.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 49657
   :PG.Title: Bosambo of the River
   :PG.Released: 2015-08-08
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Edgar Wallace
   :DC.Title: Bosambo of the River
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1914
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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BOSAMBO OF THE RIVER
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      BOSAMBO
      OF THE RIVER

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      BY

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      EDGAR WALLACE

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      *Author of "Sanders of the River," "People of the River,"
      "Four Just Men," etc.*

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      WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
      LONDON AND MELBOURNE
      1914

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      *Made and Printed in Great Britain by*
      Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, London.

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   CONTENTS.

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CHAP.

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I.—`ARACHI THE BORROWER`_
II.—`THE TAX RESISTERS`_
III.—`THE RISE OF THE EMPEROR`_
IV.—`THE FALL OF THE EMPEROR`_
V.—`THE KILLING OF OLANDI`_
VI.—`THE PEDOMETER`_
VII.—`THE BROTHER OF BOSAMBO`_
VIII.—`THE CHAIR OF THE N'GOMBI`_
IX.—`THE KI-CHU`_
X.—`THE CHILD OF SACRIFICE`_
XI.—`"THEY"`_
XII.—`THE AMBASSADORS`_
XIII.—`GUNS IN THE AKASAVA`_





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.. _`ARACHI THE BORROWER`:

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   BOSAMBO OF THE RIVER

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   CHAPTER I

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   ARACHI THE BORROWER

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Many years ago the Monrovian Government
sent one Bosambo, a native of the Kroo
coast and consequently a thief, to penal
servitude for the term of his natural life.  Bosambo,
who had other views on the matter, was given
an axe and a saw in the penal settlement—which
was a patch of wild forest in the back country—and
told to cut down and trim certain mahogany-trees
in company with other unfortunate men
similarly circumstanced.

To assure themselves of Bosambo's obedience,
the Government of Liberia set over him a number
of compatriots, armed with weapons which had
rendered good service at Gettysburg, and had been
presented to the President of Liberia by President
Grant.  They were picturesque weapons, but they
were somewhat deficient in accuracy, especially
when handled by the inexpert soldiers of the
Monrovian coast.  Bosambo, who put his axe to an
ignoble use, no less than the slaying of Captain
Peter Cole—who was as black as the ten of clubs,
but a gentleman by the Liberian code—left the
penal settlement with passionate haste.  The
Gettysburg relics made fairly good practice up to two
hundred yards, but Bosambo was a mile away before
the guards, searching the body of their dead
commander for the key of the ammunition store, had
secured food for their lethal weapons.

The government offered a reward of two hundred
and fifty dollars for Bosambo, dead or alive.
But, although the reward was claimed and paid
to the half-brother of the Secretary of War, it
is a fact that Bosambo was never caught.

On the contrary, he made his way to a far land,
and became, by virtue of his attainments, chief
of the Ochori.

Bosambo was too good a sportsman to leave
his persecutors at peace.  There can be little
doubt that the Kroo insurrection, which cost
the Liberian Government eight hundred and twenty-one
pounds sixteen shillings to suppress, was due
to the instigation and assistance of Bosambo.
Of this insurrection, and the part that Bosambo
played, it may be necessary to speak again.

The second rebellion was a more serious and
expensive affair; and it was at the conclusion
of this that the Liberian Government made
representations to Britain.  Sanders, who conducted
an independent inquiry into the question of
Bosambo's complicity, reported that there was
no evidence whatever that Bosambo was directly
or indirectly responsible.  And with that the
Liberian Government was forced to be content;
but they expressed their feelings by offering a
reward of two thousand dollars for Bosambo alive
or dead—preferably alive.  They added, for the
benefit of minor government officials and their
neighbours, that they would, in the language of
the advertisement, reject all substitutes.  The news
of this price went up and down the coast and very
far into the interior, yet strangely enough Arachi
of the Isisi did not learn of it until many years
afterward.

