Settlers and Scouts: A Tale of the African Highlands

by Herbert Strang

  CHAPTER THE FIFTH--Juma takes to the Bush

  Mr. Halliday spent the next two days in surveying the neighbourhood ofMr. Gilmour's stake. The country was all that his friend had described.The soil was rich; the river, as the natives informed him, never randry, though its waters were sometimes very low; and the valley wasintersected by several smaller watercourses, which, though now dry, werefull streams in the rainy season, so that the estate would never lackirrigation except after long-continued drought. Being well satisfiedwith the locality, Mr. Halliday got his men to erect a number ofboundary posts about a rectangular area of some 1,500 acres, and thenset off on the return journey to Nairobi to lodge a claim for aGovernment grant in the office of the District Commissioner. He paidhis preliminary survey fee of seventy-five rupees; then, knowing that itwould be months before the official survey was made, he decided topurchase stores, stock, and material for building a bungalow andout-houses, and to engage porters to convey these to the spot, and acertain number of servants to staff the farm. Formal possession of theland would be granted as soon as it was certified to be actuallyoccupied and the balance of the survey fee, some two hundred rupees, waspaid; but the lease for ninety-nine years would not be made out untilthe Commissioner received proof that development had taken place, whichpractically meant the expenditure of forty times the rent, this beingtwelve cents an acre. Thus it would be about three years before Mr.Halliday was definitely accepted as a settler and leaseholder, and heimpressed upon John that they must both put their backs into the work ifthey intended to be successful.

  It was a month before the second safari was ready to start--a far moreimportant caravan than the first. To begin with, there was a largequantity of stores for the use of the white men, together with seeds,root plants, and a few apple-tree slips, which by all accounts wouldthrive. Then there was a considerable amount of thin corrugated ironfor roofing, some glass, and some ready-made window-frames, which ifmade on the spot would have involved too great an expenditure of timeand labour. There were a few simple agricultural implements which Mr.Halliday had brought from home, guessing, and rightly as it proved, thateven allowing for the cost of freight they were cheaper than they couldhave been bought in Nairobi. These included the "small holdings plough"of Ipswich, which had to be taken to pieces for convenience of transit.Mr. Halliday deplored the lack of roads and of bridges over the streams,which made it impossible to employ vehicles for the carriage of hisgoods, and prevented him from taking several pieces of machinery hewould have liked to have with him. But he purchased a few donkeys, eachof which could carry twice as much as a man.

  In addition to these articles, a large number of live-stock was includedin the caravan. It might be possible, Mr. Halliday was told, topurchase cattle and sheep from the natives in the neighbourhood of hisfarm, but he was advised to buy a good number of half-bred animals inNairobi, the native sheep and goats being woolless, and of no valueexcept for their flesh and hides. Later on, when he was fairly settled,he hoped to introduce some English stock to cross with the native.Accordingly he bought 750 sheep at an average price of six shillings ahead, a few goats, and a score of cattle, for which he paid L140.

  To carry his goods he found it necessary to engage, in addition to thedonkeys, forty porters, a few of whom he intended to keep as labourerson the farm or servants in the house, if they proved satisfactory. Ofthese forty only one, Coja the headman, had been a member of the firstexpedition, the rest of that party being unwilling to do any more workuntil they had spent their wages. Twelve of the new company wereSwahilis, the remainder Wakamba or Wakikuyu. Four of the Swahilis wereaskaris, or armed porters. Said Mohammed had done so well on the firstjourney that he was engaged permanently as cook. John declared that hisconversation was well worth his wages, but Mr. Halliday took severelypractical views of everything, and said that he didn't pay forconversation. He hired two Indian mistris for three months, at tworupees a day, to build his bungalow and do what other carpenter's workwas necessary. And since his farm was to be mainly a stock-farm, heengaged a stalwart Masai and his son, a lad of sixteen or seventeen, toassist in the herding, the Masai being a pastoral race _par excellence_.

  Mr. Halliday had not intended to increase his men's burdens on thisoccasion by "trade" goods, thinking that the friendship he had alreadysealed with the chief of the neighbouring village would obviate anyfurther dealings with the natives. But he changed his mind on theadvice of Mr. Gillespie, who represented that he might come in contactwith other tribes not so well disposed, that he might find it necessaryto purchase more sheep and cattle, especially if tick fever or someother disease broke out among his stock, and that it would be well tohave the means of purchasing ivory, if he found an opportunity, thetribes to the north of Kenya being reputed great elephant hunters.

