brentham walked in front with the guides and a few disencumbered porters to help Lucy over an ascent which would have been thought rough climbing in the Alps, and here had to be made without any paraphernalia of ropes and irons.Lucy sometimes had to shut her eyes and hold her body rigidly pressed against the wall of rock that she might recover from vertigo and continue with shaking legs her ascent of a twisting path, sometimes only fifteen inches broad where it overhung an abyss. Roger was beside himself with anxiety. He cast about in his mind for safeguards—Ropes? But they had none. Lengths of cotton cloth? But how get at them and apply them, when any extra movement might turn Lucy giddy and precipitate her into the tree-tops far below? Their taciturn Masai guides, pledged only to show them the way to Kilimanjaro, had given them no warning of what the path was like from the lake shore, between three and four thousand feet above sea level, to the top of the escarpment at seven thousand feet.Once committed to the ascent the caravan had to continue, as there was no room in which to turn the donkeys round and descend again to the valley. All Roger could do was to insist on great deliberation in the climb and frequent halts, though this policy was not endorsed by the impatient asses behind. When the white people in front paused to negotiate some more than usually dangerous section of the path, the rest of the caravan had to pause too, the porters with their loads poised on their heads and their sinewy legs trembling with the strain, while the donkeys pranced with impatience to pass them, and nearly pushed some of them and their loads over into the gulf below."It's no good," Roger would say to his companion, "you can't get round this, walking upright; you must go on hands and knees andcrawlover it. Never mind your dress or your knees. If your skirt is torn I'll make you one out of buck-skin; if your knees are cut it's better than breaking your neck."He had never lived through such a nightmare as this climb, and ran down in sweat for sheer apprehension of an irretrievable disaster. However it came to an end at last, and towards that end its difficulties were tempered by the path's entry into gorges where there were merciful bays of level ground, places to rest in and stretch oneself, to put down the loads and regain one's breath and ease one's palsied legs. From the jagged rocks grew out horizontally fleshy-leaved aloes with zebra markings of green and white, and long stalks of blood-red or orange-yellow, tubular flowers, haunted by large yellow-velvet bees with probing tongues. Huge blue-black ravens with arched bills and white collars perched on pinnacles of rock above the path, or set out to sail in circles over the gorge below, hoping no doubt some beast or human would fall and die and provide sightless eyeballs and protruding entrails for the ravens' feast.Lucy thought of this in these silent halts—all were too exhausted to speak—and shuddered. Yet for a white woman of that period, unsuitably costumed as she was, she gave no more trouble to her male companion than she could help, uttered no futile complaints or queries. They had exchanged but little conversation during the two days which had elapsed since they received Ann Jamblin's message. John Baines's ghost, like a Banquo, came between them. Lucy was—and looked as though she was—in perfect health. Deep down within her heart she was quietly content, convinced now that somehow, some day, she would marry Roger. Equally certain was she that none of the ordinary dangers of African travel would prevent her from reaching the coast under his escort; so that he had in her a more cheerful and far less sulky or doleful companion than had accompanied the unfortunate John on his wedding tour.After the ascent of the escarpment they camped two nights in succession in a strange region suggestive of the Moon's surface as revealed by a powerful telescope. There were the crumbling sides of craters, the cones of extinct volcanoes—extinct, perhaps; but sometimes a strange and ominous-looking white smoke or gassy vapour issued from cracks in the ground and through veins in the obsidian rocks. Vegetation was very scanty—a few yellow stalks of bamboo in the hollows; and water was scarce enough to cause anxiety and limit washing to a minimum. Yet if they could cross this dry belt of naked rock and barren mountain and the possibly waterless plain that lay in front of them, to the east there was a promise of better things. Far away, a blue pyramid seen against the morning sun, was Mount Meru, one of the great, unmistakable landmarks of East Africa. It towered fifteen thousand feet into the sky and when the sun turned to the zenith and the west they could see the peak of the pyramid was white with snow. And behind Meru in the early morning or in the early evening there came into view something at first unbelievable, a floating island in the sky, a Laputa: the great snowy dome of Kibô....A few days of rough, silent travel—seeing no natives and very few birds and beasts—and they were in the Kisongo plains. Here it was less arid, and beneath the burnt stems of the old grass the fresh green grass was springing. The occasional scrubby trees and bushes were putting forth fresh leaves, sometimes quite red in colour, or even purplish black. Big game swarmed round them unafraid of man, inclined even to be insolent. Rhinoceroses charged the caravan and both Lucy and Roger had narrow escapes of being tossed on their horns, while Lucy was twice flung from her donkey when it bolted with terror at a tangent from the unexpected rush of the squealing monster. A Nyamwezi porter was gored and trampled, his load smashed and the caravan disorganized. Roger laid low one rhinoceros; and then, water being near, they spent all the rest of that day and the next cutting up its flesh, smoking it, drying it in the sun, and making of it a food provision greatly wanted by the porters.This much-needed rest however brought another danger on them. The sound of rifle firing, the assemblage of vultures, the noise of the porters' excited voices attracted the attention of a large war party of Masai, trailing southward to see what was up in this rumoured war between the Arabs—or, as they called them, the "coast" people—and the White men ... troubled waters in which they might fish to advantage. Lucy was sitting in camp in as much placid enjoyment as she could feel, with the remembrance of John's death in the background. She forgot, at any rate for the moment, her remorse and her anxieties "as to what people would say." It was very pleasant to rest here and to know that she would not have to rise at five the next morning and ride nearly all day, and perhaps have another close shave from a charging rhinoceros....Gradually there stole on her ear a sound like distant thunder. The sky was clear ... surely it couldn't be a wholeherdof rhinos, or a distant earthquake—earthquakes not being unknown in this region? Presently the Wanyamwezi looked up anxiously from their camp employments or their parcelling out of the rhinoceros meat. Roger was away, shooting more game.... There went up the fear-inspiring word: "Masai!"Then appeared on the north a cloud of red dust and out of this emerged a small army of red-coloured men trailing their shields by lanyards, with a rumbling noise, waving long-bladed white-flashing spears, and uttering a growling chant, a war-song of bloodthirsty purport, though its words were not understood by the people in the undefended camp.The Swahili Kiongozi fortunately was on the spot, and then and at other times never lost his head. He stood quietly beside Lucy, who was seated in her deckchair with her white umbrella to shade her from the sun. "Starehe, Bibi," he said; "usiogope; Muungu anatulinda. Hawa ndio Masai, kweli; walakini tutawashinda na akili."[#][#] "Be tranquil, Lady. Do not fear. God is guarding us. These indeed are Masai truly, but we shall overcome them with intelligence."The porters just stayed where they were. To have started to run would—they knew—have been fatal. They just stood about, silent, while the advancing army—perhaps three hundred in number—suddenly halted and lay down behind their large, gaily-painted shields. The two men of the expedition who knew the Masai language drew up to the Kiongozi—unfortunately the Masai guides were away, out hunting with Roger. A hundred yards distant there stood out one superb Masai warrior, the leader of the party; a naked figure of perfect manhood, red in colour, with a naturally brown skin, raddled with ochre and powdered with the dust of the red ground. The vertical sun seemed to make a red halo round the outline of his beautiful body. He held a tuft of grass in his hand and shouted in an authoritative voice: "Tôtŏna!" (Sit down!)At once the men of Brentham's caravan obeyed him. All sat down and plucked tufts of fresh green grass. Then the Masai spokesman advanced slowly ... wonderingly ... peeringly towards the white woman, reclining on the deck-chair. "What isthis?" he asked the headman and the two interpreters. "This," they replied, glad to get a chance of making an impression, "thisis a WHITE WOMAN of the great race of the Wa-ingrezi. Her husband is the great chief, the Balozi of the Wa-ingrezi on the coast. We come now from the Manyara country, guided by your own people, the Masai. There is war to the south, in Nguru and Ugogo, war between the Lajomba and the White men. Our Balozi is taking his wife to the coast to put her with his own people; then he will return and finish the Lajomba.""Good," said the Masai war-captain. "We heard of this war and we are going there to see if we can join in. We hate the Lajomba."At this moment there was a stir among the three hundred warriors sitting apart. It was caused by the approach of Brentham, filled with apprehension and anxiety as to Lucy. Unfortunately his own Masai guides belonged to a southern clan of the Masai, not on very good terms with this more northern, purer breed. So there was a ruffle of angry words as each realized the other as whilom foes. But the leader who had been sitting close to Lucy rose to his feet and spoke with a carrying voice—rather than shouted—a command and once more his warriors sat down. He then took Lucy's hand, but quite gently. His own hand had well-trimmed nails and was clean except for the red dust. He turned back her sleeve a little (she trembled, but tried to smile). Having satisfied himself that the arm was even whiter than the hand, he threw back his head and laughed a full-throated laugh, while his eyes sparkled with the wonderment of it all. Seeing her smile he looked at her with such a friendly glance that she felt completely reassured. Then he sat down again, took snuff, and was framing other questions when Roger strode up. "It is all well, master," said the headman hurriedly in Swahili."Why, you're holding quite a court, Lucy," said Roger, inwardly immensely relieved."Ye-es. But I shall beratherglad when they all go."The Masai leader rose to his feet and held out his hand to Brentham. The latter took it and White man and Red man looked for a moment into each other's eyes. Roger, knowing something of Masai customs—was he not indeed but three or four marches from scenes of earlier exploration?