"You are joking, monsieur. You permit yourself a ruse. Ah! ah! I am not to be entrapped in that way."

"Pardon me, monsieur. You shall have the fullest a.s.surance as to the truth of what I am saying. Lepoko, ask Mr. Barney to send out the white officer."

The Belgian was now looking very uncomfortable. This was a strange turning of the tables; his summons to surrender had been completely forgotten. Jack had no need to kill time by keeping up the conversation, for in a minute or two the lieutenant captured in the river left the fort under an armed guard and walked quickly down.

"Beuzemaker!" exclaimed Lieutenant Jennaert under his breath.

"Yes, monsieur--Monsieur Beuzemaker."

Lieutenant Beuzemaker smiled ruefully as he joined the group. He gave a rapid narrative of the capture of the convoy.

"It only remains, therefore," said Jack, "for you to decide upon your course, monsieur. May I make you a proposal? You shall surrender your arms and ammunition except a dozen rifles. I will supply you with canoes to take your men down the river, and provisions for a fortnight.

Within ten days you should enter a district where more food can be obtained. As you know, the country hereabouts has been made almost a desert by your people."

But this was too much. Was it he, Lieutenant Jennaert, who was being called upon to surrender? He rose in a fury.

"Never! The thing is absurd! Monsieur, I take my leave.

Beuzemaker!----"

He stopped, biting his lips.

"Monsieur Beuzemaker is my prisoner," said Jack suavely, rising. "He will accompany me back to my camp. Of course, if you accept our terms, we will release all the prisoners."

The Belgian turned away in a rage. The meeting broke up; the two parties went their several ways. Jack, as he walked back to the fort, hoped that on thinking the matter over the officer would see the wisdom of compliance. The alternative was starvation. He must see that it would be no easy matter to storm the fort, and that Jack had only to sit tight for a few days. The State troops, none too well disciplined at the best, would soon be clamouring for food. With a starving soldiery, an active well-fed enemy on his rear, and a swarm of scouts cutting off his foraging parties, he must see the impossibility of making his way back through several hundred miles of country inhabited by tribes only waiting an opportunity to rise against their oppressors.

So that when Barney met him as he re-entered the fort, and asked eagerly, "Well, sorr, and did the patient swallow the pill?" he smiled as he shook his head, saying--

"Not yet, Barney. But he _will_ swallow it, bitter as it is."

"Or his men will swallow him, bedad!"

And a few hours later a negro soldier marched up the hill with a white flag. Lieutenant Jennaert's note was very brief.

MONSIEUR,--

J'agree vos conditions.

JENNAERT, _Lieutenant dans l'armee de l'etat du Congo_.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

The Dawn of Freedom

It was a fortnight later. Ilombekabasi was the scene of great activity. Gangs of negroes were busy carrying, hauling, stones of all shapes and sizes from the dry bed of the stream that once flowed past the fort; other gangs were building a wall above the original northern wall of the fort, a few yards beyond the spring whence the water supply was derived. On the cultivable land on the west and east men and women were digging, ploughing, planting, hoeing, for in some parts seed sown only two weeks before was already sprouting. Barney O'Dowd superintended the mason work, sporting a red fez taken from one of the slain Askari and dry-cleaned by a process of his own. In his mouth was his old short clay pipe, in which, after long deprivation, he was smoking a mixture made by himself from tobacco grown on a bed in front of his hut. It was not s.h.a.g, he said, nor twist, but it made a betther smoke than cavendish, and sure 'twould give a man a little comfort till the rale thing could be grown. The agriculturists were directed by Imbono. An air of cheerful industry pervaded the whole settlement.

When the State troops under Lieutenant Jennaert had disappeared, Jack determined, after a breathing s.p.a.ce, to enlarge the fort and to plant new crops. The enlargement was prompted not merely by the wish to have the source of the water supply within the wall, but by the expectation that the defeat of Bula Matadi would cause an increase of the population. And, in fact, within a week of Jennaert's departure, natives from distant parts to which the news had penetrated came flocking into Ilombekabasi to join the community which looked up to Lokolobolo as its invincible chief.

