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Title: The Keepers of the King's Peace
Author: Edgar Wallace
Release Date: June 15, 2008 [EBook #25803]
Language: English
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THE KEEPERS OF
THE KING'S PEACE
BY
EDGAR WALLACE
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON AND MELBOURNE
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS LTD.,
LONDON AND TONBRIDGE
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I BONES, SANDERS AND ANOTHER 5
II BONES CHANGES HIS RELIGION 28
III THE MAKER OF STORMS 53
IV BONES AND THE WIRELESS 75
V THE REMEDY 99
VI THE MEDICINE MAN 117
VII BONES, KING-MAKER 135
VIII THE TAMER OF BEASTS 154
IX THE MERCENARIES 169
X THE WATERS OF MADNESS 191
XI EYE TO EYE 215
XII THE HOODED KING 233
TO
PAT
(P. M. C. W.)
THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE
CHAPTER I
BONES, SANDERS AND ANOTHER
To Isongo, which stands upon the tributary of that name, came a woman of
the Isisi who had lost her husband through a providential tree falling
upon him. I say "providential," for it was notorious that he was an evil
man, a drinker of beer and a favourite of many bad persons. Also he made
magic in the forest, and was reputedly the familiar of Bashunbi the
devil brother of M'shimba-M'shamba. He beat his wives, and once had set
fire to his house from sheer wickedness. So that when he was borne back
to the village on a grass bier and the women of his house decked
themselves with green leaves and arm in arm staggered and stamped
through the village street in their death dance, there was a suspicion
of hilarity in their song, and a more cheery step in their dance than
the occasion called for.
An old man named D'wiri, who knew every step of every dance, saw this
and said in his stern way that it was shameless. But he was old and was,
moreover, in fear for the decorum of his own obsequies if these
outrageous departures from custom were approved or allowed to pass
without reprimand.
When M'lama, the wife of G'mami, had seen her lord depart in the canoe
for burial in the middle island and had wailed her conventional grief,
she washed the dust from her body at the river's edge and went back to
her hut. And all that was grief for the dead man was washed away with
the dust of mourning.
Many moons came out of the sky, were wasted and died before the woman
M'lama showed signs of her gifts. It is said that they appeared one
night after a great storm wherein lightning played such strange tricks
upon the river that even the old man D'wiri could not remember parallel
instances.
In the night the wife of a hunter named E'sani-Osoni brought a dying
child into the hut of the widow. He had been choked by a fish-bone and
was _in extremis_ when M'lama put her hand upon his head and straightway
the bone flew from his mouth, "and there was a cry terrible to
hear--such a cry as a leopard makes when he is pursued by ghosts."
A week later a baby girl fell into a terrible fit and M'lama had laid
her hand upon it and behold! it slept from that moment.
Ahmet, chief of the Government spies, heard of these happenings and came
a three days' journey by river to Isongo.
"What are these stories of miracles?" he asked.
"_Capita_," said the chief, using the term of regard which is employed
in the Belgian Congo, "this woman M'lama is a true witch and has great
gifts, for she raises the dead by the touch of her hand. This I have
seen. Also it is said that when U'gomi, the woodcutter, made a fault,
cutting his foot in two, this woman healed him marvellously."
"I will see this M'lama," said Ahmet importantly.
He found her in her hut tossing four bones idly. These were the shanks
of goats, and each time they fell differently.
"O Ahmet," she said, when he entered, "you have a wife who is sick, also
a first-born boy who does not speak though he is more than six seasons
old."
Ahmet squatted down by her side.
"Woman," said he, "tell me something that is not the talk of river and I
will believe your magic."
"To-morrow your master, the lord Sandi, will send you a book which will
give you happiness," she said.
"Every day my lord sends me a book," retorted the sceptical Ahmet, "and
each brings me happiness. Also it is common talk that at this time
there come messengers carrying bags of silver and salt to pay men
according to their services."
Undismayed she tried her last shot.
"You have a crooked finger which none can straighten--behold!"
She took his hand in hers and pressed the injured phlange. A sharp pain
shot up his arm and he winced, pulling back his hand--but the year-old
dislocation which had defied the effort of the coast doctor was
straightened out, and though the movement was exquisitely painful he
could bend it.
"I see you are a true witch," he said, greatly impressed, for a native
has a horror of deformity of any kind, and he sent back word of the
phenomenon to Sanders.
Sanders at the same time was in receipt of other news which alternately
pleased him and filled him with panic. The mail had come in by fast
launch and had brought Captain Hamilton of the Houssas a very bulky
letter written in a feminine hand. He had broken the glad news to
Commissioner Sanders, but that gentleman was not certain in his mind
whether the startling intelligence conveyed by the letter was good or
bad.
"I'm sure the country will suit her," he said, "this part of the country
at any rate--but what will Bones say?"
"Bones!" repeated Captain Hamilton scornfully. "What the dickens does
it matter what Bones says?"
Nevertheless, he went to the sea-end of the verandah, and his roar
rivalled the thunder of the surf.
"Bones!"
There was no answer and for an excellent reason.
Sanders came out of the bungalow, his helmet on the back of his head, a
cheroot tilted dizzily.
"Where is he?" he asked.
Hamilton turned.
"I asked him to--at least I didn't ask him, he volunteered--to peg out a
trench line."
"Expect an invasion?" asked Sanders.
Hamilton grinned.
"Bones does," he said. "He's full of the idea, and offered to give me
tips on the way a trench should be dug--he's feeling rotten about things
... you know what I mean. His regiment was at Mons."
Sanders nodded.
"I understand," he said quietly. "And you ... you're a jolly good
soldier, Hamilton--how do you feel about it all?"
Hamilton shrugged his shoulders.
"They would have taken me for the Cameroons, but somebody had to stay,"
he said quietly. "After all, it is one's business to ... to do one's job
in the station of life to which it has pleased God to call him. This is
my work ... here."
Sanders laid his hand on the other's shoulder.
"That's the game as it should be played," he said, and his blue eyes
were as soft and as tender as a woman's. "There is no war here--we are
the keepers of the King's peace, Hamilton."
"It's rotten...."
"I know--I feel that way myself. We're out of it--the glory of it--the
chance of it--the tragedy of it. And there are others. Think of the men
in India eating their hearts out ... praying for the order that will
carry them from the comfort of their lives to the misery and the
death--and the splendour, I grant you--of war."
He sighed and looked wistfully to the blue sea.
Hamilton beckoned a Houssa corporal who was crossing the garden of the
Residency.
"Ho, Mustaf," he said, in his queer coast Arabic, "where shall I look
for my lord Tibbetti?"
The corporal turned and pointed to the woods which begin at the back of
the Residency and carry without a break for three hundred miles.
"Lord, he went there carrying many strange things--also there went with
him Ali Abid, his servant."
Hamilton reached through an open window of the bungalow and fished out
his helmet with his walking-stick.
"We'll find Bones," he said grimly; "he's been gone three hours and he's
had time to re-plan Verdun."
It took some time to discover the working party, but when it was found
the trouble was well repaid.
Bones was stretched on a canvas chair under the shade of a big Isisi
palm. His helmet was tipped forward so that the brim rested on the
bridge of his nose, his thin red arms were folded on his breast, and
their gentle rise and fall testified to his shame. Two pegs had been
driven in, and between them a string sagged half-heartedly.
Curled up under a near-by bush was, presumably, Ali Abid--presumably,
because all that was visible was a very broad stretch of brown satin
skin which showed between the waistline of a pair of white cotton
trousers and a duck jacket.
They looked down at the unconscious Bones for a long time in silence.
"What will he say when I kick him?" asked Hamilton. "You can have the
first guess."
Sanders frowned thoughtfully.
"He'll say that he was thinking out a new system of communicating
trenches," he said. "He's been boring me to tears over saps and things."
Hamilton shook his head.
"Wrong, sir," he said; "that isn't the lie he'll tell. He will say that
I kept him up so late last night working at the men's pay-sheets that he
couldn't keep awake."
Bones slept on.
"He may say that it was coffee after tiffin," suggested Sanders after a
while; "he said the other day that coffee always made him sleep."
"'Swoon' was the word he used, sir," corrected Hamilton. "I don't think
he'll offer that suggestion now--the only other excuse I can think of is
that he was repeating the Bomongo irregular verbs. Bones!"
He stooped and broke off a long grass and inserted it in the right ear
of Lieutenant Tibbetts, twiddling the end delicately. Bones made a
feeble clutch at his ear, but did not open his eyes.
"Bones!" said Hamilton, and kicked him less gently. "Get up, you lazy
devil--there's an invasion."
Bones leapt to his feet and staggered a little; blinked fiercely at his
superior and saluted.
"Enemy on the left flank, sir," he reported stiffly. "Shall we have
dinner or take a taxi?"
"Wake up, Napoleon," begged Hamilton, "you're at Waterloo."
Bones blinked more slowly.
"I'm afraid I've been unconscious, dear old officer," he confessed. "The
fact is----"
"Listen to this, everybody," said Hamilton admiringly.
"The fact is, sir," said Bones, with dignity, "I fell asleep--that
beastly coffee I had after lunch, added to the fatigue of sittin' up
half the night with those jolly old accounts of yours, got the better of
me. I was sittin' down workin' out one of the dinkiest little ideas in
trenches--a sort of communicatin' trench where you needn't get wet in
the rainiest weather--when I--well, I just swooned off."
Hamilton looked disappointed.
"Weren't you doing anything with the Bomongo verbs?" he demanded.
A light came to Bones's eyes.
"By Jove, sir!" he said heartily, "that was it, of course.... The last
thing I remember was...."
"Kick that man of yours and come back to the bungalow," Hamilton
interrupted, "there's a job for you, my boy."
He walked across and stirred the second sleeper with the toe of his
boot.
Ali Abid wriggled round and sat up.
He was square of face, with a large mouth and two very big brown eyes.
He was enormously fat, but it was not fat of the flabby type. Though he
called himself Ali, it was, as Bones admitted, "sheer swank" to do so,
for this man had "coast" written all over him.
He got up slowly and saluted first his master, then Sanders, and lastly
Hamilton.
Bones had found him at Cape Coast Castle on the occasion of a joy-ride
which the young officer had taken on a British man-of-war. Ali Abid had
been the heaven-sent servant, and though Sanders had a horror of natives
who spoke English, the English of Ali Abid was his very own.
He had been for five years the servant of Professor Garrileigh, the
eminent bacteriologist, the account of whose researches in the field of
tropical medicines fill eight volumes of closely-printed matter, every
page of which contains words which are not to be found in most lexicons.
They walked back to the Residency, Ali Abid in the rear.
"I want you to go up to the Isongo, Bones," said Sanders; "there may be
some trouble there--a woman is working miracles."
"He might get a new head," murmured Hamilton, but Bones pretended not to
hear.
"Use your tact and get back before the 17th for the party."
"The----?" asked Bones.
He had an irritating trick of employing extravagant gestures of a
fairly commonplace kind. Thus, if he desired to hear a statement
repeated--though he had heard it well enough the first time--he
would bend his head with a puzzled wrinkle of forehead, put his hand
to his ear and wait anxiously, even painfully, for the repetition.
"You heard what the Commissioner said," growled Hamilton.
"Party--P-A-R-T-Y."
"My birthday is not until April, your Excellency," said Bones.
"I'd guess the date--but what's the use?" interposed Hamilton.
"It isn't a birthday party, Bones," said Sanders. "We are giving a
house-warming for Miss Hamilton."
Bones gasped, and turned an incredulous eye upon his chief.
"You haven't a sister, surely, dear old officer?" he asked.
"Why the dickens shouldn't I have a sister?" demanded his chief.
Bones shrugged his shoulders.
"A matter of deduction, sir," he said quietly. "Absence of all evidence
of a soothin' and lovin' influence in your lonely an' unsympathetic
upbringin'; hardness of heart an' a disposition to nag, combined with a
rough and unpromisin' exterior--a sister, good Lord!"
"Anyway, she's coming, Bones," said Hamilton; "and she's looking forward
to seeing you--I've written an awful lot about you."
Bones smirked.
"Of course," he said, "you've overdone it a bit--women hate to be
disillusioned. What you ought to have done, sir, is to describe me as a
sort of ass--genial and all that sort of thing, but a commonplace sort
of ass."
Hamilton nodded.
"That's exactly what I've done, Bones," he said. "I told her how Bosambo
did you in the eye for twenty pounds, and how you fell into the water
looking for buried treasure, and how the Isisi tried to sell you a
flying crocodile and would have sold it too, if it hadn't been for my
timely arrival. I told her----"
"I think you've said enough, sir."
Bones was very red and very haughty.
"Far be it from me to resent your attitude or contradict your calumnies.
Miss Hamilton will see very little of me. An inflexible sense of duty
will keep me away from the frivolous circle of society, sir. Alert an'
sleepless----"
"Trenches," said Hamilton brutally.
Bones winced, regarded his superior for a moment with pain, saluted, and
turning on his heel, stalked away, followed by Ali Abid no less pained.
He left at dawn the next morning, and both Sanders and Hamilton came
down to the concrete quay to see the _Zaire_ start on her journey.
Sanders gave his final instructions--
"If the woman is upsetting the people, arrest her; if she has too big a
hold on them, arrest her; but if she is just amusing them, come back."
"And don't forget the 17th," said Hamilton.
"I may arrive a little late for that," said Bones gravely. "I don't
wish to be a skeleton at your jolly old festive board, dear old
sportsman--you will excuse my absence to Miss Hamilton. I shall
probably have a headache and all that sort of thing."
He waved a sad farewell as the _Zaire_ passed round the bend of the
river, and looked, as he desired to look, a melancholy figure with his
huge pipe in his mouth and his hands thrust dejectedly into his trousers
pockets.
Once out of sight he became his own jovial self.
"Lieutenant Ali," he said, "get out my log and put it in old Sanders'
cabin, make me a cup of tea and keep her jolly old head east, east by
north."
"Ay, ay, sir," said Ali in excellent English.
The "log" which Bones kept was one of the secret documents which never
come under the eye of the superior authorities. There were such entries
as--
"Wind N.N.W. Sea calm. Hostile craft sighted on port bow, at 10.31
a.m. General Quarters sounded 10.32. Interrogated Captain of the
hostile craft and warned him not to fish in fair-way. Sighted Cape
M'Gooboori 12.17, stopped for lunch and wood."
What though Cape M'Gooboori was the village of that name and the "calm
sea" was no more than the placid bosom of the Great River? What though
Bones's "hostile craft" was a dilapidated canoe, manned by one aged and
bewildered man of the Isisi engaged in spearing fish? Bones saw all
things through the rosy spectacles of adventurous youth denied its
proper share of experience.
At sunset the _Zaire_ came gingerly through the shoals that run out from
the Isongo beach, and Bones went ashore to conduct his investigations.
It chanced that the evening had been chosen by M'lama, the witch, for
certain wonderful manifestations, and the village was almost deserted.
In a wood and in a place of green trees M'lama sat tossing her sheep
shanks, and a dense throng of solemn men and women squatted or sat or
tiptoed about her--leaving her a respectable space for her operations. A
bright fire crackled and glowed at her side, and into this, from time to
time, she thrust little sticks of plaited straw and drew them forth
blazing and spluttering until with a quick breath she extinguished the
flame and examined the grey ash.
"Listen, all people," she said, "and be silent, lest my great ju-ju
strike you dead. What man gave me this?"
"It was I, M'lama," said an eager woman, her face wrinkled with
apprehension as she held up her brown palm.
The witch peered forward at the speaker.
"O F'sela!" she chanted, "there is a man-child for thee who shall be
greater than chiefs; also you will suffer from a sickness which shall
make you mad."
"O ko!"
Half dismayed by the promise of her own fate; half exalted by the career
the witch had sketched for her unborn son, the woman stared
incredulously, fearfully at the swaying figure by the fire.
Again a plaited stick went into the fire, was withdrawn and blown out,
and the woman again prophesied.
And sometimes it was of honours and riches she spoke, and sometimes--and
more often--of death and disaster. Into this shuddering group strode
Bones, very finely clad in white raiment yet limp withal, for the night
was close and the way had been long and rough.
The sitters scrambled to their feet, their knuckles at their teeth, for
this was a moment of great embarrassment.
"Oh, M'lama," said Bones agreeably, and spoke in the soft dialect of the
Isisi by-the-River, "prophesy for me!"
She looked up sullenly, divining trouble for herself.
"Lord," she said, with a certain smooth venom, "there is a great
sickness for you--and behold you will go far away and die, and none
shall miss you."
Bones went very red, and shook an indignant forefinger at the offending
prophetess.
"You're a wicked old storyteller!" he stammered. "You're depressin' the
people--you naughty girl! I hate you--I simply loathe you!"
As he spoke in English she was not impressed.
"Goin' about the country puttin' people off their grub, by Jove!" he
stormed; "tellin' stories ... oh, dash it, I shall have to be awfully
severe with you!"
Severe he was, for he arrested her, to the relief of her audience, who
waited long enough to discover whether or not her ju-ju would strike him
dead, and being obviously disappointed by her failure to provide this
spectacle, melted away.
Close to the gangway of the _Zaire_ she persuaded one of her Houssa
guard to release his hold. She persuaded him by the simple expedient of
burying her sharp white teeth in the fleshy part of his arm--and bolted.
They captured her half mad with panic and fear of her unknown fate, and
brought her to the boat.
Bones, fussing about the struggling group, dancing with excitement, was
honourably wounded by the chance contact of his nose with a wild and
whirling fist.
"Put her in the store cabin!" he commanded breathlessly. "Oh, what a
wicked woman!"
In the morning as the boat got under way Ali came to him with a
distressing story.
"Your Excellency will be pained to hear," he said, "that the female
prisoner has eradicated her costume."
"Eradicated...?" repeated the puzzled Bones, gently touching the patch
of sticking-plaster on his nose.
"In the night," explained this former slave of science, "the subject has
developed symptoms of mania, and has entirely dispensed with her
clothes--to wit, by destruction."
"She's torn up her clothes?" gasped Bones, his hair rising and Ali
nodded.
Now, the dress of a native woman varies according to the degree in
which she falls under missionary influence. Isongo was well within
the sphere of the River Mission, and so M'lama's costume consisted
of a tight-fitting piece of print which wound round and round the body
in the manner of a kilt, covering the figure from armpit to feet.
Bones went to the open window of the prison cabin, and steadfastly
averting his gaze, called--
"M'lama!"
No reply came, and he called again.
"M'lama," he said gently, in the river dialect, "what shall Sandi say to
this evil that you do?"
There was no reply, only a snuffling sound of woe.
"Oh, ai!" sobbed the voice.
"M'lama, presently we shall come to the Mission house where the God-men
are, and I will bring you clothing--these you will put on you," said
Bones, still staring blankly over the side of the ship at the waters
which foamed past her low hull; "for if my lord Sandi see you as I see
you--I mean as I wouldn't for the world see you, you improper person,"
he corrected himself hastily in English--"if my lord Sandi saw you, he
would feel great shame. Also," he added, as a horrible thought made him
go cold all over, "also the lady who comes to my lord Militini--oh,
lor!"
These last two words were in English.
Fortunately there was a Jesuit settlement near by, and here Bones
stopped and interviewed the stout and genial priest in charge.
"It's curious how they all do it," reflected the priest, as he led the
way to his storehouse. "I've known 'em to tear up their clothes in an
East End police cell--white folk, the same as you and I."
He rummaged in a big box and produced certain garments.
"My last consignment from a well-meaning London congregation," he
smiled, and flung out a heap of dresses, hats, stockings and shoes. "If
they'd sent a roll or two of print I might have used them--but strong
religious convictions do not entirely harmonize with a last year's Paris
model."
Bones, flushed and unhappy, grabbed an armful of clothing, and showering
the chuckling priest with an incoherent medley of apology and thanks,
hurried back to the _Zaire_.
"Behold, M'lama," he said, as he thrust his loot through the window of
the little deck-house, "there are many grand things such as great ladies
wear--now you shall appear before Sandi beautiful to see."
He logged the happening in characteristic language, and was in the midst
of this literary exercise when the tiny steamer charged a sandbank, and
before her engines could slow or reverse she had slid to the top and
rested in two feet of water.
A rueful Bones surveyed the situation and returned to his cabin to
conclude his diary with--
"12.19 struck a reef off B'lidi Bay. Fear vessel total wreck. Boats
all ready for lowering."
As a matter of fact there were neither boats to lower nor need to lower
them, because the crew were already standing in the river (up to their
hips) and were endeavouring to push the _Zaire_ to deep water.
In this they were unsuccessful, and it was not for thirty-six hours
until the river, swollen by heavy rains in the Ochori region, lifted the
_Zaire_ clear of the obstruction, that Bones might record the story of
his salvage.
He had released a reformed M'lama to the greater freedom of the deck,
and save for a shrill passage at arms between that lady and the corporal
she had bitten, there was no sign of a return to her evil ways. She wore
a white pique skirt and a white blouse, and on her head she balanced
deftly, without the aid of pins, a yellow straw hat with long trailing
ribbons of heliotrope. Alternately they trailed behind and before.
"A horrible sight," said Bones, shuddering at his first glimpse of her.
The rest of the journey was uneventful until the _Zaire_ had reached the
northernmost limits of the Residency reserve. Sanders had partly
cleared and wholly drained four square miles of the little peninsula on
which the Residency stood, and by barbed wire and deep cutting had
isolated the Government estate from the wild forest land to the north.
Here, the river shoals in the centre, cutting a passage to the sea
through two almost unfathomable channels close to the eastern and
western banks. Bones had locked away his journal and was standing on the
bridge rehearsing the narrative which was to impress his superiors with
a sense of his resourcefulness--and incidentally present himself in the
most favourable light to the new factor which was coming into his daily
life.
He had thought of Hamilton's sister at odd intervals and now....
The _Zaire_ was hugging the western bank so closely that a bold and
agile person might have stepped ashore.
M'lama, the witch, was both bold and agile.
He turned with open mouth to see something white and feminine leap the
space between deck and shore, two heliotrope ribbons streaming wildly in
such breeze as there was.
"Hi! Don't do that ... naughty, naughty!" yelled the agonized Bones, but
she had disappeared into the undergrowth before the big paddle-wheel of
the _Zaire_ began to thresh madly astern.
Never was the resourcefulness of Bones more strikingly exemplified. An
ordinary man would have leapt overboard in pursuit, but Bones was no
ordinary man. He remembered in that moment of crisis, the distressing
propensity of his prisoner to the "eradication of garments." With one
stride he was in his cabin and had snatched a counterpane from his bed,
in two bounds he was over the rail on the bank and running swiftly in
the direction the fugitive had taken.
For a little time he did not see her, then he glimpsed the white of a
pique dress, and with a yell of admonition started in pursuit.
She stood hesitating a moment, then fled, but he was on her before she
had gone a dozen yards; the counterpane was flung over her head, and
though she kicked and struggled and indulged in muffled squeaks, he
lifted her up in his arms and staggered back to the boat.
They ran out a gangway plank and across this he passed with his burden,
declining all offers of assistance.
"Close the window," he gasped; "open the door--now, you naughty old
lady!"
He bundled her in, counterpane enmeshed and reduced to helpless silence,
slammed the door and leant panting against the cabin, mopping his brow.
"Phew!" said Bones, and repeated the inelegant remark many times. All
this happened almost within sight of the quay on which Sanders and
Hamilton were waiting. It was a very important young man who saluted
them.
"All correct, sir," said Bones, stiff as a ramrod; "no
casualties--except as per my nose which will be noted in the margin of
my report--one female prisoner secured after heroic chase, which, I
trust, sir, you will duly report to my jolly old superiors----"
"Don't gas so much, Bones," said Hamilton. "Come along and meet my
sister--hullo, what the devil's that?"
They turned with one accord to the forest path.
Two native policemen were coming towards them, and between them a
bedraggled M'lama, her skirt all awry, her fine hat at a rakish angle,
stepped defiantly.
"Heavens!" said Bones, "she's got away again.... That's my prisoner,
dear old officer!"
Hamilton frowned.
"I hope she hasn't frightened Pat ... she was walking in the
reservation."
Bones did not faint, his knees went from under him, but he recovered by
clutching the arm of his faithful Ali.
"Dear old friend," he murmured brokenly, "accidents ... error of
judgment ... the greatest tragedy of my life...."
"What's the matter with you?" demanded Sanders in alarm, for the face of
Bones was ghastly.
Lieutenant Tibbetts made no reply, but walked with unsteady steps to the
lock-up, fumbled with the key and opened the door.
There stepped forth a dishevelled and wrathful girl (she was a little
scared, too, I suspect), the most radiant and lovely figure that had
ever dawned upon the horizon of Bones.
She looked from her staggered brother to Sanders, from Sanders to her
miserable custodian.
"What on earth----" began Hamilton.
Then her lips twitched and she fell into a fit of uncontrollable
laughter.
"If," said Bones huskily, "if in an excess of zeal I mistook... in the
gloamin', madame ... white dress...."
He spread out his arms in a gesture of extravagant despair.
"I can do no more than a gentleman.... I have a loaded revolver in my
cabin ... farewell!"
He bowed deeply to the girl, saluted his dumbfounded chief, tripped up
over a bucket and would have fallen but for Hamilton's hand.
"You're an ass," said Hamilton, struggling to preserve his sense of
annoyance. "Pat--this is Lieutenant Tibbetts, of whom I have often
written."
The girl looked at Bones, her eyes moist with laughter.
"I guessed it from the first," she said, and Bones writhed.
CHAPTER II
BONES CHANGES HIS RELIGION
Captain Hamilton of the King's Houssas had two responsibilities in life,
a sister and a subaltern.
The sister's name was Patricia Agatha, the subaltern had been born
Tibbetts, christened Augustus, and named by Hamilton in his arbitrary
way, "Bones."
Whilst sister and subaltern were separated from one another by some
three thousand miles of ocean--as far, in fact, as the Coast is from
Bradlesham Thorpe in the County of Hampshire--Captain Hamilton bore his
responsibilities without displaying a sense of the burden.
When Patricia Hamilton decided on paying a visit to her brother she did
so with his heartiest approval, for he did not realize that in bringing
his two responsibilities face to face he was not only laying the
foundation of serious trouble, but was actually engaged in erecting the
fabric.
Pat Hamilton had come and had been boisterously welcomed by her brother
one white-hot morning, Houssas in undress uniform lining the beach and
gazing solemnly upon Militini's riotous joy. Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
C.M.G., had given her a more formal welcome, for he was a little scared
of women. Bones, as we know, had not been present--which was unfortunate
in more ways than one.
It made matters no easier for the wretched Bones that Miss Hamilton was
an exceedingly lovely lady. Men who live for a long time in native lands
and see little save beautiful figures displayed without art and with
very little adornment, are apt to regard any white woman with regular
features as pretty, when the vision comes to them after a long interval
spent amidst native people. But it needed neither contrast nor
comparison to induce an admiration for Captain Hamilton's sister.
She was of a certain Celtic type, above the medium height, with the
freedom of carriage and gait which is the peculiar possession of her
country-women. Her face was a true oval, and her complexion of that kind
which tans readily but does not freckle.
Eyes and mouth were firm and steadfast; she was made for ready laughter,
yet she was deep enough, and in eyes and mouth alike you read a
tenderness beyond disguise. She had a trinity of admirers: her brother's
admiration was natural and critical; Sanders admired and feared;
Lieutenant Tibbetts admired and resented.
From the moment when Bones strode off after the painful discovery, had
slammed the door of his hut and had steadfastly declined all manner of
food and sustenance, he had voluntarily cut himself off from his kind.
He met Hamilton on parade the following morning, hollow-eyed (as he
hoped) after a sleepless night, and there was nothing in his attitude
suggestive of the deepest respect and the profoundest regard for that
paragraph of King's Regulations which imposes upon the junior officer a
becoming attitude of humility in the presence of his superior officer.
"How is your head, Bones?" asked Hamilton, after the parade had been
dismissed.
"Thank you, sir," said Bones bitterly--though why he should be bitter at
the kindly inquiry only he knew--"thank you, sir, it is about the same.
My temperature is--or was--up to one hundred and four, and I have been
delirious. I wouldn't like to say, dear old--sir, that I'm not nearly
delirious now."
"Come up to tiffin," invited Hamilton.
Bones saluted--a sure preliminary to a dramatic oration.
"Sir," he said firmly, "you've always been a jolly old officer to me
before this contretemps wrecked my young life--but I shall never be
quite the same man again, sir."
"Don't be an ass," begged Hamilton.
"Revile me, sir," said Bones dismally; "give me a dangerous mission, one
of those jolly old adventures where a feller takes his life in one
hand, his revolver in the other, but don't ask me----"
"My sister wants to see you," said Hamilton, cutting short the flow of
eloquence.
"Ha, ha!" laughed Bones hollowly, and strode into his hut.
"And what I'm going to do with him, Heaven knows," groaned Hamilton at
tiffin. "The fact is, Pat, your arrival on the scene has thoroughly
demoralized him."
The girl folded her serviette and walked to the window, and stood
looking out over the yellow stretch of the deserted parade-ground.
"I'm going to call on Bones," she said suddenly.
"Poor Bones!" murmured Sanders.
"That's very rude!" She took down her solar helmet from the peg behind
the door and adjusted it carefully. Then she stepped through the open
door, whistling cheerfully.
"I hope you don't mind, sir," apologized Hamilton, "but we've never
succeeded in stopping her habit of whistling."
Sanders laughed.
"It would be strange if she didn't whistle," he said cryptically.
Bones was lying on his back, his hands behind his head. A half-emptied
tin of biscuits, no less than the remnants of a box of chocolates,
indicated that anchorite as he was determined to be, his austerity did
not run in the direction of starvation.
His mind was greatly occupied by a cinematograph procession of
melancholy pictures. Perhaps he would go away, far, far, into the
interior. Even into the territory of the great king where a man's life
is worth about five cents net. And as day by day passed and no news came
of him--as how could it when his habitation was marked by a cairn of
stones?--she would grow anxious and unhappy. And presently messengers
would come bringing her a few poor trinkets he had bequeathed to her--a
wrist-watch, a broken sword, a silver cigarette-case dented with the
arrow that slew him--and she would weep silently in the loneliness of
her room.
And perhaps he would find strength to send a few scrawled words asking
for her pardon, and the tears would well up in her beautiful grey
eyes--as they were already welling in Bones's eyes at the picture he
drew--and she would know--all.
"Phweet!"
Or else, maybe he would be stricken down with fever, and she would want
to come and nurse him, but he would refuse.
"Tell her," he would say weakly, but oh, so bravely, "tell her ... I ask
only ... her pardon."
"Phweet!"
Bones heard the second whistle. It came from the open window immediately
above his head. A song bird was a rare visitor to these parts, but he
was too lazy and too absorbed to look up.
Perhaps (he resumed) she would never see him again, never know the deep
sense of injustice....
"Phwee--et!"
It was clearer and more emphatic, and he half turned his head to
look----
He was on his feet in a second, his hand raised to his damp forehead,
for leaning on the window sill, her lips pursed for yet another whistle,
was the lady of his thoughts.
She met his eyes sternly.
"Come outside--misery!" she said, and Bones gasped and obeyed.
"What do you mean," she demanded, "by sulking in your wretched little
hut when you ought to be crawling about on your hands and knees begging
my pardon?"
Bones said nothing.
"Bones," said this outrageous girl, shaking her head reprovingly, "you
want a jolly good slapping!"
Bones extended his bony wrist.
"Slap!" he said defiantly.
He had hardly issued the challenge when a very firm young palm, driven
by an arm toughened by a long acquaintance with the royal and ancient
game, came "Smack!" and Bones winced.
"Play the game, dear old Miss Hamilton," he said, rubbing his wrist.
"Play the game yourself, dear old Bones," she mimicked him. "You ought
to be ashamed of yourself----"
"Let bygones be bygones, jolly old Miss Hamilton," begged Bones
magnanimously. "And now that I see you're a sport, put it there, if it
weighs a ton."
And he held out his nobbly hand and caught the girl's in a grip that
made her grimace.
Five minutes later he was walking her round the married quarters of his
Houssas, telling her the story of his earliest love affair. She was an
excellent listener, and seldom interrupted him save to ask if there was
any insanity in his family, or whether the girl was short-sighted; in
fact, as Bones afterwards said, it might have been Hamilton himself.
"What on earth are they finding to talk about?" wondered Sanders,
watching the confidences from the depths of a big cane chair on the
verandah.
"Bones," replied Hamilton lazily, "is telling her the story of his life
and how he saved the territories from rebellion. He's also begging her
not to breathe a word of this to me for fear of hurting my feelings."
At that precise moment Bones was winding up a most immodest recital of
his accomplishments with a less immodest footnote.
"Of course, dear old Miss Hamilton," he was saying, lowering his voice,
"I shouldn't like a word of this to come to your jolly old brother's
ears. He's an awfully good sort, but naturally in competition with an
agile mind like mine, understanding the native as I do, he hasn't an
earthly----"
"Why don't you write the story of your adventures?" she asked
innocently. "It would sell like hot cakes."
Bones choked with gratification.
"Precisely my idea--oh, what a mind you've got! What a pity it doesn't
run in the family! I'll tell you a precious secret--not a word to
anybody--honest?"
"Honest," she affirmed.
Bones looked round.
"It's practically ready for the publisher," he whispered, and stepped
back to observe the effect of his words.
She shook her head in admiration, her eyes were dancing with delight,
and Bones realized that here at last he had met a kindred soul.