—did not shrink away when the Masai captain spat on his clothing and on Lucy's dress. He knew it was intended for the friendliest of greetings, a seal on their good relations.After that, all was boisterous good-fellowship, though the Wanyamwezi porters were careful to keep together and half carelessly to reclaim their rifles. The three hundred Masai agreed to overlook the fact that Roger's guides had belonged to a once hostile clan. And when they learnt from these men what a hunter he was and what an unerring shot, they pressed their friendship and their red presence on him. They visited his tent—they were throughout strictly honest—they sat on his bed, and he had afterwards to do without sheet and pillow case, for besides leaving red dust wherever they sat they distributed a flavour of tallow from their favourite unguent, mutton fat. They insisted on blood-brotherhood and declared they would escort the white chieftain and his lady to the coast.As a matter of prosaic fact, they took him no farther than the base of Meru. There the rainy season began to break with vehemence. So there they left him and went off to the drier steppe country and the War in the south with its possibilities of loot.Roger longed at this time to ascend Meru and explore its hidden wonders; and Lucy gazed with awe at the now fully displayed majesty of Kilimanjaro, rising above the watery plain of Kahe, with its dome of snow and ice, and its lesser peak of Kimawenzi.But being short of stores they made straight for a newly-founded Evangelical Mission station, at an altitude of four thousand feet, where it was hoped Lucy might find shelter for a few days from the torrential rains, and he himself gather news about the happenings on the coast, and dispatch carriers to Mvita with messages which might be telegraphed to Unguja.After all their adventures this seemed rather a prosaic phase in the journey, and Lucy found herself actually depressed at being once more with fellow-countrymen. There were three missionaries—a married couple and an assistant bachelor propagandist—at the station of the Evangelical Mission, but they did not seem over surprised at this arrival of a white man and woman from the unknown interior. They received Lucy's halting explanations civilly but coldly, and though they gave her a room to herself and nicely cooked meals, they seemed—to her fancy—to have purposely adopted an almost penitentiary surfeit of services and prayers.Captain Brentham preferred to camp out at the Chief's village, two miles away. He had known this genial, old, one-eyed ruffian three years before, when he was exploring the approaches to the great Snow Mountain, and making tentative treaties to forestall the Germans. He rather ground his teeth over the changing scene. Since his first journey, missionaries, big-game sportsmen, concession hunters, had thronged into this wonderful country, and had not the slightest respect for its earliest pioneers. Already there was a large and flourishing mission station on the site of his first camp; and when on installing Lucy there he had drawn the missionaries' attention to this fact, and to his having made the site ready for them, purchased it in fact, the present occupants merely said with pursed lips, "Indeed?"; and Mrs. Missionary added primly: "Yes: weheardfrom the Chief you had stayed here, three years ago; but we preferneverto listen togossipabout white people. It is sooften ill-natured."And so onwards to the Taita Hills and the coast. A sense of flatness, a leaking-out of all romance in their adventure. They were no longer alone. Lucy went to see Mr. Thomas at the East African Mission station in Taita. He startled her by asking cheery questions about John, his old college-mate, and supposing John was with her on thissafari. He had heard nothing about the disaster and made rather stupid and inquisitive inquiries as to the motives of her journey. Farther on, they had the misery of crossing the red Maungu desert, with its stretch of forty miles between water and water; but there was no "adventure" about this; and midway they met the caravan of a very rich Englishman with two companions, wearing single eye-glasses, who offered them champagne and soda-water at midday to relieve their thirst, and told Lucy he wasn't surprised at her travelling about with a stray Consul, as he always contended that missionaries out in Africa had a jolly good time and did themselves uncommonly well, and for his part he didn't blame her. "Gather ye roses, don't you know—while you can—or was it while you're young? And now I suppose you're on your way back to Hubby?"The old Arab port of Mvita was not much altered since Roger had seen it last; though there was the beginning of a stir, for a British Chartered Company was preparing to make this their head-quarters. Meantime, the centre of rank and fashion, so to speak, was the British Consulate. Roger made his way here, with Lucy and Halima, while he left the bulk of his caravan encamped across the water.His colleague, the Vice-Consul, was an ex-Naval Officer, who had given up the Navy for a while to serve in the East African Consulates, in the idea that they entailed little office work, good pay, and any amount of shooting, varied with agreeablesafarisat the expense of the Government. This particular example of his kind had been rather sharply called back to more humdrum duties and the preparation of statistics by Roger himself, when he was acting Consul-General. So now was the time to get his own back:—"Hullo, old chap!Who'dhave thought it. Where have you sprung from? We'd all given you up for lost—thought you'd gone 'Fanti,' eloped with a missionaryess for the far interior and were founding an empire on your own....""I've brought here," interrupted Roger, with a set face, "Mrs. John Baines" (Lucy had retreated out of ear-shot with Halima to the verandah of the Consulate)—"Mrs. John Baines, whose husband has been killed, I fear, in the Ulunga country. I should be much obliged if you could put her up here till we can get a dau to take us over to Unguja.... As for me...""Aw*fully sorry old chap. *Of course, I can make room foryou... give yousomesort of a shakedown.... You're a fellowmanand you'll understand.... But the fact is I'm—I'm not—quite prepared—er—to entertain a white lady here. Bachelor establishment you know....Youtwig? ... Dare say you're fixed up just the same at—where is it? at Medina, What?"Roger turned away angrily."Lucy! ... Mrs. Baines!""Yes, Captain Brentham.""I'll get a boat and we'll go over to the Mission station across the Bay. I expect they'll have room—indeed they mustmakeroom—for you there till our dau is ready to sail...."Then turning to the Vice-Consul: "Be good enough to send a cablegram to-day to the Agency at Unguja stating that H.M. Consul for Zangia arrived here this morning from the interior with Mrs. John Baines from Ulunga, and add that I shall arrive at Unguja to report as soon as I can charter a dau; unless a gun-boat comes in first. My Camp is at Kisolutini. You can send on any letters that come for me there....""Well, but I say..."Roger having been joined by the wondering and disappointed Lucy, who had taken a great fancy to the picturesque Consulate, strode out with an angry face, flushed under the tan.No return message came for him from the Agency at Unguja. And a few days afterwards he embarked with Lucy and Halima (who had already agreed to marry the Goanese cook), his Wanyamwezi porters, and a selected collection of trophies and mineralogical specimens, in an Arab dau, for the island port of Unguja. This time—December 27, 1888—Lucy was too anxious about her future to notice or to care whether it had bugs or not in its rotting timbers or its frowsy thatch.Meantime, unfriendly forces were at work to Roger's detriment. Here is a letter which Mrs. Spencer Bazzard probably wrote to Mr. Bennet Molyneux, of the Foreign Office. (Like most of the letters appearing in this book, it is based on my deductions as to the kind of letter that would have been written under the circumstances, rather than on textual evidence):—H.B.M. Consulate for Zangia,Medinat-al-Barkah,December23, 1888.DEAR MR. MOLYNEUX,—I hope you don't resent my letters. You don't answer them, but then I told you not to. I shouldn't like to be a bore to you, or for you to feel—amid your piles of work—that you had an extra letter to write to an importunate little person in far-off East