Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (34 page)

At the end of the day, Livingstone crossed a small river known as the Liya and entered a section of land cleared for cultivation. He entered a farming village known as Monanbundwa, where he was welcomed, and lay down to rest. The chief came to his side, unarmed. Livingstone explained the mistake about his identity, assuring the chief that he was not the slaver named Mohammed Bogharib and that he had no wish to kill men. The chief was reassured, and allowed them to stay the night. Livingstone, to prevent further animosity, temporarily stopped wearing the offending jacket.

Without his knowing, Livingstone had seen the first stage of a full-scale native revolt against the Arabs from the citizens to the west of Lake Tanganyika — a revolt coincidental to Mirambo’s. The Manyuema set Arab encampments ablaze in the months that followed, and the slavers’ people were fired upon. Using bows and arrows judiciously, the Manyuema could fire and reload faster than the Arabs with their archaic single-shot muskets. ‘This is the beginning of the end,’ Livingstone wrote. ‘Which will exclude Arab traders from the country.’

Livingstone trekked away from the heart of cannibal country, but the stress of the day he had endured under attack had frazzled his immune system. Dysentery returned. He lost his appetite. Dust got in his eyes, making him temporarily blind. Even in the dangerous country, he was forced to rest most days. On the days he marched it was through mountainous wilderness, in a thick equatorial heat. His French-made shoes were too tight because his feet had swollen. The soles were falling apart and the uppers were rotting. Worse, the trail crossed a
mountain path of sharp quartz. ‘The mind acted on the body,’ he wrote. ‘And it is no overstatement to say that every step of between 400 and 500 miles was in pain.’

SHAW WAS STANDING
over Stanley as the malarial journey through his subconscious came to an end. Two weeks had passed, Shaw told his incredulous boss. The journalist had been sick in bed the entire time. It was cerebral malaria this time —
Plasmodium falciparum
— and Stanley had almost died. But Shaw nursed him back to health. He had fed Stanley gruel and forced him to sip brandy. Stanley remembered nothing of it. Just the emotions and memories, surging through him, reminding him where he’d come from and preparing him for the battle ahead. ‘I remembered the battlefields of America,’ he wrote, ‘and the stormy scenes of rampant war.’

A new set of stormy scenes was added to those over the next six weeks. Flying the American flag, Stanley marched his men into battle against Mirambo, alongside the Arabs. The warfare was unlike the disciplined marches of the Confederates on Shiloh, or even the British Army’s determined assault on Magdala. Rather, Arab sultans trekked into the bush hunting their enemy. Their slaves — men
without any training in military tactics — were forced to fight their fellow Africans because their owners commanded it. Mirambo, however, foresaw the attack. He had cleverly concealed his forces in the woods and tall grasses. Stanley, meanwhile, marvelled at the military tactics of the uneducated chief. He found them ingenious — and savage. He even wrote a dispatch to the
Herald
calling Mirambo ‘the African Bonaparte’.

On the morning of 4 August, the men daubed their bodies with a combination of flour and herb juice that they believed would protect them in battle. Stanley’s malaria was flaring again, shooting fever and weakness through his veins. Fear of the battle added to his miseries, and he was experiencing serious misgivings about the terms of his alliance with the Arabs. Instead of commanding his own men, Stanley and his group would march into battle under the leadership of the fiery Khamis bin Abdullah, who was serving as the campaign’s de facto commander in chief. Just before noon the Arab force of almost 2,500 surrounded the wooden fence of Mirambo’s village and prepared to attack. ‘Khamis bin Abdullah crept through the forest to the west of the village,’ Stanley wrote. ‘Suddenly a volley opened on us as we emerged from the forest.’

To Stanley, the battle was comical. The Arabs and their slaves had no concept of taking cover or advancing on the enemy under fire. Instead, they lay in the grass to load their guns, then leapt up and fired, then jumped into the grass again and again. ‘Forward, then backward, with the agility of hopping frogs.’