Arachi was of the Isisi people, and a great
borrower.  Up and down the river all men knew him
for such, so that his name passed into the legendary
vocabulary of the people whilst he yet lived; and
did the wife of Yoka beg from the wife of O'taki
the service of a cooking-pot, be sure that O'taki's
wife would agree, but with heavy pleasantry scream
after the retiring pot: "O thou shameless Arachi!"
whereupon all the village folk who heard the jest
would rock with laughter.

Arachi was the son of a chief, but in a country
where chieftainship was not hereditary, and where,
moreover, many chiefs' sons dwelt without
distinction, his parentage was of little advantage.
Certainly it did not serve him as, in his heart, he
thought he should be served.

He was tall and thin, and his knees were
curiously knobbly.  He carried his head on one side
importantly, and was profoundly contemptuous
of his fellows.

Once he came to Sanders.

"Lord," he said, "I am a chief's son, as you
know, and I am very wise.  Men who look upon
me say, 'Behold, this young man is full of craft,'
because of my looks.  Also I am a great talker."

"There are many in this land who are great
talkers, Arachi," said Sanders, unpleasantly; "yet
they do not travel for two days down-stream to
tell me so."

"Master," said Arachi impressively, "I came
to you because I desire advancement.  Many
of your little chiefs are fools, and, moreover,
unworthy.  Now I am the son of a chief, and it is
my wish to sit down in the place of my father.
Also, lord, remember this, that I have dwelt among
foreign people, the Angola folk, and speak their
tongue."

Sanders sighed wearily.

"Seven times you have asked me, Arachi,"
he said, "and seven times I have told you you
are no chief for me.  Now I tell you this—that
I am tired of seeing you, and if you come to me
again I will throw you to the monkeys.[#]  As
for your Angola palaver, I tell you this—that if it
happen—which may all gods forbid!—that a tribe
of Angola folk sit down with me, you shall be
chief."

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[#] Colloquial: "Make you look foolish."

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Unabashed, Arachi returned to his village, for
he thought in his heart that Sandi was jealous
of his great powers.  He built a large hut at the
end of the village, borrowing his friends' labour;
this he furnished with skins and the like, and
laid in stores of salt and corn, all of which he had
secured from neighbouring villages by judicious
promises of payment.

It was like a king's hut, so glorious were the
hangings of skin and the stretched bed of hide,
and the people of his village said "Ko!" believing
that Arachi had dug up those hidden treasures
which every chief is popularly supposed to possess
in secret places to which his sons may well be
privy.

Even those who had helped to supply the
magnificence were impressed and comforted.

"I have lent Arachi two bags of salt," said
Pidini, the chief of Kolombolo, the fishing village,
"and my stomach was full of doubt, though he
swore by Death that he would repay me three
days after the rains.  Now I see that he is indeed
very rich, as he told me he was, and if my salt does
not return to me I may seize his fine bed."

In another village across the River Ombili,
a headman of the Isisi confided to his wife:

"Woman, you have seen the hut of Arachi,
now I think you will cease your foolish talk.  For
you have reproached me bitterly because I lent
Arachi my fine bed."

"Lord, I was wrong," said the woman meekly;
"but I feared he would not pay you the salt he
promised; now I know that I was foolish, for I
saw many bags of salt in his hut."

The story of Arachi's state spread up and down
the river, and when the borrower demanded the
hand of Koran, the daughter of the chief of the
Putani ("The Fishers of the River"), she came
to him without much palaver, though she was
rather young.

A straight and winsome girl well worth the
thousand rods and the twenty bags of salt which
the munificent Arachi promised, by Death, devils,
and a variety of gods, should be delivered to her
father when the moon and the river stood in certain
relative positions.

Now Arachi did no manner of work whatever,
save to walk through the village street at certain
hours clad in a robe of monkey tails which he
had borrowed from the brother of the king of the
Isisi.

He neither fished nor hunted nor dug in the
fields.