Africa. I said once I should go on writing every now and again, unless you ordered me to stop. As you haven't—Well! Here is another budget of East African news.We have had alarums and excursions, as Shakespeare says. You will see by this address that I am on the mainland with my husband. When Captain B. disappeared last September into theewigkeitthe Agency at Unguja began receiving disquieting stories as to what was taking place in his absence. He had only left an Indian clerk in charge, and complaints arose from Indian merchants and English missionaries that no one could attend to their business. So Sir G. D. thought it best to send Spence over here to take charge, and, of course, I came with him to help him to interpret.We found everything (a month ago) in a terrible muddle. The consulate is filthily dirty, the archives are just anyhow, and Spence fears a considerable sum is missing from the Consular receipts, or else that the clerk is muddled in his accounts. But all this you will hear officially.Meantime, we are all uneasy about Captain B.'s disappearance. He left here last August with some idea of letting the missionaries know there was danger of ah Arab attack on all white people independent of their nationality, German or English. He seems to have translated Sir G.'s brief instructions into a permission to make a vast tour of the interior—a delightful thing to do, no doubt, but not when you have a Consulate to look after. He greatly alarmed all the missionaries, and, as it appears, somewhat needlessly. Those who have their stations in Usagara and farther south are very angry with him. He arrived at their stations early in September and ordered them to retire on the coast—or at any rate send their wives and children there, as the Arabs might attack at once. And after they had obeyed him the attacks never came off! One of the missionary ladies was in a certain condition, it appears, and the hurried journey so upset her that—how shall I phrase it?—her hopes were disappointed.He next appeared at a place called Hangodi—according to native report—and was so anxious about the safety of a fair lady there (the missionary young woman who travelled out with him and me a year and a half ago)—that he took her away with him and has seemingly gone waltzing off to the unknown with this fair charge. Quite romantic, isn't it? In this case his warning as to an impending attack seems to have been only too well founded, if what has been reported to the Germans is true. Soon after he left this place—Hangodi—it was apparently attacked and destroyed and the missionaries all killed—except, of course, the lady who left with him. Ill-natured people will naturally ask why he did not stay and defend the station.It is only two days off Christmas, and I can picture to myself the happy preparations going on at Spilsbury—the carols the village children are practising for Christmas Day, and the Christmas-tree which I am sure Mrs. Molyneux and your daughter are preparing for their reward.These ridiculous sentimental Germans are, of course, getting up Christmas-trees, too, and are practising Carols to be sung round them, though the town is still more or less besieged on the landward side.Whoandwhatwas Good King Wenceslaus, and why should we sing about him at Christmastide? There is no library here, except the one they have at the French Mission, and that mentions nothing about Germany.We are told here that a certain Captain Wissmann will soon arrive with a large force of Sudanese soldiers to take command and finish the Arabs.Still no news of Stanley, except it be the wildest, most improbable rumours. If he really emerges from the heart of Africa it will only be—I fear—to fall into some ambush laid by the Arabs.With our united kindest regards and best wishes for 1889,Believe me, dear Mr. Molyneux,Yours sincerely,EMILIA BAZZARD.Roger and Lucy reached Unguja in their Arab dau at the end of December, when the Europeans therefore were recovering from the surfeit of Christmas junketings and preparing for another round of New Year festivities, but a little bit peevish and liverish in the interval. The arrival of the British Consul for Zangia was not unexpected, because telegraphic news of his emergence from the interior had already reached the British Agency. In the afternoon of December 29th he walked into the office of the Agency and reported himself to Sir Godfrey Dewburn...."Ah! mydearBrentham,howare you?Whata time you must have had, to be sure! We all gave you up for lost, or thought you had gone in search of Stanley or Emin, or were off to attack the Mahdi. Well: and how is the fair companion of your travels, Mrs.—Mrs. ... er ..."Brentham: "Mrs. John Baines? She is, I believe, at Mr. Callaway's at the present moment. I advised her to go there as he is Agent here for their Mission, and would probably have definite news about—about—the attack on her husband's station ... and the results. Have you heard anything, Sir?"Sir Godfrey: "Nothing more than the rumour that after you left it was attacked, and, I think, all the Whites were killed ..."At this moment a clerk comes in and says: "This is a note with an enclosure, Sir Godfrey, from Mr. Callaway." Sir Godfrey asks Brentham to be seated and hastily runs his eye over a very long communication. Five minutes elapse. Then whilst he is still reading, another door leading to the residential part of the Agency opens and there appears a handsome woman of middle age, with the stamp of elegance and fashion upon her, dressed in some agreeable adaptation of an Englishwoman's dress for the tropics. She says, "Godfrey, my dear, tea's ready and as you don't like it drawn or cold I thought if I came myself—but I see you have a visitor....""Oh! Ah! ... Yes.... To be sure.... Er.... Brentham, this is Lady Dewburn—" (They shake hands. Lady Dewburn looks him over approvingly.) "You'd better come in and have tea with us and then we can talk over this extraordinary communication of Callaway's. It couldn't have come more appropriately. Evidently it must have been brought by your dau. It's been sent down by some Arab and it is all about the attack on the station where these missionary friends of yours were living. It seems they were not all killed, two of 'em at any rate ... though I think the husband of your lady friendwas.... But come along and we'll have a confab all about it. The Bazzards are over at your Consulate on the mainland, so whilst you're here you'd better take possession of their quarters. The golden-haired Emily says she left it in apple-pie order when she departed for Medina.... This way ... would you like to wash your hands first? You look quite the Wild Man of Borneo, and I don't wonder....Musthave had a beastly time.... I should suggest a whisky and soda first and tea afterwards...."Lucy meantime was reading Ann Anderson's letter, given in a previous chapter. She had been placed once more in the bedroom she had occupied in Mr. Callaway's house before her marriage, and shuddered at the memories it enshrined. Dear, kind Mrs. Stott was far away in the Happy Valley ... and she could never again hear John's voice calling to her from the courtyard under the great fig-trees that the Sultan's carriage was waiting hard-by to take them for a drive; or making some other proposition which she probably snubbed in fretfulness.She was consumed with remorse. Ann's statement that in his last agonies, dying with poisoned blood, he had only thought and spoken ofher, made her heart ache, almost literally—the aching of unshed tears over the irrevocable. She had not been unfaithful to him in body; but in mind, in desire,yes: from the day of the marriage onwards, and never more so than from the day of her departure from Hangodi. She knew she had hoped then that somehow this departure, this desertion of John when danger was approaching—might be the beginning of her severance from him, and lead to her union with Roger. Tohimat any time during the longsafarishe would have surrendered herself....Yet though her upper consciousness—the "speaking to one's self" (which we almost do sometimes aloud, as if to an audience that may register our words and resolves)—asserted that theonlyreparation shecouldmake wasneverto see Roger again—(what a mercy he had behaved better than she had done!)—her innermost intention was to stay on in Unguja on some pretext or other, in the faint hope he might ...might... "do the right thing," as Ann had put it ... might marry her. If he wouldonlydo that her whole remaining life should beone long atonementto John. She wouldneverforget him and his unselfish love of a shallow, ungrateful woman.Mr. Callaway had hinted she might like to take the next steamer home: there was one going in a week—back to England. But how could she go back ... and face Mrs. Baines ... and live on her parents? John had probably no money to leave her; the Mission, after so short a term of married life, would certainly give her no pension ... why should it? The post of National school-teacher at Aldermaston was long ago filled up. And could she even resume her life there? At no great distance was Engledene, with Lord and Lady Silchester. Lady Silchester she vaguely dreaded as a person who might mock at her.—She must have heard something about her from Captain Brentham. What—what—whatwas she to do? Insist on remaining out in Africa and rejoin the Mission? And work under Ann? The thought of the altered circumstances repelled her. Who would carenowif she were ill? She had had several illnesses and many fits of malaise—and tears of self-pity now ran down her cheeks. And howgoodanduncomplaining——here choking sobs, hiccups, almost a loud wailing intervened—dear John had been. The cups of broth he had brought to her bedside, the little meals to tempt her appetite.... And Roger? ... The equal solicitude—the interesthehad shown, even in her whims!
