Part 25

When in the evening of that day, by the light of a camp fire--they had practically no artificial light--Mrs. Stott put this plan before Roger, he promptly agreed. It would show he had done the right thing. It would go far to save Lucy's good name, especially among Mission folk. And it would give him nearly a month to stay and explore the Happy Valley. He had spent much of the day with James Stott helping him in his work on the embryo station, and Stott had told him of wonderful things he had seen or had gleaned from native information. There was the new lake to survey roughly; there was a paradise of big game to shoot in. Here Mrs. Stott intervened: "I hope you and my husband will go slow as regards shooting. I know we must have the meat and we're so nearly bankrupt at the coast that a few tusks of ivory would come in handy. But somehow I should like to think of this Happy Valley as a sort of preserved zoological gardens where all these innocent creatures of God's handiwork----"

"I shouldn't call a rhinoceros innocent, Mrs. Stott," said Roger, smoking his pipe with such contentment as he had not known for months--"I have rather a tender conscience about antelopes and zebras, but rhinos attack you absolutely unprovoked...."

Mrs. Stott: "Only because men began humbugging them first of all, long ago, I expect. However, if ever I lived to see our mission stations self-supporting and growing all the food they needed, I'd never let James fire another shot at the game."

The next morning the two Masai guides, well rewarded, started off with a package. It contained letters home from the Stotts, telling of their wonderful deliverance; a brief despatch from Captain Brentnam to H.M. Agent at Unguja, and letters to John Baines and Ann Jamblin. John was asked how things were going, and whether on second thoughts he would prefer Lucy to return to Hangodi, and if he could take the next opportunity of having the accompanying letters sent to the coast; and Ann was given--curtly--information as to Lucy's reaching the temporary station of the Stotts. However expansive the Stotts might be, within the compass of one sheet of paper, they said very little about the situation of the Happy Valley; and Brentham was still more reticent. Both no doubt for the same reason, that the Happy Valley was too good a proposition to be given away lightly to a greedy world. Mrs. Stott still hoped, despite concluded boundary conventions, it might be brought within the British sphere; Brentham did not want any other fellow to have a go at its big game or an examination of its alluring secrets till he had had a chance to return.

Whilst these letters were being carried to their destination by two lithe, naked men of red-brown skin, with hair done up in periwigs of twine soaped with mutton fat and the same red-ochre as coloured their sleek bodies, men who carried knobkerries in their waistcords and long-bladed spears in the right hand, great oval shields on the left arm, and who ran on sandalled feet a steady six miles an hour when they were on the road: Lucy and Roger disposed themselves to await patiently the news which--they felt--was to determine their fate.

Twenty days went by in the Happy Valley in blissful sameness. Lucy had her very limited wardrobe washed in the lake waters which had some oddly cleansing, blanching effect--something chemical which both Roger and Mr. Stott would discuss in muttered phrases. Lucy and Mrs. Stott together, with many a laugh at blunder or foiled hopes of success, at length succeeded in ironing the skirts and bodices and petticoats and linen with a parody of a flat-iron, made for them by a naked Elkonono blacksmith in a native forge.

Brentham and his Wanyamwezi porters helped Mr. Stott complete his new station. Or they organized great shooting parties which enriched Mr. Stott with ivory that he might some day sell, as against trade goods and tea; or they accumulated biltong for Roger's expedition, besides finding meat for the day-by-day food of these hungry Wanyamwezi. To meet Mrs. Stott's scruples and objections they had themselves paddled in Wambugwe canoes farther up the lake and shot elephants, zebras, buffaloes, antelopes, on the flats twenty miles to the north of the Stotts' station. Or they rode donkeys and travelled twenty miles southwards, back along the road they had come (and got faint, far-off rumours of men fighting, leagues and leagues away, which made them anxious).

Or they laid out plantations in the rich alluvial soil behind the station and fenced them in. There Mr. Stott could plant his poor remnant of English vegetable seeds, or with greater hope the maize, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, ground-nuts, beans, and manioc of the agricultural and fishing Bantu population.

Then, on the twenty-first day of this busy three weeks, the Masai messengers once more squatted before the Stotts' baraza. Silently one of them tendered to Mrs. Stott a little package of dried banana leaves, tied with some native fibre. Inside a fold of old newspaper and a makeshift envelope made out of a copy-book cover, on one half-sheet of dirty copy-book paper, Ann sent Lucy this message:

Mbogo's Village, NOVEMBER SOMETHING OR OTHER, 1888.