He talked to Koran his wife, and explained
why this was so.  He talked to her from sunset
until the early hours of the morning, for he was a
great talker, and when he was on his favourite
subject—which was Arachi—he was very eloquent.
He talked to her till the poor child's head rocked
from side to side, and from front to back, in her
desperate sleepiness.

He was a great man, beloved and trusted of
Sandi.  He had immense thoughts and plans—plans
that would ensure him a life of ease without
the distressing effects of labour.  Also, Sanders
would make him chief—in good time.

She should be as a queen—she would much
rather have been in her bed and asleep.

Though no Christian, Arachi was a believer in
miracles.  He pinned his faith to the supreme
miracle of living without work, and was near to
seeing the fulfilment of that wonder.

But the miracle which steadfastly refused to
happen was the miracle which would bring him
relief at the moment when his numerous creditors
were clamouring for the repayment of the many
and various articles which they had placed in his care.

It is an axiom that the hour brings its man—most
assuredly it brings its creditor.

There was a tumultuous and stormy day when the
wrathful benefactors of Arachi gathered in full
strength and took from him all that was takable,
and this in the face of the village, to Koran's great
shame.  Arachi, on the contrary, because of his
high spirit, was neither ashamed nor distressed,
even though many men spoke harshly.

"O thief and rat!" said the exasperated owner
of a magnificent stool of ceremony, the base of
which Arachi had contrived to burn.  "Is it not
enough that you should steal the wear of these
things?  Must you light your fires by my beautiful
stool?"

Arachi replied philosophically and without
passion: they might take his grand furnishings—which
they did; they might revile him in tones
and in language the most provocative—this also
they did; but they could not take the noble hut
which their labours had built, because that was
against the law of the tribe; nor could they
rob him of his faith in himself, because that
was contrary to the laws of nature—Arachi's
nature.

"My wife," he said to the weeping girl, "these
things happen.  Now I think I am the victim of
Fate, therefore I propose changing all my gods.
Such as I have do not serve me, and, if you
remember, I spent many hours in the forest with
my *bete*."

Arachi had thought of many possible
contingencies—as, for instance:

Sandi might relent, and appoint him to a great
chieftainship.

Or he might dig from the river-bed some such
treasure as U'fabi, the N'gombi man, did once
upon a time.

Arachi, entranced with this latter idea, went
one morning before sunrise to a place by the shore
and dug.  He turned two spadefuls of earth before
an infinite weariness fell upon him, and he gave up
the search.

"For," he argued, "if treasure is buried in the
river-bed, it might as well be there as elsewhere.
And if it be not there, where may it be?"

Arachi bore his misfortune with philosophy.
He sat in the bare and bleak interior of his hut,
and explained to his wife that the men who had
robbed him—as he said—hated him, and were
jealous of him because of his great powers, and that
one day, when he was a great chief, he would borrow
an army from his friends the N'gombi, and put
fire to their houses.

Yes, indeed, he said "borrow," because it was
his nature to think in loans.

His father-in-law came on the day following
the deporting, expecting to save something from
the wreckage on account of Koran's dowry.  But
he was very late.

"O son of shame!" he said bitterly.  "Is it
thus you repay for my priceless daughter?  By
Death! but you are a wicked man."

"Have no fear, fisherman," said Arachi loftily,
"for I am a friend of Sandi, and be sure that he
will do that for me which will place me high above
common men.  Even now I go to make a long
palaver with him, and, when I return, you shall
hear news of strange happenings."

Arachi was a most convincing man, possessing
the powers of all great borrowers, and he
convinced his father-in-law—a relation who, from
the beginning of time, has always been the least
open to conviction.

He left his wife, and she, poor woman, glad to
be relieved of the presence of her loquacious
husband, probably went to sleep.

At any rate, Arachi came to headquarters at a
propitious moment for him.  Headquarters at that
moment was an armed camp at the junction of
the Isisi and Ikeli rivers.