ANN ANDERSON.
P.S. I ought perhaps to be more business-like, in spite of feeling so ill, in case there is any trouble about wills and say that their names wereThomas Aldrich BayleyandJohn Bainesand that they died as near as I can reckon on October 29th, 1888. I haven't found any wills, but I am trying to get their effects together, though of course there is great confusion after the looting. I've also written a note for old Mrs. Bayley.
From Mrs. Anderson, E.A.M., to Mrs. John Baines,c/o Mr. Callaway, Agent, East African Mission,Unguja.
November, 1888.
DEAR LUCY,—
I am beginning to write this as near as I can guess November 15, but I've got out in my dates and no wonder. I've also got a broken head—I expect a touch of concussion besides a scalp wound—and it is simple agony to write for long. My eyes hurt so. I must however try to tell you—and John's mother—what has happened, so I shall write a little every day if I am fit to and send these letters to the coast by the first chance. Ali bin Ferhani thinks he can manage a messenger later on who would cross into the British "sphere." I expect you got my first message sent by the Masai? In case you didn't or in case something happens to me and I can't finish a long letter, I'll tell you the plain facts first:John's dead, Bayley's dead, Josiah's dead. Anderson and I are wounded. I'm nearly well. The station is only partially destroyed. Now you know the worst.
When I returned here from Burungi it was about the tenth of October, so far as we could keep count. John was very angry with me at first, for leaving you and for coming to live with three men and I a single woman. I well-nigh lost patience with him. But I said, Well ifthat'sall I'll marry one of you, I'll marry Ebenezer if he'll have me. Ebenezer Anderson didn't look overjoyed, but John said: That's all right; you came out to marry him, so the Mission expected, and you're only now fulfilling the contract. All right, I said, you're a minister of the Gospel, you could marry us at home, so you can do it here, only it won't be legal till we're re-married at the Consulate. But it'll be a marriage in God's eyes, which is the great thing. I felt reckless about it somehow. Of course I'm not going to live with Eb until all this trouble's over and everything is legal. Well, after that was done with, the country round seemed to be getting jumpy and Mbogo sent to say the Ruga-ruga under that Devil, Ayub, were coming to attack us, coming with lots of men and guns. So we sent out word to the Masai, and they turned up well. About three hundred spears. But after a bit they got tired of waiting, so went off somewhere else to do some raiding on their own account.
Towards the end of October—perhaps it was the 28th—no sooner was our first bell rung for dressing—half-past five—than we heard the most unearthly yelling and a tremendous firing of guns. I just got my clothes and boots on anyhow and the men turned out in shirts and trousers and with their boots unlaced. The bullets were flying like hail above the stockade, first of all too high. We dared not go to peep through for fear of being shot. Well, John didn't lose his head one bit. He gave out the Sniders to all our Walunga who could use them, and he and Bayley and Anderson took up the posts they had settled beforehand.
Then the Ruga-ruga made a rush almost up to the ditch which they seemed not to expect, and John and the men let them have it. Five or six were killed. After that Mbogo's Walunga came up and took them on the flank with guns and spears, and they didn't like it at all and withdrew for a spell. But I can't tell you everything—Perhaps some day I will if you ever care to hear it—I've got to write to John's mother as well as you.
The fighting in the afternoon was chiefly between the Ruga-ruga and Mbogo's villages. I suppose they thought they'd better finishthemoff before they came again to us. They drove Mbogo's people out of all their villages except the big one near us, where Mbogo lives. This was higher up, and Mbogo and John had worked at its fortification on Captain Brentham's plan—it turned out to be much more easily defended than our place. Fortunately also the Ruga-ruga and the Arabs don't like fighting at night—Oh my headache, I must leave off for a bit....
Well, during that night we worked like Trojans—Who were the Trojans and why did they work hard? You ought to know with your superior education. We dug out a square pit in the middle of the station and lined it with dry grass. In it we arranged chairs and mattresses so that we could rest and sleep here out of reach of the bullets. We also turned the Chapel into a living-house and store, because its brick walls and iron roof made it secure against fire and fairly safe from bullets.
On the second day the Ruga-ruga, led on by Ayub, attacked us on the west side, where our stockade was weakest and where we were overlooked a little by that mound we used to call the Snakes's Hill. Brother Bayley was standing talking to me about some dressings he wanted for Josiah Briggs who had been shot in the foot, when suddenly he uttered a shriek, whirled round and fell at my feet. He died a few minutes afterwards. John was so infuriated at his death that in spite of my shouts to be careful, he climbed up to a look-out post and fired his double-barrelled sporting rifle at a group of Ruga-ruga on Snakes's Hill. Whilst he was stooping to reload a poisoned arrow struck him on the chest and penetrated his lung. A good many of the Ruga-ruga were Manyema savages, slaves of the Arabs, and they fought with bows and poisoned arrows. John scrambled down somehow on to the ground. Ebenezer Anderson helped me to carry him into the pit shelter and there we undressed him. He was streaming with blood and coughing up blood and fast losing consciousness. Somehow or other—oh, what a time it was!—we got the arrow-head out of the wound. I don't know even now how, for we were both of us bunglers and it had got partly wedged in the ribs. And we had to cut the poor dear about. Fortunately we had Bayley's instruments down with us in this pit. But I can't go into all these details. Shall I ever get this letter finished?
Whilst we were attending to John we heard a tremendous shouting. It was the Humba war song—the Masai, you know. They had come at last to our assistance and taken the Ruga-ruga rather by surprise. But just before they made their rush up the hill, the Ruga-ruga had contrived to shoot arrows with flaming cotton soaked in oil on to our thatched roofs. Fire was spreading from building to building except the Chapel and the store. My Big-geru had lost their heads. Up to that time they had been so good. Our Walunga were trying to open the doors of the stockade and dash out into the open country. Then the Ruga-ruga would have broken in and all would have been up with us. Fortunately the charge of the Masai came at that very moment, when I was beginning to doubt if God had not forgotten us. They killed lots of the Ruga-ruga and would hack off their heads and throw them back into our stockade.
Then the Ruga-ruga seemed to get reinforcements from the Ugogo direction—quite a large body of men, they say, led by two Arabs—the two Arabs whom John had got expelled a year ago by Mbogo for trading in slaves. They had got a small cannon and its noise and the landing of a stone cannon ball in the middle of a party of Masai gave them a fright, so that all of the Masai drew off from near our station and ran round to the high ground behind Mbogo's town. Once more it seemed as though nothing could save us. The Ruga-ruga fired stone balls at our stockade and seemed making up their minds to a rush.