"It must be awfully interesting to write books," she sighed. "I've
tried--but I can never invent anything."
"Of course, in my case----" corrected Bones.
"I suppose you just sit down with a pen in your hand and imagine all
sorts of things," she mused, directing her feet to the Residency.
"This is the story of my life," explained Bones earnestly. "Not
fiction ... but all sorts of adventures that actually happened."
"To whom?" she asked.
"To me," claimed Bones, louder than was necessary.
"Oh!" she said.
"Don't start 'Oh-ing,'" said Bones in a huff. "If you and I are going to
be good friends, dear old Miss Hamilton, don't say 'Oh!'"
"Don't be a bully, Bones." She turned on him so fiercely that he shrank
back.
"Play the game," he said feebly; "play the game, dear old sister!"
She led him captive to the stoep and deposited him in the easiest chair
she could find.
From that day he ceased to be anything but a slave, except on one point.
The question of missions came up at tiffin, and Miss Hamilton revealed
the fact that she favoured the High Church and held definite views on
the clergy.
Bones confessed that he was a Wesleyan.
"Do you mean to tell me that you're a Nonconformist?" she asked
incredulously.
"That's my dinky little religion, dear old Miss Hamilton," said Bones.
"I'd have gone into the Church only I hadn't enough--enough----"
"Brains?" suggested Hamilton.
"Call is the word," said Bones. "I wasn't called--or if I was I was
out--haw-haw! That's a rippin' little bit of persiflage, Miss Hamilton?"
"Be serious, Bones," said the girl; "you mustn't joke about things."
She put him through a cross-examination to discover the extent of his
convictions. In self-defence Bones, with only the haziest idea of the
doctrine he defended, summarily dismissed certain of Miss Hamilton's
most precious beliefs.
"But, Bones," she persisted, "if I asked you to change----"
Bones shook his head.
"Dear old friend," he said solemnly, "there are two things I'll never
do--alter the faith of my distant but happy youth, or listen to one
disparagin' word about the jolliest old sister that ever----"
"That will do, Bones," she said, with dignity. "I can see that you don't
like me as I thought you did--what do you think, Mr. Sanders?"
Sanders smiled.
"I can hardly judge--you see," he added apologetically, "I'm a Wesleyan
too."
"Oh!" said Patricia, and fled in confusion.
Bones rose in silence, crossed to his chief and held out his hand.
"Brother," he said brokenly.
"What the devil are you doing?" snarled Sanders.
"Spoken like a true Christian, dear old Excellency and sir," murmured
Bones. "We'll bring her back to the fold."
He stepped nimbly to the door, and the serviette ring that Sanders threw
with unerring aim caught his angular shoulder as he vanished.
That same night Sanders had joyful news to impart. He came into the
Residency to find Bones engaged in mastering the art of embroidery under
the girl's tuition.
Sanders interrupted what promised to be a most artistic execution.
"Who says a joy-ride to the upper waters of the Isisi?"
Hamilton jumped up.
"Joy-ride?" he said, puzzled.
Sanders nodded.
"We leave to-morrow for the Lesser Isisi to settle a religious
palaver--Bucongo of the Lesser Isisi is getting a little too
enthusiastic a Christian, and Ahmet has been sending some queer reports.
I've been putting off the palaver for weeks, but Administration says it
has no objection to my making a picnic of duty--so we'll all go."
"Tri-umph!" said Hamilton. "Bones, leave your needlework and go overhaul
the stores."
Bones, kneeling on a chair, his elbows on the table, looked up.
"As jolly old Francis Drake said when the Spanish Armada----"
"To the stores, you insubordinate beggar!" commanded Hamilton, and Bones
made a hurried exit.
The accommodation of the _Zaire_ was limited, but there was the launch,
a light-draught boat which was seldom used except for tributary work.
"I could put Bones in charge of the _Wiggle_," he said, "but he'd be
pretty sure to smash her up. Miss Hamilton will have my cabin, and you
and I could take the two smaller cabins."
Bones, to whom it was put, leapt at the suggestion, brushing aside all
objections. They were answered before they were framed.
As for the girl, she was beside herself with joy.
"Will there be any fighting?" she asked breathlessly. "Shall we be
attacked?"
Sanders shook his head smilingly.
"All you have to do," said Bones confidently, "is to stick to me. Put
your faith in old Bones. When you see the battle swayin' an' it isn't
certain which way it's goin', look for my jolly old banner wavin' above
the stricken field."
"And be sure it _is_ his banner," interrupted Hamilton, "and not his
large feet. Now the last time we had a fight...."
And he proceeded to publish and utter a scandalous libel, Bones
protesting incoherently the while.
The expedition was on the point of starting when Hamilton took his
junior aside.
"Bones," he said, not unkindly, "I know you're a whale of a navigator,
and all that sort of thing, and my sister, who has an awfully keen sense
of humour, would dearly love to see you at the helm of the _Wiggle_, but
as the Commissioner wants to make a holiday, I think it would be best if
you left the steering to one of the boys."
Bones drew himself up stiffly.
"Dear old officer," he said aggrieved, "I cannot think that you wish to
speak disparagingly of my intelligence----"
"Get that silly idea out of your head," said Hamilton. "That is just
what I'm trying to do."
"I'm under your jolly old orders, sir," Bones said with the air of an
early Christian martyr, "and according to Paragraph 156 of King's
Regulations----"
"Don't let us go into that," said Hamilton. "I'm not giving you any
commands, I'm merely making a sensible suggestion. Of course, if you
want to make an ass of yourself----"
"I have never had the slightest inclination that way, cheery old sir,"
said Bones, "and I'm not likely at my time of life to be influenced by
my surroundings."
He saluted again and made his way to the barracks. Bones had a
difficulty in packing his stores. In truth they had all been packed
before he reached the _Wiggle_, and to an unprofessional eye they were
packed very well indeed, but Bones had them turned out and packed _his_
way. When that was done, and it was obvious to the meanest intelligence
that the _Wiggle_ was in terrible danger of capsizing before she
started, the stores were unshipped and rearranged under the directions
of the fuming Hamilton.
When the third packing was completed, the general effect bore a
striking resemblance to the position of the stores as Bones had found
them when he came to the boat. When everybody was ready to start, Bones
remembered that he had forgotten his log-book, and there was another
wait.
"Have you got everything now?" asked Sanders wearily, leaning over the
rail.
"Everything, sir," said Bones, with a salute to his superior, and a
smile to the girl.
"Have you got your hot-water bottle and your hair-curlers?" demanded
Hamilton offensively.
Bones favoured him with a dignified stare, made a signal to the
engineer, and the _Wiggle_ started forward, as was her wont, with a jerk
which put upon Bones the alternative of making a most undignified sprawl
or clutching a very hot smoke-stack. He chose the latter, recovered his
balance with an easy grace, punctiliously saluted the tiny flag of the
_Zaire_ as he whizzed past her, and under the very eyes of Hamilton,
with all the calmness in the world, took the wheel from the steersman's
hand and ran the _Wiggle_ ashore.
All this he did in the brief space of three minutes.
"And," said Hamilton, exasperated to a degree, "if you'd only broken
your infernal head, the accident would have been worth it."
It took half an hour for the _Wiggle_ to get afloat again. She had run
up the beach, and it was necessary to unload the stores, carry them back
to the quay and reload her again.
"_Now_ are you ready?" said Sanders.
"Ay, ay, sir," said Bones, abased but nautical.
* * * * *
Bucongo, the chief of the Lesser Isisi folk, had a dispute with his
brother-in-law touching a certain matter which affected his honour. It
affected his life eventually, since his relative was found one morning
dead of a spear-thrust. This Sanders discovered after the big trial
which followed certain events described hereafter.
The brother-in-law in his malice had sworn that Bucongo held communion
with devils. It is a fact that Bucongo had, at an early age, been
captured by Catholic missionaries, and had spent an uncomfortable youth
mastering certain mysterious rites and ceremonies. His brother-in-law
had been in the blessed service of another missionary who taught that
God lived in the river, and that to fully benefit by his ju-ju it was
necessary to be immersed in the flowing stream.
Between the water-God men and the cross-God men there was ever a feud,
each speaking disparagingly of the other, though converts to each creed
had this in common, that neither understood completely the faith into
which they were newly admitted. The advantage lay with the Catholic
converts because they were given a pewter medal with hearts and sunlike
radiations engraved thereon (this medal was admittedly a cure for
toothache and pains in the stomach), whilst the Protestants had little
beyond a mysterious something that they referred to as A'lamo--which
means Grace.
But when taunted by their medal-flaunting rivals and challenged to
produce this "Grace," they were crestfallen and ashamed, being obliged
to admit that A'lamo was an invisible magic which (they stoutly
affirmed) was nevertheless an excellent magic, since it preserved one
from drowning and cured warts and boils.
Bucongo, the most vigorous partisan of the cross-God men, and an
innovator of ritual, found amusement in watching the Baptist
missionaries standing knee-deep in the river washing the souls of the
converts.
He had even been insolent to young Ferguson, the earnest leader of the
American Baptist Mission, and to his intense amazement had been suddenly
floored with a left-hander delivered by the sometime Harvard middle
weight.
He carried his grievance and a lump on his jaw to Mr. Commissioner
Sanders, who had arrived at the junction of the Isisi and the N'gomi
rivers and was holding his palaver, and Sanders had been unsympathetic.
"Go worship your God in peace," said Sanders, "and let all other men
worship theirs; and say no evil word to white men for these are very
quick to anger. Also it is unbecoming that a black man should speak
scornfully to his masters."
"Lord," said Bucongo, "in heaven all men are as one, black or white."
"In heaven," said Sanders, "we will settle that palaver, but here on the
river we hold our places by our merits. To-morrow I come to your village
to inquire into certain practices of which the God-men know
nothing--this palaver is finished."
Now Bucongo was something more than a convert. He was a man of singular
intelligence and of surprising originality. He had been a lay missioner
of the Church, and had made many converts to a curious religion, the
ritual of which was only half revealed to the good Jesuit fathers when
at a great palaver which Bucongo summoned to exhibit his converts, the
Church service was interspersed with the sacrifice of a goat and a weird
procession and dance which left the representative of The Order
speechless. Bucongo was called before a conference of the Mission and
reprimanded.
He offered excuses, but there was sufficient evidence to prove that this
enthusiastic Christian had gone systematically to work, to found what
amounted to a religion of his own.
The position was a little delicate, and any other Order than the Jesuits
might have hesitated to tackle a reform which meant losing a very large
membership.
The fate of Bucongo's congregation had been decided when, in his anger,
he took canoe, and travelling for half a day, came to the principal
Mission.
Father Carpentier, full-bearded, red of face and brawny of arm, listened
in the shade of his hut, pulling thoughtfully at a long pipe.
"And so, Pentini," concluded Bucongo, "even Sandi puts shame upon me
because I am a cross-God man, and he by all accounts is of the water-God
ju-ju."
The father eyed this perturbed sheep of his flock thoughtfully.
"O Bucongo," he said gently, "in the river lands are many beasts. Those
which fly and which swim; those that run swiftly and that hide in the
earth. Now who of these is right?"
"Lord, they are all right but are of different ways," said Bucongo.
Father Carpentier nodded.
"Also in the forest are two ants--one who lives in tree nests, and one
who has a home deep in the ground. They are of a kind, and have the same
business. Yet God put it into the little heads of one to climb trees,
and of the other to burrow deeply. Both are right and neither are wrong,
save when the tree ant meets the ground ant and fights him. Then both
are wrong."
The squatting Bucongo rose sullenly.
"Master," he said, "these mysteries are too much for a poor man. I think
I know a better ju-ju, and to him I go."
"You have no long journey, Chief," said the father sternly, "for they
tell me stories of ghost dances in the forest and a certain Bucongo who
is the leader of these--and of a human sacrifice. Also of converts who
are branded with a cross of hot iron."
The chief looked at his sometime tutor with face twisted and puckered
with rage, and turning without a word, walked back to his canoe.
The next morning Father Carpentier sent a messenger to Sanders bearing
an urgent letter, and Sanders read the closely written lines with a
troubled frown.
He put down the letter and came out on to the deck, to find Hamilton
fishing over the side of the steamer. Hamilton looked round.
"Anything wrong?" he asked quickly.
"Bucongo of the Lesser Isisi is wrong," said Sanders. "I have heard of
his religious meetings and have been a little worried--there will be a
big ju-ju palaver or I'm very much mistaken. Where is Bones?"
"He has taken my sister up the creek--Bones says there are any number of
egrets' nests there, and I believe he is right."
Sanders frowned again.
"Send a canoe to fetch him back," he said. "That is Bucongo's territory,
and I don't trust the devil."
"Which one--Bones or Bucongo?" asked Hamilton innocently.
But Sanders was not feeling humorous.
* * * * *
At that precise moment Bones was sitting before the most fantastic
religious assembly that ecclesiastic or layman had ever attended.
Fate and Bones had led the girl through a very pleasant forest
glade--they left the light-draught _Wiggle_ half a mile down stream
owing to the shoals which barred their progress, and had come upon
Bucongo in an exalted moment.
With the assurance that he was doing no more than intrude upon one of
those meetings which the missionizing Chief of the Lesser Isisi so
frequently held, Bones stood on the outer fringe of the circle which sat
in silence to watch an unwilling novitiate getting acquainted with
Bucongo's god.
The novice was a girl, and she lay before an altar of stones surmounted
by a misshapen _beti_ who glared with his one eye upon the devout
gathering. The novice lay rigid, for the excellent reason that she was
roped foot and hands to two pegs in the ground.
Before the altar itself was a fire of wood in which two irons were
heating.
Bones did not take this in for a moment, for he was gazing open-mouthed
at Bucongo. On his head was an indubitable mitre, but around the mitre
was bound a strip of skin from which was suspended a circle of dangling
monkey tails. For cope he wore a leopard's robe. His face was streaked
red with camwood, and around his eyes he had painted two white circles.
He was in the midst of a frenzied address when the two white visitors
came upon the scene, and his hand was outstretched to take the red
branding-iron when the girl at Bones's side, with a little gasp of
horror, broke into the circle, and wrenching the rough iron from the
attendant's hand, flung it towards the circle of spectators, which
widened in consequence.
"How dare you--how dare you!" she demanded breathlessly, "you
horrible-looking man!"
Bucongo glared at her but said nothing; then he turned to meet Bones.
In that second of time Bucongo had to make a great decision, and to
overcome the habits of a lifetime. Training and education to the
dominion of the white man half raised his hand to the salute; something
that boiled and bubbled madly and set his shallow brain afire, something
that was of his ancestry, wild, unreasoning, brutish, urged other
action. Bones had his revolver half drawn when the knobbly end of the
chief's killing-spear struck him between the eyes, and he went down on
his knees.
Thus it came about, that he found himself sitting before Bucongo, his
feet and hands tied with native grass, with the girl at his side in no
better case.
She was very frightened, but this she did not show. She had the
disadvantage of being unable to understand the light flow of offensive
badinage which passed between her captor and Bones.
"O Tibbetti," said Bucongo, "you see me as a god--I have finished with
all white men."
"Soon we shall finish with you, Bucongo," said Bones.
"I cannot die, Tibbetti," said the other with easy confidence, "that is
the wonderful thing."
"Other men have said that," said Bones in the vernacular, "and their
widows are wives again and have forgotten their widowhood."
"This is a new ju-ju, Tibbetti," said Bucongo, a strange light in his
eyes. "I am the greatest of all cross-God men, and it is revealed to me
that many shall follow me. Now you and the woman shall be the first of
all white people to bear the mark of Bucongo the Blessed. And in the
days to be you shall bare your breasts and say, 'Bucongo the Wonderful
did this with his beautiful hands.'"
Bones was in a cold sweat and his mouth was dry. He scarcely dare look
at the girl by his side.
"What does he say?" she asked in a low voice. Bones hesitated, and then
haltingly he stammered the translation of the threat.
She nodded.
"O Bucongo," said Bones, with a sudden inspiration, "though you do evil,
I will endure. But this you shall do and serve me. Brand me alone upon
the chest, and upon the back. For if we be branded separately we are
bound to one another, and you see how ugly this woman is with her thin
nose and her pale eyes; also she has long hair like the grass which the
weaver birds use for their nests."
He spoke loudly, eagerly, and it seemed convincingly, for Bucongo was in
doubt. Truly the woman by all standards was very ugly. Her face was
white and her lips thin. She was a narrow woman too, he thought, like
one underfed.
"This you shall do for me, Bucongo," urged Bones; "for gods do not do
evil things, and it would be bad to marry me to this ugly woman who has
no hips and has an evil tongue."
Bucongo was undecided.
"A god may do no evil," he said; "but I do not know the ways of white
men. If it be true, then I will mark you twice, Tibbetti, and you shall
be my man for ever; and the woman I will not touch."
"Cheer oh!" said Bones.
"What are you saying--will he let us go?" asked the girl.
"I was sayin' what a jolly row there'll be," lied Bones; "and he was
sayin' that he couldn't think of hurtin' a charmin' lady like you. Shut
your eyes, dear old Miss Hamilton."
She shut them quickly, half fainting with terror, for Bucongo was coming
towards them, a blazing iron in his hand, a smile of simple benevolence
upon his not unintelligent face.
"This shall come as a blessing to you, Tibbetti," he said almost
jovially.
Bones shut his teeth and waited.
The hot iron was scorching his silk shirt when a voice hailed the
high-priest of the newest of cults.
"O Bucongo," it said.
Bucongo turned with a grimace of fear and cringed backward before the
levelled Colt of Mr. Commissioner Sanders.
"Tell me now," said Sanders in his even tone, "can such a man as you
die? Think, Bucongo."
"Lord," said Bucongo huskily, "I think I can die."
"We shall see," said Sanders.
* * * * *
It was not until after dinner that night that the girl had recovered
sufficiently to discuss her exciting morning.
"I think you were an awful brute," she addressed her unabashed brother.
"You were standing in the wood listening to and seeing everything, and
never came till the last minute."
"It was my fault," interrupted Sanders. "I wanted to see how far the
gentle Bucongo would go."
"Dooced thoughtless," murmured Bones under his breath, but audible.
She looked at him long and earnestly then turned again to her brother.
"There is one thing I want to know," she said. "What was Bones saying
when he talked to that horrible man? Do you know that Bones was
scowling at me as though I was ... I hardly know how to express it. Was
he saying nice things?"
Hamilton looked up at the awning, and cleared his throat.
"Play the game, dear old sir and brother-officer," croaked Bones.
"He said----" began Hamilton.
"Live an' let live," pleaded Bones, all of a twitter. "_Esprit de corps_
an' discretion, jolly old captain."
Hamilton looked at his subordinate steadily.
"He asked to be branded twice in order that you might not be branded
once," he said quietly.
The girl stared at Bones, and her eyes were full of tears.
"Oh, Bones!" she said, with a little catch in her voice, "you ... you
are a sportsman."
"Carry on," said Bones incoherently, and wept a little at the
realization of that magnificent moment.
CHAPTER III
THE MAKER OF STORMS
Everybody knows that water drawn from rivers is very bad water, for the
rivers are the Roads of the Dead, and in the middle of those nights when
the merest rind of a moon shows, and this slither of light and two
watchful stars form a triangle pointing to the earth, the spirits rise
from their graves and walk, "singing deadly songs," towards the lower
star which is the source of all rivers. If you should be--which God
forbid--on one of those lonely island graveyards on such nights you will
see strange sights.
The broken cooking-pots which rest on the mounds and the rent linen
which flutters from little sticks stuck about the graves, grow whole and
new again. The pots are red and hot as they come from the fire, and the
pitiful cloths take on the sheen of youth and fold themselves about
invisible forms. None may see the dead, though it is said that you may
see the babies.
These the wise men have watched playing at the water's edge, crowing and
chuckling in the universal language of their kind, staggering groggily
along the shelving beach with outspread arms balancing their uncertain
steps. On such nights when M'sa beckons the dead world to the source of
all rivers, the middle islands are crowded with babies--the dead babies
of a thousand years. Their spirits come up from the unfathomed deeps of
the great river and call their mortality from graves.
"How may the waters of the river be acceptable?" asks the shuddering
N'gombi mother.
Therefore the N'gombi gather their water from the skies in strange
cisterns of wicker, lined with the leaf of a certain plant which is
impervious, and even carry their drinking supplies with them when they
visit the river itself.
There was a certain month in the year, which will be remembered by all
who attempted the crossing of the Kasai Forest to the south of the
N'gombi country, when pools and rivulets suddenly dried--so suddenly,
indeed, that even the crocodiles, who have an instinct for coming
drought, were left high and dry, in some cases miles from the nearest
water, and when the sun rose in a sky unflecked by cloud and gave place
at nights to a sky so brilliant and so menacing in their fierce and
fiery nearness that men went mad.
Toward the end of this month, when an exasperating full moon advertised
a continuance of the dry spell by its very whiteness, the Chief
Koosoogolaba-Muchini, or, as he was called, Muchini, summoned a council
of his elder men, and they came with parched throats and fear of death.
"All men know," said Muchini, "what sorrow has come to us, for there is
a more powerful ju-ju in the land than I remember. He has made M'shimba
M'shamba afraid so that he has gone away and walks no more in the forest
with his terrible lightning. Also K'li, the father of pools, has gone
into the earth and all his little children, and I think we shall die,
every one of us."
There was a skinny old man, with a frame like a dried goatskin, who made
a snuffling noise when he spoke.
"O Muchini," he said, "when I was a young man there was a way to bring
M'shimba M'shamba which was most wonderful. In those days we took a
young maiden and hung her upon a tree----"
"Those old ways were good," interrupted Muchini; "but I tell you,
M'bonia, that we can follow no more the old ways since Sandi came to the
land, for he is a cruel man and hanged my own mother's brother for that
fine way of yours. Yet we cannot sit and die because of certain magic
which the Stone Breaker is practising."
Now Bula Matadi ("The Stone Breaker") was in those days the mortal enemy
of the N'gombi people, who were wont to ascribe all their misfortunes to
his machinations. To Bula Matadi (which was the generic name by which
the Government of the Congo Free State was known) was traceable the
malign perversity of game, the blight of crops, the depredations of
weaver birds. Bula Matadi encouraged leopards to attack isolated
travellers, and would on great occasions change the seasons of the year
that the N'gombi's gardens might come to ruin.
"It is known from one end of the earth to the other that I am a most
cunning man," Muchini went on, stroking his muscular arm, a trick of
self-satisfied men in their moments of complacence; "and whilst even the
old men slept, I, Koosoogolaba-Muchini, the son of the terrible and
crafty G'sombo, the brother of Eleni-N'gombi, I went abroad with my wise
men and my spies and sought out devils and ghosts in places where even
the bravest have never been," he lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper,
"to the Ewa-Ewa Mongo, the Very Place of Death."
The gasp of horror from his audience was very satisfying to this little
chief of the Inner N'gombi, and here was a moment suitable for his
climax.
"And behold!" he cried.
By his side was something covered with a piece of native cloth. This
covering he removed with a flourish and revealed a small yellow box.
It was most certainly no native manufacture, for its angles were clamped
with neat brass corner-pieces set flush in the polished wood.
The squatting councillors watched their lord as with easy familiarity he
opened the lid.
There were twenty tiny compartments, and in each was a slender glass
tube, corked and heavily sealed, whilst about the neck of each tube was
a small white label covered with certain devil marks.
Muchini waited until the sensation he had prepared had had its full
effect.
"By the Great River which runs to the Allamdani,"[1] he said slowly and
impressively, "were white men who had been sent by Bula Matadi to catch
ghosts. For I saw them, I and my wise men, when the moon was calling all
spirits. They were gathered by the river with little nets and little
gourds and they caught the waters. Also they caught little flies and
other foolish things and took them to their tent. Then my young men and
I waited, and when all were gone away we went to their tents and found
his magic box--which is full of devils of great power--Ro!"
[Footnote 1: This was evidently the Sanga River.]
He leapt to his feet, his eye gleaming. Across the starry dome of the
sky there had flicked a quick flare of light.
There came a sudden uneasy stirring of leaves, a hushed whisper of
things as though the forest had been suddenly awakened from sleep.
Then an icy cold breeze smote his cheek, and staring upward, he saw the
western stars disappearing in swathes behind the tumbling clouds.
"M'shimba M'shamba--he lives!" he roared, and the crash of thunder in
the forest answered him.
Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori, was on the furthermost edge of the forest,
for he was following the impulse of his simple nature and was hunting in
a country where he had no right to be. The storm (which he cursed,
having no scruples about river and water, and being wholly sceptical as
to ghosts) broke with all its fury over his camp and passed. Two nights
later, he sat before the rough hut his men had built, discussing the
strange ways of the antelope, when he suddenly stopped and listened,
lowering his head till it almost touched the ground.
Clear to his keen ears came the rattle of the distant lokali--the drum
that sends messages from village to village and from nation to nation.
"O Secundi," said Bosambo, with a note of seriousness in his voice, "I
have not heard that call for many moons--for it is the war call of the
N'gombi."
"Lord, it is no war call," said the old man, shifting his feet for
greater comfort, "yet it is a call which may mean war, for it calls
spears to a dance, and it is strange, for the N'gombi have no enemies."
"All men are the enemies of the N'gombi," Bosambo quoted a river saying
as old as the sun.
He listened again, then rose.
"You shall go back and gather me a village of spears, and bring them to
the borderland near the road that crosses the river," he said.
"On my life," said the other.
Muchini, Chief of the Inner N'gombi, a most inflated man and a familiar
of magical spirits, gathered his spears to some purpose, for two days
later Bosambo met him by his border and the chiefs greeted one another
between two small armies.
"Which way do you go, Muchini?" asked Bosambo.
Now, between Muchini and the Chief of the Ochori was a grievance dating
back to the big war, when Bosambo had slain the N'gombi chief of the
time with his own hands.
"I go to the river to call a palaver of all free men," said Muchini;
"for I tell you this, Bosambo, that I have found a great magic which
will make us greater than Sandi, and it has been prophesied that I shall
be a king over a thousand times a thousand spears. For I have a small
box which brings even M'shimba to my call."
Bosambo, a head and shoulders taller than the other, waved his hand
towards the forest path which leads eventually to the Ochori city.
"Here is a fine moment for you, Muchini," he said, "and you shall try
your great magic on me and upon my young men. For I say that you do not
go by this way, neither you nor your warriors, since I am the servant of
Sandi and of his King, and he has sent me here to keep his peace; go
back to your village, for this is the way to Death."
Muchini glared at his enemy.
"Yet this way I go, Bosambo," he said huskily, and looked over his
shoulder towards his followers.
Bosambo swung round on one heel, an arm and a leg outstretched in the
attitude of an athlete who is putting the shot. Muchini threw up his
wicker shield and pulled back his stabbing-spear, but he was a dead man
before the weapon was poised.
Thus ended the war, and the N'gombi folk went home, never so much as
striking a blow for the yellow box which Bosambo claimed for himself as
his own personal loot.
At the time, Mr. Commissioner Sanders, C.M.G., was blissfully ignorant
of the miraculous happenings which have been recorded. He was wholly
preoccupied by the novelty which the presence of Patricia Hamilton
offered. Never before had a white woman made her home at the Residency,
and it changed things a little.
She was at times an embarrassment.
When Fubini, the witch-doctor of the Akasava, despatched five maidens to
change Sandi's wicked heart--Sanders had sent Fubini to the Village of
Irons for six months for preaching unauthorized magic--they came, in the
language of Bones, "doocedly undressed," and Patricia had beaten a
hurried retreat.
She was sometimes an anxiety, as I have already shown, but was never a
nuisance. She brought to headquarters an aroma of English spring, a
clean fragrance that refreshed the heat-jaded Commissioner and her
brother, but which had no perceptible influence upon Bones.
That young officer called for her one hot morning, and Hamilton,
sprawling on a big cane chair drawn to the shadiest and breeziest end of
the verandah, observed that Bones carried a wooden box, a drawing-board,
a pad of paper, two pencils imperfectly concealed behind his large ear,
and a water-bottle.
"Shop!" said Hamilton lazily. "Forward, Mr. Bones--what can we do for
you this morning?"
Bones shaded his eyes and peered into the cool corner.
"Talkin' in your sleep, dear old Commander," he said pleasantly,
"dreamin' of the dear old days beyond recall."
He struck an attitude and lifted his unmusical voice--
"When life was gay, heigho!
Tum tum te tay, heigho!
Oh, tiddly umpty humpty umty do,
When life was gay--dear old officer--heigho!"
Patricia Hamilton stepped out to the verandah in alarm.
"Oh, please, don't make that hooting noise," she appealed to her
brother. "I'm writing----"
"Don't be afraid," said Hamilton, "it was only Bones singing. Do it
again, Bones, Pat didn't hear you."
Bones stood erect, his hand to his white helmet.
"Come aboard, my lady," he said.
"I won't keep you a minute, Bones," said the girl, and disappeared into
the house.
"What are you doing this morning?" asked Hamilton, gazing with
pardonable curiosity at the box and drawing-board.
"Polishin' up my military studies with Miss Hamilton's kind
assistance--botany and applied science, sir," said Bones briskly. "Field
fortifications, judgin' distance, strategy, Bomongo grammar, field
cookery an' tropical medicines."
"What has poor little making-up-company-accounts done?" asked Hamilton,
and Bones blushed.
"Dear old officer," he begged, "I'll tackle that little job as soon as I
get back. I tried to do 'em this mornin' an was four dollars out--it's
the regimental cash account that's wrong. People come in and out helpin'
themselves, and I positively can't keep track of the money."
"As I'm the only person with the key of the regimental cash-box, I
suppose you mean----?"
Bones raised his hand.
"I make no accusations, dear old feller--it's a painful subject. We all
have those jolly old moments of temptation. I tackle the accounts
to-night, sir. You mustn't forget that I've a temperament. I'm not like
you dear old wooden-heads----"
"Oh, shut up," said the weary Hamilton. "So long as you're going to do a
bit of study, it's all right."
"Now, Bones," said Patricia, appearing on the scene, "have you got the
sandwiches?"
Bones made terrifying and warning grimaces.
"Have you got the board to lay the cloth and the paper to cover it, and
the chocolates and the cold tea?"
Bones frowned, and jerked his head in an agony of warning.
"Come on, then," said the unconscious betrayer of Lieutenant Tibbetts.
"Good-bye, dear."
"Why 'good-bye,' dear old Hamilton's sister?" asked Bones.
She looked at him scornfully and led the way.
"Don't forget the field fortifications," called Hamilton after them;
"they eat nicely between slices of strategy."
The sun was casting long shadows eastward when they returned. They
had not far to come, for the place they had chosen for their picnic
was well within the Residency reservation, but Bones had been describing
on his way back one of the remarkable powers he possessed, namely, his
ability to drag the truth from reluctant and culpable natives. And every
time he desired to emphasize the point he would stop, lower all his
impedimenta to the ground, cluttering up the landscape with picnic-box,
drawing-board, sketching-blocks and the numerous bunches of wild
flowers he had culled at her request, and press his argument with
much palm-punching.
He stopped for the last time on the very edge of the barrack square, put
down his cargo and proceeded to demolish the doubt she had unwarily
expressed.
"That's where you've got an altogether erroneous view of me, dear old
sister," he said triumphantly. "I'm known up an' down the river as the
one man that you can't deceive. Go up and ask the Bomongo, drop in on
the Isisi, speak to the Akasava, an' what will they say? They'll say,
'No, ma'am, there's no flies on jolly old Bones--not on your life,
Harriet!'"
"Then they would be very impertinent," smiled Pat.
"Ask Sanders (God bless him!). Ask Ham. Ask----" he was going on
enthusiastically.
"Are you going to camp here, or are you coming in?" she challenged.
Bones gathered up his belongings, never ceasing to talk.
"Fellers like me, dear young friend, make the Empire--paint the whole
bally thing red, white an' blue--'unhonoured an' unsung, until the
curtain's rung, the boys that made the Empire and the Navy.'"
"Bones, you promised you wouldn't sing," she said reproachfully; "and,
besides, you're not in the navy."
"That doesn't affect the argument," protested Bones, and was rapidly
shedding his equipment in preparation for another discourse, when she
walked on towards Sanders who had come across the square to meet them.
Bones made a dive at the articles he had dropped, and came prancing (no
other word describes his erratic run) up to Sanders.
"I've just been telling Miss Hamilton, sir and Excellency, that nobody
can find things that old Bones--you'll remember, sir, the episode of
your lost pyjama legs. Who found 'em?"
"You did," said Sanders; "they were sent home in your washing. Talking
about finding things, read this."
He handed a telegraph form to the young man, and Bones, peering into the
message until his nose almost touched the paper, read--
"Very urgent. Clear the line. Administration.
"To Sanders, Commission River Territories. Message begins. Belgian
Congo Government reports from Leopoldville, Bacteriological
Expedition carriers raided on edge of your territory by Inner
N'gombi people, all stores looted including case of 20 culture
tubes. Stop. As all these cultures are of virulent diseases,
inoculate Inner N'gombi until intact tubes recovered. Message
ends."
Bones read it twice, and his face took on an appearance which indicated
something between great pain and intense vacancy. It was intended to
convey to the observer the fact that Bones was thinking deeply and
rapidly, and that he had banished from his mind all the frivolities of
life.
"I understand, sir--you wish me to go to the dear old Congo Government
and apologize--I shall be ready in ten minutes."
"What I really want you to do," said Sanders patiently, "is to take the
_Wiggle_ up stream and get that box."