  All being at last ready, Mr. Halliday set out on his second journey,which took him nearly four times as long as the first, owing partly to acertain turbulence among the Swahili porters, and partly to thedifficulty of driving the animals. Apart from their natural tendency tolag and to stray, it was a difficult and sometimes a perilous operationto get them across the many streams; fortunately it was the height ofthe dry season, and the depth of water insignificant. Several sheep weredrowned, some strayed and could not be recovered; one or two died ofover-marching. The donkeys also gave a good deal of trouble, having tobe unloaded at every stream, lugged across, and then loaded up again.It was a long and tiresome business each night to construct a boma ofsufficient circuit to enclose the whole of the safari, and in spite ofthis thorny fence, and watchfires kept constantly alight, a lion on oneoccasion broke in at dead of night, snapped up a sheep, and made offwith it before the alarm could be given.

  Mr. Halliday found the porters even more troublesome than the animals.It turned out that one of the Swahilis was an old rival of Coja benSelim. He was a big man named Juma, with a stronger strain of Arabblood than the rest, and he constantly disputed Coja's authority, andincited the other men to complain of their loads and their food. Mr.Halliday had to be continually on the watch, and only by dint of greatfirmness and by keeping Juma on one occasion without food for a day didhe succeed in preventing a mutiny. Juma had brought his wife with him,a very stout negress of some Bantu race; or rather, she had attachedherself to the expedition when it had marched some ten miles out ofNairobi, and resolutely refused to leave. Her presence proved to berather an advantage than otherwise, for once when Mr. Halliday had foundit necessary to give Juma a stern reprimand, the woman volubly assistedhim, demanding of her husband why he was such a fool as to endanger hispay. Juma was evidently in some awe of his spouse, and Coja told Johnprivately that she had a terrible tongue.

  At length the safari arrived at the site of the farm, and though Mr.Halliday did not flatter himself that his troubles were over, he felt agreat relief that the anxieties of the journey were a thing of the past.The first proceeding was to construct a substantial boma. Then heselected a site for his bungalow, fixing on a pleasant knoll above theriver and at a distance of about two hundred yards from it. Johnpleaded for a position nearer the river, but Mr. Halliday pointed outthat the stream was at present shrunk, and would no doubt swell to amuch greater width in the rainy season, when exhalations from it mightbe dangerous to health. He had brought a couple of tents to live inwhile the bungalow was building; his natives ran up grass huts forthemselves; and within twenty-four hours of their arrival, with thetents pitched, the huts erected, the sheep and cattle grazing, and aboma enclosing them all, the place had already begun to assume theaspect of a settlement.

  During the first night the sleep of the camp was disturbed by thedistant roaring of lions, and Mr. Halliday took turns with John towatch. They had learnt from Mr. Gillespie that the lion stalks his preyin absolute silence, so that they did not fear an actual visitationwhile the roars continued; and though the sounds came nearer towards themorning, the dread beasts made no attempt to break in. Examining theground on the following day, Mr. Hallid
ay found pug marks abouthalf-a-mile from the enclosure, and a little further away the scantyremains of a zebra. The proximity of lions was somewhat perturbing.Sometimes, as Mr. Halliday had learnt, the mere presence of man wasenough to drive them away; but if they had once tasted human flesh theyshowed extraordinary audacity and cunning in obtaining further victims.As a precaution, he caused an inner boma to be erected around the tentsand the grass huts of the men, so that if lions should break into theouter enclosure they would find another barrier between them and humanprey.

  During the daytime the building of the bungalow and the cattle-shedsproceeded apace. There was plenty of wood in the neighbourhood, and thepeople of the village beyond the river assisted in cutting andtransporting the timber in exchange for a small quantity of cloth,beads, or wire. No work could be got out of the porters, except a fewof the Wakamba, who began to prepare the ground around the bungalow forcultivation. Mr. Halliday would willingly have seen the backs of thewhole company, but Juma declared that they must rest a few days aftertheir long march before returning to Nairobi; and having no means ofexpelling them Mr. Halliday must needs submit, though he hoped theirstay would be short. Apart from other reasons why their presence wasundesirable, they consumed a prodigious amount of food, which had to bepurchased from the chief; and while the Wakamba were satisfied withgrain and fruits, the Swahili demanded meat, which meant that eithersome of the cattle must be killed, or the Hallidays must go hunting fortheir unwelcome guests.