Ebenezer was just splendid at this time. I'm not sorry now I agreed to marry him, though the poor dear is still pretty bad and hardly right in his mind yet. But just at this critical moment he and Josiah and five of our men who knew how to handle guns kept up such a fire with the rifles that they shot down several of the big men among the enemy. Then poor Josiah was shot in the stomach and died an hour or two afterwards. Ebenezer got a splinter of wood in his eye—through a cannon ball striking a post near him, and he was put out of action for a bit. Meantime nothing more happened. There was a lull. The Ruga-ruga drew off out of sight.
I could think of nothing but John all this time, though I had a feeling of being stunned and hurt myself. He recovered consciousness and talked of no one but you. I think he thought you were with him all the time, and I confessthathurt me. It was Lucy my darling, my own true wife—and I wondered whether youwere—and Lucy you've come back and now we'll go home together.... He didn't mention my nameonce, and I can't remember that he said a word about God. Perhaps he didn't know he was dying. Towards the last his body swelled dreadfully and he sank into a stupor. He must have died just about sunset. When he was going I seemed to be going too. I suppose I fainted, for when one of my Big-geru came down into the pit with some broth she'd made she set up a howling and a yelling saying we were both dead, that Bwana Fulata, as they called John, had taken me with him.
My girls undressed me and found then that I had been wounded all the time. A slug or a rusty nail fired out of one of the guns had ripped across my shoulders and the back of my head and I'd never noticed it. It must have been when Eb and I were helping John down into the pit—I thought some one then had given me a push. And while I sat beside John the blood had soaked all the back of my bodice and caked quite hard. It's left a kind of blood-poisoning, but I'm getting over it. Only it causes these awful headaches. And poor Eb before the fighting finished got hit in the arm, and then from our clumsy attempts to extract the iron filings which had struck him he got blood-poisoning too, much worse than me. I can't say what his temperature went up to because I can't find any of our clinical thermometers, but to judge from his ravings it must have been pretty high.
In the night following that second day, Mbogo came with a lot of his headmen and took us three away and all our Big-geru to inside his own village and put us in his women's quarters.He'sa white man if you like, under his skin. He was afraid we might all be burnt to death by the fire spreading inside our station. So we should have done. I lost my senses that night from weakness or shock or something. When I came to again I could hardly move my head for pain. But my girls bathed me and gave me wonderful potions of their own making and I was able to sit up. Mbogo came in, but spoke behind the door for modesty. What do you think of that in a black savage? A "Mshenzi"! Because he thought I might be undressed. But he said in Swahili: "Fear no more. Your friends are coming."
The next morning I heard that Ali bin Ferhani, who'd been a friend of John's—you remember?—had come with a big party of his followers, and hearing he was on his way the Ruga-ruga had bolted because they all respect him as a "Sheikh." He says he is going to stop here with his men till peace comes, or at any rate till white people take command here.
Your Masai messengers came two days after Ali bin Ferhani had arrived, and I wrote with great difficulty the message I sent you and got the Big-geru to do it up for me. Some of them write quite nicely themselves now, but only in Kagulu.
There's lots and lots more I could tell you if we ever meet again or I ever have time and plenty of paper. After the Ruga-ruga were gone and the fires were beaten out my Big-geru searched in the Chapel and the ruins of the school houses and found three copy-books and a stone bottle of ink and some pens. I've used nearly a copy-book each for you and John's mother and a bit of a one writing to Mr. Callaway and a short note to Mr. Bayley's mother. I haven't made a proper search yet, but I can't find any will left by John. I don't suppose he had much to leave you.
You'd better go now and marry your Captain. It's the least he can do after compromising you, whether it was his fault or not. You never loved John as he deserved to be loved and you did wrong to become engaged to him, as his mother always said. If you hadn't been there he'd have married me. And we should have been happy as happy because I'd have slaved for him. I loved him from the time we first met, because he was kind and polite to me even though I was not well favoured. He never laughed at my hymns as you used to do. They may have been rubbish, but I meant well. In those days I was that religious it had to come out somehow. I said I loved the Lord and I did—I thought. I ain't so sure about it now. His ways are trulypast finding outand I've given up trying, though I shall stick to Mission work for John's sake. John would have said the coming of Ali bin Ferhani was providential, but why couldn't Providence have acted a bit sooner and saved John and Brother Bayley? I suppose we shall know some day....
Well, good-bye, Lucy. Let me have a line to say you got this packet. I've no envelope to put it in.
I was going to finish up with Yours in the love of Jesus, but I really don't know....
ANN ANDERSON.
P.S. If you ever get to England and back Reading way, give my love to the Miss Calthorps and go in and see my Uncle at the shop and say I'm trying to do my duty out here and he isn't to bother. I think perhaps you'd better not go near Mrs. Baines—John's mother. You never know how she'll take things. She was thatseton John.
December1.
Ali bin Ferhani's pretty sure to-day he can get these letters through, so off this goes. I forgot to say that we're going to bury John and Mr. Bayley side by side in the pit we dug in the middle of the station. Eb is not in a fit state to be consulted, though his temperature seems going down. But I've decided for him. As soon as I can get about without too much aches and pains I shall see it done. If you get home you might communicate with the East African Mission and arrange for a Stone to be sent out to be put up over the grave. Somehow it seems to me John wants to be buried there. It may bring good luck to Hangodi.
ANN.
CHAPTER XIII
THE RETURN TO UNGUJA
Up the scarcely-discernible path they climbed, leaving the Happy Valley behind them; over the foothills and under cliff at the base of the northern escarpment, where the gaily flowering bushes in their early spring display gave way to tall forest trees, hung with lianas. The black Colobus monkeys with their white-plumed tails chattered and showed their teeth and flopped from branch to branch in the leafy canopy, not used to this tumultuous invasion of their solitudes. Then suddenly the escarpment rose like the wall of a Babel towering into Heaven. How could any way for human beings walking on two legs be found up these precipices? But despite its savagery there is scarcely one of Africa's fastnesses that has not been trodden by man, and although the practised route into the Happy Valley was from the south, and though its encompassing walls of cliff on either side and at the northern end of its lake seemed impassable, there were ways up and over them known to the Masai and Hamitic and Nilotic peoples of this sequestered rift valley.
Up some suchVia malathe Masai guides were now leading Brentham's caravan, with little concern for the trepidation it caused. The white man and woman and the silently suffering Goanese cook had been obliged to descend from their donkeys and trudge with the porters. The donkeys, in fact, were sent to the rear of the procession, and Brentham walked in front with the guides and a few disencumbered porters to help Lucy over an ascent which would have been thought rough climbing in the Alps, and here had to be made without any paraphernalia of ropes and irons.
Lucy sometimes had to shut her eyes and hold her body rigidly pressed against the wall of rock that she might recover from vertigo and continue with shaking legs her ascent of a twisting path, sometimes only fifteen inches broad where it overhung an abyss. Roger was beside himself with anxiety. He cast about in his mind for safeguards—Ropes? But they had none. Lengths of cotton cloth? But how get at them and apply them, when any extra movement might turn Lucy giddy and precipitate her into the tree-tops far below? Their taciturn Masai guides, pledged only to show them the way to Kilimanjaro, had given them no warning of what the path was like from the lake shore, between three and four thousand feet above sea level, to the top of the escarpment at seven thousand feet.
Once committed to the ascent the caravan had to continue, as there was no room in which to turn the donkeys round and descend again to the valley. All Roger could do was to insist on great deliberation in the climb and frequent halts, though this policy was not endorsed by the impatient asses behind. When the white people in front paused to negotiate some more than usually dangerous section of the path, the rest of the caravan had to pause too, the porters with their loads poised on their heads and their sinewy legs trembling with the strain, while the donkeys pranced with impatience to pass them, and nearly pushed some of them and their loads over into the gulf below.