"I quite understand, sir," said Bones, nodding his head. "To-day is the
8th, to-morrow is the 9th--the box shall be in your hands on the 15th by
half-past seven in the evening, dear old sir."
He saluted and turned a baleful glare upon the girl, the import of which
she was to learn at first hand.
"Duty, Miss Patricia Hamilton! Forgive poor old Bones if he suddenly
drops the mask of _dolce far niente_--I go!"
He saluted again and went marching stiffly to his quarters, with all the
dignity which an empty lunch-box and a dangling water-bottle would allow
him.
The next morning Bones went forth importantly for the Ochori city, being
entrusted with the task of holding, so to speak, the right flank of the
N'gombi country.
"You will use your discretion," Sanders said at parting, "and, of
course, you must keep your eyes open; if you hear the merest hint that
the box is in your neighbourhood, get it."
"I think, your Excellency," said Bones, with heavy carelessness, "that
I have fulfilled missions quite as delicate as this, and as for
observation, why, the gift runs in my family."
"And runs so fast that you've never caught up with it," growled
Hamilton.
Bones turned haughtily and saluted. It was a salute full of subdued
offence.
He went joyously to the northward, evolving cunning plans. He stopped
at every village to make inquiries and to put the unoffending villagers
to considerable trouble--for he insisted upon a house-to-house
search--before, somewhat wearied by his own zeal, he came to the Ochori.
Chief Bosambo heard of his coming and summoned his councillors.
"Truly has Sandi a hundred ears," he said in dismay, "for it seems that
he has heard of the slaying of Muchini. Now, all men who are true to me
will swear to the lord Tibbetti that we know nothing of a killing
palaver, and that we have not been beyond the trees to the land side of
the city. This you will all say because you love me; and if any man says
another thing I will beat him until he is sick."
Bones came and was greeted by the chief--and Bosambo was carried to the
beach on a litter.
"Lord," said Bosambo weakly, "now the sight of your simple face will
make me a well man again. For, lord, I have not left my bed since the
coming of the rains, and there is strength neither in my hands and
feet."
"Poor old bird," said Bones sympathetically, "you've been sittin' in a
draught."
"This I tell you, Tibbetti," Bosambo went on, as yet uncertain of his
ruler's attitude, since Bones must need, at this critical moment, employ
English and idiomatic English, "that since the last moon was young I
have lain in my hut never moving, seeing nothing and hearing nothing,
being like a dead man--all this my headman will testify."
Bones's face dropped, for he had hoped to secure information here.
Bosambo, watching his face through half-closed lids, saw the dismal
droop of the other's mouth, and came to the conclusion that whatever
might be the cause of the visit, it was not to hold the Ochori or their
chief to account for known misdeeds.
"O Bosambo," said Bones, in the river dialect, "this is sad news, for I
desire that you shall tell me certain things for which Sandi would have
given you salt and rods."
The Chief of the Ochori sat up in his litter and went so far as to put
one foot to the ground.
"Lord," said he heartily, "the sound of your lovely voice brings me from
the grave and gives me strength. Ask, O Bonesi, for you are my father
and my mother; and though I saw and heard nothing, yet in my sickness I
had wonderful visions and all things were made visible--that I declare
to you, Bonesi, before all men."
"Don't call me 'Bonesi,'" said Bones fiercely. "You're a jolly cheeky
feller, Bosambo--you're very, very naughty, indeed!"
"Master," said Bosambo humbly, "though I rule these Ochori I am a
foreigner in this land; in the tongue of my own people, Bonesi means
'he-who-is-noble-in-face-and-a-giver-of-justice.'"
"That's better," nodded the gratified Bones, and went on speaking in the
dialect. "You shall help me in this--it touches the people of the Inner
N'gombi----"
Bosambo fell back wearily on to the litter, and rolled his eyes as one
in pain.
"This is a sorrow for me, Bo--Tibbetti," he said faintly, "but I am a
sick man."
"Also," continued Bones, "of a certain box of wood, full of poisons----"
As well as he could Bones explained the peculiar properties of germ
culture.
"Oh, ko!" said Bosambo, closing his eyes, and was to all appearances
beyond human aid.
* * * * *
"Lord," said Bosambo, at parting, "you have brought me to life, and
every man of every tribe shall know that you are a great healer. To all
the far and quiet places of the forest I will send my young men who will
cry you aloud as a most wonderful doctor."
"Not at all," murmured Bones modestly, "not at all."
"Master," said Bosambo, this time in English, for he was not to be
outdone in the matter of languages, for had he not attended a great
mission school in Monrovia? "Master, you dam' fine feller, you look 'um
better feller, you no find um. You be same like Moses and Judi Escariot,
big fine feller, by golly--yas."
All night long, between the visits which Bones had been making from the
moored _Wiggle_ to the village (feeling the patient's pulse with a
profound and professional air and prescribing brandy and milk), Bosambo
had been busy.
"Stand you at the door, Secundi," he said to his headman, "and let one
of your men go to the shore to warn me of my lord Tibbetti's coming, for
I have work to do. It seems this Maker of Storms were better with Sandi
than with me."
"Tibbetti is a fool, I think," suggested Secundi.
Bosambo, kneeling on a rush mat, busy with a native chisel and a pot of
clay paint, looked up.
"I have beaten older men than you with a stick until they have wept," he
said, "and all for less than you say. For this is the truth, Secundi,
that a child cannot be a fool, though an old man may be a shame. This is
the word of the blessed prophet. As for Tibbetti, he has a clean and
loving heart."
There was a rustle at the door and a whispered voice.
The box and the tools were thrust under a skin rug and Bosambo again
became the interesting invalid.
In the morning Bosambo had said farewell, and a blushing Bones listened
with unconcealed pleasure to the extravagant praise of his patient.
"And this I tell you, Tibbetti," said Bosambo, standing thigh-deep in
the river by the launch's side, "that knowing you are wise man who
gathers wisdom, I have sent to the end of my country for some rare and
beautiful thing that you may carry it with you."
He signalled to a man on the bank, and his servant brought him a curious
object.
It was, Bones noted, a square box apparently of native make, for it was
fantastically carved and painted. There were crude heads and hideous
forms which never were on land or sea. The paint was brilliant; red,
yellow and green indiscriminately splashed.
"This is very ancient and was brought to my country by certain forest
people. It is a Maker of Storms, and is a powerful ju-ju for good and
evil."
Bones, already a collector of native work, was delighted. His delight
soothed him for his failure in other respects.
He returned to headquarters empty-handed and sat the centre of a
chilling group--if we except Patricia Hamilton--and endeavoured, as so
many successful advocates have done, to hide his short-comings behind a
screen of rhetoric.
He came to the part of his narrative where Bosambo was taken ill without
creating any notable sensation, save that Sanders's grey eyes narrowed
a little and he paid greater heed to the rest of the story.
"There was poor old Bosambo knocked out, sir--ab-so-lutely done
for--fortunately I did not lose my nerve. You know what I am, dear old
officer, in moments of crisis?"
"I know," said Hamilton grimly, "something between a Welsh revivalist
and a dancing dervish."
"Please go on, Bones," begged the girl, not the least interested of the
audience.
"I dashed straight back to the _Wiggle_," said Bones breathlessly,
"searched for my medicine chest--it wasn't there! Not so much as a
mustard plaster--what was I to do, dear old Miss Hamilton?" he appealed
dramatically.
"Don't tell him, Pat," begged Hamilton, "he's sure to guess it."
"What was I to do? I seized a bottle of brandy," said Bones with relish,
"I dashed back to where Bosambo was lyin'. I dashed into the village,
into his hut and got a glass----"
"Well, well!" said Sanders impatiently, "what happened after all this
dashing?"
Bones spread out his hands.
"Bosambo is alive to-day," he said simply, "praisin'--if I may be
allowed to boast--the name of Bones the Medicine Man. Look here, sir."
He dragged towards him along the floor of the hut a package covered with
a piece of native sacking. This he whisked away and revealed the
hideous handiwork of an artist who had carved and painted as true to
nature as a man may who is not quite certain whether the human eye is
half-way down the nose or merely an appendage to his ear.
"That, sir," said Bones impressively, "is one of the most interestin'
specimens of native work I have ever seen: a gift! From Bosambo to the
jolly old doctor man who dragged him, if I might so express it, from the
very maws of death."
He made his dramatic pause.
Sanders bent down, took a penknife from his pocket and scraped the paint
from a flat oblong space on the top.
There for all men to see--save Bones who was now engaged in a relation
of his further adventure to his one sympathizer--was a brass plate, and
when the paint had been scraped away, an inscription--
Department du Médicins, Etat CONGO BELGE.
Sanders and Hamilton gazed, fascinated and paralysed to silence.
"I've always had a feelin' I'd like to be a medicine man." Bones
prattled on. "You see----"
"One moment, Bones," interrupted Sanders quietly. "Did you open this box
by any chance?"
"No, sir," said Bones.
"And did you see any of its contents?"
"No, sir," said Bones confidentially, "that's the most interestin' thing
about the box. It contains magic--which, of course, honoured sir and
Excellency, is all rubbish."
Sanders took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and after a few trials
opened the case and scrutinized the contents, noting the comforting fact
that all the tubes were sealed. He heaved a deep sigh of thankfulness.
"You didn't by chance discover anything about the missing cultures,
Bones?" he asked mildly.
Bones shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and looked disconsolately
at his chief.
"You think I've been feeble, but I haven't lost hope, sir," he said,
with fine resolution. "I've got a feelin' that if I were allowed to go
into the forest, disguised, sir, as a sort of half-witted native chap,
sir----"
"Disguised!" said Hamilton. "Good Lord, what do you want a disguise
for?"
CHAPTER IV
BONES AND THE WIRELESS
Ko-boru, the headman of Bingini, called his relations together for a
solemn family conference.
The lower river folk play an inconsiderable rôle in the politics of the
Territories, partly because they are so near to headquarters that there
is no opportunity for any of those secret preparations which precede all
native intrigues, great or small, and partly because the lower river
people are so far removed from the turbulent elements of the upper river
that they are not swayed by the cyclonic emotions of the Isisi, the cold
and deliberate desire for slaughter which is characteristically
Akasavian, or the electrical decisions of the Outer N'gombi.
But they had their crises.
To Bingini came all the notables of the district who claimed kinship
with Ko-boru, and they sat in a great circle about the headman's hut,
alternately eyeing the old headman and their stout relative, his
daughter.
"All my relations shall know this," began Ko-boru, after Okmimi, the
witch-doctor, had formally burnt away the devils and ghosts that fringe
all large assemblies, "that a great shame has come to us, every one,
because of Yoka-m'furi. For this Yoka is to Sandi as a brother, and
guides his little ship up and down the river, and because of this
splendid position I gave him my own daughter by the first of my wives."
"S'm-m!" murmured the council in agreement.
"Also I built him a hut and gave him a garden, where his wife might
work, and he has sat at family palavers. Now, I tell you that
Yoka-m'furi is an evil man, for he has left my daughter, and has found
another wife in the upper river, and he comes no more to this village,
and my daughter weeps all day.
"For three seasons he has not been to this village; when the moon comes
again, it will be four." He said this with proper significance, and the
flat face of the melancholy girl by his side puckered and creased
miserably before she opened her large mouth to wail her woe.
For the man who deliberately separates himself from his wife for
four seasons and does not spend twenty-four hours--"from sunrise to
moonset" in her village is automatically divorced and freed from all
responsibility. This is the custom of all people from the lands of
the Great King to the sea.
"Now, I have had a dream," Ko-boru went on, "and in this dream it was
told me that I should call you all together, and that I and the chief of
my councillors and friends should go to Sandi and tell him what is
true."
"Brother and uncle," said Bechimi of G'lara, "I will go with you, for
once I spoke to Sandi and he spoke to me, and because of his cunning
memory he will recall Bechimi, who picked up his little black stick,
when it fell, and gave it to him."
Five were chosen to accompany Ko-boru, and they took canoe and travelled
for less than five miles to the Residency.
Sanders was entertaining Patricia Hamilton with stories of native feuds,
when the unexpected deputation squatted in the sun before the verandah.
"O Ko-boru," hailed Sanders, "why do you come?"
Ko-boru was all for a long and impressive palaver, but recognized a
certain absence of encouragement in the Commissioner's tone. Therefore
he came straight to the point.
"Now, you are our father and our mother, Sandi," he said, in conclusion,
"and when you speak, all wonders happen. Also you have very beautiful
friends, Militini, who speak a word and set his terrible soldiers moving
like leopards towards a kill, and Tibbetti, the young one who is
innocent and simple. So I say to you, Sandi, that if you speak one word
to Yoka, he will come back to my daughter, his wife."
Sanders stood by the rail of the stoep and looked down upon the
spokesman.
"I hear strange things, Ko-boru," he said quietly. "They tell me stories
of a woman with many lovers and an evil tongue; and once there came to
me Yoka with a wounded head, for this daughter of yours is very quick in
her anger."
"Lord," said the flustered Ko-boru, "such things happen even in love."
"All things happen in love," said Sanders, with a little smile, "and, if
it is to be, Yoka will return. Also, if it is to be, he will not go back
to the woman, and she will be free. This palaver is finished."
"Lord," pleaded Ko-boru, "the woman will do no more angry things. Let
him come back from sunrise to moonset----"
"This palaver is finished," repeated Sanders.
On their way back to Bingini the relatives of Ko-boru made a plot. It
was the first plot that had been hatched in the shadow of headquarters
for twenty years.
"Would it be indiscreet to ask what your visitors wanted?" asked the
girl, as the crestfallen deputation was crossing the square to their
canoe.
"It was a marriage palaver," replied Sanders, with a little grimace,
"and I was being requested to restore a husband to a temperamental lady
who has a passion for shying cook-pots at her husband when she is
annoyed."
The girl's laughing eyes were fixed upon his.
"Poor Mr. Sanders!" she said, with mock seriousness.
"Don't be sorry for me," smiled Sanders. "I'm rather domestic, really,
and I'm interested in this case because the man concerned is my
steersman--the best on the river, and a capital all-round man. Besides
that," he went on seriously, "I regard them all as children of mine. It
is right that a man who shirks his individual responsibilities to the
race should find a family to 'father.'"
"Why do you?" she asked, after a little pause.
"Why do I what?"
"Shirk your responsibilities," she said. "This is a healthy and a
delightful spot: a woman might be very happy here."
There was an awkward silence.
"I'm afraid I've been awfully impertinent," said Patricia, hurriedly
rising, "but to a woman there is a note of interrogation behind every
bachelor--especially nice bachelors--and the more 'confirmed' he is, the
bigger the question mark."
Sanders rose to her.
"One of these days I shall do something rash," he threatened, with that
shy laugh of his. "Here is your little family coming."
Bones and Hamilton were discussing something heatedly, and justice was
on the side of Lieutenant Tibbetts, if one could judge by the frequency
with which he stopped and gesticulated.
"It really is too bad," said the annoyed Hamilton, as he mounted the
steps to the stoep, followed by Bones, who, to do him justice, did not
adopt the attitude of a delinquent, but was, on the contrary, injured
virtue personified.
"What is too bad, dear?" asked the girl sympathetically.
"A fortnight ago," said Hamilton, "I told this silly ass----"
"Your jolly old brother is referrin' to me, dear lady," explained Bones.
"Who else could I be referring to?" demanded the other truculently. "I
told him to have all the company accounts ready by to-morrow. You know,
sir, that the paymaster is coming down from Administration to check 'em,
and will you believe me, sir"--he glared at Bones, who immediately
closed his eyes resignedly--"would you believe me that, when I went to
examine those infernal accounts, they were all at sixes and sevens?"
"Threes an' nines, dear old officer," murmured Bones, waking up, "the
matter in dispute being a trifle of thirty-nine dollars, which I've
generously offered to make up out of my own pocket."
He beamed round as one who expected applause.
"And on the top of this," fumed Hamilton, "he talks of taking Pat for an
early morning picnic to the village island!"
"Accompanied by the jolly old accounts," corrected Bones. "Do me
justice, sir and brother-officer. I offered to take the books with me,
an' render a lucid and convincin' account of my stewardship."
"Don't make me laugh," snarled Hamilton, stamping into the bungalow.
"Isn't he naughty?" said Bones admiringly.
"Now, Bones," warned the girl, "I shan't go unless you keep your word
with Alec."
Bones drew himself up and saluted.
"Dear old friend," he said proudly, "put your faith in Bones."
* * * * *
"H.M. Launch No. 36 (Territories)," as it was officially described on
the stores record, had another name, which she earned in her early days
through certain eccentricities of construction. Though she might not in
justice be called the _Wiggle_ any longer, yet the _Wiggle_ she was from
one end of the river to the other, and even native men called her
"Komfuru," which means "that which does not run straight."
It had come to be recognized that the _Wiggle_ was the especial charge
of Lieutenant Tibbetts. Bones himself was the first to recognize this
right. There were moments when he inferred that the _Wiggle's_ arrival
on the station at the time he was making his own first appearance was
something more than a coincidence.
She was not, in the strictest sense of the word, a launch, for she
possessed a square, open dining saloon and two tiny cabins amidships.
Her internal works were open to the light of day, and her engineer
lived in the engine-room up to his waist and on deck from his waist up,
thus demonstrating the possibility of being in two places at once.
The _Wiggle_, moreover, possessed many attributes which are denied to
other small steamers. She had, for example, a Maxim gun on her tiny
forecastle. She had a siren of unusual power and diabolical tone, she
was also fitted with a big motor-horn, both of which appendages were
Bones's gift to his flagship. The motor-horn may seem superfluous, but
when the matter is properly explained, you will understand the necessity
for some less drastic method of self-advertisement than the siren.
The first time the siren had been fitted Bones had taken the _Wiggle_
through "the Channel." Here the river narrows and deepens, and the
current runs at anything from five to seven knots an hour. Bones was
going up stream, and met the Bolalo Mission steamer coming down. She had
dipped her flag to the _Wiggle's_ blue ensign, and Bones had replied
with two terrific blasts on his siren.
After that the _Wiggle_ went backwards, floating with the current all
ways, from broadside on to stern first, for in those two blasts Bones
had exhausted the whole of his steam reserve.
She was also equipped with wireless. There was an "aerial" and an
apparatus which Bones had imported from England at a cost of twelve
pounds, and which was warranted to receive messages from two hundred
miles distant. There was also a book of instructions. Bones went to his
hut with the book and read it. His servant found him in bed the next
morning, sleeping like a child, with his hand resting lightly upon the
second page.
Sanders and Hamilton both took a hand at fixing the _Wiggle's_ wireless.
The only thing they were all quite certain about was that there ought to
be a wire somewhere. So they stretched the aerial from the funnel to the
flagstaff at the stern of the boat, and then addressed themselves to the
less simple solution of "making it work."
They tried it for a week, and gave it up in despair.
"They've had you, Bones," said Hamilton. "It doesn't 'went.' Poor old
Bones!"
"Your pity, dear old officer, is offensive," said Bones stiffly, "an' I
don't mind tellin' you that I've a queer feelin'--I can't explain what
it is, except that I'm a dooce of a psychic--that that machine is goin'
to be jolly useful."
But though Bones worked day and night, read the book of instructions
from cover to cover, and took the whole apparatus to pieces, examining
each part under a strong magnifying glass, he never succeeded either in
transmitting or receiving a message, and the machine was repacked and
stored in the spare cabin, and was never by any chance referred to,
except by Hamilton in his most unpleasant moments.
Bones took an especial delight in the _Wiggle_; it was his very own
ship, and he gave her his best personal attention.
It was Bones who ordered from London especially engraved notepaper
headed "H. M. S. _Komfuru_"--the native name sounded more dignified than
_Wiggle_, and more important than "Launch 36." It was Bones who
installed the little dynamo which--when it worked--lit the cabins and
even supplied power for a miniature searchlight. It was Bones who had
her painted Service grey, and would have added another funnel if
Hamilton had not detected the attempted aggrandizement. Bones claimed
that she was dustproof, waterproof, and torpedo-proof, and Hamilton had
voiced his regret that she was not also fool-proof.
At five o'clock the next morning, when the world was all big hot stars
and shadows, and there was no sound but the whisper of the running river
and the "ha-a-a-a--ha-a-a-a" of breakers, Bones came from his hut,
crossed the parade-ground, and, making his way by the light of a lantern
along the concrete quay--it was the width of an average table--dropped
on to the deck and kicked the custodian of the _Wiggle_ to wakefulness.
Bones's satellite was one Ali Abid, who was variously described as Moor,
Egyptian, Tripolitan, and Bedouin, but was by all ethnological
indications a half-breed Kano, who had spent the greater part of his
life in the service of a professor of bacteriology. This professor was
something of a purist, and the association with Ali Abid, plus a
grounding in the elementary subjects which are taught at St. Joseph's
Mission School, Cape Coast Castle, had given Ali a gravity of demeanour
and a splendour of vocabulary which many better favoured than he might
have envied.
"Arise," quoth Bones, in the cracked bass which he employed whenever he
felt called upon to deliver his inaccurate versions of Oriental poets--
"Arise, for morning in the bowl of night
Has chucked a stone to put the stars to flight.
And lo! and lo!... Get up, Ali; the caravan is moving.
Oh, make haste!"
("Omar will never be dead so long as Bones quotes him," Hamilton once
said; "he simply couldn't afford to be dead and leave it to Bones!")
Ali rose, blinking and shivering, for the early morning was very cold,
and he had been sleeping under an old padded dressing-gown which Bones
had donated.
"Muster all the hands," said Bones, setting his lantern on the deck.
"Sir," said Ali slowly, "the subjects are not at our disposition. Your
preliminary instructions presupposed that you had made necessary
arrangements _re personnel_."
Bones scratched his head.
"Dash my whiskers," he said, in his annoyance, "didn't I tell you that I
was taking the honourable lady for a trip? Didn't I tell you, you jolly
old slacker, to have everything ready by daybreak? Didn't I issue
explicit an' particular instructions about grub?"
"Sir," said Ali, "you didn't."
"Then," said Bones wrathfully, "why the dickens do I think I have?"
"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, when enjoying refreshing coma, possess
delirium, hallucinations, highly imaginative, which dissipate when the
subject recovers consciousness, but retain in brain cavity illusory
reminiscences."
Bones thrust his face into the other's.
"Do you mean to tell me I dreamt it?" he hissed.
"Sir," said Ali, "self-preservation compels complete acquiescence in
your diagnosis."
"You're childish," said Bones.
He gave a few vague instructions in the best Bones manner, and stole up
to the dark Residency. He had solemnly promised Sanders that he would
rouse the girl without waking up the rest of the house.
They were to go up stream to the Village Island, where the ironworkers
of the Akasava had many curious implements to show her. Breakfast was
to be taken on the boat, and they were to return for tiffin.
Overnight she had shown Bones the window of her room, and Hamilton had
offered to make a chalk mark on the sash, so there could be no mistaking
the situation of the room.
"If you wake me before sunrise, I shall do something I shall be sorry
for," he warned Bones. "If you return without straightening the
accounts, I shall do something which _you_ will be sorry for."
Bones remembered this as he crept stealthily along the wooden verandah.
To make doubly sure, he took off his boots and dropped them with a
crash.
"Sh!" said Bones loudly. "Sh, Bones! Not so much noise, you silly old
ass!"
He crept softly along the wooden wall and reconnoitred. The middle
window was Hamilton's room, the left was Sanders's, the right was
Patricia's. He went carefully to the right window and knocked. There was
no answer. He knocked again. Still no reply. He knocked loudly.
"Is that you, Bones?" growled Sanders's voice.
Bones gasped.
"Awfully sorry, sir," he whispered agitatedly--"my mistake entirely."
He tiptoed to the left window and rapped smartly. Then he whistled, then
he rapped again.
He heard a bed creak, and turned his head modestly away.
"It's Bones, dear old sister," he said, in his loudest whisper. "Arise,
for mornin' in the bowl of light has----"
Hamilton's voice raged at him.
"I knew it was you, you blithering----"
"Dear old officer," began Bones, "awfully sorry! Go to sleep again.
Night-night!"
"Go to the devil!" said a muffled voice.
Bones, however, went to the middle window; here he could make no
mistake. He knocked authoritatively.
"Hurry up, ma'am," he said; "time is on the wing----"
The sash was flung up, and again Bones confronted the furious Hamilton.
"Sir," said the exasperated Bones, "how the dooce did you get here?"
"Don't you know this room has two windows? I told you last night, you
goop! Pat sleeps at the other end of the building. I told you that, too,
but you've got a brain like wool!"
"I am obliged to you, sir," said Bones, on his dignity, "for the
information. I will not detain you."
Hamilton groped on his dressing-table for a hair-brush.
"Go back to bed, sir," said Bones, "an' don't forget to say your
prayers."
He was searching for the window in the other wing of the Residency,
when the girl, who had been up and dressed for a quarter of an hour,
came softly behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Wow!" screeched Bones. "Oh, Lord, dear old sister, you gave me the
dickens of a fright! Well, let's get along. Thank heavens, we haven't
disturbed anybody."
He was followed to the boat with the imprecations of two pyjamaed
figures that stood on the stoep and watched his lank body melt in the
darkness.
"Send us a wireless when you're coming back!" roared Hamilton.
"Cad!" said Bones, between his teeth.
Ali Abid had not been idle. He had aroused Yoka, the steersman, and
Boosoobi, the engineer, and these two men had accepted the unexpected
call with the curious readiness which natives show on such occasions,
and which suggests that they have pre-knowledge of the summons, and are
only waiting the word.
In one of the small cabins Ali had arranged the much-discussed company
accounts ready for his lord's attention, and there was every promise of
a happy and a profitable day when Yoka rang the engines "ahead," and the
_Wiggle_ jerked her way to midstream.
The east had grown pale, there was a murmur from the dark forests on
either bank, the timorous chirping or bad-tempered squawk of a bird, a
faint fragrance of burning gumwood from the fishing villages
established on the river bank, where, in dancing spots of light, the
women were tending their fires.
There is no intermediate stage on the big river between darkness and
broad daylight. The stars go out all at once, and the inky sky which
serves then becomes a delicate blue. The shadows melt deeper and deeper
into the forest, clearly revealing the outlines of the straight-stemmed
trees. There is just this interregnum of pearl greyness, a sort of
hush-light, which lasts whilst a man counts twenty, before the silver
lances of the sun are flashing through the leaves, and the grey veil
which blurs the islands to shapeless blotches in a river of dull silver
is burnt to nothingness, and the islands are living things of vivid
green set in waters of gold.
"The sunrise!" said Bones, and waved his hand to the east with the air
of one who was responsible for the miracle.
The girl sat in a deep wicker chair and breathed in the glory and the
freshness of the scene. Across the broad river, right ahead of the boat,
a flock of parroquets was flying, screeching their raucous chorus. The
sun caught their brilliant plumage, and she saw, as it seemed, a rainbow
in flight.
"Isn't that wonderful?" she whispered.
Bones peered up at the birds, shading his eyes.
"Just like a jolly old patchwork quilt," he said. "What a pity they
can't talk till you teach 'em! They're awful bad eatin', too, though
some fellers say they make a good curry----"
"Oh, look, look!"
The _Wiggle_ was swerving to the southern bank of the river, and two
majestic flamingos standing at the water's edge had arrested the girl's
attention.
"_They're_ bad eatin', too," said the informative Bones. "The flesh is
fishy an' too fat; heron are just the same."
"Haven't you a soul, Bones?" she asked severely.
"A soul, dear ma'am?" Bones asked, in astonishment. "Why, that's my
specialty!"
It was a delightful morning for the girl, for Bones had retired to his
cabin at her earnest request, and was struggling with the company
accounts, and she was left to enjoy the splendour of the day, to watch
the iron-red waters piling up against the _Wiggle's_ bows, to feel the
cool breezes that swept down from the far-away mountains, and all this
without being under the necessity of making conversation with Bones.
That gentleman had a no less profitable morning, for Ali Abid was a
methodical and clerkly man, and unearthed the missing thirty-nine
dollars in the Compensation Record.
"Thank goodness!" said Bones, relieved. "You're a jolly old accountant,
Ali. I'd never have found it."
"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, by impetuous application, omit vision
of intricate detail. This is due to subjects' lack of concentration."
"Have it your way," said Bones, "but get the statement out for me to
copy."
He awoke the girl from a profound reverie--which centred about shy and
solemn bachelors who adopted whole nations of murderous children as
their own--and proceeded to "take charge."
This implied the noisy issuing of orders which nobody carried out, the
manipulation of a telescope, anxious glances at the heavens, deep and
penetrating scrutinies of the water, and a promenade back and forward
from one side of the launch to the other. Bones called this "pacing the
bridge," and invariably carried his telescope tucked under his arm in
the process, and, as he had to step over Pat's feet every time, and
sometimes didn't, she arrested his nautical wanderings.
"You make me dizzy," she said. "And isn't that the island?"
* * * * *
In the early hours of the afternoon they re-embarked, the _capita_ of
the village coming to the beach to see them off.
They brought back with them a collection of spear-heads, gruesome
execution knives, elephant swords, and wonder-working steel figures.
"And the lunch was simply lovely, Bones," agreed the girl, as the
_Wiggle_ turned her nose homeward. "Really, you can be quite clever
sometimes."
"Dear old Miss Hamilton," said Bones, "you saw me to-day as I really am.
The mask was off, and the real Bones, kindly, thoughtful, considerate,
an'--if I may use the word without your foundin' any great hope upon
it--tender. You saw me free from carkin' care, alert----"
"Go along and finish your accounts, like a good boy," she said. "I'm
going to doze."
Doze she did, for it was a warm, dozy afternoon, and the boat was
running swiftly and smoothly with the tide. Bones yawned and wrote,
copying Ali's elaborate and accurate statement, whilst Ali himself slept
contentedly on the top of the cabin. Even the engineer dozed at his
post, and only one man was wide awake and watchful--Yoka, whose hands
turned the wheel mechanically, whose dark eyes never left the river
ahead, with its shoals, its sandbanks, and its snags, known and unknown.
Two miles from headquarters, where the river broadens before it makes
its sweep to the sea, there are three islands with narrow passages
between. At this season only one such passage--the centre of all--is
safe. This is known as "The Passage of the Tree," because all boats,
even the _Zaire_, must pass so close beneath the overhanging boughs of a
great lime that the boughs brush their very funnels. Fortunately, the
current is never strong here, for the passage is a shallow one. Yoka
felt the boat slowing as he reached shoal water, and brought her nearer
to the bank of the island. He had reached the great tree, when a noose
dropped over him, tightened about his arms, and, before he could do more
than lock the wheel, he was jerked from the boat and left swinging
between bough and water.
"O Yoka," chuckled a voice from the bough, "between sunrise and moonset
is no long time for a man to be with his wife!"
* * * * *
Bones had finished his account, and was thinking. He thought with his
head on his hands, with his eyes shut, and his mouth open, and his
thought was accompanied by strange guttural noises.
Patricia Hamilton was also thinking, but much more gracefully. Boosoobi
sat by his furnace door, nodding. Sometimes he looked at the steam
gauge, sometimes he kicked open the furnace door and chucked in a few
billets of wood, but, in the main, he was listening to the soothing
"chook-a-chook, chook-a-chook" of his well-oiled engines.
"Woo-yow!" yawned Bones, stretched himself, and came blinking into the
sunlight. The sun was nearly setting.
"What the dooce----" said Bones. He stared round.
The _Wiggle_ had run out from the mouth of the river and was at sea.
There was no sign of land of any description. The low-lying shores of
the territory had long since gone under the horizon.
Bones laid his hand on the shoulder of the sleeping girl, and she woke
with a start.
"Dear old shipmate," he said, and his voice trembled, "we're alone on
this jolly old ocean! Lost the steersman!"
She realized the seriousness of the situation in a moment.
The dozing engineer, now wide awake, came aft at Bones's call, and
accepted the disappearance of the steersman without astonishment.
"We'll have to go back," said Bones, as he swung the wheel round. "I
don't think I'm wrong in sayin' that the east is opposite to the west,
an', if that's true, we ought to be home in time for dinner."
"Sar," said Boosoobi, who, being a coast boy, elected to speak English,
"dem wood she no lib."
"Hey?" gasped Bones, turning pale.
"Dem wood she be done. I look um. I see um. I no find um."
Bones sat down heavily on the rail.
"What does he say?" Pat asked anxiously.
"He says there's no more wood," said Bones. "The horrid old bunkers are
empty, an' we're at the mercy of the tempest."
"Oh, Bones!" she cried, in consternation.
But Bones had recovered.
"What about swimmin' to shore with a line?" he said. "It can't be more
than ten miles!"
It was Ali Abid who prevented the drastic step.
"Sir," he said, "the subject on such occasions should act with
deliberate reserve. Proximity of land presupposes research. The subject
should assist rather than retard research by passivity of action, easy
respiration, and general normality of temperature."
"Which means, dear old Miss Hamilton, that you've got to keep your wool
on," explained Bones.
What might have happened is not to be recorded, for at that precise
moment the s.s. _Paretta_ came barging up over the horizon.
There was still steam in the _Wiggle's_ little boiler, and one log of
wood to keep it at pressure.
Bones was incoherent, but again Ali came to the rescue.
"Sir," he said, "for intimating SOS-ness there is upon steamer or launch
certain scientific apparatus, unadjusted, but susceptible to treatment."
"The wireless!" spluttered Bones. "Good lor', the wireless!"