Despite their inadequacies, the Arabs routed Mirambo’s forces with ease. When the Arabs finally took the village the only things left behind were ivory tusks, slaves, piles of grain and twenty dead bodies. The Arabs set fire to the village so Mirambo and his men would have no refuge, then set fire to two neighbouring villages and the surrounding grasslands for good measure. When one of Mirambo’s men was caught sleeping in the forest he was grabbed by the hair, had his neck stretched as far
back as it would go, then had his throat slashed clean through to his spine.

Stanley had been an active participant in the battle on 4 August, but two days later a relapse of his malaria prevented him from accompanying the Arabs as they pressed on with the manhunt for Mirambo. He stayed behind in the war camp, shivering under a blanket on the morning of 6 August. Half of his men had left for the day to join the forces of a fiery Arab, Soud bin Sayd. The Arabs were determined to exterminate Mirambo once and for all, making an example of him for future generations of potential rebels. It was obvious from the Arabs’ easy victories that Mirambo wasn’t the military genius of his reputation.

Just as the sun was setting, the first stragglers of the battle returned. Stanley was sleeping under a pile of blankets, trying to sweat out his fever, when he learned that Soud bin Sayd had been killed in an ambush, along with five of Stanley’s sepoys. Mirambo had allowed Soud bin Sayd to take the village of Wilyankuru, pretending to flee. However, as the Arab forces marched back to their camp laden with tusks, hundreds of slaves and sixty bales of cloth, Mirambo and his men sprang from the tall grass along the road. Soud bin Sayd was reloading his shotgun when a spear pierced him ‘through and through’. Every Arab member of his convoy was captured and killed in the same manner.

‘The effect of this defeat is indescribable,’ Stanley wrote. ‘It was impossible to sleep, from the shrieks of women whose husbands had fallen. All night they howled through their lamentations, and sometimes might be heard the groans of the wounded who had contrived to crawl through the grass unperceived by the enemy. Fugitives were continually coming in through the night, but none of my men who were reported to be dead were ever heard of again.’

That single defeat crushed the Arab resolve. The morning of 7 August was spent bickering with one another, pointing the finger of blame. Khamis bin Abdullah raged
that his compatriots were cowards, and preferred peace and subjugation to seeing their mission carried out in its entirety. The tent where they held the latest war council was hardly soundproof, and as the screams and rants were heard, soon everyone in camp was privy to the accusations. Stanley, saddened by his men’s deaths and more sure than ever about the folly of fighting the Arabs’ war, went back to bed in another attempt to overcome his malaria.

But Mirambo was not resting. He pressed forth his advantage. At one thirty in the afternoon, Selim shook Stanley from his malarial daze. It was imperative, Selim shouted, that Stanley get up. The camp was being evacuated. Mirambo was on his way. Even Khamis bin Abdullah was running, with no intention of stopping to help Stanley. ‘With the aid of Selim I dressed myself and staggered towards the door,’ Stanley wrote. He saw the Arabs and their slaves retreating in terror. There was no order, simply pandemonium. Worse, except for Bombay and three of his soldiers, Stanley’s men were fleeing — including Shaw, who ‘was saddling his donkey with my own saddle, preparatory to giving me the slip and leaving me in the lurch to the tender mercies of Mirambo’.

Stanley ordered Shaw to give him back his saddle. Then Stanley organized his men into a single unit and led them in a disciplined military retreat. For eleven long hours, well into the night, they stayed together as they fled Mirambo and his men. Finally, just after midnight, he rendezvoused with the Arab forces.

Stanley had had enough. After a fitful night’s sleep he lambasted the Arabs for their cowardice. He was insulted that they’d planned on leaving him behind, and even more insulted when they casually greeted him in the morning as if nothing had happened. He lectured the council of war for deserting their wounded and their ‘every man for himself’ policy. The war was just between them and Mirambo, he scolded them, and their habit of running away at the slightest setback was a solid indicator that the war could drag on for years — years Stanley didn’t have. ‘I know something about fighting, but I never saw people
run away from an encampment like ours at Zimbizo, for such slight cause as you had.’