"It's no good," Roger would say to his companion, "you can't get round this, walking upright; you must go on hands and knees andcrawlover it. Never mind your dress or your knees. If your skirt is torn I'll make you one out of buck-skin; if your knees are cut it's better than breaking your neck."
He had never lived through such a nightmare as this climb, and ran down in sweat for sheer apprehension of an irretrievable disaster. However it came to an end at last, and towards that end its difficulties were tempered by the path's entry into gorges where there were merciful bays of level ground, places to rest in and stretch oneself, to put down the loads and regain one's breath and ease one's palsied legs. From the jagged rocks grew out horizontally fleshy-leaved aloes with zebra markings of green and white, and long stalks of blood-red or orange-yellow, tubular flowers, haunted by large yellow-velvet bees with probing tongues. Huge blue-black ravens with arched bills and white collars perched on pinnacles of rock above the path, or set out to sail in circles over the gorge below, hoping no doubt some beast or human would fall and die and provide sightless eyeballs and protruding entrails for the ravens' feast.
Lucy thought of this in these silent halts—all were too exhausted to speak—and shuddered. Yet for a white woman of that period, unsuitably costumed as she was, she gave no more trouble to her male companion than she could help, uttered no futile complaints or queries. They had exchanged but little conversation during the two days which had elapsed since they received Ann Jamblin's message. John Baines's ghost, like a Banquo, came between them. Lucy was—and looked as though she was—in perfect health. Deep down within her heart she was quietly content, convinced now that somehow, some day, she would marry Roger. Equally certain was she that none of the ordinary dangers of African travel would prevent her from reaching the coast under his escort; so that he had in her a more cheerful and far less sulky or doleful companion than had accompanied the unfortunate John on his wedding tour.
After the ascent of the escarpment they camped two nights in succession in a strange region suggestive of the Moon's surface as revealed by a powerful telescope. There were the crumbling sides of craters, the cones of extinct volcanoes—extinct, perhaps; but sometimes a strange and ominous-looking white smoke or gassy vapour issued from cracks in the ground and through veins in the obsidian rocks. Vegetation was very scanty—a few yellow stalks of bamboo in the hollows; and water was scarce enough to cause anxiety and limit washing to a minimum. Yet if they could cross this dry belt of naked rock and barren mountain and the possibly waterless plain that lay in front of them, to the east there was a promise of better things. Far away, a blue pyramid seen against the morning sun, was Mount Meru, one of the great, unmistakable landmarks of East Africa. It towered fifteen thousand feet into the sky and when the sun turned to the zenith and the west they could see the peak of the pyramid was white with snow. And behind Meru in the early morning or in the early evening there came into view something at first unbelievable, a floating island in the sky, a Laputa: the great snowy dome of Kibô....
A few days of rough, silent travel—seeing no natives and very few birds and beasts—and they were in the Kisongo plains. Here it was less arid, and beneath the burnt stems of the old grass the fresh green grass was springing. The occasional scrubby trees and bushes were putting forth fresh leaves, sometimes quite red in colour, or even purplish black. Big game swarmed round them unafraid of man, inclined even to be insolent. Rhinoceroses charged the caravan and both Lucy and Roger had narrow escapes of being tossed on their horns, while Lucy was twice flung from her donkey when it bolted with terror at a tangent from the unexpected rush of the squealing monster. A Nyamwezi porter was gored and trampled, his load smashed and the caravan disorganized. Roger laid low one rhinoceros; and then, water being near, they spent all the rest of that day and the next cutting up its flesh, smoking it, drying it in the sun, and making of it a food provision greatly wanted by the porters.
This much-needed rest however brought another danger on them. The sound of rifle firing, the assemblage of vultures, the noise of the porters' excited voices attracted the attention of a large war party of Masai, trailing southward to see what was up in this rumoured war between the Arabs—or, as they called them, the "coast" people—and the White men ... troubled waters in which they might fish to advantage. Lucy was sitting in camp in as much placid enjoyment as she could feel, with the remembrance of John's death in the background. She forgot, at any rate for the moment, her remorse and her anxieties "as to what people would say." It was very pleasant to rest here and to know that she would not have to rise at five the next morning and ride nearly all day, and perhaps have another close shave from a charging rhinoceros....
Gradually there stole on her ear a sound like distant thunder. The sky was clear ... surely it couldn't be a wholeherdof rhinos, or a distant earthquake—earthquakes not being unknown in this region? Presently the Wanyamwezi looked up anxiously from their camp employments or their parcelling out of the rhinoceros meat. Roger was away, shooting more game.... There went up the fear-inspiring word: "Masai!"
Then appeared on the north a cloud of red dust and out of this emerged a small army of red-coloured men trailing their shields by lanyards, with a rumbling noise, waving long-bladed white-flashing spears, and uttering a growling chant, a war-song of bloodthirsty purport, though its words were not understood by the people in the undefended camp.
The Swahili Kiongozi fortunately was on the spot, and then and at other times never lost his head. He stood quietly beside Lucy, who was seated in her deckchair with her white umbrella to shade her from the sun. "Starehe, Bibi," he said; "usiogope; Muungu anatulinda. Hawa ndio Masai, kweli; walakini tutawashinda na akili."[#]
[#] "Be tranquil, Lady. Do not fear. God is guarding us. These indeed are Masai truly, but we shall overcome them with intelligence."
The porters just stayed where they were. To have started to run would—they knew—have been fatal. They just stood about, silent, while the advancing army—perhaps three hundred in number—suddenly halted and lay down behind their large, gaily-painted shields. The two men of the expedition who knew the Masai language drew up to the Kiongozi—unfortunately the Masai guides were away, out hunting with Roger. A hundred yards distant there stood out one superb Masai warrior, the leader of the party; a naked figure of perfect manhood, red in colour, with a naturally brown skin, raddled with ochre and powdered with the dust of the red ground. The vertical sun seemed to make a red halo round the outline of his beautiful body. He held a tuft of grass in his hand and shouted in an authoritative voice: "Tôtŏna!" (Sit down!)
At once the men of Brentham's caravan obeyed him. All sat down and plucked tufts of fresh green grass. Then the Masai spokesman advanced slowly ... wonderingly ... peeringly towards the white woman, reclining on the deck-chair. "What isthis?" he asked the headman and the two interpreters. "This," they replied, glad to get a chance of making an impression, "thisis a WHITE WOMAN of the great race of the Wa-ingrezi. Her husband is the great chief, the Balozi of the Wa-ingrezi on the coast. We come now from the Manyara country, guided by your own people, the Masai. There is war to the south, in Nguru and Ugogo, war between the Lajomba and the White men. Our Balozi is taking his wife to the coast to put her with his own people; then he will return and finish the Lajomba."
"Good," said the Masai war-captain. "We heard of this war and we are going there to see if we can join in. We hate the Lajomba."
At this moment there was a stir among the three hundred warriors sitting apart. It was caused by the approach of Brentham, filled with apprehension and anxiety as to Lucy. Unfortunately his own Masai guides belonged to a southern clan of the Masai, not on very good terms with this more northern, purer breed. So there was a ruffle of angry words as each realized the other as whilom foes. But the leader who had been sitting close to Lucy rose to his feet and spoke with a carrying voice—rather than shouted—a command and once more his warriors sat down. He then took Lucy's hand, but quite gently. His own hand had well-trimmed nails and was clean except for the red dust. He turned back her sleeve a little (she trembled, but tried to smile). Having satisfied himself that the arm was even whiter than the hand, he threw back his head and laughed a full-throated laugh, while his eyes sparkled with the wonderment of it all. Seeing her smile he looked at her with such a friendly glance that she felt completely reassured. Then he sat down again, took snuff, and was framing other questions when Roger strode up. "It is all well, master," said the headman hurriedly in Swahili.
