The party, when sighted, was marching very slowly, following a native path that wound through dense bush, and crossed the track between the plantation and the nullah. Tom calculated that if he started at once he would arrive at a position where he might ambush the enemy just before they reached the road to Bismarckburg. With his untrained men he could not risk a stand-up fight; but he hoped that the advantage of surprise, if the patrol was really so small as the scouts declared, would enable him to achieve his end without fighting.
Selecting twenty of the men who had been with him in his little action in the forest, he led them out, with Mwesa, and followed rapidly on the heels of the scouts. In about an hour and a half they came to the spot he had fixed on, and while he posted the men in the bush on both sides of the track, he sent the scouts to worm their way eastward and watch for the enemy. The interval before they returned was long enough for the men and himself to regain breath. It was perhaps half an hour later when they came quietly through the brushwood with news that the enemy were in sight.
At the place where Tom had posted himself the track ran fairly straight for more than a hundred yards, and he was able to take stock of the party with which he had to deal while it was still distant. First came two unarmed natives, evidently guides; then a German non-commissioned officer; behind him two German privates, followed by a string of negroes. The tail of the party was out of sight.
Seeing how few were the armed men at the head of the column, Tom instantly resolved on a bold course. His own men were concealed among the bushes; they had their orders. He stepped out on to the track, accompanied only by Mwesa, just before the negro guides reached him.
They halted in surprise, and looked round towards the German thirty yards behind.
"Tell them to come on, Mwesa," said Tom.
The boy called to them, and they at once hastened on. Tom spoke to them in German, but they evidently did not understand him. Meanwhile the German sergeant had quickened his step, and hearing German on the lips of the stranger, he approached unsuspiciously, halted, clicked his heels together, and waited, as a well-trained subordinate will, for his superior to address him.
"Halt your men, Sergeant," said Tom.
The sergeant started. Quicker-witted than the sergeant whom Tom had so easily disposed of at the plantation, he detected a foreign accent in the stranger"s speech. Tom gave him no time to consider.
"Your life depends on your keeping cool," he went on quickly. "Don"t make a sound. Keep your arms still and face me. The bush on both sides is lined with troops who will fire at the slightest hostile movement.
Halt your men."
The sergeant hesitated for the fraction of a second, then called to the privates a few yards away to pa.s.s word along the column.
"They are halted," he said; "but there is something I don"t understand here." He looked incredulously around him. "I don"t know who you are, but if you are bluffing----"
"Let me convince you."
Tom parted a clump of thick bush on one side of the track, disclosing a negro kneeling, with his rifle pointed straight at the German. In a bush on the other side, nearly opposite, he showed another man. Moving half-a-dozen paces down the track he revealed yet another man, finger on trigger, to the astonished sergeant.
"Your position is quite hopeless, you see," Tom went on. "You had better surrender quietly. Give me your revolver."
The German threw a glance over his shoulder at the privates, standing at the head of the column of negroes.
"At once! Don"t hesitate!" said Tom. "Your men will be shot down if they attempt resistance. Your revolver."
The man handed over the weapon sullenly.
"Now tell those men of yours to come forward one at a time and lay their rifles down on the track in front of me. Don"t say another word."
The sergeant gave the order. The men, with a look of mingled curiosity and wonderment, advanced, laid down their rifles, and at Tom"s command walked a few yards along the track, then halted.
"Mwesa, go and tell those natives to come past me, slowly, and then turn into the bush and wait. Tell them nothing else.... You have men at the rear?" he added to the sergeant.
"Yes."
"Who are they?"
"Askaris."
"How many?"
"Twenty."
"Then when they come up behind the negroes you will give them the same order as you gave your Germans. Stand here by me."
The negroes, all strong young men, defiled past Tom in silence, their eyes wide with anxiety and dread. He counted sixty. In their rear came the twenty askaris. One by one they laid down their rifles and pa.s.sed on, looking with surprise at their officer"s glowering face.
"That is all?" asked Tom.
"All."
"Then we will go. Give me your whistle."
The sergeant unslung the whistle from his shoulder. Tom blew a shrill note, and his men started out of the bush and lined up on the track. The German cursed when he saw that they were less in number than his own men; Tom felt that he would have writhed had he known that none of them was trained. At the present moment he was lost in wonderment at the fact of a young white man, in German territory but clearly not a German, having at his command negroes who were just as clearly not German askaris, but possessed German rifles.
The order of the march home was quickly arranged. Half Tom"s men went ahead, carrying the captured rifles. They were followed by the liberated natives, who, imagining that they had only exchanged one servitude for another, trudged on in gloomy silence. Tom"s motive in not dismissing them at once was to link them to the British cause by means of the impression which he hoped they would gain from his defensive measures at the nullah, and he knew that they would break away the moment they realised that they were free. Behind them marched the askaris, then five more of his riflemen escorting the German privates.
He kept the sergeant by his side, and the rear was brought up by Mwesa and the rest of his men.
The capture of a German prisoner gave Tom an opportunity of learning something of the course of events on the frontier. He considered how best to open up the subject with the sergeant, and decided that perfect frankness would probably serve him best.
"You are naturally surprised, Sergeant," he said, "at finding an Englishman on your side of the border."
"An Englishman!" growled the sergeant. "I thought you were a Belgian."
"Indeed! Are you at war with Belgium too?"
"There is no Belgium. It belongs now to the Kaiser."
"Dear me! I understand that Paris has fallen: you have therefore France and Britain against you; but Belgium--did she break her neutrality?
"I don"t know anything about that; but I do know that Belgium and half France are now in our hands; your Navy is defeated; and London will soon be at our mercy."
"You make me tremble! And what about Abercorn?"
The sergeant blinked.
"London is rather far away," Tom went on. "I am much more deeply interested at present in places nearer at hand. You were going to attack Abercorn, I understood. No doubt you took it as easily as your troops took Paris."
The German"s frown relieved Tom of his anxiety. Smiling, he continued:
"Come now, Sergeant, you may as well tell the truth, you know. You have nothing to lose by it. You found Abercorn a harder nut than you expected, eh?"
"You seem to know a lot," said the German gloomily. "Did you come across from Rhodesia?"
"No: I came from Kigoma on the _Hedwig von Wissmann_."
"Ach!"
"What is the matter?"
"There are always misfortunes; we can"t win everything."