The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
gunmen-porters of the stalwart Unyamwezi breed over to
Medinat-al-barkah--the "Town of Blessings," on the Zangian coast:
formerly the chief shipping port of slaves and now the head-quarters of
the German Chartered Company which had succeeded to the authority of the
Sultan of Unguja.
A few months afterwards, when he had organized a Consulate and an Indian
clerical staff in an adapted, cleansed, and tidied Arab house, he
received an urgent and confidential communication from Sir Godfrey:
"The F.O. is much perturbed by the reports of Arab risings against the
German Company. Mvita seems to be quiet under Mackenzie. The various
missionary societies are clamouring for information and some indication
that H.M.G. realizes the seriousness of the situation. I have been
instructed semi-officially by H. and M. that you should at once proceed
inland with a sufficiently strong caravan and visit the missionary
stations within a radius of--say--three hundred miles of Medina,
assisting the white people to repair to safe positions on the coast,
especial care being taken to bring away their women and children. You
know far better what to do than I, who am a new comer to East Africa.
So, _carte blanche_. Do your best. Good luck and chin-chin.
"Lady Dewburn, who has just come out, is dying to put her feet on a
maned lion skin when she gets out of bed. So if you've any luck
shooting, 'Then you'll remember me!'
"Yours,
"GODFREY DEWBURN."
In consequence of these instructions you can picture such events as
these occurring at the end of September, 1888.
Lucy Baines, attended by Josiah Briggs's wife Halima, was taking the air
on the outskirts of Hangodi. She had had a baby in the previous July,
and was still weak and anaemic. The confinement had been a difficult
one, as it was a little premature, owing to Lucy having been frightened
by a hyena. A medical missionary had been in hurried attendance, and
kind Mrs. Stott had come fifty miles to act as an amateur midwife. But
the child died soon after its birth, and Lucy, for the first fortnight,
had been delirious. If her child had lived her whole outlook might have
changed and brightened. As it was----
John had rigged up a kind of machila--I can't explain a second time what
a machila is--a compromise between a palanquin and a hammock--and this
could be taken out on short journeys by two strong porters. With this
and her pupil-teacher, Halima, in attendance, Lucy was wont to make
little afternoon pilgrimages along the red paths on the outskirts of the
Hangodi plateau.
At this and that shady spot she would leave her machila languidly, sit
on a camp stool and pick flowers and examine them: or she would practise
her Swahili and Kagulu with Halima and question this woman--greatly
devoted to her--on native manners and customs, or native legends. The
two porters would squat at a respectful distance, or if told they would
not be wanted for half an hour, would stroll off to the nearest native
village.
On this particular day in September they came running back in great
excitement to say a white man's _safari_ was approaching. It could be
seen in the plain below ... quite a small army of black men headed by
one white man, coming in single file over the burnt grass.
Rumour had flown ahead of it ... as it did in Africa, in pre-telegraph
days. The white man was a great English consul coming to make a treaty
with Ulunga, or coming to fight the Arabs, or to turn the Wa-dachi out
of the country and to place Nguru under the Woman chief of the English.
Mbogo the chief had already run up his English flag....
Lucy's heart stood still and she sat on her camp stool too much overcome
to remain standing. Could it ... be ... Roger?
Halima fumbled in her basket and produced a restorative. Presently Lucy
rose to her feet and said in a decisive tone:
"Take me to meet the white man...."
They met about three miles from the Mission Station. Seeing the machila
approaching, heralded by the boastful singing of its carriers, anxious
to do their mistress honour, Brentham had got off his riding donkey and
handed it to a follower carrying his sporting rifle.. He walked to meet
the unknown person swaying in the jaunty advance of the delighted
porters. The machila stopped. Lucy emerged from it, then overcome with
dizziness sank down by the wayside. Quickly he had raised her,
unthinkingly and instinctively their arms were round each other.... "My
dearest girl! You are safe then? Your station has not been attacked?"
"My darling _Roger_! you have come for me ... take, oh, _take_ me away!"
Thus they spoke instinctively in continuation of thoughts long
sanctioned by their inner consciousness, but never outwardly expressed.
There were no listeners who could understand what the avowals meant.
Nevertheless they hastened to resume a correct parlance as between old
acquaintances and nothing more.
"I think," said Lucy, "you had better send one or two spare men on ahead
with a brief note to my husband saying you will be arriving at our
station in about an hour, that you met me on the road and will bring me
on with you. This will give our people time to--to--plan where to put
you all. There won't be room for everybody inside the stockade. Then
when you've sent off the note we can rest for half an hour or so in that
piece of shade, where there are the euphorbias and the fig trees, and I
shan't feel quite so shaky. I've been rather ill--I'll tell you all
about it when you've sent off the note."
Roger scribbled the message on a leaf out of his road-book.
"There is our station," said Lucy, "about two miles off, on that great
spur that comes out from the mountain. You can see the white houses and
the red brick chapel and the glint of the corrugated iron. And away to
the--well, I s'pose it's the south--is the chief Mbogo's principal
village--all those little brown huts...."