On the top of all his other troubles, Sanders
had the problem of a stranger who had arrived
unbidden.  His orderly came to him and told him
that a man desired speech of him.

"What manner of man?" asked Sanders, wearily.

"Master," said the orderly, "I have not seen a
man like him before."

Sanders went out to inspect his visitor.  The
stranger rose and saluted, raising both hands,
and the Commissioner looked him over.  He was
not of any of the tribes he knew, being without
the face-cuts laterally descending either cheek,
which mark the Bomongo.  Neither was he tattooed
on the forehead, like the people of the Little River.

"Where do you come from?" asked Sanders, in
Swaheli—which is the *lingua franca* of the
continent—but the man shook his head.

So Sanders tried him again, this time in Bomongo,
thinking, from his face-marks, that he must be a
man of the Bokeri people.  But he answered in a
strange tongue.

"*Quel nom avez vous?*" Sanders asked, and
repeated the question in Portuguese.  To this
latter he responded, saying that he was a small
chief of the Congo Angola, and that he had left his
land to avoid slavery.

"Take him to the men's camp and feed him,"
said Sanders, and dismissed him from his mind.

Sanders had little time to bother about stray
natives who might wander into his camp.  He
was engaged in searching for a gentleman who was
known as Abdul Hazim, a great rascal, trading guns
and powder contrary to the law.

"And," said Sanders to the captain of the
Houssas, "if I catch him he'll be sorry."

Abdul Hazim shared this view, so kept out of
Sanders's way to such purpose that, after a week's
further wanderings, Sanders returned to his headquarters.

Just about then he was dispirited, physically
low from the after-effects of fever, and mentally
disturbed.

Nothing went right with the Commissioner.
There had been a begging letter from head-quarters
concerning this same Abdul Hazim.  He was in
no need of Houssa palavers, yet there must needs
come a free fight amongst these valiant soldier-men,
and, to crown all, two hours afterwards, the Houssa
skipper had gone to bed with a temperature of 104.6.

"Bring the swine here," said Sanders inelegantly,
when the sergeant of Houssas reported
the fight.  And there were marched before him the
strange man, who had come to him from the
backlands, and a pugnacious soldier named Kano.

"Lord," said the Houssa, "by my god, who is,
I submit, greater than most gods, I am not to
blame.  This Kaffir dog would not speak to me
when I spoke; also, he put his hands to my meat,
so I struck him."

"Is that all?" asked Sanders.

"That is all, lord."

"And did the stranger do no more than, in his
ignorance, touch your meat, and keep silence when
you spoke?"

"No more, lord."

Sanders leant back in his seat of justice and scowled
horribly at the Houssa.

"If there is one thing more evident to me than
another," he said slowly, "it is that a Houssa is a
mighty person, a lord, a king.  Now I sit here in
justice, respecting neither kings, such as you be,
nor slaves, such as this silent one.  And I judge so,
regarding the dignity of none, according to the law
of the book.  Is that so?"

"That is so, lord."

"And it would seem that it is against the law to
raise hand against any man, however much he
offends you, the proper course being to make
complaint according to the regulations of the service.
Is that so?"

"That is so, lord."

"Therefore you have broken the law.  Is that truth?"

"That is truth, lord."

"Go back to your lines, admitting this truth
to your comrades, and let the Kaffir rest.  For on
the next occasion, for him that breaks the law,
there will be breaking of skin.  The palaver is
finished."

The Houssa retired.

"And," said Sanders, retailing the matter to the
convalescent officer next morning, "I consider
that I showed more than ordinary self-restraint
in not kicking both of them to the devil."

"You're a great man," said the Houssa officer.
"You'll become a colonial-made gentleman one
of these days, unless you're jolly careful."

Sanders passed in silence the Houssa's gibe at
the Companionship of St. Michael and St. George,
and, moreover, C.M.G.'s were not likely to come
his way whilst Abdul Hazim was still at large.