  One day Wasama, the Masai herdsman, reported that a number of the sheephad strayed. Not willing to lose them, Mr. Halliday and John set offwith Wasama and two or three of the Wakamba to find them, taking theirrifles in the hope of bringing down some game for the men. They trackedthe wanderers through the long grass to the west of the encampment, andfound that the trail led them into the woods on the rising ground inthat direction. There they lost the trail, and scattered, theEnglishmen arranging to fire a shot as a signal to the others if eitherof them came upon the track of the missing animals.

  John was making his way through the wood, bending close to the ground,when he suddenly came upon a small hut standing by itself in a littleglade. It consisted of four upright logs, the interspaces filled withbrushwood, and covered with a roof of twisted boughs. He halted,wondering whose dwelling it might be, and then, a movement among theundergrowth at the rear of the hut attracting his attention, he walkedslowly towards the spot, holding his rifle in readiness to encounterdanger. To his amazement he saw a quaint little figure emerge from thethicket. It was the form of an elderly man, not more than four feethigh, dark brown in colour, with strangely bent shins, longish hairstreaked with grey, and protruding jaws. He wore nothing but a loosecloak of undressed skin hung from the shoulders, and he carried a smallbow. Still more to John's surprise, the little man came forward, andheld out his hand with a frank gesture of friendliness, uttering a wordor two in a low, quiet voice. John shook his hand, feeling a littleconfused in his inability to speak to the man; then, thinking that hemight be able to assist in the search for the sheep, he fired off hisrifle, upon which the man sprang back into his hut with every mark ofterror.

  The shot soon brought up the rest of the party, and on John explainingwhy he had fired, Wasama went to the entrance of the hut and shoutedinto the interior. After a little hesitation the owner came out, and abrief conversation ensued between the two men, at the close of whichWasama, who knew enough English to make himself understood, explainedthat the man was one of the Wanderobbo tribe and was living quite alone.This fact was rather surprising, for the African natives always live incommunities, large or small. But after further speech with the hermit,Wasama said that he had no tribe or village, all his people having beenkilled a long while ago. He had since lived in this little hut,occupying himself, after the manner of his people, in collecting wildhoney and hunting, selling the skins of the animals he killed to theneighbouring villagers.

  Mr. Halliday asked whether the man had seen anything of his sheep, andthe Wanderobbo at once offered to help in the search in return for a fewbeads. The party set off again, and, emerging from the wood at itssouthern extremity, the little man soon discovered the trail, and thewanderers were seen placidly grazing half-a-mile away. The Wanderobboseemed much more delighted with the few beads given him than the valueof the gift appeared to justify, and at parting shook hands warmly withthe Englishmen, promising, when Wasama had told him of their settlement,to bring them some honey shortly. Wasama collected the sheep and beganto herd them back towards the farm, Mr. Halliday and the others going alittle farther in pursuance of his intention of shooting something forthe larder. But an hour's search revealing no trace of game, he startedto return. He had just overtaken Wasama, about a mile from camp, whenhe saw Said Mohammed hastening towards him at a run.

  "I hope there's nothing wrong," he said, but as the Bengali drew nearerit was plain from his perturbed countenance that he bore bad news.

  "Master and esteemed sir," he said, panting as he came up, "I regret toinform you that a calamity has transpired."

  "What is it?" asked Mr. Halliday, as the cook, who was of substantialphysique, paused to recover breath.

  "Larceny, sir. Juma, that badmash, awful scoundrel, sir, has lifted, orshall I say pinched, four donkeys, a dozen rifles, and a regular heap oftrade goods, and has decamped, bunked, sir, with the Swahilis, who knowswhere?"

  "What was Coja about?" demanded Mr. Halliday, at the same timequickening his pace.

  "That, sir, deponent knoweth not. In fact, I have not seen Coja forsome time, and suspect that he winked the other eye."

  "How long ago was this?"

  "I do not know the exact moment, since I was engaged in washing crockeryafter our matutinal repast, and did not discover the crime until I hadmade a hole in it; but on a modest computation I should say, not lessthan five hours ago."

  "Soon after we left, John. Which way did the men go?"

  "Of that also I am in blissful ignorance, sir."

  "We'll soon track them, anyway. John, we must go after them."

