officers again looked at one another with an air of some embarrassment, he continued, bluntly: “I suppose you want to know if I have got any contraband of war?”
“Well, you know,” was the half-apologetic reply, “someone has been selling rifles and ammunition to the natives, so we have to make inquiries.”
“Of course you do,” said Osmond; “and you’d better have a look at my goods. Koffi, tell the carriers to bring their loads here and open them.”
A very perfunctory inspection was enough to satisfy the constabulary officers of the harmless character of the trade goods, and having made it, they introduced themselves by the respective names of Stockbridge and Westall and invited Osmond to join them in their interrupted tea under the shade tree.
“Troublesome affair this rising,” said Westall, as he handed Osmond a mug of tea; “there’ll be wigs on the green before it’s over. Now that the beggars have got rifles, they are ready to stand up to the constabulary. Think they’re as good as we are; and they’re not so far wrong, either.”
“Where are you bound for now?” Osmond asked.
“We are going back to Quittah with some prisoners from Agotimé.” Westall nodded at the manacled native and added: “That’s one of the ring-leaders—a rascal named Zippah; a devil of a fellow, vicious as a bush-cat and plucky, too. Stockbridge and I are keeping him with us, in case of a rescue, but there are over a dozen other prisoners with the main body of Hausas. They marched out of the village just before you turned up.”
“And we’d better be marching out, too,” said Stockbridge, “or we shan’t catch them up. Will you have any more tea, Cook? If not, we’d better get on the road. There’s only a native sergeant-major with those men ahead. Are you coming our way?”
“Yes,” replied Osmond, “I’ll come with you as far as Affieringba, and then work my way home along the north shore of the lagoon.”
The three Englishman rose, and, as Westall’s servant repacked the tea apparatus, the little procession formed up. The six Hausas led with fixed bayonets; then came Westall followed by the prisoner, Zippah, and his guard; next came half a dozen carriers loaded with bundles of confiscated muskets and powder then Osmond and Stockbridge; and the rear was brought up by Osmond’s carriers and the three servants.
The road, or path, after leaving the village, passed through a number of yam and cassava plantations and then entered a forest of fan-palms; a dim and ghostly place now that the sun was getting low, pervaded by a universal rustling from the broad, ragged leaves above and a noisy crackling from the dry branches underfoot. For nearly an hour the party threaded its way through the gloomy aisles, then the palms gradually thinned out, giving place to ordinary forest trees and bush.
“Quite pleasant to get a look at the sky again,” Osmond remarked as they came out into the thin forest.
“Yes,” said Stockbridge; “but you won’t see it for long. There’s a bamboo thicket just ahead.”
Even as he spoke there loomed up before them an immense, cloudy mass of soft, blue-green foliage; then appeared a triangular black hole like the entrance to a tunnel, into which the Hausas, the prisoners, and the carriers successively vanished. A moment later and Osmond himself had entered through that strange portal and was groping his way in almost total darkness through a narrow passage, enclosed and roofed in by solid masses of bamboo stalks. Ahead, he could dimly make out the vague shapes of the carriers, while all around the huge clusters of bamboos rose like enormous piers, widening out until they met overhead to form a kind of groined roof. It was an uncanny place; a place in which voices echoed weirdly, mingling with strange, unexplained noises and with the unceasing, distant murmur of the soft foliage far away over head.
Osmond stumbled on over the crackling canes that formed the floor, gradually growing accustomed to the darkness until there appeared ahead a triangular spot of light that grew slowly larger, framing the figures of the Hausas and carriers; and then, quite suddenly, he emerged, blinking, into broad daylight on the margin of a smallish but deep and rapid river, which at this spot was spanned by a primitive bridge.
Now a native bridge is an excellent contrivance—for natives; for the booted European it is much less suitable. The present one was formed of the slender trunk of a young silk-cotton tree, barkless and polished by years of wear, and Osmond watched enviously as the Hausas strolled across, grasping the cylindrical surface handily with their bare feet, and wondered if he had not better take off his boots. However, Westall had no false pride. Recognizing the disabilities involved by boots, he stooped, and, getting astride the slender log, crossed the river with ease and safety, if without much dignity; and the other two white men were not too proud to follow his example.
Beyond the river the path, after crossing a narrow belt of forest, entered a valley bordered by hills covered with dense bush, which rose steeply on either side. Osmond looked at the little party ahead, straggling in single file along the bottom of the valley, and inwardly wondered where Westall had picked up his strategy.
“It’s to be hoped, Stockbridge,” he remarked, “that there are none of Mr. Zippah’s friends hanging about here. You couldn’t want a prettier spot for an ambush.”
He had hardly spoken when a tall man, wearing a hunter’s lionskin cap and carrying a musket, stepped quietly out of the bush on to the track just in front of Westall. The prisoner, Zippah, uttered a yell of recognition and held up his manacled hands. The deep, cannon-like report of the musket rang out and the narrow gorge was filled with a dense cloud of smoke.
There was an instant’s silence. Then a scattering volley was heard from the Hausas ahead, the panic-stricken carriers came flying back along the trail, shouting with terror, and the two white men plunged forward into the stinking smoke. Leaping over the prostrate Zippah, who was being held down by two Hausas, they came upon Westall, lying across the path, limp and motionless. A great ragged patch on his breast, all scorched and bloody, told the tale that his pinched, grey face and glazing eyes confirmed. Indeed, even as they stooped over him, heedless of the bellowing muskets and the slugs that shrieked past, he drew one shallow breath and was gone.
There was no time for sentiment. With set faces the two men turned from the dead officer and ran forward to where the shadowy forms of the Hausas appeared through the smoke, holding their ground doggedly and firing right and left into the bush. But a single glance showed the hopelessness of the position. Two of the Hausas were down, and of the remaining four, three, including the sergeant, were more or less wounded. Not a man of the enemy was to be seen, but from the wooded slope on either hand came jets of flame and smoke, accompanied by the thunderous reports of the muskets and the whistle of flying slugs, while a thick cloud of smoke rolled down the hillsides and filled the bottom of the valley as with a dense fog.
Osmond snatched up the rifle of one of the fallen Hausas and, clearing out the man’s cartridge-pouch, began firing into likely spots in the bush when Stockbridge interposed. “It’s no go, Cook. We must fall back across the bridge. You clear out while you’ve got a whole skin. Hallo! did you hear that? Those weren’t trade guns.”
As he spoke there were heard, mingling with the noisy explosions of the muskets, a succession of sharp, woody reports, each followed by the musical hum of a high-speed bullet.
“Back you go, Cook,” he urged. “This is no place for—”
He stopped short, staggered back a few paces, and fell, cursing volubly, with a bloody hand clasped on his leg just below the knee.
Osmond stooped over him, and, finding that the bone was not broken, quickly tied his handkerchief over the wound to restrain the bleeding. “That will do for the present,” said he. “Now you tell the men to fall back, and I’ll bring the prisoner.”
“Never mind the prisoner,” said Stockbridge. “Get the wounded back and get back yourself.”
“Not at all,” said Osmond. “The prisoner is going to cover our retreat. Put your arm round the sergeant’s neck and hop along on your sound leg.”
In spite of the galling