He was in an unpleasant frame of mind when
Arachi came swiftly in a borrowed canoe, paddled
by four men whom he had engaged at an Isisi
village, on a promise of payment which it was
very unlikely he would ever be able to fulfil.

"Master," said Arachi solemnly, "I come desiring
to serve your lordship, for I am too great a man
for my village, and, if no chief, behold, I have a
chief's thoughts."

"And a chief's hut," said Sanders dryly, "if
all they tell me is true."

Arachi winced.

"Lord," he said humbly, "all things are known
to you, and your eye goes forth like a chameleon's
tongue to see round the corners."

Sanders passed over the unpleasant picture
Arachi suggested.

"Arachi," he said, "it happens that you have
come at a moment when you can serve me, for
there is in my camp a strange man from a far-away
land, who knows not this country, yet desires to
cross it.  Now, since you know the Angola tongue,
you shall take him in your canoe to the edge of
the Frenchi land, and there you shall put him on
his way.  And for this I will pay your paddlers.
And as for you, I will remember you in the day of
your need."

It was not as Arachi could have wished, but it
was something.  The next day he departed importantly.

Before he left, Sanders gave him a word of advice.

"Go you, Arachi," he said, "by the Little Kusu River."

"Lord," said Arachi, "there is a shorter way by
the creek of Still Waters.  This goes to the Frenchi
land, and is deep enough for our purpose."

"It is a short way and a long way," said Sanders
grimly.  "For there sits a certain Abdul Hazim
who is a great buyer of men, and, because the
Angola folk are wonderful gardeners, behold, the
Arab is anxious to come by them.  Go in peace."

"On my head," said Arachi, and took his leave.

It was rank bad luck that he should meet on his
way two of his principal creditors.  These, having
some grievance in the matter of foodstuffs,
advanced, desiring to do him an injury, but, on his
earnest entreaties, postponed the performance of
their solemn vows.

"It seems," said one of them, "that you are
now Sandi's man, for though I do not believe
anything you have told me, yet these paddlers do
not lie."

"Nor this silent one," said Arachi, pointing to
his charge proudly.  "And because I alone in
all the land can make palaver with him, Sandi has
sent me on a mission to certain kings.  These
will give me presents, and on my return I will pay
you what I owe, and much more for love."

They let him pass.

It may be said that Arachi, who lent "to none
and believed no man," had no faith whatever in
his lord's story.  Who the silent Angola was,
what was his mission, and why he had been chosen
to guard the stranger, Arachi did not guess.

He would have found an easy way to understanding
if he had believed all that Sanders had told him,
but that was not Arachi's way.

On a night when the canoe was beached on
an island, and the paddlers prepared the noble
Arachi's food, the borrower questioned his charge.

"How does it happen, foreigner," he asked,
"that my friend and neighbour, Sandi, asks me
of my kindness to guide you to the French land?"

"Patron," said the Angola man, "I am a
stranger, and desire to escape from slavery.  Also,
there is a small Angola-Balulu tribe, which are of
my people and faith, who dwell by the Frenchi
tribe."

"What is your faith?" asked Arachi.

"I believe in devils and ju-jus," said the Angola
man simply, "especially one called Billimi, who
has ten eyes and spits at snakes.  Also, I hate
the Arabi, that being part of my faith."

This gave Arachi food for thought, and some
reason for astonishment that Sandi should have
spoken the truth to him.

"What of this Abdul Arabi?" he asked.  "Now
I think that Sandi lied to me when he said such
an one buys men, for, if this be so, why does he
not raid the Isisi?"

But the Angola man shook his head.

"These are matters too high for my understanding,"
he said.  "Yet I know that he takes
the Angola because they are great gardeners, and
cunning in the pruning of trees."

Again Arachi had reason for thinking profoundly.

This Abdul, as he saw, must come to the Upper
River for the people of the Lesser Akasava, who
were also great gardeners.  He would take no
Isisi, because they were notoriously lazy, and
moreover, died with exasperating readiness when
transplanted to a foreign soil.

