It was about two hours after the departure of the women: the carriers had not yet come back: when Tom heard a faint sharp sound from southward, which, unexpected as it was, he believed to be a rifle-shot. For some few minutes there was no repetition of the sound: then there came half a dozen cracks in succession, a little nearer--unmistakably the reports of rifles. Tom at once dispatched two men to follow in the track of the scouts and see what was happening. It seemed unlikely that a German force had already been dispatched in pursuit of him; but it was clearly necessary to be prepared for any contingency. The shots had roused some excitement among the Wahehe; Reinecke and the Arabs did not disguise the spring of hope. Tom recognised that his men were ill-fitted to cope with trained troops, in the open or even in the bush. The nullah, on the other hand, about six miles away, offered many facilities for defence, and his plan had been to post his non-combatants far up towards the lake, and to employ the men to strengthen the position below. He had reckoned on being unmolested for a whole day, and the shots gave him not a little uneasiness. The progress of the laden carriers would necessarily be slow: it was essential that the enemy, if enemy it was, should be delayed at least until the stores had been safely conveyed to the nullah. He must fight and run. Hoping that it might turn out to be a false alarm, he nevertheless sent forward a runner to urge the carriers to their utmost speed; then selected a score of the older men, who in their day had fought the Germans, and ordered all the rest to hurry on with as much as they could carry of the remaining stores. Mwesa he kept as interpreter. As soon as the camping-place was clear, he sent Reinecke and the Arabs on, guarded by half a dozen men, and followed closely behind them with the rest of his party, to discover a suitable position for making a first stand if pursuers were really on his tracks. He had been marching less than half an hour through the forest when some of his scouts overtook him, and reported that a large force of askaris, under German officers, was pushing on at great speed. Knowing the hopelessness of getting from the natives a sound estimate of the enemy’s numbers, he asked no questions, but pressed forward as rapidly as possible for another ten minutes. Then, on the further side of a comparatively clear space, about two hundred yards long and twice as wide, he saw a dense belt of trees, fringed by low bushes, which seemed to offer advantages for a delaying action. There he decided to await the enemy’s arrival.