Twenty minutes later the _Wiggle_ ran alongside the gangway of the s.s.
_Paretta_, anticipating the arrival of the _Zaire_ by half an hour.
The s.s. _Paretta_ was at anchor when Sanders brought the _Zaire_ to the
scene.
He saw the _Wiggle_ riding serenely by the side of the great ship,
looking for all the world like a humming bird under the wings of an
ostrich, and uttered a little prayer of thankfulness.
"They're safe," he said to Hamilton. "O Yoka, take the _Zaire_ to the
other side of the big boat."
"Master, do we go back to-night to seek Ko-boru?" asked Yoka, who was
bearing marks which indicated his strenuous experience, for he had
fought his way clear of his captors, and had swum with the stream to
headquarters.
"To-morrow is also a day," quoth Sanders.
Hamilton was first on the deck of the s.s. _Paretta_, and found his
sister and a debonair and complacent Bones waiting for him. With them
was an officer whom Hamilton recognized.
"Company accounts all correct, sir," said Bones, "audited by the jolly
old paymaster"--he saluted the other officer--"an' found correct, sir,
thus anticipatin' all your morose an' savage criticisms."
Hamilton gripped his hand and grinned.
"Bones was really wonderful," said the girl, "they wouldn't have seen us
if it hadn't been for his idea."
"Saved by wireless, sir," said Bones nonchalantly. "It was a mere
nothin'--just a flash of inspiration."
"You got the wireless to work?" asked Hamilton incredulously.
"No, sir," said Bones. "But I wanted a little extra steam to get up to
the ship, so I burnt the dashed thing. I knew it would come in handy
sooner or later."
CHAPTER V
THE REMEDY
Beyond the far hills, which no man of the Ochori passed, was a range of
blue mountains, and behind this again was the L'Mandi country. This
adventurous hunting men of the Ochori had seen, standing in a safe place
on the edge of the Great King's country. Also N'gombi people, who are
notoriously disrespectful of all ghosts save their own, had, upon a
time, penetrated the northern forest to a high knoll which Nature had
shaped to the resemblance of a hayrick.
A huntsman climbing this after his lawful quarry might gain a nearer
view of the blue mountains, all streaked with silver at certain periods
of the year, when a hundred streams came leaping with feathery feet from
crag to crag to strengthen the forces of the upper river, or, as some
said, to create through underground channels the big lakes M'soobo and
T'sambi at the back of the N'gombi country.
And on summer nights, when the big yellow moon came up and showed all
things in her own chaste way, you might see from the knoll of the
hayrick these silver ribbons all a-glitter, though the bulk of the
mountain was lost to sight.
The river folk saw little of the L'Mandi, because L'Mandi territory lies
behind the country of the Great King, who looked with a jealous eye upon
comings and goings in his land, and severely restricted the movement and
the communications of his own people.
The Great King followed his uncle in the government of the pleasant
O'Mongo lands, and he had certain advantages and privileges, the
significance of which he very imperfectly interpreted.
His uncle had died suddenly at the hands of Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
C.M.G., and the land itself might have passed to the protection of the
Crown, for there was gold in the country in large and payable
quantities.
That such a movement was arrested was due largely to the L'Mandi and the
influence they were able to exercise upon the European Powers by virtue
of their military qualities. Downing Street was all for a permanent
occupation of the chief city and the institution of a conventional
_régime_; but the L'Mandi snarled, clicked their heels, and made
jingling noises with their great swords, and there was at that moment a
Government in office in England which was rather impressed by
heel-clicking and sword-jingling, and so the territory of the Great King
was left intact, and was marked on all maps as Omongoland, and coloured
red, as being within the sphere of British influence. On the other hand,
the L'Mandi people had it tinted yellow, and described it as an integral
portion of the German Colonial Empire.
There was little communication between L'Mandi and Sanders's territory,
but that little was more than enough for the Commissioner, since it took
the shape of evangelical incursions carried out by missionaries who were
in the happy position of not being obliged to say as much as "By your
leave," since they had secured from a Government which was, as I say,
impressed by heel-clicking and sword-jingling, an impressive document,
charging "all commissioners, sub-commissioners, magistrates, and
officers commanding our native forces," to give facilities to these good
Christian gentlemen.
There were missionaries in the Territories who looked askance at their
brethren, and Ferguson, of the River Mission, made a journey to
headquarters to lay his views upon the subject before the Commissioner.
"These fellows aren't missionaries at all, Mr. Sanders; they are just
political agents utilizing sacred symbols to further a political
propaganda."
"That is a Government palaver," smiled Sanders, and that was all the
satisfaction Ferguson received. Nevertheless, Sanders was watchful, for
there were times when the L'Mandi missioners and their friends strayed
outside their sphere.
Once the L'Mandi folk had landed in a village in the middle Ochori, had
flogged the headman, and made themselves free of the commodities which
the people of the village had put aside for the payment of their
taxation.
In his wrath, Bosambo, the chief, had taken ten war canoes; but Sanders,
who had been in the Akasava on a shooting trip, was there before him,
and had meted out swift justice to the evil-doers.
"And let me tell you, Bosambo," said Sanders severely, "that you shall
not bring spears except at my word."
"Lord," said Bosambo, frankness itself, "if I disobeyed you, it was
because I was too hot to think."
Sanders nodded.
"That I know," he said. "Now I tell you this, Bosambo, and this is the
way of very wise men--that when they go to do evil things with a hot
heart, they first sleep, and in their sleep their spirits go free and
talk with the wise and the dead, and when they wake, their hearts are
cool, and they see all the folly of the night, and their eyes are bright
for their own faults."
"Master," said Bosambo, "you are my father and my mother, and all the
people of the river you carry in your arms. Now I say to you that when I
go to do an evil thing I will first sleep, and I will make all my people
sleep also."
There are strange stories in circulation as to the manner in which
Bosambo carried out this novel reform. There is the story of an Ochori
wife-beater who, adjured by his chief, retired to slumber on his
grievance, and came to his master the following morning with the
information that he had not closed his eyes. Whereupon Bosambo clubbed
him insensible, in order that Sanders's plan might have a fair chance.
At least, this is the story which Hamilton retailed at breakfast one
morning. Sanders, appealed to for confirmation, admitted cautiously that
he had heard the legend, but did not trouble to make an investigation.
"The art of governing a native country," he said, "is the art of not
asking questions."
"But suppose you want to know something?" demanded Patricia.
"Then," said Sanders, with a twinkle in his eyes, "you must pretend that
you know."
"What is there to do to-day?" asked Hamilton, rolling his serviette.
He addressed himself to Lieutenant Tibbetts, who, to Sanders's intense
annoyance, invariably made elaborate notes of all the Commissioner said.
"Nothin' until this afternoon, sir," said Bones, closing his notebook
briskly, "then we're doin' a little deep-sea fishin'."
The girl made a grimace.
"We didn't catch anything yesterday, Bones," she objected.
"We used the wrong kind of worm," said Bones confidently. "I've found a
new worm nest in the plantation. Jolly little fellers they are, too."
"What are we doing to-day, Bones?" repeated Hamilton ominously.
Bones puckered his brows.
"Deep-sea fishin', dear old officer and comrade," he repeated, "an'
after dinner a little game of tiddly-winks--Bones _v._ jolly old
Hamilton's sister, for the championship of the River an' the Sanders
Cup."
Hamilton breathed deeply, but was patient.
"Your King and your country," he said, "pay you seven and eightpence per
diem----"
"Oh," said Bones, a light dawning, "you mean _work_?"
"Strange, is it not," mused Hamilton, "that we should
consider----Hullo!"
They followed the direction of his eyes.
A white bird was circling groggily above the plantation, as though
uncertain where to alight. There was weariness in the beat of its wings,
in the irregularity of its flight. Bones leapt over the rail of the
verandah and ran towards the square. He slowed down as he came to a
place beneath the bird, and whistled softly.
Bones's whistle was a thing of remarkable sweetness--it was his one
accomplishment, according to Hamilton, and had neither tune nor rhyme.
It was a succession of trills, rising and falling, and presently, after
two hesitating swoops, the bird rested on his outstretched hand. He came
back to the verandah and handed the pigeon to Sanders.
The Commissioner lifted the bird and with gentle fingers removed the
slip of thin paper fastened to its leg by a rubber band.
Before he opened the paper he handed the weary little servant of the
Government to an orderly.
"Lord, this is Sombubo," said Abiboo, and he lifted the pigeon to his
cheek, "and he comes from the Ochori."
Sanders had recognized the bird, for Sombubo was the swiftest, the
wisest, and the strongest of all his messengers, and was never
dispatched except on the most critical occasions.
He smoothed the paper and read the letter, which was in Arabic.
"From the servant of God Bosambo, in the Ochori City, to Sandi,
where-the-sea-runs.
"There have come three white men from the L'Mandi country, and they
have crossed the mountains. They sit with the Akasava in full
palaver. They say there shall be no more taxes for the People of
the River, but there shall come a new king greater than any. And
every man shall have goats and salt and free hunting. They say the
Akasava shall be given all the Ochori country, also guns like the
white man. Many guns and a thousand carriers are in the mountains
waiting to come. I hold the Ochori with all my spears. Also the
Isisi chief calls his young men for your King.
"Peace be on your house in the name of Allah Compassionate and
Merciful."
"M-m!" said Sanders, as he folded the paper. "I'm afraid there will be
no fishing this afternoon. Bones, take the _Wiggle_ and get up to the
Akasava as fast as you can; I will follow on the _Zaire_. Abiboo!"
"Lord?"
"You will find me a swift Ochori pigeon. Hamilton, scribble a line to
Bosambo, and say that he shall meet Bones by Sokala's village."
Half an hour later Bones was sending incomprehensible semaphore signals
of farewell as the _Wiggle_ slipped round the bend of the river.
Sokala, a little chief of the Isisi, was a rich man. He had ten wives,
each of whom lived in her own hut. Also each wife wore about her neck a
great ring of brass weighing twenty pounds, to testify to the greatness
and wealth of her lord.
Sokala was wizened and lined of face, and across his forehead were many
deep furrows, and it seemed that he lived in a state of perplexity as to
what should become of all his riches when he died, for he was cursed
with ten daughters--O'femi, Jubasami, K'sola, M'kema, Wasonga, Mombari,
et cetera.
When Wasonga was fourteen, there was revealed to Sokala, her father, a
great wonder.
The vision came at the tail end of a year of illness, when his head had
ached for weeks together, and not even the brass wire twisted lightly
about his skull brought him relief.
Sokala was lying on his fine bed of skins, wondering why strange animals
sat by the fire in the centre of his hut, and why they showed their
teeth and talked in human language. Sometimes they were leopards,
sometimes they were little white-whiskered monkeys that scratched and
told one another stories, and these monkeys were the wisest of all, for
they discussed matters which were of urgency to the sick man rolling
restlessly from side to side.
On this great night two such animals had appeared suddenly, a big grey
fellow with a solemn face, and a very little one, and they sat staring
into the fire, mechanically seeking their fleas until the little one
spoke.
"Sokala is very rich and has ten daughters."
"That is true," said the other; "also he will die because he has no
son."
Sokala's heart beat furiously with fear, but he listened when the little
black monkey spoke.
"If Sokala took Wasonga, his daughter, into the forest near to The Tree
and slew her, his daughters would become sons and he would grow well."
And the other monkey nodded.
As they talked, Sokala recognized the truth of all that they had said.
He wondered that he had never thought of the matter before in this way.
All night long he lay thinking--thinking--long after the fires had died
down to a full red glow amidst white ashes, and the monkeys had
vanished. In the cold dawn his people found him sitting on the side of
the bed, and marvelled that he should have lived the night through.
"Send me Wasonga, my daughter," he said, and they brought a sleepy girl
of fourteen, tall, straight, and wholly reluctant. "We go a journey,"
said Sokala, and took from beneath his bed his wicker shield and his
sharp-edged throwing-spear.
"Sokala hunts," said the people of the village significantly, and they
knew that the end was very near, for he had been a great hunter, and men
turn in death to the familiar pursuits of life.
Three miles on the forest road to the Isisi city, Sokala bade his
daughter sit on the ground.
Bones had met and was in earnest conversation with the Chief of the
Ochori, the _Wiggle_ being tied up at a wooding, when he heard a scream,
and saw a girl racing through the wood towards him.
Behind her, with the foolish stare on his face which comes to men in the
last stages of sleeping sickness, his spear balanced, came Sokala.
The girl tumbled in a wailing, choking heap at Bones's feet, and her
pursuer checked at the sight of the white man.
"I see you, Sokala,"[2] said Bones gently.
[Footnote 2: The native equivalent for "Good morning."]
"Lord," said the old man, blinking at the officer of the Houssas, "you
shall see a wonderful magic when I slay this woman, for my daughters
shall be sons, and I shall be a well man."
Bones took the spear from his unresisting hand.
"I will show you a greater magic, Sokala, for I will give you a little
white stone which will melt like salt in your mouth, and you shall
sleep."
The old man peered from Lieutenant Tibbetts to the King of the Ochori.
He watched Bones as he opened his medicine chest and shook out two
little white pellets from a bottle marked "Veronal," and accepted them
gratefully.
"God bless my life," cried Bones, "don't chew 'em, you dear old
silly--swallow 'em!"
"Lord," said Sokala soberly, "they have a beautiful and a magic taste."
Bones sent the frightened girl back to the village, and made the old man
sit by a tree.
"O Tibbetti," said Bosambo, in admiration, "that was a good palaver. For
it is better than the letting of blood, and no one will know that Sokala
did not die in his time."
Bones looked at him in horror.
"Goodness gracious heavens, Bosambo," he gasped, "you don't think I've
poisoned him?"
"Master," said Bosambo, nodding his head, "he die one time--he not fit
for lib--you give um plenty no-good stuff. You be fine Christian feller
same like me."
Bones wiped the perspiration from his brow and explained the action of
veronal. Bosambo was sceptical. Even when Sokala fell into a profound
slumber, Bosambo waited expectantly for his death. And when he realized
that Bones had spoken the truth, he was a most amazed man.
"Master," he said, in that fluid Ochori dialect which seems to be made
up of vowels, "this is a great magic. Now I see very surely that you
hold wonderful ju-jus, and I have wronged you, for I thought you were
without wisdom."
"Cheer-oh!" said the gratified Bones.
* * * * *
Near by the city of the Akasava is a small hill on which no vegetation
grows, though it rises from a veritable jungle of undergrowth. The
Akasava call this place the Hill of the Women, because it was here that
M'lama, the King of the Akasava, slew a hundred Akasava maidens to
propitiate M'shimba M'shamba, the god of storms. It was on the topmost
point of the hill that Sanders erected a fine gallows and hung M'lama
for his country's good. It had always been associated with the spiritual
history of the Akasava, for ghosts and devils and strange ju-jus had
their home hereabouts, and every great decision at which the people
arrived was made upon its slopes. At the crest there was a palaver
house--no more than a straw-thatched canopy affording shelter for four
men at the most.
On a certain afternoon all the chiefs, great and minor, the headmen, the
warriors, and the leaders of fishing villages of the Akasava, squatted
in a semicircle and listened to the oration of a bearded man, who spoke
easily in the river dialect of the happy days which were coming to the
people.
By his side were two other white men--a tall, clean-shaven man with
spectacles, and a stouter man with a bristling white moustache.
Had the bearded man's address been in plain English, or even plain
German, and had it been delivered to European hearers accustomed to
taking its religion in allegories and symbols, it would have been
harmless. As it was, the illustrations and the imagery which the speaker
employed had no other interpretation to the simple-minded Akasava than a
purely material one.
"I speak for the Great King," said the orator, throwing out his arms, "a
king who is more splendid than any. He has fierce and mighty armies that
cover the land like ants. He holds thunder and lightning in his hand,
and is greater than M'shimba M'shamba. He is the friend of the black man
and the white, and will deliver you from all oppression. He will give
you peace and full crops, and make you _capita_ over your enemies. When
he speaks, all other kings tremble. He is a great buffalo, and the
pawing of his hoofs shakes the earth.
"This he says to you, the warrior people of the Akasava----"
The message was destined to be undelivered.
Heads began to turn, and there was a whisper of words. Some of the
audience half rose, some on the outskirts of the gathering stole quietly
away--the lesser chiefs were amongst these--and others, sitting stolidly
on, assumed a blandness and a scepticism of demeanour calculated to meet
the needs of the occasion.
For Sanders was at the foot of the hill, a trim figure in white, his
solar helmet pushed back to cover the nape of his neck from the slanting
rays of the sun, and behind Sanders were two white officers and a
company of Houssas with fixed bayonets. Not a word said Sanders, but
slowly mounted the Hill of the Dead. He reached the palaver house and
turned.
"Let no man go," he said, observing the disposition of the gathering to
melt away, "for this is a great palaver, and I come to speak for these
God-men."
The bearded orator glared at the Commissioner and half turned to his
companions. The stout man with the moustache said something quickly, but
Sanders silenced him with a gesture.
"O people," said Sanders, "you all know that under my King men may live
in peace, and death comes quickly to those who make war. Also you may
worship in what manner you desire, though it be my God or the famous
gods of your fathers. And such as preach of God or gods have full
liberty. Who denies this?"
"Lord, you speak the truth," said an eager headman.
"Therefore," said Sanders, "my King has given these God-men a book[3]
that they may speak to you, and they have spoken. Of a great king they
tell. Also of wonders which will come to you if you obey him. But this
king is the same king of whom the God-cross men and the water-God men
tell. For he lives beyond the stars, and his name is God. Tell me,
preacher, if this is the truth?"
[Footnote 3: A book = written permission, any kind of document or
writing.]
The bearded man swallowed something and muttered, "This is true."
"Also, there is no king in this world greater than my King, whom you
serve," Sanders continued, "and it is your duty to be obedient to him,
and his name is D'jorja." Sanders raised his hand to his helmet in
salute. "This also the God-men will tell you."
He turned to the three evangelists.
Herr Professor Wiessmann hesitated for the fraction of a second. The
pause was pardonable, for he saw the undoing of three months' good work,
and his thoughts at that moment were with a certain party of carriers
who waited in the mountains.
"The question of earthly and heavenly dominion is always debatable," he
began in English, but Sanders stopped him.
"We will speak in the Akasava tongue," he said, "and let all men hear.
Tell me, shall my people serve my King, or shall they serve another?"
"They shall serve your King," growled the man, "for it is the law."
"Thank you," said Sanders in English.
The gathering slowly dispersed, leaving only the white men on the hill
and a few lingering folk at the foot, watching the stolid native
soldiery with an apprehension born of experience.
"We should like you to dine with us," said Sanders pleasantly.
The leader of the L'Mandi mission hesitated, but the thin man with the
spectacles, who had been silent, answered for him.
"We shall be pleased, Mr. Commissioner," he said. "After eating with
these swine for a month, a good dinner would be very acceptable."
Sanders said nothing, though he winced at the inelegant description of
his people, and the three evangelists went back to their huts, which had
been built for their use by the Akasava chief.
An hour later that worthy sent for a certain witch-doctor.
"Go secretly," he said, "and call all headmen and chiefs to the Breaking
Tree in the forest. There they shall be until the moon comes up, and the
L'Mandi lords will come and speak freely. And you shall tell them that
the word he spoke before Sandi was no true word, but to-night he shall
speak the truth, and when Sandi is gone we shall have wonderful guns
and destroy all who oppose us."
This the witch-doctor did, and came back by the river path.
Here, by all accounts, he met Bosambo, and would have passed on; but the
Chief of the Ochori, being in a curious mind and being, moreover,
suspicious, was impressed by the importance of the messenger, and made
inquiries....
An old man is a great lover of life, and after the witch-doctor's head
had been twice held under water--for the river was providentially
near--he gasped the truth.
* * * * *
The three missioners were very grateful guests indeed. They were the
more grateful because Patricia Hamilton was an unexpected hostess. They
clicked their heels and kissed her hand and drank her health many times
in good hock. The dinner was a feast worthy of Lucullus, they swore, the
wine was perfect, and the coffee--which Abiboo handed round with a
solemn face--was wonderful.
They sat chatting for a time, and then the bearded man looked at his
watch.
"To bed, gentlemen," he said gaily. "We leave you, Herr Commissioner, in
good friendship, we trust?"
"Oh, most excellent," said Sanders awkwardly, for he was a poor liar,
and knew that his spies were waiting on the bank to "pick up" these
potential enemies of his.
He watched them go ashore and disappear into the darkness of the forest
path that leads to the village.
The moon was rising over the tall trees, and an expectant gathering of
Akasava notables were waiting for a white spokesman who came not, when
Bosambo and his bodyguard were engaged in lifting three unconscious men
and laying them in a large canoe. He himself paddled the long boat to
midstream, where two currents run swiftly, one to the sea and one to the
Isisi River, which winds for a hundred miles until it joins the Congo.
"Go with God," said Bosambo piously, as he stepped into his own canoe,
and released his hold of the other with its slumbering freight, "for if
your king is so great, he will bring you to your own lands; and if he is
not great, then you are liars. O Abiboo"--he spoke over his shoulder to
the sergeant of Houssas--"tell me, how many of the magic white stones of
Bonesi did you put in their drink?"
"Bosambo, I put four in each, as you told me, and if my lord Tibbetti
misses them, what shall I say?"
"You shall say," said Bosambo, "that this is Sandi's own word--that when
men plan evils they must first sleep. And I think these men will sleep
for a long time. Perhaps they will sleep for ever--all things are with
God."
CHAPTER VI
THE MEDICINE MAN
At the flood season, before the turbulent tributaries of the Isisi River
had been induced to return to their accustomed channels, Sanders came
back to headquarters a very weary man, for he had spent a horrid week in
an endeavour--successful, but none the less nerve-racking--to impress an
indolent people that the swamping of their villages was less a matter of
Providence and ghosts than the neglect of elementary precaution.
"For I told you, Ranabini," said an exasperated Sanders, "that you
should keep the upper channel free from trees and branches, and I have
paid you many bags of salt for your services."
"Lord, it is so," said Ranabini, scratching his brown leg thoughtfully.
"At the full of the moon, before the rains, did I not ask you if the
channel was clear, and did you not say it was like the street of your
village?" demanded Sanders, in wrath.
"Lord," said Ranabini frankly, "I lied to you, thinking your lordship
was mad. For what other man would foresee with his wonderful eye that
rains would come? Therefore, lord, I did not think of the upper channel,
and many trees floated down and made a little dam. Lord, I am an
ignorant man, and my mind is full of my own brother, who has come from a
long distance to see me, for he is a very sick man."
Sanders's mind was occupied by no thought of Ranabini's sick brother, as
the dazzling white _Zaire_ went thrashing her way down stream. For he
himself was a tired man, and needed rest, and there was a dose of
malaria looming in the offing, as his aching head told him. It was as
though his brains were arranged in slats, like a venetian blind, and
these slats were opening and closing swiftly, bringing with each
lightning flicker a momentary unconsciousness.
Captain Hamilton met him on the quay, and when Sanders landed--walking a
thought unsteadily, and instantly began a long and disjointed account of
his adventures on a Norwegian salmon river--Hamilton took him by the arm
and led the way to the bungalow.
In ten minutes he was assisting Sanders into his pyjamas, Sanders
protesting, albeit feebly, and when, after forcing an astonishing amount
of quinine and arsenic down his chief's throat, Hamilton came from the
semi-darkness of the bungalow to the white glare of the barrack square,
Hamilton was thoughtful.
"Let one of your women watch by the bed of the lord Sandi," said he to
Sergeant Abiboo, of the Houssas, "and she shall call me if he grows
worse."
"On my life," said Abiboo, and was going off.
"Where is Tibbetti?" asked Hamilton.
The sergeant turned back and seemed embarrassed.
"Lord," he said, "Tibbetti has gone with the lady, your sister, to make
a palaver with Jimbujini, the witch-doctor of the Akasava. They sit in
the forest in a magic circle, and lo! Tibbetti grows very wise."
Hamilton swore under his breath. He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his
second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the
drill of some raw Kano recruits who had been sent from the coast.
"Go tell the lord Tibbetti to come to me," he said, "but first send your
woman to Sandi."
Lieutenant Tibbetts, with his plain, boyish face all red with his
exertions, yet dignified withal, came hurriedly from his studies.
"Come aboard, sir," he said, and saluted extravagantly, blinking at his
superior with a curious solemnity of mien which was his own peculiar
expression.
"Bones," said Hamilton, "where the dickens have you been?"
Bones drew a long breath. He hesitated, then--
"Knowledge," he said shortly.
Hamilton looked at his subordinate in alarm.
"Dash it, you aren't off your head, too, are you?"
Bones shook his head with vigour.
"Knowledge of the occult, sir and brother-officer," he said. "One is
never too old to learn, sir, in this jolly old world."
"Quite right," said Hamilton; "in fact, I'm pretty certain that you'll
never live long enough to learn everything."
"Thank you, sir," said Bones.
The girl, who had had less qualms than Bones when the summons arrived,
and had, in consequence, returned more leisurely, came into the room.
"Pat," said her brother, "Sanders is down with fever."
"Fever!" she said a little breathlessly. "It isn't--dangerous?"
Bones, smiling indulgently, soothed her.
"Nothin' catchin', dear Miss Patricia Hamilton," he began.
"Please don't be stupid," she said so fiercely that Bones recoiled. "Do
you think I'm afraid of catching anything? Is it dangerous for Mr.
Sanders?" she asked her brother.
"No more dangerous than a cold in the head," he answered flippantly. "My
dear child, we all have fever. You'll have it, too, if you go out at
sunset without your mosquito boots."
He explained, with the easy indifference of a man inured to malaria,
the habits of the mosquito--his predilection for ankles and wrists,
where the big veins and arteries are nearer to the surface--but the girl
was not reassured. She would have sat up with Sanders, but the idea so
alarmed Hamilton that she abandoned it.
"He'd never forgive me," he said. "My dear girl, he'll be as right as a
trivet in the morning."
She was sceptical, but, to her amazement, Sanders turned up at breakfast
his usual self, save that he was a little weary-eyed, and that his hand
shook when he raised his coffee-cup to his lips. A miracle, thought
Patricia Hamilton, and said so.
"Not at all, dear miss," said Bones, now, as ever, accepting full credit
for all phenomena she praised, whether natural or supernatural. "This is
simply nothin' to what happened to me. Ham, dear old feller, do you
remember when I was brought down from the Machengombi River? Simply
delirious--ravin'--off my head."
"So much so," said Hamilton, slicing the top off his egg, "that we
didn't think you were ill."
"If you'd seen me," Bones went on, solemnly shaking one skinny
forefinger at the girl, "you'd have said: 'Bones is for the High Jump.'"
"I should have said nothing so vulgar, Bones," she retorted. "And was it
malaria?"
"Ah," said Hamilton triumphantly, "I was too much of a gentleman to hint
that it wasn't. Press the question, Pat."
Bones shrugged his shoulders and cast a look of withering contempt upon
his superior.
"In the execution of one's duty, dear Miss Patricia H," he said, "the
calibre of the gun that lays a fellow low, an' plunges his relations an'
creditors into mournin', is beside the point. The only consideration, as
dear old Omar says, is--
"'The movin' finger hits, an', havin' hit,
Moves on, tum tumty tumty tay,
And all a feller does won't make the slightest difference.'"
"Is that Omar or Shakespeare?" asked the dazed Hamilton.
"Be quiet, dear. What was the illness, Bones?"
"Measles," said Hamilton brutally, "and German measles at that."
"Viciously put, dear old officer, but, nevertheless, true," said Bones
buoyantly. "But when the hut's finished, I'll return good for evil.
There's goin' to be a revolution, Miss Patricia Hamilton. No more fever,
no more measles--health, wealth, an' wisdom, by gad!"
"Sunstroke," diagnosed Hamilton. "Pull yourself together, Bones--you're
amongst friends."
But Bones was superior to sarcasm.
There was a creature of Lieutenant Tibbetts a solemn, brown man, who
possessed, in addition to a vocabulary borrowed from a departed
professor of bacteriology, a rough working knowledge of the classics.
This man's name was, as I have already explained, Abid Ali or Ali Abid,
and in him Bones discovered a treasure beyond price.
Bones had recently built himself a large square hut near the
seashore--that is to say, he had, with the expenditure of a great amount
of midnight oil, a pair of compasses, a box of paints, and a T-square,
evolved a somewhat complicated plan whereon certain blue oblongs stood
for windows, and certain red cones indicated doors. To this he had added
an elevation in the severe Georgian style.
With his plan beautifully drawn to scale, with sectional diagrams and
side elevations embellishing its margin, he had summoned Mojeri of the
Lower Isisi, famous throughout the land as a builder of great houses,
and to him he had entrusted the execution of his design.
"This you shall build for me, Mojeri," said Bones, sucking the end of
his pencil and gazing lovingly at the plan outspread before him, "and
you shall be famous all through the world. This room shall be twice as
large as that, and you shall cunningly contrive a passage so that I may
move from one to the other, and none see me come or go. Also, this shall
be my sleeping-place, and this a great room where I will practise
powerful magics."
Mojeri took the plan in his hand and looked at it. He turned it upside
down and looked at it that way. Then he looked at it sideways.
"Lord," said he, putting down the plan with a reverent hand, "all these
wonders I shall remember."
"And did he?" asked Hamilton, when Bones described the interview.
Bones blinked and swallowed.
"He went away and built me a square hut--just a plain square hut. Mojeri
is an ass, sir--a jolly old fraud an' humbug, sir. He----"
"Let me see the plan," said Hamilton, and his subordinate produced the
cartridge paper.
"H'm!" said Hamilton, after a careful scrutiny. "Very pretty. But how
did you get into your room?"
"Through the door, dear old officer," said the sarcastic Bones.
"I thought it might be through the roof," said Hamilton, "or possibly
you made one of your famous dramatic entries through a star-trap in the
floor--
"'Who is it speaks in those sepulchral tones?
It is the demon king--the grisly Bones!
Bing!'
"and up you pop amidst red fire and smoke."
A light dawned on Bones.
"Do you mean to tell me, jolly old Ham, that I forgot to put a door into
my room?" he asked incredulously, and peered over his chief's shoulder.
"That is what I mean, Bones. And where does the passage lead to?"
"That goes straight from my sleepin' room to the room marked L," said
Bones, in triumph.
"Then you _were_ going to be a demon king," said the admiring Hamilton.
"But fortunately for you, Bones, the descent to L is not so easy--you've
drawn a party wall across----"
"L stands for laboratory," explained the architect hurriedly. "An'
where's the wall? God bless my jolly old soul, so I have! Anyway, that
could have been rectified in a jiffy."
"Speaking largely," said Hamilton, after a careful scrutiny of the plan,
"I think Mojeri has acted wisely. You will have to be content with the
one room. What was the general idea of the house, anyway?"
"Science an' general illumination of the human mind," said Bones
comprehensively.
"I see," said Hamilton. "You were going to make fireworks. A splendid
idea, Bones."
"Painful as it is to undeceive you, dear old sir," said Bones,
with admirable patience, "I must tell you that I'm takin' up my
medical studies where I left off. Recently I've been wastin' my time,
sir: precious hours an' minutes have been passed in frivolous
amusement--_tempus fugit_, sir an' captain, _festina lente_, an'
I might add----"
"Don't," begged Hamilton; "you give me a headache."
There was a look of interest in Bones's eyes.
"If I may be allowed to prescribe, sir----" he began.
"Thanks, I'd rather have the headache," replied Hamilton hastily.
It was nearly a week before the laboratory was fitted that Bones gave a
house-warming, which took the shape of an afternoon tea. Bones, arrayed
in a long white coat, wearing a ferocious lint mask attached to huge
mica goggles, through which he glared on the world, met the party at the
door and bade them a muffled welcome. They found the interior of the hut
a somewhat uncomfortable place. The glass retorts, test tubes, bottles,
and the paraphernalia of science which Bones had imported crowded the
big table, the shelves, and even overflowed on to the three available
chairs.
"Welcome to my little workroom," said the hollow voice of Bones from
behind the mask. "Wel----Don't put your foot in the crucible, dear old
officer! You're sittin' on the methylated spirits, ma'am! Phew!"
Bones removed his mask and showed a hot, red face.
"Don't take it off, Bones," begged Hamilton; "it improves you."
Sanders was examining the microscope, which stood under a big glass
shade.
"You're very complete, Bones," he said approvingly. "In what branch of
science are you dabbling?"
"Tropical diseases, sir," said Bones promptly, and lifted the shade.
"I'm hopin' you'll allow me to have a look at your blood after tea."
"Thank you," said Sanders. "You had better practise on Hamilton."
"Don't come near me!" threatened Hamilton.
It was Patricia who, when the tea-things had been removed, played the
heroine.
"Take mine," she said, and extended her hand.
Bones found a needle, and sterilized it in the flame of a spirit lamp.
"This won't hurt you," he quavered, and brought the point near the
white, firm flesh. Then he drew it back again.
"This won't hurt you, dear old miss," he croaked, and repeated the
performance.
He stood up and wiped his streaming brow.
"I haven't the heart to do it," he said dismally.
"A pretty fine doctor you are, Bones!" she scoffed, and took the needle
from his hand. "There!"
Bones put the tiny crimson speck between his slides, blobbed a drop of
oil on top, and focussed the microscope.
He looked for a long time, then turned a scared face to the girl.
"Sleepin' sickness, poor dear old Miss Hamilton!" he gasped. "You're
simply full of tryps! Good Lord! What a blessin' for you I discovered
it!"