"Why, you're holding quite a court, Lucy," said Roger, inwardly immensely relieved.
"Ye-es. But I shall beratherglad when they all go."
The Masai leader rose to his feet and held out his hand to Brentham. The latter took it and White man and Red man looked for a moment into each other's eyes. Roger, knowing something of Masai customs—was he not indeed but three or four marches from scenes of earlier exploration?—did not shrink away when the Masai captain spat on his clothing and on Lucy's dress. He knew it was intended for the friendliest of greetings, a seal on their good relations.
After that, all was boisterous good-fellowship, though the Wanyamwezi porters were careful to keep together and half carelessly to reclaim their rifles. The three hundred Masai agreed to overlook the fact that Roger's guides had belonged to a once hostile clan. And when they learnt from these men what a hunter he was and what an unerring shot, they pressed their friendship and their red presence on him. They visited his tent—they were throughout strictly honest—they sat on his bed, and he had afterwards to do without sheet and pillow case, for besides leaving red dust wherever they sat they distributed a flavour of tallow from their favourite unguent, mutton fat. They insisted on blood-brotherhood and declared they would escort the white chieftain and his lady to the coast.
As a matter of prosaic fact, they took him no farther than the base of Meru. There the rainy season began to break with vehemence. So there they left him and went off to the drier steppe country and the War in the south with its possibilities of loot.
Roger longed at this time to ascend Meru and explore its hidden wonders; and Lucy gazed with awe at the now fully displayed majesty of Kilimanjaro, rising above the watery plain of Kahe, with its dome of snow and ice, and its lesser peak of Kimawenzi.
But being short of stores they made straight for a newly-founded Evangelical Mission station, at an altitude of four thousand feet, where it was hoped Lucy might find shelter for a few days from the torrential rains, and he himself gather news about the happenings on the coast, and dispatch carriers to Mvita with messages which might be telegraphed to Unguja.
After all their adventures this seemed rather a prosaic phase in the journey, and Lucy found herself actually depressed at being once more with fellow-countrymen. There were three missionaries—a married couple and an assistant bachelor propagandist—at the station of the Evangelical Mission, but they did not seem over surprised at this arrival of a white man and woman from the unknown interior. They received Lucy's halting explanations civilly but coldly, and though they gave her a room to herself and nicely cooked meals, they seemed—to her fancy—to have purposely adopted an almost penitentiary surfeit of services and prayers.
Captain Brentham preferred to camp out at the Chief's village, two miles away. He had known this genial, old, one-eyed ruffian three years before, when he was exploring the approaches to the great Snow Mountain, and making tentative treaties to forestall the Germans. He rather ground his teeth over the changing scene. Since his first journey, missionaries, big-game sportsmen, concession hunters, had thronged into this wonderful country, and had not the slightest respect for its earliest pioneers. Already there was a large and flourishing mission station on the site of his first camp; and when on installing Lucy there he had drawn the missionaries' attention to this fact, and to his having made the site ready for them, purchased it in fact, the present occupants merely said with pursed lips, "Indeed?"; and Mrs. Missionary added primly: "Yes: weheardfrom the Chief you had stayed here, three years ago; but we preferneverto listen togossipabout white people. It is sooften ill-natured."
And so onwards to the Taita Hills and the coast. A sense of flatness, a leaking-out of all romance in their adventure. They were no longer alone. Lucy went to see Mr. Thomas at the East African Mission station in Taita. He startled her by asking cheery questions about John, his old college-mate, and supposing John was with her on thissafari. He had heard nothing about the disaster and made rather stupid and inquisitive inquiries as to the motives of her journey. Farther on, they had the misery of crossing the red Maungu desert, with its stretch of forty miles between water and water; but there was no "adventure" about this; and midway they met the caravan of a very rich Englishman with two companions, wearing single eye-glasses, who offered them champagne and soda-water at midday to relieve their thirst, and told Lucy he wasn't surprised at her travelling about with a stray Consul, as he always contended that missionaries out in Africa had a jolly good time and did themselves uncommonly well, and for his part he didn't blame her. "Gather ye roses, don't you know—while you can—or was it while you're young? And now I suppose you're on your way back to Hubby?"
The old Arab port of Mvita was not much altered since Roger had seen it last; though there was the beginning of a stir, for a British Chartered Company was preparing to make this their head-quarters. Meantime, the centre of rank and fashion, so to speak, was the British Consulate. Roger made his way here, with Lucy and Halima, while he left the bulk of his caravan encamped across the water.
His colleague, the Vice-Consul, was an ex-Naval Officer, who had given up the Navy for a while to serve in the East African Consulates, in the idea that they entailed little office work, good pay, and any amount of shooting, varied with agreeablesafarisat the expense of the Government. This particular example of his kind had been rather sharply called back to more humdrum duties and the preparation of statistics by Roger himself, when he was acting Consul-General. So now was the time to get his own back:—
"Hullo, old chap!Who'dhave thought it. Where have you sprung from? We'd all given you up for lost—thought you'd gone 'Fanti,' eloped with a missionaryess for the far interior and were founding an empire on your own...."
"I've brought here," interrupted Roger, with a set face, "Mrs. John Baines" (Lucy had retreated out of ear-shot with Halima to the verandah of the Consulate)—"Mrs. John Baines, whose husband has been killed, I fear, in the Ulunga country. I should be much obliged if you could put her up here till we can get a dau to take us over to Unguja.... As for me..."
"Aw*fully sorry old chap. *Of course, I can make room foryou... give yousomesort of a shakedown.... You're a fellowmanand you'll understand.... But the fact is I'm—I'm not—quite prepared—er—to entertain a white lady here. Bachelor establishment you know....Youtwig? ... Dare say you're fixed up just the same at—where is it? at Medina, What?"
Roger turned away angrily.
"Lucy! ... Mrs. Baines!"
"Yes, Captain Brentham."
"I'll get a boat and we'll go over to the Mission station across the Bay. I expect they'll have room—indeed they mustmakeroom—for you there till our dau is ready to sail...."
Then turning to the Vice-Consul: "Be good enough to send a cablegram to-day to the Agency at Unguja stating that H.M. Consul for Zangia arrived here this morning from the interior with Mrs. John Baines from Ulunga, and add that I shall arrive at Unguja to report as soon as I can charter a dau; unless a gun-boat comes in first. My Camp is at Kisolutini. You can send on any letters that come for me there...."
"Well, but I say..."
Roger having been joined by the wondering and disappointed Lucy, who had taken a great fancy to the picturesque Consulate, strode out with an angry face, flushed under the tan.
No return message came for him from the Agency at Unguja. And a few days afterwards he embarked with Lucy and Halima (who had already agreed to marry the Goanese cook), his Wanyamwezi porters, and a selected collection of trophies and mineralogical specimens, in an Arab dau, for the island port of Unguja. This time—December 27, 1888—Lucy was too anxious about her future to notice or to care whether it had bugs or not in its rotting timbers or its frowsy thatch.
Meantime, unfriendly forces were at work to Roger's detriment. Here is a letter which Mrs. Spencer Bazzard probably wrote to Mr. Bennet Molyneux, of the Foreign Office. (Like most of the letters appearing in this book, it is based on my deductions as to the kind of letter that would have been written under the circumstances, rather than on textual evidence):—
December23, 1888.
DEAR MR. MOLYNEUX,—
I hope you don't resent my letters. You don't answer them, but then I told you not to. I shouldn't like to be a bore to you, or for you to feel—amid your piles of work—that you had an extra letter to write to an importunate little person in far-off East Africa. I said once I should go on writing every now and again, unless you ordered me to stop. As you haven't—Well! Here is another budget of East African news.