The two impatient messengers scarcely waited for this information but
bounded off to deliver their message and find some resting-place for the
caravan, extenuated as it was with the long, hot march.
Lucy took Roger's arm--how it thrilled her, how like an impossible dream
come true!--and followed by Halima and the machila reached the patch of
blue shade made by a group of candelabra euphorbias and fig trees with
thick glossy leaves and pendent branches. The ground underneath was
absolutely clear of any cover for snakes and was whitish with the ashes
of many a cooking fire, lit here by caravans arriving at evening and
preferring to postpone their interviews with Chief Mbogo--sometimes a
rapacious gentleman over his dues--till the morning light.
Whilst Brentham's cook was preparing a cup of tea, Lucy poured forth
tumultuously her story of the chief happenings of the past six months.
Brentham said in reply that she must have gone through a beastly time;
but she might now take heart. He had come with definite instructions to
take her away to the coast and her husband too, if the men-folk agreed.
"Any other English woman at the station?" he inquired.
Lucy told him there was Ann Jamblin, but did not think the present
moment the right one in which to expatiate on the irritating side of
Ann's disposition. Moreover now that she was going back to England, why
run down Ann? If Ann stayed behind, as she was convinced she would do,
she might be a great comfort to John. "Don't think it odd of me,"
finished Lucy, "if when we reach the station I go straight to my house
and to bed. I feel really too much shaken to take part in any
discussion. I would much sooner you settled everything with John. I'm
sure he won't oppose my going."
When Brentham reached Hangodi he was introduced to Ann, who listened to
his polite phrases rather impatiently and seemed a little incredulous
about any danger from Arab attacks. What exercised her mind, she said
frankly, was how to keep the hundred men of his caravan from too close
contact with her twenty or thirty maidens who lived in--what it was
hoped was--"maiden meditation, fancy free," within the stockaded
boundaries of the Mission Station. The local young manhood of the
near-by Ulunga villages was supposed to stand too much in awe of Ann and
to obey too strictly their chief's prohibition of interference with the
young women of the Mission to annoy them with any amorous advances; but
already Ann thought she had seen bold glances cast at her pupils--whom
she was training to be Christian wives of Christian husbands--by the
love-famished stalwarts of the caravan; and a coy recognition of this
admiration on the part of the plump "Big-geru." To ease her
apprehensions the men were soon all drafted off to billets in the native
villages a mile away. To Brentham and his personal servants were
alotted the Boys' School and the Chapel for their accommodation, the
Consul being told that under all the circumstances of his visit there
could be no thought of sacrilege in his using the House of God as a
dwelling-place.
Brentham had told them as soon as he arrived that he was charged with
instructions to escort all the white _personnel_ of Hangodi to some safe
place on the coast whilst this war between Arabs and Germans was going
on. He had started from Medinat-al-barkah and had with great difficulty
and by making the utmost use of the British flag and of the presence of
British war vessels off the coast, pushed his way past the insurgent
Arabs and Waswahili that were attacking the German strongholds.
By forced marches he had reached the mission stations of Uluguru and
Usagara, and had advised the retreat of the older men and all the white
women towards the Kilwa coast, not at present in revolt. He left them
still undecided whether or not to take his advice, but he had furnished
them with a reinforcement of porters and arms.
There was no time to lose, so he was now hurrying on to Ulunga and Ugogo
to put the same proposition before the members of the East African
Mission, except that the safest route to the coast must now be a great
detour towards Kilimanjaro.
Whatever the men decided to do, the women should at any rate come away
with him. He would proceed westward and try to pick up the Stotts; then
with his stout-hearted Wanyamwezi soldier-porters they would all find a
way round the routes and villages dominated by the Arabs and Wangwana[#]
and reach the coast at Mvita, where there was a British Consulate and
where British gunboats were lying off the Arab town. But time was
precious. Already he had heard that bands of plundering Wangwana and
Ruga-ruga[#] were approaching Ugogo from the west.
[#] Wangwana was the general term in the East African interior by which
the "Black Arabs," the Muhammadan Arabized negroes, were known.
[#] Ruga-ruga was the name given to war-like negroes--not necessarily
Muhammadans, armed by the Arabs with flint-lock guns and sent to raid
and ravish those tribes which rebelled against the slave-traders.
"How long can you give us?" said the anguished John, torn between his
sense of duty regarding his wife and his extreme reluctance to abandon
his Mission Station to certain destruction.
"Well, not more than forty-eight hours."
"Brethren," said John, "we must meet in conference and decide this.
Sister Lucy has retired to bed--I advised her to do so. She has left it
to me to settle what she had better do. But for the rest of us, let us
meet after supper in the mess house and talk it over. You, sir," he
said, to the worn and weary-looking Brentham--who, whatever he might
appear in Lucy's eyes as paladin and parfit gentill knight, was streaked
with black and brown after having ridden and walked through the charred
herbage of the burnt plains still smoking with their dry-season bush