Looking round upon the cheerful faces of the people; observing their willingness to work, and eagerness to please; watching the happy family life they led when unmolested and free from anxieties, Jack felt that his toil had not been in vain, and was immeasurably glad that Providence had laid this charge upon him. If only his uncle had lived to see this day!

Jack found that his feelings were shared by Mr. Arlington and his friend the missionary. They had awaited the issue of his hazardous enterprise with more anxiety than they cared to admit, and while they hailed his success with cordial congratulations, they were scarcely less troubled about the future. The Congo State could not permit this leaven of revolt to spread; it would certainly organize an expeditionary force of sufficient strength to crush Jack and his people; and then would not their lot be infinitely worse than it had ever been?

"Even so we shall have had some months of happiness, and set an example," said Jack, talking things over with his friends the day before they left Ilombekabasi. "But I hope for better things. We may have the rains upon us any day now; the country for miles around will be one vast mora.s.s; we shall be safe in our castle for six months, perhaps. And what may not be done in six months, Mr. Arlington?"

"You mean?"

"I mean if you and Mr. Dathan will hurry home and tell what you have seen and know. Mr. Arlington, you are no longer a member of Parliament, I believe?"

"No. The House of Commons is no longer what it was."

"Surely it is what men like you choose to make it, sir. If you would go home, stand at a bye-election, and return to the House, what an immense influence a man with your record might wield! Do you know what I would do in your place, sir? You do not mind my speaking out?"

"Not a bit. I am deeply interested."

"Well, sir, I would badger the Foreign Secretary; I would move the country until England moved the world."

"Go on the stump like Gladstone?"

"Why not, sir? Isn't the cause of the negroes every bit as good as the cause of the Bulgarians or Macedonians or Armenians? Nay, ten times better, because they're more helpless and suffer under a Christian King! And you would succeed, sir."

"I haven't Gladstone's power of moving the ma.s.ses."

"What does that matter? The facts don't need any eloquence to back them, sir. I don't mean that you are not eloquent," he added with a smile. "I haven't heard you speak, but I have read your speeches; and if you tell what you have seen here, the country must listen, and something will surely be done. Why, if you go to my old school and speak to the fellows in the schoolhouse, I'll back there's not a boy there but will want to rush off here by the first train, to lend a hand!"

"Upon my word, Mr. Challoner, I think you'd better come back with us and do the stumping yourself."

"No, no," said Jack, his face flushing. "I cannot leave these people.

My place is here, and here I'll stick until I'm driven out, or until Leopold is brought to book."

"Well, I'll do what I can. I promise you that. Perhaps I've ploughed the lonely furrow long enough. What do you say, Dathan? Shall we join hands in this? We rowed in the same boat at Trinity; we kept the head of the river. This boat's rather low down now, but d'you think we could make a b.u.mp?"

"We'll make a shot for it, George. And please G.o.d, we like Bishop Latimer, will light such a candle in England as shall not be put out until this wrong is crushed and right is done."

Jack felt more than satisfied. If his countrymen had not grown strangely deaf, surely they would listen to these two--ay, and do more than listen.

"You leave to-morrow?" he said.

"Yes. My leg won't carry me yet, but with a canoe and a litter I can make shift to get along until we reach the Nyanza. Can you lend me an interpreter?"

"Lepoko is a good fellow. I think I can spare him now. We'll see what he says."

He sent for the man, and explained that he wished him to accompany the travellers during the first part of their journey.

"Me plenty sorry, ma.s.sa," said Lepoko. "Me no fit to go. What for?

Me comfy heah! No lib for go talk talk for nudder ma.s.sa. What for?

Nando go to Boma with old ma.s.sa; what den? He come back, get cotched, chicotte, feel plenty bad. No, no, sah; Lepoko know all 'bout dat.