Sanders pushed the young scientist aside and looked. When he turned his
head, the girl saw his face was white and drawn, and for a moment a
sense of panic overcame her.
"You silly ass," growled the Commissioner, "they aren't trypnosomes! You
haven't cleaned the infernal eyepiece!"
"Not trypnosomes?" said Bones.
"You seem disappointed, Bones," said Hamilton.
"As a man, I'm overjoyed," replied Bones gloomily; "as a scientist, it's
a set-back, dear old officer--a distinct set-back."
The house-warming lasted a much shorter time than the host had intended.
This was largely due to the failure of a very beautiful experiment which
he had projected. In order that the rare and wonderful result at which
he aimed should be achieved, Bones had the hut artificially darkened,
and they sat in a hot and sticky blackness, whilst he knocked over
bottles and swore softly at the instruments his groping hand could not
discover. And the end of the experiment was a large, bad smell.
"The women and children first," said Hamilton, and dived for the door.
They took farewell of Bones at a respectful distance.
Hamilton went across to the Houssa lines, and Sanders walked back to the
Residency with the girl. For a little while they spoke of Bones and his
newest craze, and then suddenly the girl asked--
"You didn't really think there were any of those funny things in my
blood, did you?"
Sanders looked straight ahead.
"I thought--you see, we know--the tryp is a distinct little body, and
anybody who had lived in this part of the world for a time can pick him
out. Bones, of course, knows nothing thoroughly--I should have
remembered that."
She said nothing until they reached the verandah, and she turned to go
to her room.
"It wasn't nice, was it?" she said.
Sanders shook his head.
"It was a taste of hell," he said simply. And she fetched a quick, long
sigh and patted his arm before she realized what she was doing.
Bones, returning from his hut, met Sanders hurrying across the square.
"Bones, I want you to go up to the Isisi," said the Commissioner.
"There's an outbreak of some weird disease, probably due to the damming
of the little river by Ranabini, and the flooding of the low forests."
Bones brightened up.
"Sir an' Excellency," he said gratefully, "comin' from you, this tribute
to my scientific----"
"Don't be an ass, Bones!" said Sanders irritably. "Your job is to make
these beggars work. They'll simply sit and die unless you start them on
drainage work. Cut a few ditches with a fall to the river; kick Ranabini
for me; take up a few kilos of quinine and dose them."
Nevertheless, Bones managed to smuggle on board quite a respectable
amount of scientific apparatus, and came in good heart to the despondent
folk of the Lower Isisi.
Three weeks after Bones had taken his departure, Sanders was sitting at
dinner in a very thoughtful mood.
Patricia had made several ineffectual attempts to draw him into a
conversation, and had been answered in monosyllables. At first she had
been piqued and a little angry, but, as the meal progressed, she
realized that matters of more than ordinary seriousness were occupying
his thoughts, and wisely changed her attitude of mind. A chance
reference to Bones, however, succeeded where more pointed attempts had
failed.
"Yes," said Sanders, in answer to the question she had put, "Bones has
some rough idea of medical practice. He was a cub student at Bart.'s for
two years before he realized that surgery and medicines weren't his
forte."
"Don't you sometimes feel the need of a doctor here?" she asked, and
Sanders smiled.
"There is very little necessity. The military doctor comes down
occasionally from headquarters, and we have a native apothecary. We have
few epidemics amongst the natives, and those the medical missions deal
with--sleep-sickness, beri-beri and the like. Sometimes, of course, we
have a pretty bad outbreak which spreads----Don't go, Hamilton--I want
to see you for a minute."
Hamilton had risen, and was making for his room, with a little nod to
his sister.
At Sanders's word he turned.
"Walk with me for a few minutes," said Sanders, and, with an apology to
the girl, he followed the other from the room.
"What is it?" asked Hamilton.
Sanders was perturbed--this he knew, and his own move towards his room
was in the nature of a challenge for information.
"Bones," said the Commissioner shortly. "Do you realize that we have had
no news from him since he left?"
Hamilton smiled.
"He's an erratic beggar, but nothing could have happened to him, or we
should have heard about it."
Sanders did not reply at once. He paced up and down the gravelled path
before the Residency, his hands behind him.
"No news has come from Ranabini's village for the simple reason that
nobody has entered or left it since Bones arrived," he said. "It is
situated, as you know, on a tongue of land at the confluence of two
rivers. No boat has left the beaches, and an attempt to reach it by land
has been prevented by force."
"By force?" repeated the startled Hamilton.
Sanders nodded.
"I had the report in this morning. Two men of the Isisi from another
village went to call on some relations. They were greeted with arrows,
and returned hurriedly. The headman of M'gomo village met with the same
reception. This came to the ears of my chief spy Ahmet, who attempted to
paddle to the island in his canoe. At a distance of two hundred yards he
was fired upon."
"Then they've got Bones?" gasped Hamilton.
"On the contrary, Bones nearly got Ahmet, for Bones was the marksman."
The two men paced the path in silence.
"Either Bones has gone mad," said Hamilton, "or----"
"Or----?"
Hamilton laughed helplessly.
"I can't fathom the mystery," he said. "McMasters will be down
to-morrow, to look at some sick men. We'll take him up, and examine the
boy."
It was a subdued little party that boarded the _Zaire_ the following
morning, and Patricia Hamilton, who came to see them off, watched their
departure with a sense of impending trouble.
Dr. McMasters alone was cheerful, for this excursion represented a break
in a somewhat monotonous routine.
"It may be the sun," he suggested. "I have known several fellows who
have gone a little nutty from that cause. I remember a man at Grand
Bassam who shot----"
"Oh, shut up, Mac, you grisly devil!" snapped Hamilton. "Talk about
butterflies."
The _Zaire_ swung round the bend of the river that hid Ranabini's
village from view, but had scarcely come into sight when--
"Ping!"
Sanders saw the bullet strike the river ahead of the boat, and send a
spiral column of water shooting into the air. He put up his glasses and
focussed them on the village beach.
"Bones!" he said grimly. "Take her in, Abiboo."
As the steersman spun the wheel--
"Ping!"
This time the shot fell to the right.
The three white men looked at one another.
"Let every man take cover," said Sanders quietly. "We're going to that
beach even if Bones has a battery of 75's!"
An exclamation from Hamilton arrested him.
"He's signalling," said the Houssa Captain, and Sanders put up his
glasses again.
Bones's long arms were waving at ungainly angles as he semaphored his
warning.
Hamilton opened his notebook and jotted down the message--
"Awfully sorry, dear old officer," he spelt, and grinned at the
unnecessary exertion of this fine preliminary flourish, "but must keep
you away. Bad outbreak of virulent smallpox----"
Sanders whistled, and pulled back the handle of the engine-room
telegraph to "stop."
"My God!" said Hamilton through his teeth, for he had seen such an
outbreak once, and knew something of its horrors. Whole districts had
been devastated in a night. One tribe had been wiped out, and the
rotting frames of their houses still showed amidst the tangle of
elephant grass which had grown up through the ruins.
He wiped his forehead and read the message a little unsteadily, for his
mind was on his sister--
"Had devil of fight, and lost twenty men, but got it under. Come
and get me in three weeks. Had to stay here for fear careless
devils spreading disease."
Sanders looked at Hamilton, and McMasters chuckled.
"This is where I get a swift vacation," he said, and called his servant.
Hamilton leapt on to the rail, and steadying himself against a
stanchion, waved a reply--
"We are sending you a doctor."
Back came the reply in agitated sweeps of arm--
"Doctor be blowed! What am I?"
"What shall I say, sir?" asked Hamilton after he had delivered the
message.
"Just say 'a hero,'" said Sanders huskily.
CHAPTER VII
BONES, KING-MAKER
Patricia Hamilton, an observant young lady, had not failed to notice
that every day, at a certain hour, Bones disappeared from view. It was
not for a long time that she sought an explanation.
"Where is Bones?" she asked one morning, when the absence of her
cavalier was unusually protracted.
"With his baby," said her brother.
"Please don't be comic, dear. Where is Bones? I thought I saw him with
the ship's doctor."
The mail had come in that morning, and the captain and surgeon of the
s.s. _Boma Queen_ had been their guests at breakfast.
Hamilton looked up from his book and removed his pipe.
"Do you mean to tell me that Bones has kept his guilty secret all this
time?" he asked anxiously.
She sat down by his side.
"Please tell me the joke. This isn't the first time you have ragged
Bones about 'the baby'; even Mr. Sanders has done it."
She looked across at the Commissioner with a reproving shake of her
pretty head.
"Have _I_ ragged Bones?" asked Sanders, in surprise. "I never thought I
was capable of ragging anybody."
"The truth is, Pat," said her brother, "there isn't any rag about the
matter. Bones adopted a piccanin."
"A child?"
"A baby about a month old. Its mother died, and some old bird of a
witch-doctor was 'chopping' it when Bones appeared on the scene."
Patricia gave a little gurgle of delight and clapped her hands. "Oh,
please tell me everything about it."
"It was Sanders who told her of Henry Hamilton Bones, his dire peril and
his rescue; it was Hamilton who embellished the story of how Bones had
given his adopted son his first bath.
"Just dropped him into a tub and stirred him round with a mop."
Soon after this Bones came blithely up from the beach and across the
parade-ground, his large pipe in his mouth, his cane awhirl.
Hamilton watched him from the verandah of the Residency, and called over
his shoulder to Patricia.
It had been an anxious morning for Bones, and even Hamilton was
compelled to confess to himself that he had felt the strain, though he
had not mentioned the fact to his sister.
Outside in the roadstead the intermediate Elder Dempster boat was
waiting the return of the doctor. Bones had been to see him off. An
important day, indeed, for Henry Hamilton Bones had been vaccinated.
"I think it 'took,'" said Bones gravely, answering the other's question.
"I must say Henry behaved like a gentleman."
"What did Fitz say?"
(Fitzgerald, the doctor, had come in accordance with his promise to
perform the operation.)
"Fitz?" said Bones, and his voice trembled. "Fitz is a cad!"
Hamilton grinned.
"He said that babies didn't feel pain, and there was Henry howling his
young head off. It was horrible!"
Bones wiped his streaming brow with a large and violent bandana, and
looked round cautiously.
"Not a word, Ham, to her!" he said, in a loud whisper.
"Sorry!" said Hamilton, picking up his pipe. "Her knows."
"Good gad!" said Bones, in despair, and turned to meet the girl.
"Oh, Bones!" she said reproachfully, "you never told me!"
Bones shrugged his shoulders, opened his mouth, dropped his pipe,
blinked, spread out his hands in deprecation, and picked up his pipe.
From which it may be gathered that he was agitated.
"Dear old Miss Hamilton," he said tremulously, "I should be a horrid
bounder if I denied Henry Hamilton Bones--poor little chap. If I never
mentioned him, dear old sister, it is because----Ah, well, you will
never understand."
He hunched his shoulders dejectedly.
"Don't be an ass, Bones. Why the dickens are you making a mystery of the
thing?" asked Hamilton. "I'll certify you're a jolly good father to the
brat."
"Not 'brat,' dear old sir," begged Bones. "Henry is a human being with a
human heart. That boy"--he wagged his finger solemnly--"knows me the
moment I go into the hut. To see him sit up an' say 'Da!' dear old
sister Hamilton," he went on incoherently, "to see him open his mouth
with a smile, one tooth through, an' one you can feel with your little
finger--why, it's--it's wonderful, jolly old Miss Hamilton! Damn it,
it's wonderful!"
"Bones!" cried the shocked girl.
"I can't help it, madame," said Bones miserably. "Fitz cut his poor
little, fat little arm. Oh, Fitz is a low cad! Cut it, my dear old
Patricia, mercilessly--yes, mercilessly, brutally, an' the precious
little blighter didn't so much as call for the police. Good gad, it was
terrible!"
His eyes were moist, and he blew his nose with great vigour.
"I'm sure it was awful," she soothed him. "May I come and see him?"
Bones raised a warning hand, and, though the habitat of the wonderful
child could not have been less than half a mile away, lowered his voice.
"He's asleep--fitfully, but asleep. I've told them to call me if he has
a turn for the worse, an' I'm goin' down with a gramophone after dinner,
in case the old fellow wants buckin' up. But now he's asleep, thankin'
you for your great kindness an' sympathy, dear old miss, in the moment
of singular trial."
He took her hand and shook it heartily, tried to say something, and
swallowed hard, then, turning, walked from the verandah in the direction
of his hut.
The girl was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.
"What a boy!" she said, half to herself.
Sanders nodded.
"Bones is very nice," he said, and she looked at him curiously.
"That is almost eloquent," she said quietly.
"I thought it was rather bald," he replied. "You see, few people really
understand Bones. I thought, the first time I saw him, that he was a
fool. I was wrong. Then I thought he was effeminate. I was wrong again,
for he has played the man whenever he was called upon to do so. Bones
is one of those rare creatures--a man with all the moral equipment of a
good woman."
Her eyes were fixed on his, and for a moment they held. Then hers
dropped quickly, and she flushed ever so slightly.
"I think you have defined the perfect man," she said, turning the leaves
of her book.
The next morning she was admitted to an audience with that paragon of
paragons, Henry Hamilton Bones.
He lived in the largest of the Houssa huts at the far end of the lines,
and had for attendants two native women, for whom Bones had framed the
most stringent and regimental of orders.
The girl paused in the porch of the hut to read the typewritten
regulations which were fastened by drawing-pins to a green baize board.
They were bi-lingual, being in English and in coast Arabic, in which
dialect Bones was something of a master. The girl wondered why they
should be in English.
"Absolutely necessary, dear old lady friend," explained Bones firmly.
"You've no idea what a lot of anxiety I have had. Your dear old
brother--God bless him!--is a topping old sport, but with children you
can't be too careful, and Ham is awfully thoughtless. There, I've said
it!"
The English part of the regulations was brief, and she read it through.
HENRY HAMILTON BONES (Care of).
1. Visitors are requested to make as little noise as possible. How
would you like to be awakened from refreshing sleep! Be unselfish,
and put yourself in his place.
2. It is absolutely forbidden to feed the child except with
articles a list of which may be obtained on application. Nuts and
chocolates are strictly forbidden.
3. The undersigned will not be responsible for articles broken by
the child, such as watches. If watches are used to amuse child,
they should be held by child's ear, when an interested expression
will be observed on child's face. On no account should child be
allowed--knowing no better--to bite watch, owing to danger from
glass, minute hand, etc.
4. In lifting child, grasp above waist under arms and raise slowly,
taking care that head does not fall back. Bring child close to
holder's body, passing left arm under child and right arm over.
Child should not be encouraged to sit up--though quite able to,
being very forward for eight months--owing to strain on back. On no
account should child be thrown up in the air and caught.
5. Any further information can be obtained at Hut 7.
(Signed)
AUGUSTUS TIBBETTS, Lieutenant.
"All based upon my personal observation and experience," said Bones
triumphantly--"not a single tip from anybody."
"I think you are really marvellous, Bones," said the girl, and meant it.
Henry Hamilton Bones sat upright in a wooden cot. A fat-faced atom of
brown humanity, bald-headed and big-eyed, he sucked his thumb and stared
at the visitor, and from the visitor to Bones.
Bones he regarded with an intelligent interest which dissolved into a
fat chuckle of sheer delight.
"Isn't it--isn't it simply extraordinary?" demanded Bones ecstatically.
"In all your long an' painful experience, dear old friend an' co-worker,
have you ever seen anything like it? When you remember that babies don't
open their eyes until three weeks after they're born----"
"Da!" said Henry Hamilton Bones.
"Da yourself, Henry!" squawked his foster-father.
"Do da!" said Henry.
The smile vanished from Bones's face, and he bit his lip thoughtfully.
"Do da!" he repeated. "Let me see, what is 'do da'?"
"Do da!" roared Henry.
"Dear old Miss Hamilton," he said gently, "I don't know whether Henry
wants a drink or whether he has a pain in his stomach, but I think that
we had better leave him in more experienced hands."
He nodded fiercely to the native woman nurse and made his exit.
Outside they heard Henry's lusty yell, and Bones put his hand to his ear
and listened with a strained expression on his face.
Presently the tension passed.
"It _was_ a drink," said Bones. "Excuse me whilst I make a note." He
pulled out his pocket-book and wrote: "'Do da' means 'child wants
drink.'"
He walked back to the Residency with her, giving her a remarkable
insight into Henry's vocabulary. It appeared that babies have a language
of their own, which Bones boasted that he had almost mastered.
She lay awake for a very long time that night, thinking of Bones, his
simplicity and his lovableness. She thought, too, of Sanders, grave,
aloof, and a little shy, and wondered....
She woke with a start, to hear the voice of Bones outside the window.
She felt sure that something had happened to Henry. Then she heard
Sanders and her brother speaking, and realized that it was not Henry
they were discussing.
She looked at her watch--it was three o'clock.
"I was foolish to trust that fellow," Sanders was saying, "and I know
that Bosambo is not to blame, because he has always given a very wide
berth to the Kulumbini people, though they live on his border."
She heard him speak in a strange tongue to some unknown fourth, and
guessed that a spy of the Government had come in during the night.
"We'll get away as quickly as we can, Bones," Sanders said. "We can take
our chance with the lower river in the dark; it will be daylight before
we reach the bad shoals. You need not come, Hamilton."
"Do you think Bones will be able to do all you want?" Hamilton's tone
was dubious.
"Pull yourself together, dear old officer," said Bones, raising his
voice to an insubordinate pitch.
She heard the men move from the verandah, and fell asleep again,
wondering who was the man they spoke of and what mischief he had been
brewing.
* * * * *
On a little tributary stream, which is hidden by the island of bats, was
the village of Kulumbini. High elephant grass hid the poor huts even
from they who navigate a cautious way along the centre of the narrow
stream. On the shelving beach one battered old canoe of ironwood, with
its sides broken and rusted, the indolence of its proprietor made plain
by the badly spliced panels, was all that told the stranger that the
habitations of man were nigh.
Kulumbini was a term of reproach along the great river and amongst the
people of the Akasava, the Isisi, and the N'gombi, no less than among
that most tolerant of tribes the Ochori. They were savage people,
immensely brave, terrible in battle, but more terrible after.
Kulumbini, the village and city of the tribe, was no more than an
outlier of a fairly important tribe which occupied forest land
stretching back to the Ochori boundary. Their territory knew no frontier
save the frontiers of caprice and desire. They had neither nationality
nor national ambition, and would sell their spears for a bunch of fish,
as the saying goes. Their one consuming passion and one great wish was
that they should not be overlooked, and, so long as the tribes respected
this eccentricity, the Kulumbini distressed no man.
How this desire for isolation arose, none know. It is certain that once
upon a time they possessed a king who so shared their views that he
never came amongst them, but lived in a forest place which is called to
this day S'furi-S'foosi, "The trees (or glade) of the distant king."
They had demurred at Government inspection, and Sanders, coming up the
little river on the first of his visits, was greeted by a shower of
arrows, and his landing opposed by locked shields.
There are many ways of disposing of opposition, not the least important
of which is to be found in two big brass-barrelled guns which have their
abiding place at each end of the _Zaire's_ bridge. There is also a
method known as peaceful suasion. Sanders had compromised by going
ashore for a peace palaver with a revolver in each hand.
He had a whole fund of Bomongo stories, most of which are unfit for
printing, but which, nevertheless, find favour amongst the primitive
humorists of the Great River. By parable and story, by nonsense tale and
romance, by drawing upon his imagination to supply himself with facts,
by invoking ju-jus, ghosts, devils, and all the armoury of native
superstition, he had, in those far-off times, prevailed upon the people
of Kulumbini not only to allow him a peaceful entrance to their country,
but--wonder of wonders!--to contribute, when the moon and tide were in
certain relative positions, which in English means once every six
months, a certain tithe or tax, which might consist of rubber, ivory,
fish, or manioc, according to the circumstances of the people.
More than this, he stamped a solemn treaty--he wrote it in a tattered
laundry-book which had come into the chief's possession by some
mysterious means--and he hung about the neck of Gulabala, the titular
lord of these strange people, the medal and chain of chieftainship.
Not to be outdone in courtesy, the chief offered him the choice of all
the maidens of Kulumbini, and Sanders, to whom such offers were by no
means novel, had got out of a delicate situation in his usual manner,
having resort to witchcraft for the purpose. For he said, with due
solemnity and hushed breath, that it had been predicted by a celebrated
witch-doctor of the lower river that the next wife he should take to
himself would die of the sickness-mongo, and said Sanders--
"My heart is too tender for your people, O Chief, to lead one of your
beautiful daughters to death."
"O Sandi," replied Gulabala hopefully, "I have many daughters, and I
should not miss one. And would it not be good service for a woman of my
house to die in your hut?"
"We see things differently, you and I," said Sanders, "for, according to
my religion, if any woman dies from witchcraft, her ghost sits for ever
at the foot of my bed, making terrifying faces."
Thus Sanders had made his escape, and had received at odd intervals the
tribute of these remote people.
For years they had dwelt without interference, for they were an unlucky
people to quarrel with, and, save for one or two trespasses on the part
of Gulabala, there was no complaint made concerning them. It is not
natural, however, for native people to prosper, as these folks did,
without there growing up a desire to kill somebody. For does not the
river saying run: "The last measure of a full granary is a measure of
blood"?
In the dead of a night Gulabala took three hundred spears across the
frontier to the Ochori village of Netcka, and returned at dawned with
the spears all streaky. And he brought back with him some twenty women,
who would have sung the death-song of their men but for the fact that
Gulabala and his warriors beat them.
Gulabala slept all the day, he and his spears, and woke to a grisly
vision of consequence.
He called his people together and spoke in this wise--
"Soon Sandi and his headmen will come, and, if we are here, there will
be many folk hanged, for Sandi is a cruel man. Therefore let us go to a
far place in the forest, carrying our treasure, and when Sandi has
forgiven us, we will come back."
A good plan but for the sad fact that Bosambo of the Ochori was less
than fifty miles away at the dawn of that fatal day, and was marching
swiftly to avenge his losses, for not only had Gulabala taken women, but
he had taken sixty goats, and that was unpardonable.
The scouts which Gulabala had sent out came back with the news that the
way to sanctuary was barred by Bosambo.
Now, of all the men that the Kulumbini hated, they hated none more than
the Chief of the Ochori. For he alone never scrupled to overlook them,
and to dare their anger by flogging such of them as raided his territory
in search of game.
"Ko," said Gulabala, deeply concerned, "this Bosambo is Sandi's dog. Let
us go back to our village and say we have been hunting, for Bosambo will
not cross into our lands for fear of Sandi's anger."
They reached the village, and were preparing to remove the last evidence
of their crime--one goat looks very much like another, but women can
speak--when Sanders came striding down the village street, and Gulabala,
with his curved execution knife in his hand, stood up by the side of the
woman he had slain.
"O Gulabala," said Sanders softly, "this is an evil thing."
The chief looked left and right helplessly.
"Lord," he said huskily, "Bosambo and his people put me to shame, for
they spied on me and overlooked me. And we are proud people, who must
not be overlooked--thus it has been for all time."
Sanders pursed his lips and stared at the man.
"I see here a fine high tree," he said, "so high that he who hangs from
its top branch may say that no man overlooks him. There you shall hang,
Gulabala, for your proud men to see, before they also go to work for my
King, with chains upon their legs as long as they live."
"Lord," said Gulabala philosophically, "I have lived."
Ten minutes later he went the swift way which bad chiefs go, and his
people were unresentful spectators.
"This is the tenth time I have had to find a new chief in this belt,"
said Sanders, pacing the deck of the _Zaire_, "and who on earth I am to
put in his place I do not know."
The _lokalis_ of the Kulumbini were already calling headmen to grand
palaver. In the shade of the reed-thatched _lokali_ house, before the
hollow length of tree-trunk, the player worked his flat drumsticks of
ironwood with amazing rapidity. The call trilled and rumbled, rising and
falling, now a patter of light musical sound, now a low grumble.
Bosambo came--by the river route--as Sanders was leaving the _Zaire_ to
attend the momentous council.
"How say you, Bosambo--what man of the Kulumbini folk will hold these
people in check?"
Bosambo squatted at his lord's feet and set his spear a-spinning.
"Lord," he confessed, "I know of none, for they are a strange and
hateful people. Whatever king you set above them they will despise. Also
they worship no gods or ghosts, nor have they ju-ju or fetish. And, if a
man does not believe, how may you believe him? Lord, this I say to
you--set me above the Kulumbini, and I will change their hearts."
But Sanders shook his head.
"That may not be, Bosambo," he said.
The palaver was a long and weary one. There were twelve good claimants
for the vacant stool of office, and behind the twelve there were kinsmen
and spears.
From sunset to nigh on sunrise they debated the matter, and Sanders sat
patiently through it all, awake and alert. Whether this might be said of
Bones is questionable. Bones swears that he did not sleep, and spent
the night, chin in hand, turning over the problem in his mind.
It is certain he was awake when Sanders gave his summing up.
"People of this land," said Sanders, "four fires have been burnt since
we met, and I have listened to all your words. Now, you know how good it
is that there should be one you call chief. Yet, if I take you,
M'loomo"--he turned to one sullen claimant--"there will be war. And if I
take B'songi, there will be killing. And I have come to this mind--that
I will appoint a king over you who shall not dwell with you nor overlook
you."
Two hundred pairs of eyes watched the Commissioner's face. He saw the
gleam of satisfaction which came at this concession to the traditional
characteristic of the tribe, and went on, almost completely sure of his
ground.
"He shall dwell far away, and you, the twelve kinsmen of Gulabala, shall
reign in his place--one at every noon shall sit in the chief's chair and
keep the land for your king, who shall dwell with me."
One of the prospective regents rose.
"Lord, that is good talk, for so did Sakalaba, the great king of our
race, live apart from us at S'furi-S'foosi, and were we not prosperous
in those days? Now tell us what man you will set over us."
For one moment Sanders was nonplussed. He was rapidly reviewing the
qualifications of all the little chiefs, the headmen, and the fisher
leaders who sat under him, and none fulfilled his requirements.
In that moment of silence an agitated voice whispered in his ear, and
Bones's lean hand clutched his sleeve.
"Sir an' Excellency," breathed Bones, all of a twitter, "don't think I'm
takin' advantage of my position, but it's the chance I've been lookin'
for, sir. You'd do me an awful favour--you see, sir, I've got his career
to consider----"
"What on earth----" began Sanders.
"Henry Hamilton Bones, sir," said Bones tremulously. "You'd set him up
for life, sir. I must think of the child, hang it all! I know I'm a
jolly old rotter to put my spoke in----"
Sanders gently released the frenzied grip of his lieutenant, and faced
the wondering palaver.
"Know all people that this day I give to you as king one whom you shall
call M'songuri, which means in your tongue 'The Young and the Wise,' and
who is called in my tongue N'risu M'ilitani Tibbetti, and this one is a
child and well beloved by my lord Tibbetti, being to him as a son, and
by M'ilitani and by me, Sandi."
He raised his hand in challenge.
"Wa! Whose men are you?" he cried.
"M'songuri!"
The answer came in a deep-throated growl, and the assembly leapt to its
feet.
"Wa! Who rules this land?"
"M'songuri!"
They locked arms and stamped first with the right foot and then with the
left, in token of their acceptance.
"Take your king," said Sanders, "and build him a beautiful hut, and his
spirit shall dwell with you. This palaver is finished."
Bones was speechless all the way down river. At irregular intervals he
would grip Sanders's hand, but he was too full for speech.
Hamilton and his sister met the law-givers on the quay.
"You're back sooner than I expected you, sir," said Hamilton. "Did Bones
behave?"
"Like a little gentleman," said Sanders.
"Oh, Bones," Patricia broke in eagerly, "Henry has cut another tooth."
Bones's nod was grave and even distant.
"I will go and see His Majesty," he said. "I presume he is in the
palace?"
Hamilton stared after him.
"Surely," he asked irritably, "Bones isn't sickening for measles again?"
CHAPTER VIII
THE TAMER OF BEASTS
Native folk, at any rate, are but children of a larger growth. In the
main, their delinquencies may be classified under the heading of
"naughtiness." They are mischievous and passionate, and they have a
weakness for destroying things to discover the secrets of volition. A
too prosperous nation mystifies less fortunate people, who demand of
their elders and rulers some solution of the mystery of their rivals'
progress. Such a ruler, unable to offer the necessary explanation, takes
his spears to the discovery, and sometimes discovers too much for his
happiness.
The village of Jumburu stands on the edge of the bush country, where the
lawless men of all nations dwell. This territory is filled with fierce
communities, banded together against a common enemy--the law. They call
this land the B'wigini, which means "the Nationless," and Jumburu's
importance lies in the fact that it is the outpost of order and
discipline.
In Jumburu were two brothers, O'ka and B'suru, who had usurped the
chieftainship of their uncle, the very famous K'sungasa, "very famous,"
since he had been in his time a man of remarkable gifts, which he still
retained to some extent, and in consequence enjoyed what was left of
life.
He was, by all accounts, as mad as a man could be, and in circumstances
less favourable to himself his concerned relatives would have taken him
a long journey into the forest he loved so well, and they would have put
out his eyes and left him to the mercy of the beasts, such being the
method of dealing with lunacy amongst people who, all unknown to
themselves, were eugenists of a most inflexible kind.
But to leave K'sungasa to the beasts would have been equivalent to
delivering him to the care of his dearest friends, for he had an
affinity for the wild dwellers of the bush, and all his life he had
lived amongst them and loved them.
It is said that he could arrest the parrot in the air by a "cl'k!" and
could bring the bird screeching and fluttering to his hand. He could
call the shy little monkeys from the high branches where they hid, and
even the fiercest of buffaloes would at his word come snuffling and
nosing his brown arm.
So that, when he grew weak-minded, his relatives, after a long palaver,
decided that for once the time-honoured customs of the land should be
overridden, and since there was no other method of treating the blind
but that prescribed by precedent, he should be allowed to live in a
great hut at the edge of the village with his birds and snakes and
wild cats, and that the direction of village affairs should pass to his
nephews.
Mr. Commissioner Sanders knew all this, but did nothing. His task was to
govern the territory, which meant to so direct affairs that the
territory governed itself. When the fate of K'sungasa was in the
balance, he sent word to the chief's nephews that he was somewhere in
the neighbourhood, and that the revival of the bad old custom of
blinding would be followed by the introduction of the bad new custom of
hanging; but this had less effect upon the council of relatives--to whom
Sanders's message was not transmitted--than the strange friendship which
K'sungasa had for the forest folk.
The nephews might have governed the village, exacted tribute,
apportioned fishing rights, and administered justice for all time, but
for the fact that there came a period of famine, when crops were bad and
fish was scarce, and when, remarkably enough, the village of L'bini,
distant no more than a few hours' paddling, had by a curious coincident
raised record crops, and had, moreover, a glut of fish in their waters.
There was the inevitable palaver and the inevitable solution. O'ka and
B'suru led ten canoes to the offending village, slaughtered a few men
and burnt a few huts. For two hours the combatants pranced and yelled
and thrust at one another amidst a pandemonium of screaming women, and
then Lieutenant Tibbetts dropped from the clouds with a most substantial
platoon of Houssas, and there was a general sorting out.
Sanders held a court on one of the middle islands near the Residency,
and B'suru was sent to the Village of Irons for the term of his natural
life. O'ka, who had fled to the bush, escaped, however, and with him a
headman and a few followers.
Lieutenant Tibbetts, who had spent two profitable days in the village of
Jumburu, came back to the Residency a very thoughtful young man.
"What is the matter with Bones?" asked Captain Hamilton.
His sister smiled over her book, but offered no other comment.
"Do you know, Pat?" demanded Hamilton sternly.
Sanders looked at the girl with a twinkle in his grey eyes, and lit a
cheroot. The relationships between Patricia Hamilton and Bones were a
source of constant joy to him. Taciturn and a thought dour as he was,
Pat would never have suspected the bubbling laughter which arose behind
that lean brown face, unmovable and, in his moments of most intense
enjoyment, expressionless.
"Bones and I have a feud," said the girl.
Sanders smiled.
"Not as violent a feud as O'ka and I have, I hope?" he said.
She frowned a little and looked at him anxiously.
"But you don't worry about the threats of the people you have punished?"
she asked.
"I haven't punished O'ka," said Sanders, "and an expedition into the
bush would be too expensive an affair. He has apparently settled with
the B'wigini people. If they take up his feud, they might give trouble.
But what is your trouble with Bones?"
"You must ask him," she said.
Hamilton's opportunity came next day, when Bones applied for leave.
"Leave?" said Captain Hamilton incredulously. "Leave, Bones? What the
dickens do you want leave for?"
Bones, standing as stiff as a ramrod before the office table at which
his superior sat, saluted.
"Urgent private affairs, sir," he said gruffly.
"But you haven't any private affairs," protested Hamilton. "Your life is
an open book--you were bragging about that fact yesterday."
"Sir and brother-officer," said Bones firmly, "a crisis has arisen in my
young life. My word, sir, has been called into doubt by your jolly old
sister. I desire to vindicate my honour, my reputation, an' my
veracity."
"Pat has been pulling your leg!" suggested Hamilton, but Bones shook his
head.
"Nothin' so indelicate, sir. Your revered an' lovely relative--God
bless her jolly old heart!--expressed her doubt in _re_ leopards an'
buffaloes. I'm goin' out, sir, into the wilds--amidst dangers, Ham, old
feller, that only seasoned veterans like you an' me can imagine--to
bring proof that I am not only a sportsman, but a gentleman."