Stanley paused to look hard at the Arabs, making sure his next sentence struck home. ‘By running away you have invited Mirambo to follow you to Unyanyembe. You may be sure he will come.’

In the morning the Arabs continued their retreat to Tabora. But a disappointed and disheartened Stanley was through with their war. As the Arabs marshalled their forces within the city, he gathered his men and returned to his rented home outside town to regroup. He had done his duty to the Arabs, repaying their kindnesses with service during their war. Now he was free to go. The question haunting him, however, was to where? Once the caravan route reopened, the Arabs had told him, Ujiji was just a month’s march. But judging by the way the Arabs were fighting, that reopening looked to be a long time in the future. On the other hand, if Stanley tried to run Mirambo’s blockade, especially in light of the hostilities, Mirambo would not only demand all Stanley’s cloth and beads in tribute, he would butcher each and every member of the New York
Herald
expedition.

Mentally, Stanley began making a case for turning around and going home. He rationalized he had done all that was humanly possible to find Livingstone. No reporter could have done more. Certainly Bennett would understand that.

Stanley had prevailed through swamps, sickness and warfare. His porters had been released, so he had no men to carry his cargo. Many of his men had died, his goods had been stolen by deserters, and certain death waited if he went forward. For as powerful as a Winchester repeating rifle would appear in the short term, in the long run Mirambo’s large force would be overwhelming. ‘My position is most serious,’ he finally wrote. ‘I have a good excuse for returning to the coast.’

The determining factor was the same brute reality behind the entire expedition: money. Stanley pictured himself returning to civilization without finding a scrap of
evidence about Livingstone’s whereabouts. He would be seen as a failure, and would probably lose his job. More pragmatically, he had run up an enormous tab with the Arab merchants. Bennett would refuse to pay, on the grounds that Stanley hadn’t done his duty. Legally, Webb was liable, but Stanley had given his word. The pre-Africa Stanley might have run off and left Webb to pay, considering the episode to be another of life’s little failures. But now Stanley knew he had to push on. ‘So much money has been expended, and so much confidence has been placed in me,’ he concluded. Fuelled by more Arab reports that Livingstone was alive but destitute somewhere near Lake Tanganyika, he developed a mental picture of Livingstone trapped in Ujiji, unable to move due to war and lack of supplies. Stanley was the cavalry, riding to the rescue. ‘I feel I must die sooner than return.’

It was 11 August. It had been seven weeks since Stanley had first set foot in Tabora. Counting Bombay, the soldiers and Shaw, he was down to his last thirteen men. The time had come to do something ingenious and even a little stupid, for that’s what it was going to take to reach Ujiji.

Stanley’s salvation came from the man he had denigrated the most: Bombay. The short former slave with the flat teeth told Stanley of a little used trail to the south of Tabora. It was the long way to Ujiji, adding two hundred miles to the trip by giving the traditional caravan route the widest possible berth. It was a path the porters feared, leading through thick woods of sycamore and scrub, filled with giraffes and a smallish breed of elephant. In addition to his own caravan, Stanley would also need to bring along the lazy members of Kirk’s relief expedition, overseeing them for the final march to Ujiji to ensure Livingstone’s supplies didn’t get spent in Tabora, as in past years.

The Arabs tried to convince Stanley to stay. His mind, however, was made up. The expedition had spent almost as much time in Tabora as they had getting there. The time had come to go, and as soon as possible. Even as
Shaw fell ill with what he claimed was malaria but what Stanley suspected was venereal disease, Stanley began hiring the necessary porters and preparing his men for the trail once again.

Then, as Stanley predicted, Mirambo attacked Tabora. The Arabs could look out across the plains surrounding the town from their roofs and see the vast African army spread across the bleached white grass. Mirambo’s massive tent was pitched in the rear, fully visible and out of rifle range, protected by his men. If he chose to attack Tabora there was nothing the Arabs could do to prevent the annihilation of their town, the rape of all their women and the enslavement of their children.