  They hurried on towards the camp, taking Wasama with them, and leavingthe sheep in charge of the Wakamba. When they reached the settlement,it was apparently deserted, except by the Indian carpenters and Juma'snegro wife, who, as soon as she saw them, began excitedly to haranguesome person out of sight, and then ran behind the bungalow, the walls ofwhich were already up, and dragged forth Coja, whom she brought, asheepish and crestfallen object, before his master.

  Mr. Halliday did not delay either to reprimand or to receiveexplanations, but ordered Coja and the four Wakamba who had followed himfrom his hiding-place to sling on their cooking-pots and a little foodand prepare to accompany him in chase of the fugitives.

  "We don't know how long it will take us," he said to John. "SaidMohammed, you must come with us; we may be a day or two and shall wantyou to cook. Juma's wife seems a capable body; we'll leave her incharge. Coja, look for their tracks, and go on; we'll follow you."

  Within a quarter of an hour of reaching camp the party set off,numbering eight in all. The track was very clear. For three miles itfollowed the route by which the safari had come several days before;then, to Mr. Halliday's surprise, it made a sudden turn westward.

  "I made sure they would strike for the coast," he said. "They won'tdare show themselves in any of our settled parts, and I don't understandtheir going off into the interior. They've had a good start of us, butwe travel lighter and ought to catch them if we don't lose the trail."

  The party hurried on, not pausing, though the day was now at itshottest. The trail led through open country, and across severalstreams, some of them of fair size. Here there were signs that thedonkeys had given trouble, the soft earth at the brink being so trampledand cut up as to suggest that the animals had had to be pushed andhauled into the water. The trail was for the most part easily followed,for the fugitives had clearly been in too great a hurry to attempt tocover it. Once or twice, when it c
rossed stony ground, Coja wastemporarily at fault, and he then declared he wished they had theWanderobbo with them, for there were no people like the Wanderobbo forfollowing a trail. Were they not matchless elephant hunters? But alittle skirmishing beyond such stony tracts sufficed to pick up thetrail again, and pushing on without respite, rest, or food, untilsundown, Coja said that the newness of the footprints showed that thequarry was not far ahead. Darkness fell, however, without their havingsighted the fugitives, and since they were all thoroughly tired andhungry, Mr. Halliday decided to halt for rest and a meal, and to resumethe pursuit in the night if the moon rose, or at dawn.

  "I say, father," said John, as they came to a halt, "we mustn't light afire, or we'll give ourselves away."

  "Quite right. We shall have to do without our cocoa to-night, and keepan extra sharp look-out for lions."

  The white men had to satisfy themselves with biscuit and water from abrook; the natives ate some of the roasted beans without which theynever travel. With the first glimmer of dawn the party were up and onthe trail. Two hours' hard marching, at a pace which the natives hadnever known before, brought them up with the thieves. Coja was thefirst to catch sight of them, and he held up his hand as a sign to therest to halt, informing Mr. Halliday in a whisper that the fugitiveswere only a little distance ahead, in the act of crossing a stream. Halfof them had, indeed, already crossed; the remainder were trying toinduce the donkeys to face the water.

  "Can we catch them?" Mr. Halliday asked.

  "Yes, sah, go round about," answered the man.

  He led them in a direction at right angles to the path, so as to make acircuit and come upon the runaways from among the thick vegetation atthe brink of the river. But Coja's advice turned out to be bad. Theyhad reached the bank and were wheeling to burst upon the Swahilis, whenthey were suddenly descried by those who had crossed. A shout warnedthe men struggling with the donkeys; without a moment's hesitation theylet go of the animals and took to their heels. When Mr. Halliday cameupon the scene nothing was in sight but the donkeys, which on beingreleased had scrambled up the bank out of the river and begun to braywith pleasure at the riddance of their loads.

  "We ought to have come straight instead of round about," cried Mr.Halliday, vexed at his failure to punish the men. It was obviouslyhopeless to pursue them further. The scrub was dense; the Swahilis hadgood rifles and ammunition; and being relieved of impedimenta, the loadsof goods having been left on the farther bank when they fled, they couldtravel much faster than Mr. Halliday and his party, fatigued after theirforced march.

  "We must be satisfied with having got back our donkeys and their loads,"said Mr. Halliday. "The men are a good riddance; but I grudge thoserifles of ours. However, it can't be helped. We must keep a sharp eyeon our people, and fire out at once any we can't trust."

  The loads abandoned by the runaways were brought across the riverwithout interference, and after they had been strapped on the donkeys'backs the little caravan started to return to the farm.