The timely arrival of Miss Patricia Hamilton, very beautiful in dazzling
white, with her solar helmet perched at an angle, smote Bones to
silence.
"What have you been saying to Bones?" asked Hamilton severely.
"She said----"
"I said----"
They began and finished together.
"Bones, you're a tell-tale," accused the girl.
"Go on," said Bones recklessly. "Don't spare me. I'm a liar an' a thief
an' a murderer--don't mind me!"
"I simply said that I didn't believe he shot the leopard--the one whose
skin is in his hut."
"Oh, no," said Bones, with heavy sarcasm, "I didn't shoot it--oh, no! I
froze it to death--I poisoned it!"
"But did you shoot it?" she asked.
"Did I shoot it, dear old Ham?" asked Bones, with great calmness.
"Did you?" asked Hamilton innocently.
"Did I shoot at that leopard," Bones went on deliberately, "an' was he
found next mornin' cold an' dead, with a smile on his naughty old
face?"
Hamilton nodded, and Bones faced the girl expectantly.
"Apologize, child," he said.
"I shall do nothing of the kind," she replied, with some heat. "Did
Bones shoot the leopard?"
She appealed to her brother.
Hamilton looked from one to the other.
"When the leopard was found----" he began.
"Listen to this, dear old sister," murmured Bones.
"When the leopard was found, with a spear in its side----"
"Evidently done after death by a wanderin' cad of a native," interposed
Bones hastily.
"Be quiet, Bones," commanded the girl, and Bones shrugged his shoulders
and obeyed.
"When the leopard was found," continued Hamilton, "he was certainly
beyond human aid, and though no bullet mark was discovered, Bones
conclusively proved----"
"One moment, dear old officer," interrupted Bones. He had seen out of
the tail of his eye a majestic figure crossing the square.
"Will you allow me to produce scientific an' expert evidence?"
Hamilton assented gravely, and Bones went to the door of the orderly
room and roared a name.
"I shall produce," he said quietly, but firmly, "the evidence of one
who enjoyed the confidence of dear old Professor What's-his-name, the
eminent thigumy-ologist. Oh, Ali!"
Ali Abid, a solemn figure, salaamed in the doorway.
Not for nothing had he been factotum to a great bacteriologist before
the demise of his master had driven him to service with a lieutenant of
Houssas. His vocabulary smelt of the laboratory, his English was pure,
undefiled, and unusual.
"Ali, you remember my leopard?"
"Sir," said Ali, shaking his head, "who can forget?"
"Did I kill him, Ali?" asked Bones. "Tell the lady everything."
Ali bowed to the girl.
"Miss or madame," he said, "the leopard (_Felis pardus_), a wild beast
of the Felidæ family, is indigenous to forest territory. The subject in
question--to wit, the skin thereof exhibited by Sir Bones--was
particularly ferocious, and departed this life as a result of hunting
conducted by aforesaid. Examination of subject after demise under most
scientific scrutiny revealed that said leopard (_Felis pardus_) suffered
from weak heart, and primary cause of death was diagnosed as shock
occasioned by large 'bang' from Sir Bones's rifle."
"What did I say?" asked Bones complacently.
"Do you mean to tell me," gasped the girl, "that you _frightened_ the
leopard to death?"
Bones spread out his hands disparagingly.
"You have heard the evidence, dear old sister," he said; "there is
nothing to add."
She threw back her head and laughed until her grey eyes were swimming in
tears.
"Oh, Bones, you humbug!" she laughed.
Bones drew himself up more stiffly than ever, stuck his monocle in his
eye, and turned to his chief.
"Do I understand, sir," he said, "that my leave is granted?"
"Seven days," said Hamilton, and Bones swung round on his heel, knocked
over Hamilton's stationery rack, stumbled over a chair, and strode
gloomily from the hut.
When Patricia Hamilton woke the next morning, she found a note pinned to
her pillow.
We may gloss over the impropriety of the proceedings which led to
this phenomenon. Bones was an artist, and so small a matter as the
proprieties did not come into his calculations.
Patricia sat up in bed and read the letter.
"DEAR OLD FRIEND AND DOUTTING THOS."
(Bones's spelling was always perfectly disgraceful),--
"When this reaches you, when this reaches you, I shall be far, far
away on my long and dangerus journey. I may not come back, I may
not come back, for I and a faithful servant are about to penetrate
to the lares of the wild beasts of the forest, of the forest. I am
determined to wipe out the reproach which you have made. I will
bring back, not a dead leppard, not a dead leppard, but a live one,
which I shall seeze with my own hands. I may lose my life in this
rash and hazardus enterprise, but at least I shall vindycate my
honour.--Farewell, dear old Patrisia.
"Your friend,
"B."
"Which proves," said Hamilton, when he was shown the letter, "that Bones
is learning to spell. It only seems yesterday when he was spelling
'Hamilton' with three m's. By the way, how did you get this letter?"
"I found it pinned to the door," said Patricia tactfully.
Bones went by the shortest route to Jumburu, and was received without
enthusiasm, for he had left a new chief to rule over a people who were
near enough to the B'wigini to resent overmuch discipline. But his
business was with K'sungasa, for the two days' stay which Bones had made
in the village, and all that he had learnt of the old tamer, had been
responsible for his reckless promise to Patricia Hamilton.
He came at a critical moment, for K'sungasa, a thin and knobbly old man,
with dim eyes and an incessant chuckle, was very near his end. He lay
on a fine raised bed, a big yellow-eyed wild cat at his feet, a monkey
or two shivering by the bedside, and a sprawling litter of kittens--to
which the wild cat leapt in a tremble of rage when Bones entered the
hut--crawling in the sunlight which flooded the hut.
"Lord Tibbetti," croaked the old man, "I see you! This is a good time,
for to-morrow I should be dead."
"K'sungasa," said Bones, seating himself gingerly, and looking about for
the snake which was usually coiled round the old man's stool, "that is
foolish talk, for you will see many floods."
"That is fine talk for the river folk," grinned the old man, "but not
for we people of the forest, who never see flood and only little-little
rivers. Now, I tell you, lord, that I am glad to die, because I have
been full of mad thoughts for a long time, but now my mind is clear.
Tell me, master, why you come."
Bones explained his errand, and the old man's eyes brightened.
"Lord, if I could go with you to the forest, I would bring to you many
beautiful leopards by my magic. Now, because I love Sandi, I will do
this for you, so that you shall know how wise and cunning I am."
In the woods about the village was a wild plant, the seeds of which,
when pounded and boiled in an earthen vessel, produced, by a rough
method of distillation, a most pungent liquid. Abid spoke learnedly of
_pimpinella anisum_, and probably he was right.[4]
[Footnote 4: Both anise and star anise (_Illicium anisatum_) are to be
found in the Territories, as also is a small plant which has all the
properties (and more) of _Pimpinella anisum_. This was probably the
plant.--AUTHOR.]
Bones and his assistant made many excursions into the woods before they
found and brought back the right plant. Fortunately it was seed-time,
and once he was on the right track Bones had no difficulty in securing
more than a sufficient quantity for his purpose.
He made his distillation under the old man's directions, the fire
burning in the middle of the hut. As the drops began to fall from the
narrow neck of his retort, a fault sweet aroma filled the hut. First the
cat, then the monkeys began to show signs of extraordinary agitation.
Cat and kittens crouched as near the fire as they could, their heads
craned towards the brown vessel, mewing and whimpering. Then the monkeys
came, bright-eyed and eager.
The scent brought the most unexpected beasts from every hole and crevice
in the hut--brown rats, squirrels, a long black snake with spade-shaped
head and diamond markings, little bush hares, a young buck, which came
crashing through the forest and prinked timidly to the door of the hut.
The old man on the bed called them all by name, and snapped his feeble
fingers to them; but their eyes were on the retort and the crystal
drops that trembled and fell from the lip of the narrow spout.
* * * * *
A week later a speechless group stood before the Residency and focussed
their astonished gaze upon the miracle.
"The miracle" was a half-grown leopard cub, vividly marked. He was
muzzled and held in leash by a chain affixed to a stout collar, and
Bones, a picture of smug gratification, held the end of the chain.
"But how--how did you catch him?" gasped the girl.
Bones shrugged his shoulders.
"It is not for me, dear old friend, to tell of nights spent in the
howlin' forest," he quavered, in the squeaky tone which invariably came
to him when he was excited. "I'm not goin' to speak of myself. If you
expect me to tell you how I trailed the jolly old leopard to his grisly
lair an' fought with him single-handed, you'll be disappointed."
"But did you track him to his lair?" demanded Hamilton, recovering his
speech.
"I beg of you, dear old officer, to discuss other matters," evaded Bones
tactfully. "Here are the goods delivered, as per mine of the
twenty-fourth instant."
He put his hand to his pocket mechanically, and the cub looked up with a
quick eager stare.
"Bones, you're a wonderful fellow," said Sanders quietly.
Bones bowed.
"And now," he said, "if you'll excuse me, I'll take my little friend to
his new home."
Before they realized what he was doing, he had slipped off the chain.
Even Sanders stepped back and dropped his hand to the automatic pistol
he carried in his hip pocket.
But Bones, unconcerned, whistled and marched off to his hut, and the
great cat followed humbly at his heels.
That same night Bones strode across from his hut to the Residency,
resolved upon a greater adventure yet. He would go out under the
admiring eyes of Patricia Hamilton, and would return from the Residency
woods a veritable Pied Piper, followed by a trail of forest denizens.
In his pocket was a quart bottle, and his clothes reeked with the scent
of wild aniseed. As a matter of fact, his secret would have been out the
moment he entered Sanders's dining-room, but it so happened that his
programme was doomed to interruption.
He was half-way across the square when a dark figure rose from the
ground and a harsh voice grunted "Kill!"
He saw the flash of the spear in the starlight and leapt aside. A hand
clutched at his jacket, but he wrenched himself free, leaving the
garment in his assailant's hands.
He was unarmed, and there was nothing left but flight.
Sanders heard his yell, and sprang out to the darkness of the verandah
as Bones flew up the steps.
He saw the two men racing in pursuit, and fired twice. One man fell, the
other swerved and was lost in the shadows.
An answering shot came from the Houssa sentry at the far end of the
square. Sanders saw a man running, and fired again, and again missed.
Then out of the darkness blundered Ali Abid, his face grey with fear.
"Sir," he gasped, "wild animal (_Felis pardus_) has divested muzzlement
and proper restraint, and is chasing various subjects outrageously."
Even as he spoke a fourth figure sped across the ground before the
Residency, so close that they could see the bundle he carried under his
arm.
"My jacket!" roared Bones. "Hi, stop him! Good Lord!"
Swift on the heels of the flying man came a streak of yellow fur....
Whether O'ka of the Jumburu outpaced the leopard, or the leopard
overtook O'ka, is not known, but until the rains came and washed away
the scent of crude aniseed, Bones dared not leave his hut by night for
fear of the strange beasts that came snuffling at his hut, or sat in
expectant and watchful circles about his dwelling, howling dismally.
CHAPTER IX
THE MERCENARIES
There was a large brown desk in Sanders's study, a desk the edges of
which had been worn yellow with constant rubbing. It was a very tidy
desk, with two rows of books neatly grouped on the left and on the
right, and held in place by brass rails. There were three tiers of wire
baskets, a great white blotting-pad, a silver inkstand and four
clean-looking pens.
Lately, there had appeared a glass vase filled with flowers which were
daily renewed. Except on certain solemn occasions, none intruded into
this holy of holies. It is true that a change had been brought about by
the arrival of Patricia Hamilton, for she had been accorded permission
to use the study as she wished, and she it was who had introduced the
floral decorations.
Yet, such was the tradition of sanctuary which enveloped the study, that
neither Captain Hamilton, her brother, nor Bones, her slave, had ever
ventured to intrude thither in search of her, and if by chance they came
to the door to speak to her, they unaccountably lowered their voices.
On a certain summer morning, Hamilton sat at the desk, a stern and sober
figure, and Bones, perspiring and rattled, sat on the edge of a chair
facing him.
The occasion was a solemn one, for Bones was undergoing his examination
in subjects "X" and "Y" for promotion to the rank of Captain. The
particular subject under discussion was "Map Reading and Field
Sketching," and the inquisition was an oral one.
"Lieutenant Tibbetts," said Hamilton gravely, "you will please define a
Base Line."
Bones pushed back the hair straggling over his forehead, and blinked
rapidly in an effort of memory.
"A base line, dear old officer?" he repeated. "A base line, dear old
Ham----"
"Restrain your endearing terms," said Hamilton, "you won't get any extra
marks for 'em."
"A base line?" mused Bones; then, "Whoop! I've got it! God bless your
jolly old soul! I thought I'd foozled it. A base line," he said loudly,
"is the difference of level between two adjacent contours. How's that,
umpire?"
"Wrong," said Hamilton; "you're describing a Vertical Interval."
Bones glared at him.
"Are you sure, dear old chap?" he demanded truculently. "Have a look at
the book, jolly old friend, your poor old eyes ain't what they used to
be----"
"Lieutenant Tibbetts," said Hamilton in ponderous reproof, "you are
behaving very strangely."
"Look here, dear old Ham," wheedled Bones "can't you pretend you asked
me what a Vertical Interval was?"
Hamilton reached round to find something to throw, but this was
Sanders's study.
"You have a criminal mind, Bones," he said helplessly. "Now get on with
it. What are 'Hachures'?"
"Hachures?" said Bones, shutting his eye. "Hachures? Now I know what
Hachures are. A lot of people would think they were chickens, but I
know ... they're a sort of line ... when you're drawing a hill ...
wiggly-waggly lines ... you know the funny things ... a sort of...."
Bones made mysterious and erratic gestures in the air, "shading ...
water, dear old friend."
"Are you feeling faint?" asked Hamilton, jumping up in alarm.
"No, silly ass ... shadings ... direction of water--am I right, sir?"
"Not being a thought-reader I can't visualize your disordered mind,"
said Hamilton, "but Hachures are the conventional method of representing
hill features by shading in short vertical lines to indicate the slope
and the water flow. I gather that you have a hazy idea of what the
answer should be."
"I thank you, dear old sir, for that generous tribute to my grasp
of military science," said Bones. "An' now proceed to the next
torture--which will you have, sir, rack or thumbscrew?--oh, thank
you, Horace, I'll have a glass of boiling oil."
"Shut up talking to yourself," growled Hamilton, "and tell me what is
meant by 'Orienting a Map'?"
"Turning it to the east," said Bones promptly. "Next, sir."
"What is meant by 'Orienting a Map'?" asked Hamilton patiently.
"I've told you once," said Bones defiantly.
"Orienting a Map," said Hamilton, "as I have explained to you a thousand
times, means setting your map or plane-table so that the north line lies
north."
"In that case, sir," said Bones firmly, "the east line would be east,
and I claim to have answered the question to your entire satisfaction."
"Continue to claim," snarled Hamilton. "I shall mark you zero for that
answer."
"Make it one," pleaded Bones. "Be a sport, dear old Ham--I've found a
new fishin' pool."
Hamilton hesitated.
"There never are any fish in the pools you find," he said dubiously.
"Anyway, I'll reserve my decision until I've made a cast or two."
They adjourned for tiffin soon after.
"How did you do, Bones?" asked Patricia Hamilton.
"Fine," said Bones enthusiastically; "I simply bowled over every
question that your dear old brother asked. In fact, Ham admitted that I
knew much more about some things than he did."
"What I said," corrected Hamilton, "was that your information on certain
subjects was so novel that I doubted whether even the staff college
shared it."
"It's the same thing," said Bones.
"You should try him on military history," suggested Sanders dryly. "I've
just been hearing from Bosambo----"
Bones coughed and blushed.
"The fact is, sir an' Excellency," he confessed, "I was practisin' on
Bosambo. You mightn't be aware of the fact, but I like to hear myself
speak----"
"No!" gasped Hamilton in amazement, "you're wronging yourself, Bones!"
"What I mean, sir," Bones went on with dignity, "is that if I lecture
somebody on a subject I remember what I've said."
"Always providing that you understand what you're saying," suggested
Hamilton.
"Anyway," said Sanders, with his quiet smile, "Bones has filled Bosambo
with a passionate desire to emulate Napoleon, and Bosambo has been
making tentative inquiries as to whether he can raise an Old Guard or
enlist a mercenary army."
"I flatter myself----" began Bones.
"Why not?" said Hamilton, rising. "It's the only chance you'll have of
hearing something complimentary about yourself."
"_I_ believe in you, Bones," said a smiling Patricia. "I think you're
really wonderful, and that Ham is a brute."
"I'll never, never contradict you, dear Miss Patricia," said Bones; "an'
after the jolly old Commissioner has gone----"
"You're not going away again, are you?" she asked, turning to Sanders.
"Why, you have only just come back from the interior."
There was genuine disappointment in her eyes, and Sanders experienced a
strange thrill the like of which he had never known before.
"Yes," he said with a nod. "There is a palaver of sorts in the Morjaba
country--the most curious palaver I have ever been called upon to hold."
And indeed he spoke the truth.
Beyond the frontiers of the Akasava, and separated from all the other
Territories by a curious bush belt which ran almost in a straight line
for seventy miles, were the people of Morjaba. They were a folk isolated
from territorial life, and Sanders saw them once every year and no more
frequently, for they were difficult to come by, regular payers of taxes
and law-abiding, having quarrels with none. The bush (reputedly the
abode of ghosts) was, save at one point, impenetrable. Nature had
plaited a natural wall on one side, and had given the tribe the
protection of high mountains to the north and a broad swamp to the
west.
The fierce storms of passion and hate which burst upon the river at
intervals and sent thousands of spears to a blooding, were scarcely
echoed in this sanctuary-land. The marauders of the Great King's country
to the north never fetched across the smooth moraine of the mountains,
and the evil people of The-Land-beyond-the-Swamp were held back by the
treacherous bogland wherein, _cala-cala_, a whole army had been
swallowed up.
Thus protected, the Morjabian folk grew fat and rich. The land was a
veritable treasure of Nature, and it is a fact that in the dialect they
speak, there is no word which means "hunger."[5]
[Footnote 5: It is as curious a fact that amongst the majority of
cannibal people there is no equivalent for "thank you."--E. W.]
Yet the people of the Morjaba were not without their crises.
S'kobi, the stout chief, held a great court which was attended by ten
thousand people, for at that court was to be concluded for ever the feud
between the M'gimi and the M'joro--a feud which went back for the
greater part of fifty years.
The M'gimi were the traditional warrior tribe, the bearers of arms, and,
as their name ("The High Lookers") implied, the proudest and most
exclusive of the people. For every man was the descendant of a chief,
and it was "easier for fish to walk," as the saying goes, than for a
man of the M'joro ("The Diggers") to secure admission to the caste.
Three lateral cuts on either cheek was the mark of the M'gimi--wounds
made, upon the warrior's initiation to the order, with the razor-edged
blade of a killing-spear. They lived apart in three camps to the number
of six thousand men, and for five years from the hour of their
initiation they neither married nor courted. The M'gimi turned their
backs to women, and did not suffer their presence in their camps. And if
any man departed from this austere rule he was taken to the Breaking
Tree, his four limbs were fractured, and he was hoisted to the lower
branches, between which a litter was swung, and his regiment sat beneath
the tree neither eating, drinking nor sleeping until he died. Sometimes
this was a matter of days. As for the woman who had tempted his eye and
his tongue, she was a witness.
Thus the M'gimi preserved their traditions of austerity. They were
famous walkers and jumpers. They threw heavy spears and fought great
sham-fights, and they did every violent exercise save till the ground.
This was the sum and substance of the complaint which had at last come
to a head.
S'gono, the spokesman of The Diggers, was a headman of the inner lands,
and spoke with bitter prejudice, since his own son had been rejected by
the M'gimi captains as being unworthy.
"Shall we men dig and sow for such as these?" he asked. "Now give a
judgment, King! Every moon we must take the best of our fruit and the
finest of our fish. Also so many goats and so much salt, and it is
swallowed up."
"Yet if I send them away," said the king, "how shall I protect this land
against the warriors of the Akasava and the evil men of the swamp? Also
of the Ochori, who are four days' march across good ground?"
"Lord King," said S'gono, "are there no M'gimi amongst us who have
passed from the camp and have their women and their children? May not
these take the spear again? And are not we M'joro folk men? By my life!
I will raise as many spears from The Diggers and captain them with
M'joro men--this I could do between the moons and none would say that
you were not protected. For we are men as bold as they."
The king saw that the M'gimi party was in the minority. Moreover, he had
little sympathy with the warrior caste, for his beginnings were basely
rooted in the soil, and two of his sons had no more than scraped into
the M'gimi.
"This thing shall be done," said the king, and the roar of approval
which swept up the little hillock on which he sat was his reward.
Sanders, learning something of these doings, had come in haste, moving
across the Lower Akasava by a short cut, risking the chagrin of certain
chiefs and friends who would be shocked and mortified by his apparent
lack of courtesy in missing the ceremonious call which was their due.
But his business was very urgent, otherwise he would not have travelled
by Nobolama--The-River-that-comes-and-goes.
He was fortunate in that he found deep water for the _Wiggle_ as far as
the edge of this pleasant land. A two days' trek through the forest
brought him to the great city of Morjaba. In all the Territories there
was no such city as this, for it stretched for miles on either hand, and
indeed was one of the most densely populated towns within a radius of
five hundred miles.
S'kobi came waddling to meet his governor with maize, plucked in haste
from the gardens he passed, and salt, grabbed at the first news of
Sanders's arrival, in his big hands. These he extended as he puffed to
where Sanders sat at the edge of the city.
"Lord," he wheezed, "none came with news of this great honour, or my
young men would have met you, and my maidens would have danced the road
flat with their feet. Take!"
Sanders extended both palms and received the tribute of salt and corn,
and solemnly handed the crushed mess to his orderly.
"O S'kobi," he said, "I came swiftly to make a secret palaver with you,
and my time is short."
"Lord, I am your man," said S'kobi, and signalled his councillors and
elder men to a distance.
Sanders was in some difficulty to find a beginning.
"You know, S'kobi, that I love your people as my children," he said,
"for they are good folk who are faithful to government and do ill to
none."
"Wa!" said S'kobi.
"Also you know that spearmen and warriors I do not love, for spears are
war and warriors are great lovers of fighting."
"Lord, you speak the truth," said the other, nodding, "therefore in this
land I will have made a law that there shall be no spears, save those
which sleep in the shadow of my hut. Now well I know why you have come
to make this palaver, for you have heard with your beautiful long ears
that I have sent away my fighting regiments."
Sanders nodded.
"You speak truly, my friend," he said, and S'kobi beamed.
"Six times a thousand spears I had--and, lord, spears grow no corn.
Rather are they terrible eaters. And now I have sent them to their
villages, and at the next moon they should have burnt their fine
war-knives, but for a certain happening. We folk of Morjaba have no
enemies, and we do good to all. Moreover, lord, as you know, we have
amongst us many folk of the Isisi, of the Akasava and the N'gombi, also
men from the Great King's land beyond the High Rocks, and the little
folk from The-Land-beyond-the-Swamp. Therefore, who shall attack us
since we have kinsmen of all amongst us?"
Sanders regarded the jovial king with a sad little smile.
"Have I done well by all men?" he asked quietly. "Have I not governed
the land so that punishment comes swiftly to those who break the law?
Yet, S'kobi, do not the Akasava and the Isisi, the N'gombi and the Lower
River folk take their spears against me? Now I tell you this which I
have discovered. In all beasts great and little there are mothers who
have young ones and fathers who fight that none shall harass the
mother."
"Lord, this is the way of life," said S'kobi.
"It is the way of the Bigger Life," said Sanders, "and greatly the way
of man-life. For the women bring children to the land and the men sit
with their spears ready to fight all who would injure their women. And
so long as life lasts, S'kobi, the women will bear and the men will
guard; it is the way of Nature, and you shall not take from men the
desire for slaughter until you have dried from the hearts of women the
yearning for children."
"Lord," said S'kobi, a fat man and easily puzzled, "what shall be the
answer to this strange riddle you set me?"
"Only this," said Sanders rising, "I wish peace in this land, but there
can be no peace between the leopard who has teeth and claws and the
rabbit who has neither tooth nor claw. Does the leopard fight the lion
or the lion the leopard? They live in peace, for each is terrible in
his way, and each fears the other. I tell you this, that you live in
love with your neighbours not because of your kindness, but because of
your spears. Call them back to your city, S'kobi."
The chief's large face wrinkled in a frown.
"Lord," he said, "that cannot be, for these men have marched away from
my country to find a people who will feed them, for they are too proud
to dig the ground."
"Oh, damn!" said Sanders in despair, and went back the way he came,
feeling singularly helpless.
The Odyssey of the discarded army of the Morjaba has yet to be written.
Paradoxically enough, its primary mission was a peaceful one, and when
it found first the frontiers of the Akasava and then the river borders
of the Isisi closed against it, it turned to the north in an endeavour to
find service under the Great King, beyond the mountains. Here it was
repulsed and its pacific intentions doubted. The M'gimi formed a camp a
day's march from the Ochori border, and were on the thin line which
separates unemployment from anarchy when Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori,
who had learnt of their presence, came upon the scene.
Bosambo was a born politician. He had the sense of opportunity and that
strange haze of hopeful but indefinite purpose which is the foundation
of the successful poet and statesman, but which, when unsuccessfully
developed, is described as "temperament."
Bones, paying a business call upon the Ochori, found a new township
grown up on the forest side of the city. He also discovered evidence of
discontent in Bosambo's harassed people, who had been called upon to
provide fish and meal for the greater part of six thousand men who were
too proud to work.
"Master," said Bosambo, "I have often desired such an army as this, for
my Ochori fighters are few. Now, lord, with these men I can hold the
Upper River for your King, and Sandi and none dare speak against him.
Thus would N'poloyani, who is your good friend, have done."
"But who shall feed these men, Bosambo?" demanded Bones hastily.
"All things are with God," replied Bosambo piously.
Bones collected all the available information upon the matter and took
it back to headquarters.
"H'm," said Sanders when he had concluded his recital, "if it were any
other man but Bosambo ... you would require another battalion,
Hamilton."
"But what has Bosambo done?" asked Patricia Hamilton, admitted to the
council.
"He is being Napoleonic," said Sanders, with a glance at the youthful
authority on military history, and Bones squirmed and made strange
noises. "We will see how it works out. How on earth is he going to feed
them, Bones?"
"Exactly the question I asked, sir an' Excellency," said Bones in
triumph. "'Why, you silly old ass----'"
"I beg your pardon!" exclaimed the startled Sanders.
"That is what I said to Bosambo, sir," explained Bones hastily. "'Why,
you silly old ass,' I said, 'how are you going to grub 'em?' 'Lord
Bones,' said Bosambo, 'that's the jolly old problem that I'm workin'
out.'"
How Bosambo worked out his problem may be gathered.
"There is some talk of an Akasava rising," said Sanders at breakfast one
morning. "I don't know why this should be, for my information is that
the Akasava folk are fairly placid."
"Where does the news come from, sir?" asked Hamilton.
"From the Isisi king--he's in a devil of a funk, and has begged Bosambo
to send him help."
That help was forthcoming in the shape of Bosambo's new army, which
arrived on the outskirts of the Isisi city and sat in idleness for a
month, at the end of which time the people of the Isisi represented to
their king that they would, on the whole, prefer war to a peace which
put them on half rations in order that six thousand proud warriors might
live on the fat of the land.
The M'gimi warriors marched back to the Ochori, each man carrying a
month's supply of maize and salt, wrung from the resentful peasants of
the Isisi.
Three weeks after, Bosambo sent an envoy to the King of the Akasava.
"Let no man know this, Gubara, lest it come to the ears of Sandi, and
you, who are very innocent, be wrongly blamed," said the envoy solemnly.
"Thus says Bosambo: It has come to my ears that the N'gombi are secretly
arming and will very soon send a forest of spears against the Akasava.
Say this to Gubara, that because my stomach is filled with sorrow I will
help him. Because I am very powerful, because of my friendship with
Bonesi and his cousin, N'poloyani, who is also married to Bonesi's aunt,
I have a great army which I will send to the Akasava, and when the
N'gombi hear of this they will send away their spears and there will be
peace."
The Akasava chief, a nervous man with the memory of all the discomforts
which follow tribal wars, eagerly assented. For two months Bosambo's
army sat down like a cloud of locusts and ate the Akasava to a condition
bordering upon famine.
At the end of that time they marched to the N'gombi country, news having
been brought by Bosambo's messengers that the Great King was crossing
the western mountains with a terrible army to seize the N'gombi forests.
How long this novel method of provisioning his army might have continued
may only be guessed, for in the midst of Bosambo's plans for maintaining
an army at the expense of his neighbours there was a great happening in
the Morjaba country.
S'kobi, the fat chief, had watched the departure of his warriors with
something like relief. He was gratified, moreover (native-like), by the
fact that he had confounded Sanders. But when the Commissioner had gone
and S'kobi remembered all that he had said, a great doubt settled like a
pall upon his mind. For three days he sat, a dejected figure, on the
high carved stool of state before his house, and at the end of that time
he summoned S'gono, the M'joro.
"S'gono," said he, "I am troubled in my stomach because of certain
things which our lord Sandi has said."
Thereupon he told the plebeian councillor much of what Sanders had said.
"And now my M'gimi are with Bosambo of the Ochori, and he sells them to
this people and that for so much treasure and food."
"Lord," said S'gono, "is my word nothing? Did I not say that I would
raise spears more wonderful than the M'gimi? Give me leave, King, and
you shall find an army that shall grow in a night. I, S'gono, son of
Mocharlabili Yoka, say this!"
So messengers went forth to all the villages of the Morjaba calling the
young men to the king's hut, and on the third week there stood on a
plateau beneath the king's palaver house a most wonderful host.
"Let them march across the plain and make the Dance of Killing," said
the satisfied king, and S'gono hesitated.
"Lord King," he pleaded, "these are new soldiers, and they are not yet
wise in the ways of warriors. Also they will not take the chiefs I gave
them, but have chosen their own, so that each company have two leaders
who say evil things of one another."
S'kobi opened his round eyes.
"The M'gimi did not do this," he said dubiously, "for when their
captains spoke they leapt first with one leg and then with the other,
which was beautiful to see and very terrifying to our enemies."
"Lord," begged the agitated S'gono, "give me the space of a moon and
they shall leap with both legs and dance in a most curious manner."
A spy retailed this promise to a certain giant chief of the Great King
who was sitting on the Morjaba slopes of the mountains with four
thousand spears, awaiting a favourable moment to ford the river which
separated him from the rich lands of the northern Morjaba.
This giant heard the tidings with interest.
"Soon they shall leap without heads," he said, "for without the
M'gimi they are little children. For twenty seasons we have waited,
and now comes our fine night. Go you, B'furo, to the Chief of
The-Folk-beyond-the-Swamp and tell him that when he sees three fires on
this mountain he shall attack across the swamp by the road which he
knows."
It was a well-planned campaign which the Great King's generals and the
Chief of The-People-beyond-the-Marsh had organized. With the passing of
the warrior caste the enemies of the Morjaba had moved swiftly. The path
across the swamp had been known for years, but the M'gimi had had one of
their camps so situated that no enemy could debouch across, and had so
ordered their dispositions that the northern river boundary was
automatically safeguarded.
Now S'gono was a man of the fields, a grower and seller of maize and a
breeder of goats. And he had planned his new army as he would plan a new
garden, on the basis that the nearer the army was to the capital, the
easier it was to maintain. In consequence the river-ford was unguarded,
and there were two thousand spears across the marshes before a scared
minister of war apprehended any danger.
He flung his new troops against the Great King's chief captain in a
desperate attempt to hold back the principal invader. At the same time,
more by luck than good generalship, he pushed the evil people of the
marsh back to their native element.
For two days the Morjaba fought desperately if unskilfully against the
seasoned troops of the Great King, while messengers hurried east and
south, seeking help.
Bosambo's intelligence department may have shown remarkable prescience
in unearthing the plot against the peace and security of the Morjaba, or
it may have been (and this is Sanders's theory) that Bosambo was on his
way to the Morjaba with a cock and bull story of imminent danger. He was
on the frontier when the king's messenger came, and Bosambo returned
with the courier to treat in person.
"Five thousand loads of corn I will give you, Bosambo," said the king,
"also a hundred bags of salt. Also two hundred women who shall be slaves
in your house."
There was some bargaining, for Bosambo had no need of slaves, but
urgently wanted goats. In the end he brought up his hirelings, and the
people of the Morjaba city literally fell on the necks of the returned
M'gimi.
The enemy had forced the northern defences and were half-way to the city
when the M'gimi fell upon their flank.
The giant chief of the Great King's army saw the ordered ranks of the
old army driving in his flank, and sent for his own captain.
"Go swiftly to our lord, the King, and say that I am a dead man."
He spoke no more than the truth, for he fell at the hand of Bosambo, who
made a mental resolve to increase his demand on the herds of S'kobi in
consequence.
For the greater part of a month Bosambo was a welcome visitor, and at
the end of that time he made his preparations to depart.
Carriers and herdsmen drove or portered his reward back to the Ochori
country, marching one day ahead of the main body.
The M'gimi were summoned for the march at dawn, but at dawn Bosambo
found himself alone on the plateau, save for the few Ochori headmen who
had accompanied him on his journey.
"Lord," said S'kobi, "my fine soldiers do not go with you, for I have
seen how wise is Sandi who is my father and my mother."
