"O Bahima and Bairo!" he cried, "brothers, all of you, do not give up hope. You have heard your brave chief; his words are the words of a lion-heart. I tell you now that I believe we shall yet win. There is a town, in a far land belonging to the Great White King, which was besieged like this village for many long days, and where the people waited and waited, hoping that at last their friends would come to their aid and drive away the hordes besieging them. Their food was gone; they were sick, aye, sick unto death; but did they give in? Know that the children of the Great White King never give in! No; they waited and fought, and some of them died, and then at last, far over the fields, they saw the spears of their friends advancing to help them, and the enemy melted away like mist in the sun, and they were saved! Let us wait also, a little longer, my brothers!"
For a moment after he had ceased the silence was unbroken. Then the katikiro sprang into the ring; his feelings could be played on like the notes of an instrument; raising his spear aloft he cried "Muzungu will save us! Kuboko will save us!" The crowd took up his cry, and Tom was touched to the quick to see their haggard faces lit up once more with the light of hope, and their wild eyes fixed on him as their expected deliverer.
That night he lay awake, thinking, thinking, racking his brains for some means of compelling the enemy to raise the siege and justifying the confidence of the villagers. All the expedients that he had ever read of were passed in turn before his mind, only to be dismissed as impracticable; the want of firearms and gunpowder was against them all. Then suddenly, by an inspiration seemingly quite unconnected with his train of thought, a light flashed upon his mind. There was no need to weigh probabilities; the idea carried conviction with it. Crying "I have it!" he sprang from his couch, waking Mbutu with a start.
"Come, Mbutu," he said, "a night's work and a day's waiting and then we shall be free. Come with me."
In pitch darkness, for the sky was heavy with threatening rain, they made their way across the courtyard into the village, past the silent reservoir and the swollen stream, up to the stockade above the precipice. There they clambered over with infinite caution, lest the slightest sound should arouse the attention of the Arabs below. Feeling over the ground, they searched for the small aperture through which Tom had thrust his stick when exploring the cavern. Tom was half afraid lest some shifting of the soil had covered it up; but after ten minutes' careful search Mbutu whispered that he had put his hand into it. Thrusting a stick into the hole to mark the spot, they hurried to the chief's hut. When Barega came out, rubbing his eyes, Tom asked him for the services of twenty men, with baskets, spades, and bars of iron. He asked him also to pretend to lead a sortie out of the south gate, and to order his men to make as much noise as possible.