We have had alarums and excursions, as Shakespeare says. You will see by this address that I am on the mainland with my husband. When Captain B. disappeared last September into theewigkeitthe Agency at Unguja began receiving disquieting stories as to what was taking place in his absence. He had only left an Indian clerk in charge, and complaints arose from Indian merchants and English missionaries that no one could attend to their business. So Sir G. D. thought it best to send Spence over here to take charge, and, of course, I came with him to help him to interpret.
We found everything (a month ago) in a terrible muddle. The consulate is filthily dirty, the archives are just anyhow, and Spence fears a considerable sum is missing from the Consular receipts, or else that the clerk is muddled in his accounts. But all this you will hear officially.
Meantime, we are all uneasy about Captain B.'s disappearance. He left here last August with some idea of letting the missionaries know there was danger of ah Arab attack on all white people independent of their nationality, German or English. He seems to have translated Sir G.'s brief instructions into a permission to make a vast tour of the interior—a delightful thing to do, no doubt, but not when you have a Consulate to look after. He greatly alarmed all the missionaries, and, as it appears, somewhat needlessly. Those who have their stations in Usagara and farther south are very angry with him. He arrived at their stations early in September and ordered them to retire on the coast—or at any rate send their wives and children there, as the Arabs might attack at once. And after they had obeyed him the attacks never came off! One of the missionary ladies was in a certain condition, it appears, and the hurried journey so upset her that—how shall I phrase it?—her hopes were disappointed.
He next appeared at a place called Hangodi—according to native report—and was so anxious about the safety of a fair lady there (the missionary young woman who travelled out with him and me a year and a half ago)—that he took her away with him and has seemingly gone waltzing off to the unknown with this fair charge. Quite romantic, isn't it? In this case his warning as to an impending attack seems to have been only too well founded, if what has been reported to the Germans is true. Soon after he left this place—Hangodi—it was apparently attacked and destroyed and the missionaries all killed—except, of course, the lady who left with him. Ill-natured people will naturally ask why he did not stay and defend the station.
It is only two days off Christmas, and I can picture to myself the happy preparations going on at Spilsbury—the carols the village children are practising for Christmas Day, and the Christmas-tree which I am sure Mrs. Molyneux and your daughter are preparing for their reward.
These ridiculous sentimental Germans are, of course, getting up Christmas-trees, too, and are practising Carols to be sung round them, though the town is still more or less besieged on the landward side.Whoandwhatwas Good King Wenceslaus, and why should we sing about him at Christmastide? There is no library here, except the one they have at the French Mission, and that mentions nothing about Germany.
We are told here that a certain Captain Wissmann will soon arrive with a large force of Sudanese soldiers to take command and finish the Arabs.
Still no news of Stanley, except it be the wildest, most improbable rumours. If he really emerges from the heart of Africa it will only be—I fear—to fall into some ambush laid by the Arabs.
With our united kindest regards and best wishes for 1889,
EMILIA BAZZARD.
Roger and Lucy reached Unguja in their Arab dau at the end of December, when the Europeans therefore were recovering from the surfeit of Christmas junketings and preparing for another round of New Year festivities, but a little bit peevish and liverish in the interval. The arrival of the British Consul for Zangia was not unexpected, because telegraphic news of his emergence from the interior had already reached the British Agency. In the afternoon of December 29th he walked into the office of the Agency and reported himself to Sir Godfrey Dewburn....
"Ah! mydearBrentham,howare you?Whata time you must have had, to be sure! We all gave you up for lost, or thought you had gone in search of Stanley or Emin, or were off to attack the Mahdi. Well: and how is the fair companion of your travels, Mrs.—Mrs. ... er ..."
Brentham: "Mrs. John Baines? She is, I believe, at Mr. Callaway's at the present moment. I advised her to go there as he is Agent here for their Mission, and would probably have definite news about—about—the attack on her husband's station ... and the results. Have you heard anything, Sir?"
Sir Godfrey: "Nothing more than the rumour that after you left it was attacked, and, I think, all the Whites were killed ..."
At this moment a clerk comes in and says: "This is a note with an enclosure, Sir Godfrey, from Mr. Callaway." Sir Godfrey asks Brentham to be seated and hastily runs his eye over a very long communication. Five minutes elapse. Then whilst he is still reading, another door leading to the residential part of the Agency opens and there appears a handsome woman of middle age, with the stamp of elegance and fashion upon her, dressed in some agreeable adaptation of an Englishwoman's dress for the tropics. She says, "Godfrey, my dear, tea's ready and as you don't like it drawn or cold I thought if I came myself—but I see you have a visitor...."
"Oh! Ah! ... Yes.... To be sure.... Er.... Brentham, this is Lady Dewburn—" (They shake hands. Lady Dewburn looks him over approvingly.) "You'd better come in and have tea with us and then we can talk over this extraordinary communication of Callaway's. It couldn't have come more appropriately. Evidently it must have been brought by your dau. It's been sent down by some Arab and it is all about the attack on the station where these missionary friends of yours were living. It seems they were not all killed, two of 'em at any rate ... though I think the husband of your lady friendwas.... But come along and we'll have a confab all about it. The Bazzards are over at your Consulate on the mainland, so whilst you're here you'd better take possession of their quarters. The golden-haired Emily says she left it in apple-pie order when she departed for Medina.... This way ... would you like to wash your hands first? You look quite the Wild Man of Borneo, and I don't wonder....Musthave had a beastly time.... I should suggest a whisky and soda first and tea afterwards...."
Lucy meantime was reading Ann Anderson's letter, given in a previous chapter. She had been placed once more in the bedroom she had occupied in Mr. Callaway's house before her marriage, and shuddered at the memories it enshrined. Dear, kind Mrs. Stott was far away in the Happy Valley ... and she could never again hear John's voice calling to her from the courtyard under the great fig-trees that the Sultan's carriage was waiting hard-by to take them for a drive; or making some other proposition which she probably snubbed in fretfulness.
She was consumed with remorse. Ann's statement that in his last agonies, dying with poisoned blood, he had only thought and spoken ofher, made her heart ache, almost literally—the aching of unshed tears over the irrevocable. She had not been unfaithful to him in body; but in mind, in desire,yes: from the day of the marriage onwards, and never more so than from the day of her departure from Hangodi. She knew she had hoped then that somehow this departure, this desertion of John when danger was approaching—might be the beginning of her severance from him, and lead to her union with Roger. Tohimat any time during the longsafarishe would have surrendered herself....
Yet though her upper consciousness—the "speaking to one's self" (which we almost do sometimes aloud, as if to an audience that may register our words and resolves)—asserted that theonlyreparation shecouldmake wasneverto see Roger again—(what a mercy he had behaved better than she had done!)—her innermost intention was to stay on in Unguja on some pretext or other, in the faint hope he might ...might... "do the right thing," as Ann had put it ... might marry her. If he wouldonlydo that her whole remaining life should beone long atonementto John. She wouldneverforget him and his unselfish love of a shallow, ungrateful woman.
Mr. Callaway had hinted she might like to take the next steamer home: there was one going in a week—back to England. But how could she go back ... and face Mrs. Baines ... and live on her parents? John had probably no money to leave her; the Mission, after so short a term of married life, would certainly give her no pension ... why should it? The post of National school-teacher at Aldermaston was long ago filled up. And could she even resume her life there? At no great distance was Engledene, with Lord and Lady Silchester. Lady Silchester she vaguely dreaded as a person who might mock at her.—She must have heard something about her from Captain Brentham. What—what—whatwas she to do? Insist on remaining out in Africa and rejoin the Mission? And work under Ann? The thought of the altered circumstances repelled her. Who would carenowif she were ill? She had had several illnesses and many fits of malaise—and tears of self-pity now ran down her cheeks. And howgoodanduncomplaining——here choking sobs, hiccups, almost a loud wailing intervened—dear John had been. The cups of broth he had brought to her bedside, the little meals to tempt her appetite.... And Roger? ... The equal solicitude—the interesthehad shown, even in her whims!