Bosambo choked, and as was usual in moments of intense emotion, found
refuge in English.
"Dam' nigger!" he said wrathfully, "I bring um army, I feed um, I keep
um proper--you pinch um! Black t'ief! Pig! You bad feller! I speak you
bad for N'poloyani--him fine feller."
"Lord," said the uncomprehending king, "I see that you are like Sandi
for you speak his tongue. He also said 'Dam' very loudly. I think it is
the word white folk say when they are happy."
Bosambo met Bones hurrying to the scene of the fighting, and told his
tale.
"Lord," said he in conclusion, "what was I to do, for you told nothing
of the ways of N'poloyani when his army was stolen from him. Tell me
now, Tibbetti, what this man would have done."
But Bones shook his head severely.
"This I cannot tell you, Bosambo," he said, "for if I do you will tell
others, and my lord N'poloyani will never forgive me."
CHAPTER X
THE WATERS OF MADNESS
Unexpected things happen in the Territories which Mr. Commissioner
Sanders rules. As for example: Bones had gone down to the beach to "take
the mail." This usually meant no more than receiving a mail-bag wildly
flung from a dancing surf-boat. On this occasion Bones was surprised to
discover that the boat had beached and had landed, not only the mail,
but a stranger with his baggage.
He was a clean-shaven, plump man, in spotless white, and he greeted
Bones with a friendly nod. "Morning!" he said. "I've got your mail."
Bones extended his hand and took the bag without evidence of any
particular enthusiasm.
"Sanders about?" asked the stranger.
"Mr. Sanders is in residence, sir," said Bones, ponderously polite.
The other laughed. "Show the way," he said briskly.
Bones looked at the new-comer from the ventilator of his pith helmet to
the soles of his pipe-clayed shoes. "Excuse me, dear old sir," he said,
"have I the honour of addressin' the Secretary of State for War?"
"No," answered the other in surprise. "What made you think that?"
"Because," said Bones, with rising wrath, "he's the only fellow that
needn't say 'please' to me."
The man roared with laughter. "Sorry," he said. "_Please_ show me the
way."
"Follow me, sir," said Bones.
Sanders was not "in residence," being, in fact, inspecting some
recent--and native--repairs to the boilers of the _Zaire_.
The stranger drew up a chair on the stoep without invitation and seated
himself. He looked around. Patricia Hamilton was at the far end of the
stoep, reading a book. She had glanced up just long enough to note and
wonder at the new arrival. "Deuced pretty girl that," said the stranger,
lighting a cigar.
"I beg your pardon?" said Bones.
"I say that is a deuced pretty girl," said the stranger.
"And you're a deuced brute, dear sir," said Bones, "but hitherto I have
not commented on the fact."
The man looked up quickly. "What are you here," he asked--"a clerk or
something?"
Bones did not so much as flush. "Oh, no," he said sweetly. "I am an
officer of Houssas--rank, lieutenant. My task is to tame the uncivilized
beast an' entertain the civilized pig with a selection of music. Would
you like to hear our gramophone?"
The new-comer frowned. What brilliant effort of persiflage was to follow
will never be known, for at that moment came Sanders.
The stranger rose and produced a pocket-book, from which he extracted a
card and a letter. "Good morning, Commissioner!" he said. "My name's
Corklan--P. T. Corklan, of Corklan, Besset and Lyons."
"Indeed," said Sanders.
"I've got a letter for you," said the man.
Sanders took the note, opened it, and read. It bore the neat signature
of an Under-Secretary of State and the embossed heading of the
Extra-Territorial Office, and it commended Mr. P. T. Corklan to Mr.
Commissioner Sanders, and requested him to let Mr. Corklan pass without
let or hindrance through the Territories, and to render him every
assistance "compatible with exigencies of the Service" in his "inquiries
into sugar production from the sweet potato."
"You should have taken this to the Administrator," said Sanders, "and it
should bear his signature."
"There's the letter," said the man shortly. "If that's not enough, and
the signature of the Secretary of State isn't sufficient, I'm going
straight back to England and tell him so."
"You may go to the devil and tell him so," said Sanders calmly; "but
you do not pass into these Territories until I have received telegraphic
authority from my chief. Bones, take this man to your hut, and let your
people do what they can for him." And he turned and walked into the
house.
"You shall hear about this," said Mr. Corklan, picking up his baggage.
"This way, dear old pilgrim," said Bones.
"Who's going to carry my bag?"
"Your name escapes me," said Bones, "but, if you'll glance at your
visitin' card, you will find the name of the porter legibly inscribed."
Sanders compressed the circumstances into a hundred-word telegram worded
in his own economical style.
It happened that the Administrator was away on a shooting trip, and it
was his cautious secretary who replied--
"Administration to Sanders.--Duplicate authority here. Let Corklan
proceed at own risk. Warn him dangers."
"You had better go along and tell him," said Sanders. "He can leave at
once, and the sooner the better."
Bones delivered the message. The man was sitting on his host's bed, and
the floor was covered with cigar ash. Worst abomination of all, was a
large bottle of whisky, which he had produced from one of his bags, and
a reeking glass, which he had produced from Bones's sideboard.
"So I can go to-night, can I?" said Mr. Corklan. "That's all right. Now,
what about conveyance, hey?"
Bones had now reached the stage where he had ceased to be annoyed, and
when he found some interest in the situation. "What sort of conveyance
would you like, sir?" he asked curiously.
(If you can imagine him pausing half a bar before every "sir," you may
value its emphasis.)
"Isn't there a steamer I can have?" demanded the man. "Hasn't Sanders
got a Government steamer?"
"Pardon my swooning," said Bones, sinking into a chair.
"Well, how am I going to get up?" asked the man.
"Are you a good swimmer?" demanded Bones innocently.
"Look here," said Mr. Corklan, "you aren't a bad fellow. I rather like
you."
"I'm sorry," said Bones simply.
"I rather like you," repeated Mr. Corklan. "You might give me a little
help."
"It is very unlikely that I shall," said Bones. "But produce your
proposition, dear old adventurer."
"That is just what I am," said the other. He bit off the end of another
cigar and lit it with the glowing butt of the old one. "I have knocked
about all over the world, and I have done everything. I've now a chance
of making a fortune. There is a tribe here called the N'gombi. They
live in a wonderful rubber country, and I am told that they have got all
the ivory in the world, and stacks of rubber hidden away."
Now, it is a fact--and Bones was surprised to hear it related by the
stranger--that the N'gombi are great misers and hoarders of elephant
tusks. For hundreds of years they have traded ivory and rubber, and
every village has its secret storehouse. The Government had tried for
years to wheedle the N'gombi into depositing their wealth in some State
store, for riches mean war sooner or later. They lived in great
forests--the word N'gombi means "interior"--in lands full of elephants
and rich in rubber trees.
"You are a regular information bureau," said Bones admiringly. "But what
has this to do with your inquiry into the origin of the candy tree?"
The man smoked in silence for awhile, then he pulled from his pocket a
big map. Again Bones was surprised, because the map he produced was the
official map of the Territories. He traced the river with his fat
forefinger.
"Here is the N'gombi country from the east bank of the Isisi, and this
is all forest, and a rubber tree to every ten square yards."
"I haven't counted them," said Bones, "but I'll take your word."
"Now, what does this mean?" Mr. Corklan indicated a twisting line of
dots and dashes which began at the junction of the Isisi River and the
Great River, and wound tortuously over five hundred miles of country
until it struck the Sigi River, which runs through Spanish territory.
"What is that?" he asked.
"That, or those," said Bones, "are the footprints of the mighty swoozlum
bird that barks with its eyes an' lives on buttered toast an' hardware."
"I will tell you what I know it is," said the man, looking up and
looking Bones straight in the eye--"it is one of those secret rivers you
are always finding in these 'wet' countries. The natives tell you about
'em, but you never find 'em. They are rivers that only exist about once
in a blue moon, when the river is very high and the rains are very
heavy. Now, down in the Spanish territory"--he touched Bones's knee with
great emphasis--"they tell me that their end of the secret river is in
flood."
"They will tell you anything in the Spanish territory," said Bones
pleasantly. "They'd tell you your jolly old fortune if you'd cross their
palms with silver."
"What about your end?" asked the man, ignoring the scepticism of his
host.
"Our end?" said Bones. "Well, you will find out for yourself. I'd hate
to disappoint you."
"Now, how am I going up?" asked the man after a pause.
"You can hire a canoe, and live on the land, unless you have brought
stores."
The man chuckled. "I've brought no stores. Here, I will show you
something," he said. "You are a very good fellow." He opened his bag and
took out a tight packet which looked like thin skins. There must have
been two or three hundred of them. "That's my speciality," he said. He
nipped the string that tied them together, stripped one off, and,
putting his lips to one end, blew. The skin swelled up like a toy
balloon. "Do you know what that is?"
"No, I cannot say I do," said Bones.
"You have heard of Soemmering's process?"
Bones shook his head.
"Do you know what decimal 1986 signifies?"
"You've got me guessing, my lad," said Bones admiringly.
The other chuckled, threw the skins into his bag, and closed it with a
snap. "That's my little joke," he said. "All my friends tell me it will
be the death of me one of these days. I like to puzzle people"--he
smiled amiably and triumphantly in Bones's face--"I like to tell them
the truth in such a way they don't understand it. If they understood
it--Heavens, there'd be the devil to pay!"
"You are an ingenious fellow," said Bones, "but I don't like your face.
You will forgive my frankness, dear old friend."
"Faces aren't fortunes," said the other complacently, "and I am going
out of this country with money sticking to me."
"I'm sorry for you," said Bones, shaking his head; "I hate to see
fellows with illusions."
He reported all that occurred to the Commissioner, and Sanders was a
little worried.
"I wish I knew what his game is," he said; "I'd stop him like a shot,
but I can't very well in the face of the Administrator's wire. Anyway,
he will get nothing out of the N'gombi. I've tried every method to make
the beggars bank their surpluses, and I have failed."
"He has got to come back this way, at any rate," said Hamilton, "and I
cannot see that he will do much harm."
"What is the rest of his baggage like?"
"He has a case of things that look like concave copper plates, sir,"
said Bones, "very thin copper, but copper. Then he has two or three
copper pipes, and that is about his outfit."
Mr. Corklan was evidently no stranger to the coast, and Bones, who
watched the man's canoe being loaded that afternoon, and heard his
fluent observations on the slackness of his paddlers, realized that his
acquaintance with Central Africa was an extensive one. He cursed in
Swahili and Portuguese, and his language was forcible and impolite.
"Well," he said at last, "I'll be getting along. I'll make a fishing
village for the night, and I ought to reach my destination in a week. I
shan't be seeing you again, so I'll say good-bye."
"How do you suppose you're going to get out of the country?" asked Bones
curiously.
Mr. Corklan laughed. "So long!" he said.
"One moment, my dashin' old explorer," said Bones. "A little
formality--I want to see your trunks opened."
A look of suspicion dawned on the man's face. "What for?"
"A little formality, my jolly old hero," said Bones.
"Why didn't you say so before?" growled the man, and had his two trunks
landed. "I suppose you know you're exceeding your duty?"
"I didn't know--thanks for tellin' me," said Bones. "The fact is, sir
an' fellow-man, I'm the Custom House officer."
The man opened his bags, and Bones explored. He found three bottles of
whisky, and these he extracted.
"What's the idea?" asked Mr. Corklan.
Bones answered him by breaking the bottles on a near-by stone.
"Here, what the dickens----"
"Wine is a mocker," said Bones, "strong drink is ragin'. This is what is
termed in the land of Hope an' Glory a prohibition State, an' I'm
entitled to fine you five hundred of the brightest an' best for
attemptin' to smuggle intoxicants into our innocent country."
Bones expected an outburst; instead, his speech evoked no more than a
snigger.
"You're funny," said the man.
"My friends tell me so," admitted Bones. "But there's nothin' funny
about drink. Acquainted as you are with the peculiar workin's of the
native psychology, dear sir, you will understand the primitive cravin'
of the untutored mind for the enemy that we put in our mouths to steal
away our silly old brains. I wish you 'bon voyage.'"
"So long," said Mr. Corklan.
Bones went back to the Residency and made his report, and there, for the
time being, the matter ended. It was not unusual for wandering
scientists, manufacturers, and representatives of shipping companies to
arrive armed with letters of introduction or command, and to be
dispatched into the interior. The visits, happily, were few and far
between. On this occasion Sanders, being uneasy, sent one of his spies
to follow the adventurer, with orders to report any extraordinary
happening--a necessary step to take, for the N'gombi, and especially the
Inner N'gombi, are a secretive people, and news from local sources is
hard to come by.
"I shall never be surprised to learn that a war has been going on in the
N'gombi for two months without our hearing a word about it."
"If they fight amongst themselves--yes," said Captain Hamilton; "if they
fight outsiders, there will be plenty of bleats. Why not send Bones to
overlook his sugar experiments," he added.
"Let's talk about something pleasant," said Bones hastily.
It was exactly three months later when he actually made the trip.
"Take the _Zaire_ up to the bend of the Isisi," said Sanders one
morning, at breakfast, "and find out what Ali Kano is doing--the lazy
beggar should have reported."
"Any news from the N'gombi?" asked Hamilton.
"Only roundabout stories of their industry. Apparently the sugar
merchant is making big experiments. He has set half the people digging
roots for him. Be ready to sail at dawn."
"Will it be a dangerous trip?" asked the girl.
"No. Why?" smiled Sanders.
"Because I'd like to go. Oh, please, don't look so glum! Bones is
awfully good to me."
"Better than a jolly old brother," murmured Bones.
"H'm!" Sanders shook his head, and she appealed to her brother.
"Please!"
"I wouldn't mind your going," said Hamilton, "if only to look after
Bones."
"S-sh!" said Bones reproachfully.
"If you're keen on it, I don't see why you shouldn't--if you had a
chaperon."
"A chaperon!" sneered Bones. "Great Heavens! Do, old skipper, pull
yourself together. Open the jolly old window and give him air. Feelin'
better, sir?"
"A chaperon! How absurd!" cried the girl indignantly. "I'm old enough to
be Bones's mother! I'm nearly twenty--well, I'm older than Bones, and
I'm ever so much more capable of looking after myself."
The end of it was that she went, with her Kano maid and with the wife of
Abiboo to cook for her. And in two days they came to the bend of the
river, and Bones pursued his inquiries for the missing spy, but without
success.
"But this I tell you, lord," said the little chief who acted as
Sanders's agent, "that there are strange things happening in the N'gombi
country, for all the people have gone mad, and are digging up their
teeth (tusks) and bringing them to a white man."
"This shall go to Sandi," said Bones, realizing the importance of the
news; and that same evening he turned the bow of the _Zaire_ down
stream.
* * * * *
Thus said Wafa, the half-breed, for he was neither foreign Arab nor
native N'gombi, yet combined the cunning of both--
"Soon we shall see the puc-a-puc of Government turn from the
crookedness of the river, and I will go out and speak to our lord
Tibbetti, who is a very simple man, and like a child."
"O Wafa," said one of the group of armed men which stood shivering on
the beach in the cold hours of dawn, "may this be a good palaver! As for
me, my stomach is filled with fearfulness. Let us all drink this magic
water, for it gives us men courage."
"That you shall do when you have carried out all our master's works,"
said Wafa, and added with confidence: "Have no fear, for soon you shall
see great wonders."
They heard the deep boom of the _Zaire's_ siren signalling a solitary
and venturesome fisherman to quit the narrow fair-way, and presently she
came round the bend of the river, a dazzling white craft, showering
sparks from her two slender smoke-stacks and leaving behind her twin
cornucopias of grey smoke.
Wafa stepped into a canoe, and, seeing that the others were preparing to
follow him, he struck out swiftly, man[oe]uvring his ironwood boat to
the very waters from whence a scared fisherman was frantically paddling.
"Go not there, foreigner," wailed the Isisi Stabber-of-Waters, "for it
is our lord Sandi, and his puc-a-puc has bellowed terribly."
"Die you!" roared Wafa. "On the river bottom your body, son of a fish
and father of snakes!"
"O foreign frog!" came the shrill retort. "O poor man with two men's
wives! O goatless----"
Wafa was too intent upon his business to heed the rest. He struck the
water strongly with his broad paddles, and reached the centre of the
channel.
Bones of the Houssas put up his hand and jerked the rope of the siren.
_Whoo-o-o--woo-o-op!_
"Bless his silly old head," said Bones fretfully, "the dashed fellow
will be run down!"
The girl was dusting Bones's cabin, and looked round. "What is it?" she
asked.
Bones made no reply. He gripped the telegraph handle and rung the
engines astern as Yoka, the steersman, spun the wheel.
Bump! Bump! Bumpity bump!
The steamer slowed and stopped, and the girl came out to the bridge in
alarm. The _Zaire_ had struck a sandbank, and was stranded high, if not
dry.
"Bring that man on board," said the wrathful Bones. And they hauled to
his presence Wafa, who was neither Arab nor N'gombi, but combined the
vices of both.
"O man," said Bones, glaring at the offender through his eyeglass, "what
evil ju-ju sent you to stop my fine ship?" He spoke in the Isisi
dialect, and was surprised to be answered in coast Arabic.
"Lord," said the man, unmoved by the wrath of his overlord, "I come to
make a great palaver concerning spirits and devils. Lord, I have found a
great magic."
Bones grinned, for he had that sense of humour which rises superior to
all other emotions. "Then you shall try your magic, my man, and lift
this ship to deep water."
Wafa was not at all embarrassed. "Lord, this is a greater magic, for it
concerns men, and brings to life the dead. For, lord, in this forest is
a wonderful tree. Behold!"
He took from his loose-rolled waistband a piece of wood. Bones took it
in his hand. It was the size of a corn cob, and had been newly cut, so
that the wood was moist with sap. Bones smelt it. There was a faint
odour of resin and camphor. Patricia Hamilton smiled. It was so like
Bones to be led astray by side issues.
"Where is the wonder, man, that you should drive my ship upon a
sandbank! And who are these?" Bones pointed to six canoes, filled with
men, approaching the _Zaire_. The man did not answer, but, taking the
wood from Bones's hand, pulled a knife from his belt and whittled a
shaving.
"Here, lord," he said, "is my fine magic. With this wood I can do many
miracles, such as making sick men strong and the strong weak."
Bones heard the canoes bump against the side of the boat, but his mind
was occupied with curiosity.
"Thus do I make my magic, Tibbetti," droned Wafa.
He held the knife by the haft in the right hand, and the chip of wood in
his left. The point of the knife was towards the white man's heart.
"Bones!" screamed the girl.
Bones jumped aside and struck out as the man lunged. His nobbly fist
caught Wafa under the jaw, and the man stumbled and fell. At the same
instant there was a yell from the lower deck, the sound of scuffling,
and a shot.
Bones jumped for the girl, thrust her into the cabin, sliding the steel
door behind him. His two revolvers hung at the head of his bunk, and he
slipped them out, gave a glance to see whether they were loaded, and
pushed the door.
"Shut the door after me," he breathed.
The bridge deck was deserted, and Bones raced down the ladder to the
iron deck. Two Houssas and half a dozen natives lay dead or dying. The
remainder of the soldiers were fighting desperately with whatever
weapons they found to their hands--for, with characteristic carefulness,
they had laid their rifles away in oil, lest the river air rust
them--and, save for the sentry, who used a rifle common to all, they
were unarmed.
"O dogs!" roared Bones.
The invaders turned and faced the long-barrelled Webleys, and the fight
was finished. Later, Wafa came to the bridge with bright steel manacles
on his wrist. His companions in the mad adventure sat on the iron deck
below, roped leg to leg, and listened with philosophic calm as the
Houssa sentry drew lurid pictures of the fate which awaited them.
Bones sat in his deep chair, and the prisoner squatted before him. "You
shall tell my lord Sandi why you did this wickedness," he said, "also,
Wafa, what evil thought was in your mind."
"Lord," said Wafa cheerfully, "what good comes to me if I speak?"
Something about the man's demeanour struck Bones as strange, and he rose
and went close to him.
"I see," he said, with a tightened lip. "The palaver is finished."
They led the man away, and the girl, who had been a spectator, asked
anxiously: "What is wrong, Bones?"
But the young man shook his head. "The breaking of all that Sanders has
worked for," he said bitterly, and the very absence of levity in one
whose heart was so young and gay struck a colder chill to the girl's
heart than the yells of the warring N'gombi. For Sanders had a big place
in Patricia Hamilton's life. In an hour the _Zaire_ was refloated, and
was going at full speed down stream.
* * * * *
Sanders held his court in the thatched palaver house between the Houssa
guard-room and the little stockade prison at the river's edge--a prison
hidden amidst the flowering shrubs and acacia trees.
Wafa was the first to be examined. "Lord," he said, without
embarrassment, "I tell you this--that I will not speak of the great
wonders which lay in my heart unless you give me a book[6] that I shall
go free."
[Footnote 6: A written promise.]
Sanders smiled unpleasantly. "By the Prophet, I say what is true," he
began confidentially; and Wafa winced at the oath, for he knew that
truth was coming, and truth of a disturbing character. "In this land I
govern millions of men," said Sanders, speaking deliberately, "I and two
white lords. I govern by fear, Wafa, because there is no love in simple
native men, save a love for their own and their bellies."
"Lord, you speak truth," said Wafa, the superior Arab of him responding
to the confidence.
"Now, if you make to kill the lord Tibbetti," Sanders went on, "and do
your wickedness for secret reasons, must I not discover what is that
secret, lest it mean that I lose my hold upon the lands I govern?"
"Lord, that is also true," said Wafa.
"For what is one life more or less," asked Sanders, "a suffering smaller
or greater by the side of my millions and their good?"
"Lord, you are Suliman," said Wafa eagerly. "Therefore, if you let me
go, who shall be the worse for it?"
Again Sanders smiled, that grim parting of lip to show his white teeth.
"Yet you may lie, and, if I let you go, I have neither the truth nor
your body. No, Wafa, you shall speak." He rose up from his chair.
"To-day you shall go to the Village of Irons," he said; "to-morrow I
will come to you, and you shall answer my questions. And, if you will
not speak, I shall light a little fire on your chest, and that fire
shall not go out except when the breath goes from your body. This
palaver is finished."
So they took Wafa away to the Village of Irons, where the evil men of
the Territories worked with chains about their ankles for their many
sins, and in the morning came Sanders.
"Speak, man," he said.
Wafa stared with an effort of defiance, but his face was twitching, for
he saw the soldiers driving pegs into the ground, preparatory to staking
him out. "I will speak the truth," he said.
So they took him into a hut, and there Sanders sat with him alone for
half an hour; and when the Commissioner came out, his face was drawn and
grey. He beckoned to Hamilton, who came forward and saluted. "We will
get back to headquarters," he said shortly, and they arrived two hours
later.
Sanders sat in the little telegraph office, and the Morse sounder
rattled and clacked for half an hour. Other sounders were at work
elsewhere, delicate needles vacillated in cable offices, and an
Under-Secretary was brought from the House of Commons to the bureau of
the Prime Minister to answer a question.
At four o'clock in the afternoon came the message Sanders expected:
"London says permit for Corklan forged. Arrest. Take extremest steps.
Deal drastically, ruthlessly. Holding in residence three companies
African Rifles and mountain battery support you. Good luck.
Administration."
Sanders came out of the office, and Bones met him.
"Men all aboard, sir," he reported.
"We'll go," said Sanders.
He met the girl half-way to the quay. "I know it is something very
serious," she said quietly; "you have all my thoughts." She put both her
hands in his, and he took them. Then, without a word, he left her.
* * * * *
Mr. P. T. Corklan sat before his new hut in the village of Fimini. In
that hut--the greatest the N'gombi had ever seen--were stored hundreds
of packages all well wrapped and sewn in native cloth.
He was not smoking a cigar, because his stock of cigars was running
short, but he was chewing a toothpick, for these, at a pinch, could be
improvised. He called to his headman. "Wafa?" he asked.
"Lord, he will come, for he is very cunning," said the headman.
Mr. Corklan grunted. He walked to the edge of the village, where the
ground sloped down to a strip of vivid green rushes. "Tell me, how long
will this river be full?" he asked.
"Lord, for a moon."
Corklan nodded. Whilst the secret river ran, there was escape for him,
for its meandering course would bring him and his rich cargo to Spanish
territory and deep water.
His headman waited as though he had something to say. "Lord," he said at
last, "the chief of the N'coro village sends this night ten great teeth
and a pot."
Corklan nodded. "If we're here, we'll get 'em. I hope we shall be gone."
And then the tragically unexpected happened. A man in white came through
the trees towards him, and behind was another white man and a platoon of
native soldiers.
"Trouble," said Corklan to himself, and thought the moment was one which
called for a cigar.
"Good-morning, Mr. Sanders!" he said cheerfully.
Sanders eyed him in silence.
"This is an unexpected pleasure," said Corklan.
"Corklan, where is your still?" asked Sanders.
The plump man laughed. "You'll find it way back in the forest," he said,
"and enough sweet potatoes to distil fifty gallons of spirit--all proof,
sir, decimal 1986 specific gravity water extracted by Soemmering's
method--in fact, as good as you could get it in England."
Sanders nodded. "I remember now--you're the man that ran the still in
the Ashanti country, and got away with the concession."
"That's me," said the other complacently. "P. T. Corklan--I never assume
an alias."
Sanders nodded again. "I came past villages," he said, "where every man
and almost every woman was drunk. I have seen villages wiped out in
drunken fights. I have seen a year's hard work ahead of me. You have
corrupted a province in a very short space of time, and, as far as I can
judge, you hoped to steal a Government ship and get into neutral
territory with the prize you have won by your----"
"Enterprise," said Mr. Corklan obligingly. "You'll have to prove
that--about the ship. I am willing to stand any trial you like. There's
no law about prohibition--it's one you've made yourself. I brought up
the still--that's true--brought it up in sections and fitted it. I've
been distilling spirits--that's true----"
"I also saw a faithful servant of Government, one Ali Kano," said
Sanders, in a low voice. "He was lying on the bank of this secret river
of yours with two revolver bullets in him."
"The nigger was spying on me, and I shot him," explained Corklan.
"I understand," said Sanders. And then, after a little pause: "Will you
be hung or shot?"
The cigar dropped from the man's mouth. "Hey?" he said hoarsely.
"You--you can't--do that--for making a drop of liquor--for niggers!"
"For murdering a servant of the State," corrected Sanders. "But, if it
is any consolation to you, I will tell you that I would have killed you,
anyway."
It took Mr. Corklan an hour to make up his mind, and then he chose
rifles.
To-day the N'gombi point to a mound near the village of Fimini, which
they call by a name which means, "The Waters of Madness," and it is
believed to be haunted by devils.
CHAPTER XI
EYE TO EYE
"Bones," said Captain Hamilton, in despair, "you will never be a
Napoleon."
"Dear old sir and brother-officer," said Lieutenant Tibbetts, "you are a
jolly old pessimist."
Bones was by way of being examined in subjects C and D, for promotion to
captaincy, and Hamilton was the examining officer. By all the rules and
laws and strict regulations which govern military examinations, Bones
had not only failed, but he had seriously jeopardized his right to his
lieutenancy, if every man had his due.
"Now, let me put this," said Hamilton. "Suppose you were in charge of a
company of men, and you were attacked on three sides, and you had a
river behind you on the fourth side, and you found things were going
very hard against you. What would you do?"
"Dear old sir," said Bones thoughtfully, and screwing his face into all
manner of contortions in his effort to secure the right answer, "I
should go and wet my heated brow in the purling brook, then I'd take
counsel with myself."
"You'd lose," said Hamilton, with a groan. "That's the last person in
the world you should go to for advice, Bones. Suppose," he said, in a
last desperate effort to awaken a gleam of military intelligence in his
subordinate's mind, "suppose you were trekking through the forest with a
hundred rifles, and you found your way barred by a thousand armed men.
What would you do?"
"Go back," said Bones, "and jolly quick, dear old fellow."
"Go back? What would you go back for?" asked the other, in astonishment.
"To make my will," said Bones firmly, "and to write a few letters to
dear old friends in the far homeland. I have friends, Ham," he said,
with dignity, "jolly old people who listen for my footsteps, and to whom
my voice is music, dear old fellow."
"What other illusions do they suffer from?" asked Hamilton offensively,
closing his book with a bang. "Well, you will be sorry to learn that I
shall not recommend you for promotion."
"You don't mean that," said Bones hoarsely.
"I mean that," said Hamilton.
"Well, I thought if I had a pal to examine me, I would go through with
flying colours."
"Then I am not a pal. You don't suggest," said Hamilton, with ominous
dignity, "that I would defraud the public by lying as to the qualities
of a deficient character?"
"Yes, I do," said Bones, nodding vigorously, "for my sake and for the
sake of the child." The child was that small native whom Bones had
rescued and adopted.
"Not even for the sake of the child," said Hamilton, with an air of
finality. "Bones, you're ploughed."
Bones did not speak, and Hamilton gathered together the papers, forms,
and paraphernalia of examination.
He lifted his head suddenly, to discover that Bones was staring at him.
It was no ordinary stare, but something that was a little uncanny. "What
the dickens are you looking at?"
Bones did not speak. His round eyes were fixed on his superior in an
unwinking glare.
"When I said you had failed," said Hamilton kindly, "I meant, of
course----"
"That I'd passed," muttered Bones excitedly. "Say it, Ham--say it!
'Bones, congratulations, dear old lad'----"
"I meant," said Hamilton coldly, "that you have another chance next
month."
The face of Lieutenant Tibbetts twisted into a painful contortion. "It
didn't work!" he said bitterly, and stalked from the room.
"Rum beggar!" thought Hamilton, and smiled to himself.
"Have you noticed anything strange about Bones?" asked Patricia Hamilton
the next day.
Her brother looked at her over his newspaper. "The strangest thing about
Bones is Bones," he said, "and that I am compelled to notice every day
of my life."
She looked up at Sanders, who was idly pacing the stoep of the
Residency. "Have you, Mr. Sanders?"
Sanders paused. "Beyond the fact that he is rather preoccupied and
stares at one----"
"That is it," said the girl. "I knew I was right--he stares horribly. He
has been doing it for a week--just staring. Do you think he is ill?"
"He has been moping in his hut for the past week," said Hamilton
thoughtfully, "but I was hoping that it meant that he was swotting for
his exam. But staring--I seem to remember----"
The subject of the discussion made his appearance at the far end of the
square at that moment, and they watched him. First he walked slowly
towards the Houssa sentry, who shouldered his arms in salute. Bones
halted before the soldier and stared at him. Somehow, the watchers on
the stoep knew that he was staring--there was something so fixed, so
tense in his attitude. Then, without warning, the sentry's hand passed
across his body, and the rifle came down to the "present."
"What on earth is he doing?" demanded the outraged Hamilton, for
sentries do not present arms to subaltern officers.
Bones passed on. He stopped before one of the huts in the married lines,
and stared at the wife of Sergeant Abiboo. He stared long and earnestly,
and the woman, giggling uncomfortably, stared back. Then she began to
dance.
"For Heaven's sake----" gasped Sanders, as Bones passed on.
"Bones!" roared Hamilton.
Bones turned first his head, then his body towards the Residency, and
made his slow way towards the group.
"What is happening?" asked Hamilton.
The face of Bones was flushed; there was triumph in his eye--triumph
which his pose of nonchalance could not wholly conceal. "What is
happening, dear old officer?" he asked innocently, and stared.
"What the dickens are you goggling at?" demanded Hamilton irritably.
"And please explain why you told the sentry to present arms to you."
"I didn't tell him, dear old sir and superior captain," said Bones. His
eyes never left Hamilton's; he stared with a fierceness and with an
intensity that was little short of ferocious.
"Confound you, what are you staring at? Aren't you well?" demanded
Hamilton wrathfully.
Bones blinked. "Quite well, sir and comrade," he said gravely. "Pardon
the question--did you feel a curious and unaccountable inclination to
raise your right hand and salute me?"
"Did I--what?" demanded his dumbfounded superior.
"A sort of itching of the right arm--an almost overpowerin' inclination
to touch your hat to poor old Bones?"
Hamilton drew a long breath. "I felt an almost overpowering desire to
lift my foot," he said significantly.
"Look at me again," said Bones calmly. "Fix your eyes on mine an' think
of nothin'. Now shut your eyes. Now you can't open 'em."
"Of course I can open them," said Hamilton. "Have you been drinking,
Bones?"
A burst of delighted laughter from the girl checked Bones's indignant
denial. "I know!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Bones is trying to
mesmerize you!"
"What?"
The scarlet face of Bones betrayed him.
"Power of the human eye, dear old sir," he said hurriedly. "Some people
have it--it's a gift. I discovered it the other day after readin' an
article in _The Scientific Healer_."
"Phew!" Hamilton whistled. "So," he said, with dangerous calm, "all this
staring and gaping of yours means that, does it? I remember now. When I
was examining you for promotion the other day, you stared. Trying to
mesmerize me?"
"Let bygones be bygones, dear old friend," begged Bones.
"And when I asked you to produce the company pay-sheets, which you
forgot to bring up to date, you stared at me!"
"It's a gift," said Bones feebly.
"Oh, Bones," said the girl slowly, "you stared at me, too, after I
refused to go picnicking with you on the beach."
"All's fair in love an' war," said Bones vaguely. "It's a wonderful
gift."
"Have you ever mesmerized anybody?" asked Hamilton curiously, and Bones
brightened up.