DEAR LUCY,--

Your messengers arrived yesterday, but I had to keep them waiting for an answer and now they are impatient to go. The station has been attacked--I think it began at the end of October, but I am muddled about dates. John and Mr. Bayley were killed on the second day. Anderson and I are only wounded; we are recovering, though my headaches are awful. Josiah is dead, tell Halima. Help has come at last. But don't come back this way. The Ruga-ruga are all over Ugogo and there is fierce fighting in Nguru. The Masai fought splendidly on our side. Go on to the coast quick as you can, northern route. Can't write more now, but will send through more news to Unguja if I get the chance. Good-bye. John talked of nothing but you when he was dying. It's about broken my heart.

ANN JAMBLIN.

Lucy and Mrs. Stott looked at one another in horror and consternation as this note--written by a pencil that had been frequently moistened--fluttered to the ground from Lucy's nerveless fingers. She felt it was the only tribute to her husband's memory, to her real horror and remorse to assume a faintness she did not feel while Mrs. Stott led her dry-eyed to her tent and couch.

*CHAPTER XII*

*THE ATTACK ON THE STATION*

From Mrs. Anderson, E.A.M., to Mr. Callaway, Agent of East African Mission, Unguja.

Mbogo's Village, Ulunga, Nguru, Novr. 30, 1888.

DEAR MR. CALLAWAY,--

You may have heard some rumour of what has happened to us here. You will find much of it described in the letter I have written to Mr. John Baines's mother. You can read this letter. Read it and then take notes. You have several clerks and none of them with a broken head like mine, I'll be bound, and plenty of good pens, ink and stationery. All I've got to write on is some old ruled exercise books and no envelopes. Well, make up some sort of a letter out of what I've written to Mrs. Baines senior, and then send it to the headquarters of the Mission in London; and post the letter to her, Mrs. Baines, Tilehurst, Reading. Tell them I'm recovering and I'm going to stay here till I am relieved and even perhaps afterwards, supposing I and my husband get quite well. You may be surprised at my change of surname, having known me as Miss Jamblin. Just before the attack on our station (Hangodi) occurred I went through a religious form of marriage with Mr. Ebenezer Anderson. Mrs. John Baines had gone away--her husband sent her off to the coast in the charge of Consul Brentham--and I did not think it right to stay at the Mission with three men and me unmarried; so I accepted Mr. Anderson's proposal. Mr. Baines married us, but as I supposed it wouldn't be legal without we were married again before the Consul at Unguja, we haven't lived together as man and wife, and won't till everything can be made right and proper. I only mention this in case either of us died.

You can also tell the big man at Unguja--Sir Godfrey Something--what has happened in case he cares to know. I don't suppose he does care. Those big pots always sneer at Nonconformist Missionaries. But I want him to know this. We should have all been killed and perhaps tortured and our station might have been utterly destroyed and our people carried off into slavery if it hadn't been first for the Masai, and most of all for an old Arab, Ali bin Ferhan--I think he spells his name. He's written it in Arabic on the piece of paper I enclose. He lives at Momoro, near the Lingani River. Well, for reasons too long to give he no sooner heard we were going to be attacked by the Ruga-ruga and the black Arabs (they were led by that limb of the Devil, Ayub bin Majidi, whom they nickname Mnazi-moja) than he came to our assistance. Mbogo and his people deserve a gold medal--not that any one will give it--they're only "Wa-shenzi" and we're only Nonconformists; they fought splendidly; but they were just giving way when this old Arab--just like a picture of Abraham he is--came up with a lot of his people armed with guns and carrying flags. And he called off the fighting. After that the Ruga-ruga and their leaders simply disappeared with all the plunder they could carry and we have been at peace ever since, with Ali bin Ferhani camped here and keeping guard over Ulunga. Ali doesn't like the Germans. He always wanted his beloved "Ekkels"--I suppose he means Sir James Eccles--to take the country for the English Queen. But he thinks bad will come if any white people are killed. He is so afraid the Germans will think he joined with the other Arabs that I now tell you all this, though every day I have a splitting headache. I really began this letter a week ago. I write a little every day, and now I think Ali will be able to get it sent through to the coast, to Mvita, perhaps.

The other letter--an exercise book tied up--is for Mrs. John Baines. I don't think any one ought to see it but herself. So please put it into an envelope and address it to her "To await arrival at Unguja." She started off for the Mvita coast with Captain Brentham a month ago. What's happened to her I don't know. I sent messengers to tell her her husband was dead.

I saw Mrs. Stott here last July when Mrs. John Baines had her premature confinement. Since then I only know that their station at Burungi was destroyed, but they got away safely somewhere else, where the Consul and Mrs. Baines afterwards found them.

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 were Thomas Aldrich Bayley and John Baines and 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,--