"They are halted," he said; "but there is something I don’t understand here." He looked incredulously around him. "I don’t know who you are, but if you are bluffing----" "Let me convince you." Tom parted a clump of thick bush on one side of the track, disclosing a negro kneeling, with his rifle pointed straight at the German. In a bush on the other side, nearly opposite, he showed another man. Moving half-a-dozen paces down the track he revealed yet another man, finger on trigger, to the astonished sergeant. "Your position is quite hopeless, you see," Tom went on. "You had better surrender quietly. Give me your revolver." The German threw a glance over his shoulder at the privates, standing at the head of the column of negroes. "At once! Don’t hesitate!" said Tom. "Your men will be shot down if they attempt resistance. Your revolver." The man handed over the weapon sullenly. "Now tell those men of yours to come forward one at a time and lay their rifles down on the track in front of me. Don’t say another word." The sergeant gave the order. The men, with a look of mingled curiosity and wonderment, advanced, laid down their rifles, and at Tom’s command walked a few yards along the track, then halted. "Mwesa, go and tell those natives to come past me, slowly, and then turn into the bush and wait. Tell them nothing else.... You have men at the rear?" he added to the sergeant. "Yes." "Who are they?" "Askaris." "How many?" "Twenty." "Then when they come up behind the negroes you will give them the same order as you gave your Germans. Stand here by me." The negroes, all strong young men, defiled past Tom in silence, their eyes wide with anxiety and dread. He counted sixty. In their rear came the twenty askaris. One by one they laid down their rifles and passed on, looking with surprise at their officer’s glowering face. "That is all?" asked Tom. "All." "Then we will go. Give me your whistle." The sergeant unslung the whistle from his shoulder. Tom blew a shrill note, and his men started out of the bush and lined up on the track. The German cursed when he saw that they were less in number than his own men; Tom felt that he would have writhed had he known that none of them was trained. At the present moment he was lost in wonderment at the fact of a young white man, in German territory but clearly not a German, having at his command negroes who were just as clearly not German askaris, but possessed German rifles.