"Rather, dear old sir," he said. "Jolly old Ali, my secretary--goes off
in a regular trance on the slightest provocation. Fact, dear old Ham."
Hamilton clapped his hands, and his orderly, dozing in the shade of the
verandah, rose up. "Go, bring Ali Abid," said Hamilton. And when the man
had gone: "Are you under the illusion that you made the sentry present
arms to you, and Abiboo's woman dance for you, by the magic of your
eye?"
"You saw," said the complacent Bones. "It's a wonderful gift, dear old
Ham. As soon as I read the article, I tried it on Ali. Got him, first
pop!"
The girl was bubbling with suppressed laughter, and there was a twinkle
in Sanders's eye. "I recall that you saw me in connection with shooting
leave in the N'gombi."
"Yes, sir and Excellency," said the miserable Bones.
"And I said that I thought it inadvisable, because of the trouble in the
bend of the Isisi River."
"Yes, Excellency and sir," agreed Bones dolefully.
"And then you stared."
"Did I, dear old--Did I, sir?"
His embarrassment was relieved by the arrival of Ali. So buoyant a soul
had Bones, that from the deeps of despair into which he was beginning to
sink he rose to heights of confidence, not to say self-assurance, that
were positively staggering.
"Miss Patricia, ladies and gentlemen," said Bones briskly, "we have here
Ali Abid, confidential servant and faithful retainer. I will now
endeavour to demonstrate the power of the human eye."
He met the stolid gaze of Ali and stared. He stared terribly and
alarmingly, and Ali, to do him justice, stared back.
"Close your eyes," commanded Bones. "You can't open them, can you?"
"Sir," said Ali, "optics of subject are hermetically sealed."
"I will now put him in a trance," said Bones, and waved his hand
mysteriously. Ali rocked backward and forward, and would have fallen but
for the supporting arm of the demonstrator. "He is now insensible to
pain," said Bones proudly.
"Lend me your hatpin, Pat," said Hamilton.
"I will now awaken him," said Bones hastily, and snapped his fingers.
Ali rose to his feet with great dignity. "Thank you, Ali; you may go,"
said his master, and turned, ready to receive the congratulations of
the party.
"Do you seriously believe that you mesmerized that humbug?"
Bones drew himself erect. "Sir and captain," he said stiffly, "do you
suggest I am a jolly old impostor? You saw the sentry, sir, you saw the
woman, sir."
"And I saw Ali," said Hamilton, nodding, "and I'll bet he gave the
sentry something and the woman something to play the goat for you."
Bones bowed slightly and distantly. "I cannot discuss my powers, dear
old sir; you realize that there are some subjects too delicate to broach
except with kindred spirits. I shall continue my studies of psychic
mysteries undeterred by the cold breath of scepticism." He saluted
everybody, and departed with chin up and shoulders squared, a picture of
offended dignity.
That night Sanders lay in bed, snuggled up on his right side, which
meant that he had arrived at the third stage of comfort which precedes
that fading away of material life which men call sleep. Half consciously
he listened to the drip, drip, drip of rain on the stoep, and promised
himself that he would call upon Abiboo in the morning, to explain the
matter of a choked gutter, for Abiboo had sworn, by the Prophet and
certain minor relatives of the Great One, that he had cleared every
bird's nest from the ducts about the Residency.
Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip!
Sanders sank with luxurious leisure into the nothingness of the night.
Drip-tap, drip-tap, drip-tap!
He opened his eyes slowly, slid one leg out of bed, and groped for his
slippers. He slipped into the silken dressing-gown which had been flung
over the end of the bed, corded it about him, and switched on the
electric light. Then he passed out into the big common room, with its
chairs drawn together in overnight comradeship, and the solemn tick of
the big clock to emphasize the desolation. He paused a second to switch
on the lights, then went to the door and flung it open.
"Enter!" he said in Arabic.
The man who came in was naked, save for a tarboosh on his head and a
loin-cloth about his middle. His slim body shone with moisture, and
where he stood on the white matting were two little pools. Kano from his
brown feet to the soaked fez, he stood erect with that curious
assumption of pride and equality which the Mussulman bears with less
offence to his superiors than any other race.
"Peace on this house," he said, raising his hand.
"Speak, Ahmet," said Sanders, dropping into a big chair and stretching
back, with his clasped hands behind his head. He eyed the man gravely
and without resentment, for no spy would tap upon his window at night
save that the business was a bad one.
"Lord," said the man, "it is shameful that I should wake your lordship
from your beautiful dream, but I came with the river."[7] He looked down
at his master, and in the way of certain Kano people, who are
dialecticians to a man, he asked: "Lord, it is written in the Sura of
Ya-Sin, 'To the sun it is not given to overtake the moon----'"
[Footnote 7: I came when I could.]
"'Nor doth the night outstrip the day; but each in his own sphere doth
journey on,'" finished Sanders patiently. "Thus also begins the Sura of
the Cave: 'Praise be to God, Who hath sent down the book to his servant,
and hath put no crookedness into it.' Therefore, Ahmet, be plain to me,
and leave your good speeches till you meet the abominable Sufi."
The man sank to his haunches. "Lord," he said, "from the bend of the
river, where the Isisi divides the land of the N'gombi from the lands of
the Good Chief, I came, travelling by day and night with the river, for
many strange things have happened which are too wonderful for me. This
Chief Busesi, whom all men call good, has a daughter by his second wife.
In the year of the High Crops she was given to a stranger from the
forest, him they call Gufuri-Bululu, and he took her away to live in his
hut."
Sanders sat up. "Go on, man," he said.
"Lord, she has returned and performs wonderful magic," said the man,
"for by the wonder of her eyes she can make dead men live and live men
die, and all people are afraid. Also, lord, there was a wise man in the
forest, who was blind, and he had a daughter who was the prop and staff
of him, and because of his wisdom, and because she hated all who
rivalled her, the woman D'rona Gufuri told certain men to seize the girl
and hold her in a deep pool of water until she was dead."
"This is a bad palaver," said Sanders; "but you shall tell me what you
mean by the wonder of her eyes."
"Lord," said the man, "she looks upon men, and they do her will. Now, it
is her will that there shall be a great dance on the Rind of the Moon,
and after she shall send the spears of the people of Busesi--who is old
and silly, and for this reason is called good--against the N'gombi
folk."
"Oh," said Sanders, biting his lip in thought, "by the wonder of her
eyes!"
"Lord," said the man, "even I have seen this, for she has stricken men
to the ground by looking at them, and some she has made mad, and others
foolish."
Sanders turned his head at a noise from the doorway. The tall figure of
Hamilton stood peering sleepily at the light.
"I heard your voice," he said apologetically. "What is the trouble?"
Briefly Sanders related the story the man had told.
"Wow!" said Hamilton, in a paroxysm of delight.
"What's wrong?"
"Bones!" shouted Hamilton. "Bones is the fellow. Let him go up and
subdue her with his eye. He's the very fellow. I'll go over and call
him, sir."
He hustled into his clothing, slipped on a mackintosh, and, making his
way across the dark square, admitted himself to the sleeping-hut of
Lieutenant Tibbetts. By the light of his electric torch he discovered
the slumberer. Bones lay on his back, his large mouth wide open, one
thin leg thrust out from the covers, and he was making strange noises.
Hamilton found the lamp and lit it, then he proceeded to the
heart-breaking task of waking his subordinate. "Up, you lazy devil!" he
shouted, shaking Bones by the shoulder.
Bones opened his eyes and blinked rapidly. "On the word 'One!'" he said
hoarsely, "carry the left foot ten inches to the left front, at the same
time bringing the rifle to a horizontal position at the right side.
One!"
"Wake up, wake up, Bones!"
Bones made a wailing noise. It was the noise of a mother panther who has
returned to her lair to discover that her offspring have been eaten by
wild pigs. "Whar-r-ow-ow!" he said, and turned over on his right side.
Hamilton pocketed his torch, and, lifting Bones bodily from the bed, let
him fall with a thud.
Bones scrambled up, staring. "Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "I stand
before you a ruined man. Drink has been my downfall, as the dear old
judge remarked. I _did_ kill Wilfred Morgan, and I plead the unwritten
law." He saluted stiffly, collapsed on to his pillow, and fell instantly
into a deep child-like sleep.
Hamilton groaned. He had had occasion to wake Bones from his beauty
sleep before, but he had never been as bad as this. He took a soda
siphon from the little sideboard and depressed the lever, holding the
outlet above his victim's head.
Bones leapt up with a roar. "Hello, Ham!" he said quite sanely. "Well
dear old officer, this is the finish! You stand by the lifeboat an'
shoot down anybody who attempts to leave the ship before the torpedoes
are saved. I'm goin' down into the hold to have a look at the women an'
children." He saluted, and was stepping out into the wet night, when
Hamilton caught his arm.
"Steady, the Buffs, my sleeping beauty! Dress yourself. Sanders wants
you."
Bones nodded. "I'll just drive over and see him," he said, climbed back
into bed, and was asleep in a second.
Hamilton put out the light and went back to the Residency. "I hadn't
the heart to cut his ear off," he said regretfully. "I'm afraid we
shan't be able to consult Bones till the morning."
Sanders nodded. "Anyway, I will wait for the morning. I have told Abiboo
to get stores and wood aboard, and to have steam in the _Zaire_. Let us
emulate Bones."
"Heaven forbid!" said Hamilton piously.
Bones came blithely to breakfast, a dapper and a perfectly groomed
figure. He received the news of the ominous happenings in the N'gombi
country with that air of profound solemnity which so annoyed Hamilton.
"I wish you had called me in the night," he said gravely. "Dear old
officer, I think it was due to me."
"Called you! Called you! Why--why----" spluttered Hamilton.
"In fact, we did call you Bones, but we could not wake you," smoothed
Sanders.
A look of amazement spread over the youthful face of Lieutenant
Tibbetts. "You called me?" he asked incredulously. "Called _me_?"
"_You!_" hissed Hamilton. "I not only called you, but I kicked you.
I poured water on you, and I chucked you up to the roof of the hut and
dropped you."
A faint but unbelieving smile from Bones. "Are you sure it was me,
dear old officer?" he asked, and Hamilton choked. "I only ask," said
Bones, turning blandly to the girl, "because I'm a notoriously light
sleeper, dear old Miss Patricia. The slightest stir wakes me, and
instantly I'm in possession of all my faculties. Bosambo calls me
'Eye-That-Never-Shuts----'"
"Bosambo is a notorious leg-puller," interrupted Hamilton irritably.
"Really, Bones----"
"Often, dear old Sister," Bones went on impressively, "campin' out in
the forest, an' sunk in the profound sleep which youth an' a good
conscience brings, something has wakened me, an' I've jumped to my feet,
a revolver in my hand, an' what do you think it was?"
"A herd of wild elephants walking on your chest?" suggested Hamilton.
"What do you think it was, dear old Patricia miss?" persisted Bones, and
interrupted her ingenious speculation in his usual aggravating manner:
"The sound of a footstep breakin' a twig a hundred yards away!"
"Wonderful!" sneered Hamilton, stirring his coffee. "Bones, if you could
only spell, what a novelist you'd be!"
"The point is," said Sanders, with good-humoured patience, which
brought, for some curious reason, a warm sense of intimacy to the girl,
"you've got to go up and try your eye on the woman D'rona Gufuri."
Bones leant back in his chair and spoke with deliberation and
importance, for he realized that he, and only he, could supply a
solution to the difficulties of his superiors.
"The power of the human eye, when applied by a jolly old scientist to a
heathen, is irresistible. You may expect me down with the prisoner in
four days."
"She may be more trouble than you expect," said Sanders seriously. "The
longer one lives in native lands, the less confident can one be. There
have been remarkable cases of men possessing the power which this woman
has----"
"And which I have, sir an' Excellency, to an extraordinary extent,"
interrupted Bones firmly. "Have no fear."
* * * * *
Thirty-six hours later Bones stood before the woman D'rona Gufuri.
"Lord," said the woman, "men speak evilly of me to Sandi, and now you
have come to take me to the Village of Irons."
"That is true, D'rona," said Bones, and looked into her eyes.
"Lord," said the woman, speaking slowly, "you shall go back to Sandi and
say, 'I have not seen the woman D'rona'--for, lord, is this not truth?"
"I'wa! I'wa!" muttered Bones thickly.
"You cannot see me Tibbetti, and I am not here," said the woman, and she
spoke before the assembled villagers, who stood, knuckles to teeth,
gazing awe-stricken upon the scene.
"I cannot see you," said Bones sleepily.
"And now you cannot hear me, lord?"
Bones did not reply.
The woman took him by the arm and led him through the patch of wood
which fringes the river and separates beach from village. None followed
them; even the two Houssas who formed the escort of Lieutenant Tibbetts
stayed rooted to the spot.
Bones passed into the shadow of the trees, the woman's hand on his arm.
Then suddenly from the undergrowth rose a lank figure, and D'rona of the
Magic Eye felt a bony hand at her throat. She laughed.
"O man, whoever you be, look upon me in this light, and your strength
shall melt."
She twisted round to meet her assailant's face, and shrieked aloud, for
he was blind. And Bones stood by without moving, without seeing or
hearing, whilst the strong hands of the blind witch-doctor, whose
daughter she had slain, crushed the life from her body.
* * * * *
"Of course, sir," explained Bones, "you may think she mesmerized me. On
the other hand, it is quite possible that she acted under my influence.
It's a moot point, sir an' Excellency--jolly moot!"
CHAPTER XII
THE HOODED KING
There was a certain Portuguese governor--this was in the days when
Colhemos was Colonial Minister--who had a small legitimate income and an
extravagant wife. This good lady had a villa at Cintra, a box at the
Real Theatre de São Carlos, and a motor-car, and gave five o'clocks at
the Hotel Nunes to the aristocracy and gentry who inhabited that spot,
of whom the ecstatic Spaniard said, "dejar a Cintra, y ver al mundo
entero, es, con verdad caminar en capuchera."
Since her husband's salary was exactly $66.50 weekly and the upkeep of
the villa alone was twice that amount, it is not difficult to understand
that Senhor Bonaventura was a remarkable man.
Colhemos came over to the Foreign Office in the Praco de Commercio one
day and saw Dr. Sarabesta, and Sarabesta, who was both a republican and
a sinner, was also ambitious, or he had a Plan and an Ideal--two very
dangerous possessions for a politician, since they lead inevitably to
change, than which nothing is more fatal to political systems.
"Colhemos," said the doctor dramatically, "you are ruining me! You are
bringing me to the dust and covering me with the hatred and mistrust of
the Powers!"
He folded his arms and rose starkly from the chair, his beard all
a-bristle, his deep little eyes glaring.
"What is wrong, Baptisa?" asked Colhemos.
The other flung out his arms in an extravagant gesture.
"Ruin!" he cried somewhat inadequately.
He opened the leather portfolio which lay on the table and extracted six
sheets of foolscap paper.
"Read!" he said, and subsided into his padded armchair a picture of
gloom.
The sheets of foolscap were surmounted by crests showing an emaciated
lion and a small horse with a spiral horn in his forehead endeavouring
to climb a chafing-dish which had been placed on edge for the purpose,
and was suitably inscribed with another lion, two groups of leopards and
a harp.
Colhemos did not stop to admire the menagerie, but proceeded at once to
the literature. It was in French, and had to do with a certain condition
of affairs in Portuguese Central Africa which "constituted a grave and
increasing menace to the native subjects" of "Grande Bretagne." There
were hints, "which His Majesty's Government would be sorry to believe,
of raids and requisitions upon the native manhood" of this country which
differed little from slave raids.
Further, "Mr. Commissioner Sanders of the Territories regretted to
learn" that these labour requisitions resulted in a condition of affairs
not far removed from slavery.
Colhemos read through the dispatch from start to finish, and put it down
thoughtfully.
"Pinto has been overdoing it," he admitted. "I shall have to write to
him."
"What you write to Pinto may be interesting enough to print," said Dr.
Sarabesta violently, "but what shall I write to London? This
Commissioner Sanders is a fairly reliable man, and his Government will
act upon what he says."
Colhemos, who was really a great man (it was a distinct loss when he
faced a firing platoon in the revolutionary days of '12), tapped his
nose with a penholder.
"You can say that we shall send a special commissioner to the M'fusi
country to report, and that he will remain permanently established in
the M'fusi to suppress lawless acts."
The doctor looked up wonderingly.
"Pinto won't like that," said he, "besides which, the M'fusi are quite
unmanageable. The last time we tried to bring them to reason it
cost--Santa Maria!... and the lives!... phew!"
Colhemos nodded.
"The duc de Sagosta," he said slowly, "is an enthusiastic young man. He
is also a royalist and allied by family ties to Dr. Ceillo of the Left.
He is, moreover, an Anglomaniac--though why he should be so when his
mother was an American woman I do not know. He shall be our
commissioner, my dear Baptisa."
His dear Baptisa sat bolt upright, every hair in his bristling head
erect.
"A royalist!" he gasped, "do you want to set Portugal ablaze?"
"There are moments when I could answer 'Yes' to that question," said the
truthful Colhemos "but for the moment I am satisfied that there will be
no fireworks. It will do no harm to send the boy. It will placate the
Left and please the Clerics--it will also consolidate our reputation for
liberality and largeness of mind. Also the young man will either be
killed or fall a victim to the sinister influences of that corruption
which, alas, has so entered into the vitals of our Colonial service."
So Manuel duc de Sagosta was summoned, and prepared for the subject of
his visit by telephone, came racing up from Cintra in his big American
juggernaut, leapt up the stairs of the Colonial Office two at a time,
and came to Colhemos' presence in a state of mind which may be described
as a big mental whoop.
"You will understand, Senhor," said Colhemos, "that I am doing that
which may make me unpopular. For that I care nothing! My country is my
first thought, and the glory and honour of our flag! Some day you may
hold my portfolio in the Cabinet, and it will be well if you bring to
your high and noble office the experience...."
Then they all talked together, and the dark room flickered with
gesticulating palms.
Colhemos came to see the boy off by the M.N.P. boat which carried him to
the African Coast.
"I suppose, Senhor," said the duc, "there would be no objection on the
part of the Government to my calling on my way at a certain British
port. I have a friend in the English army--we were at Clifton
together----"
"My friend," said Colhemos, pressing the young man's hand warmly, "you
must look upon England as a potential ally, and lose no opportunity
which offers to impress upon our dear colleagues this fact, that behind
England, unmoved, unshaken, faithful, stands the armed might of
Portugal. May the saints have you in their keeping!"
He embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks.
* * * * *
Bones was drilling recruits at headquarters when Hamilton hailed him
from the edge of the square.
"There's a pal of yours come to see you, Bones," he roared.
Bones marched sedately to his superior and touched his helmet.
"Sir!"
"A friend of yours--just landed from the Portuguese packet."
Bones was mystified, and went up to the Residency to find a young man in
spotless white being entertained by Patricia Hamilton and a very
thoughtful Sanders.
The duc de Sagosta leapt to his feet as Bones came up the verandah.
"Hullo, Conk!" he yelled hilariously.
Bones stared.
"God bless my life," he stammered, "it's Mug!"
There was a terrific hand-shaking accompanied by squawking inquiries
which were never answered, uproarious laughter, back patting, brazen and
baseless charges that each was growing fat, and Sanders watched it with
great kindness.
"Here's old Ham," said Bones, "you ought to know Ham--Captain Hamilton,
sir, my friend, the duke of something or other--but you can call him
Mug--Miss Hamilton--this is Mug."
"We've already been introduced," she laughed. "But why do you let him
call you Mug?"
The duc grinned.
"I like Mug," he said simply.
He was to stay to lunch, for the ship was not leaving until the
afternoon, and Bones carried him off to his hut.
"A joyous pair," said Hamilton enviously. "Lord, if I was only a boy
again!"
Sanders shook his head.
"You don't echo that wish?" said Pat.
"I wasn't thinking about that--I was thinking of the boy. I dislike this
M'fusi business, and I can't think why the Government sent him. They are
a pretty bad lot--their territory is at the back of the Akasava, and the
Chief of the M'fusi is a rascal."
"But he says that he has been sent to reform them," said the girl.
Sanders smiled.
"It is not a job I should care to undertake--and yet----"
He knitted his forehead.
"And yet----?"
"I could reform them--Bones could reform them. But if they were reformed
it would break Bonaventura, for he holds his job subject to their
infamy."
At lunch Sanders was unusually silent, a silence which was unnoticed,
save by the girl. Bones and his friend, however, needed no stimulation.
Lunch was an almost deafening meal, and when the time came for the duc
to leave, the whole party went down to the beach to see him embark.
"Good-bye, old Mug!" roared Bones, as the boat pulled away. "Whoop! hi!
how!"
"You're a noisy devil," said Hamilton, admiringly.
"Vox populi, vox Dei," said Bones.
He had an unexpected visitor that evening, for whilst he was dressing
for dinner, Sanders came into his hut--an unusual happening.
What Sanders had to say may not be related since it was quite
unofficial, but Bones came to dinner that night and behaved with such
decorum and preserved a mien so grave, that Hamilton thought he was ill.
The duc continued his journey down the African Coast and presently came
to a port which was little more than a beach, a jetty, a big white
house, and by far the most imposing end of the Moanda road. In due time,
he arrived by the worst track in the world (he was six days on the
journey) at Moanda itself, and came into the presence of the Governor.
Did the duc but know it, his Excellency had also been prepared for the
young man's mission. The mail had arrived by carrier the day before the
duc put in his appearance, and Pinto Bonaventura had his little piece
all ready to say.
"I will give you all the assistance I possibly can," he said, as they
sat at _déjeuner_, "but, naturally, I cannot guarantee you immunity."
"Immunity?" said the puzzled duc.
Senhor Bonaventura nodded gravely.
"Nothing is more repugnant to me than slavery," he said, "unless it be
the terrible habit of drinking. If I could sweep these evils out of
existence with a wave of my hand, believe me I would do so; but I cannot
perform miracles, and the Government will not give me sufficient troops
to suppress these practices which every one of us hold in abhorrence."
"But," protested the duc, a little alarmed, "since I am going to reform
the M'fusi...."
The Governor choked over his coffee and apologized. He did not laugh,
because long residence in Central Africa had got him out of the habit,
and had taught him a certain amount of self-control in all things except
the consumption of marsala.
"Pray go on," he said, wearing an impassive face.
"It will be to the interests of Portugal, no less than to your
Excellency's interest," said the young man, leaning across the table and
speaking with great earnestness, "if I can secure a condition of peace,
prosperity, sobriety, and if I can establish the Portuguese law in this
disturbed area."
"Undoubtedly," acknowledged the older man with profound seriousness.
So far from the duc's statement representing anything near the truth, it
may be said that a restoration of order would serve his Excellency very
badly indeed. In point of fact he received something like eight
shillings for every "head" of "recruited labour." He also received a
commission from the same interested syndicates which exported
able-bodied labourers, a commission amounting to six shillings upon
every case of square-face, and a larger sum upon every keg of rum that
came into the country.
Sobriety and law would, in fact, spell much discomfort to the elegant
lady who lived in the villa at Cintra, and would considerably diminish
not only Senhor Bonaventura's handsome balance at the Bank of Brazil,
but would impoverish certain ministers, permanent and temporary, who
looked to their dear Pinto for periodical contributions to what was
humorously described as "The Party Fund."
Yet the duc de Sagosta went into the wilds with a high heart and a
complete faith, in his youthful and credulous soul, that he had behind
him the full moral and physical support of a high-minded and patriotic
Governor. The high-minded and patriotic Governor, watching the caravan
of his new assistant disappearing through the woods which fringe Moanda,
expressed in picturesque language his fervent hope that the mud, the
swamp, the forest and the wilderness of the M'fusi country would swallow
up this young man for evermore, amen. The unpopularity of the new
Commissioner was sealed when the Governor learnt of his visit to
Sanders, for "Sanders" was a name at which his Excellency made
disapproving noises.
The predecessor of the duc de Sagosta was dead. His grave was in
the duc's front garden, and was covered with rank grass. The new-comer
found the office correspondence in order (as a glib native clerk
demonstrated); he also found 103 empty bottles behind the house, and
understood the meaning of that coarse grave in the garden. He found
that the last index number in the letter-book was 951.
It is remarkable that the man he succeeded should have found, in one
year, 951 subjects for correspondence, but it is the fact. Possibly nine
hundred of the letters had to do with the terrible state of the
Residency at Uango-Bozeri. The roof leaked, the foundations had settled,
and not a door closed as it should close. On the day of his arrival the
duc found a _mamba_ resting luxuriously in his one armchair, a discovery
which suggested the existence of a whole colony of these deadly
brutes--the _mamba_ bite is fatal in exactly ninety seconds--under or
near the house.
The other fifty dispatches probably had to do with the late
Commissioner's arrears of pay, for Portugal at that time was in the
throes of her annual crisis, and ministries were passing through the
Government offices at Lisbon with such rapidity that before a cheque
could be carried from the Foreign Office to the bank, it was out of
date.
Uango Bozeri is 220 miles by road from the coast, and is the centre of
the child-like people of the M'fusi. Here the duc dwelt and had his
being, as Governor of 2,000 square miles, and overlord of some million
people who were cannibals with a passion for a fiery liquid which was
described by traders as "rum." It was as near rum as the White City is
to Heaven; that is to say, to the uncultivated taste it might have been
rum, and anyway was as near to rum as the taster could expect to get.
This is all there is to be said about the duc de Sagosta, save that his
headman swindled him, his soldiers were conscienceless natives
committing acts of brigandage in his innocent name, whilst his chief at
Moanda was a peculating and incompetent scoundrel.
At the time when the duc was finding life a bitter and humiliating
experience, and had reached the stage when he sat on his predecessor's
grave for company, a small and unauthorized party crossed the frontier
from the British Territories in search of adventure.
Now it happened that the particular region through which the border-line
passed was governed by the Chief of the Greater M'fusi, who was a
cannibal, a drunkard, and a master of two regiments.
The duc had been advised not to interfere with the chief of his people,
and he had (after one abortive and painful experience) obeyed his
superiors, accepting the hut tax which was sent to him (and which was
obviously and insolently inadequate) without demur.
No white man journeyed to the city of the M'fusi without invitation
from the chief, and as Chief Karata never issued such invitation, the
Greater M'fusi was a _terra incognita_ even to his Excellency the
Governor-General of the Central and Western Provinces.
Karata was a drunkard approaching lunacy. It was his whim for weeks on
end to wear on his head the mask of a goat. At other times, "as a mark
of his confidence in devils," he would appear hidden beneath a plaited
straw extinguisher which fitted him from head to foot. He was eccentric
in other ways which need not be particularized, but he was never so
eccentric that he welcomed strangers.
Unfortunately for those concerned, the high road from the Territories
passed through the M'fusi drift. And one day there came a panting
messenger from the keeper of the drift who flung himself down at the
king's feet.
"Lord," said he, "there is a white man at the drift, and with him a
certain chief and his men."
"You will take the men, bringing them to me tied with ropes," said the
king, who looked at the messenger with glassy eyes and found some
difficulty in speaking, for he was at the truculent stage of his second
bottle.
The messenger returned and met the party on the road. What was his
attitude towards the intruders it is impossible to say. He may have been
insolent, secure in the feeling that he was representing his master's
attitude towards white men; he may have offered fight in the illusion
that the six warriors he took with him were sufficient to enforce the
king's law. It is certain that he never returned.
Instead there came to the king's kraal a small but formidable party
under a white man, and they arrived at a propitious moment, for the
ground before the king's great hut was covered with square bottles, and
the space in front of the palace was crowded with wretched men chained
neck to neck and waiting to march to the coast and slavery.
The white man pushed back his helmet.
"Goodness gracious Heavens!" he exclaimed, "how perfectly horrid!
Bosambo, this is immensely illegal an' terrificly disgustin'."
The Chief of the Ochori looked round.
"Dis feller be dam' bad," was his effort.
Bones walked leisurely to the shady canopy under which the king sat, and
King Karata stared stupidly at the unexpected vision.
"O King," said Bones in the Akasavian vernacular which runs from Dacca
to the Congo, "this is an evil thing that you do--against all law."
Open-mouthed Karata continued to stare.
To the crowded kraal, on prisoner and warrior, councillor and dancing
woman alike, came a silence deep and unbroken.
They heard the words spoken in a familiar tongue, and marvelled that a
white man should speak it. Bones was carrying a stick and taking
deliberate aim, and after two trial strokes he brought the nobbly end
round with a "swish!"
A bottle of square-face smashed into a thousand pieces, and there arose
on the hot air the sickly scent of crude spirits. Fascinated, silent,
motionless, King Karata, named not without reason "The Terrible,"
watched the destruction as bottle followed bottle.
Then as a dim realization of the infamy filtered through his thick
brain, he rose with a growl like a savage animal, and Bones turned
quickly. But Bosambo was quicker. One stride brought him to the king's
side.
"Down, dog!" he said. "O Karata, you are very near the painted hut where
dead kings lie."
The king sank back and glared to and fro.
All that was animal in him told of his danger; he smelt death in the
mirthless grin of the white man; he smelt it as strongly under the hand
of the tall native wearing the monkey-tails of chieftainship. If they
would only stand away from him they would die quickly enough. Let them
get out of reach, and a shout, an order, would send them bloodily to the
ground with little kicks and twitches as the life ran out of them.
But they stood too close, and that order of his meant his death.
"O white man," he began.
"Listen, black man," said Bosambo, and lapsed into his English; "hark
um, you dam' black nigger--what for you speak um so?"
"You shall say 'master' to me, Karata," said Bones easily, "for in my
land 'white man' is evil talk."[8]
[Footnote 8: In most native countries "white man" is seldom employed
save as a piece of insolence. It is equivalent to the practice of
referring to the natives as niggers.]
"Master," said the king sullenly, "this is a strange thing--for I see
that you are English and we be servants of another king. Also it is
forbidden that any white--that any master should stand in my kraal
without my word, and I have driven even Igselensi from my face."
"That is all foolish talk, Karata," said Bones. "This is good talk:
shall Karata live or shall he die? This you shall say. If you send away
this palaver and say to your people that we are folk whom you desire
shall live in the shadow of the king's hut, then you live. Let him say
less than this, Bosambo, and you strike quickly."
The king looked from face to face. Bones had his hand in the uniform
jacket pocket. Bosambo balanced his killing-spear on the palm of his
hand, the chief saw with the eye of an expert that the edge was razor
sharp.
Then he turned to the group whom Bones had motioned away when he started
to speak to the king.
"This palaver is finished," he said, "and the white lord stays in my hut
for a night."
"Good egg," said Bones as the crowd streamed from the kraal.
Senhor Bonaventura heard of the arrival of a white man at the chief's
great kraal and was not perturbed, because there were certain favourite
traders who came to the king from time to time. He was more concerned by
the fact that a labour draft of eight hundred men who had been promised
by Karata had not yet reached Moanda, but frantic panic came from the
remarkable information of Karata's eccentricities which had reached him
from his lieutenant.
The duc's letter may be reproduced.
"ILLUSTRIOUS AND EXCELLENT SENHOR,
"It is with joy that I announce to you the most remarkable
reformation of King Karata. The news was brought to me that the
king had received a number of visitors of an unauthorized
character, and though I had, as I have reported to you, Illustrious
and Excellent Senhor, the most unpleasant experience at the hands
of the king, I deemed it advisable to go to the city of the Greater
M'fusi and conduct an inquiry.
"I learnt that the king had indeed received the visitors, and that
they had departed on the morning of my arrival carrying with them
one of their number who was sick. With this party was a white man.
But the most remarkable circumstance, Illustrious and Excellent
Senhor, was that the king had called a midnight palaver of his
councillors and high people of state and had told them that the
strangers had brought news of such sorrowful character that for
four moons it would be forbidden to look upon his face. At the end
of that period he would disappear from the earth and become a god
amongst the stars.
"At these words, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, the king with
some reluctance took from one of the strangers a bag in which two
eyes had been cut, and pulled it over his head and went back into
his hut.
"Since then he has done many remarkable things. He has forbidden
the importation of drink, and has freed all labour men to their
homes. He has nominated Zifingini, the elder chief of the M'fusi,
to be king after his departure, and has added another fighting
regiment to his army.
"He is quite changed, and though they cannot see his face and he
has banished all his wives, relatives and councillors to a distant
village, he is more popular than ever.
"Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, I feel that at last I am seeing
the end of the old régime and that we may look forward to a period
of sobriety and prosperity in the M'fusi.
"Receive the assurance, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, of my
distinguished consideration."
His Excellency went purple and white.
"Holy mother!" he spluttered apoplectically, "this is ruin!"
With trembling hands he wrote a telegram. Translated in its sense it was
to this effect--
"Recall de Sagosta without fail or there will be nothing doing on pay
day."
He saw this dispatched on its way, and returned to his bureau. He picked
up the duc's letter and read it again: then he saw there was a
postscript.
"P.S.--In regard to the strangers who visited the king, the man
they carried away on a closed litter was very sick indeed,
according to the accounts of woodmen who met the party. He was
raving at the top of his voice, but the white man was singing very
loudly.
"P.SS.--I have just heard, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, that
the Hooded King (as his people call him) has sent off all his
richest treasures and many others which he has taken from the huts
of his deported relatives to one Bosambo, who is a chief of the
Ochori in British Territory, and is distantly related to Senhor
Sanders, the Commissioner of that Territory."
THE END
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Minor changes have been made to correct typesetter's errors; in all
other respects, every effort has been made to be true to the author's
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