He continued his journey till he came to the
place where he would have turned off had he taken
a short cut to the French territory.

Here he left his paddlers and his guest, and made
his way up the creek of Still Waters.

Half-a-day's paddling brought him to the camp
of Abdul.  The slaver's silent runners on the bank
had kept pace with him, and when Arachi landed
he was seized by men who sprang apparently from
nowhere.

"Lead me to your master, O common men,"
said Arachi, "for I am a chief of the Isisi, and
desire a secret palaver."

"If you are Isisi, and by your thinness and your
boasting I see that you are," said his captor, "my
lord Abdul will make easy work of you."

Abdul Hazim was short and stout, and a lover
of happiness.  Therefore he kept his camp in
that condition of readiness which enabled him to
leave quickly at the first sight of a white helmet
or a Houssa's tarboosh.

For it would have brought no happiness to Abdul
had Sanders come upon him.

Now, seated on a soft-hued carpet of silk before
the door of his little tent, he eyed Arachi dubiously,
and listened in silence while the man spoke of
himself.

"Kaffir," he said, when the borrower had
finished, "how do I know that you do not lie, or
that you are not one of Sandi's spies?  I think I
should be very clever if I cut your throat."

Arachi explained at length why Abdul Hazim
should not cut his throat.

"If you say this Angola man is near by, why
should I not take him without payment?" asked
the slaver.

"Because," said Arachi, "this foreigner is not
the only man in the country, and because I have
great influence with Sandi, and am beloved by
all manner of people who trust me.  I may bring
many other men to your lordship."

Arachi returned to the camp, towing a small
canoe with which the slaver had provided him.

He woke the Angola stranger from his sleep.

"Brother," he said, "here is a canoe with food.
Now I tell you to paddle one day up this creek
of Still Waters and there await my coming, for
there are evil men about, and I fear for your
safety."

The Angolan, simple man that he was, obeyed.
Half a day's journey up the creek Abdul's men
were waiting.

Arachi set off for his own village that night,
and in his canoe was such a store of cloth, of salt,
and of brass rods as would delight any man's heart.
Arachi came to his village singing a little song about
himself.

In a year he had grown rich, for there were many
ways of supplying the needs of an Arab slaver,
and Abdul paid promptly.

Arachi worked single-handed, or, if he engaged
paddlers, found them in obscure corners of the
territories.  He brought to Abdul many
marketable properties, mostly young N'gombi women,
who are fearful and easily cowed, and Sanders,
scouring the country for the stout man with the
fez, found him not.

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"Lord Abdul," said Arachi, who met the slaver
secretly one night near the Ikusi River, "Sandi
and his soldiers have gone down to the Akasava
for a killing palaver.  Now I think we will do what
you wish."

They were discussing an aspect of an adventure—the
grandest adventure which Abdul had ever
planned.

"Arachi," said Abdul, "I have made you a rich
man.  Now, I tell you that I can make you richer
than any chief in this land."

"I shall be glad to hear of this," said Arachi.
"For though I am rich, yet I have borrowed many
things, and, it seems, I have so wonderful a mind
that I must live always in to-morrow."

"So I have heard," said the Arab.  "For they
say of you that if you had the whole world you
would borrow the moon."

"That is my mystery," said Arachi modestly.
"For this reason I am a very notable man."

Then he sat down to listen in patience to the
great plan of Abdul Hazim.  And it was a very
high plan, for there were two thousand Liberian
dollars at the back of it, and, for Arachi, payment
in kind.

At the moment of the conference, Sanders was
housed in the Ochori city making palaver with
Bosambo, the chief.

"Bosambo," said Sanders, "I have given you
these upper streams to your care.  Yet Abdul
Hazim walks through the land without hurt, and
I think it is shame to you and to me."

"Master," said Bosambo, "it is a shameful
thing.  Yet the streams hereabouts are so many,
and Abdul is a cunning man, and has spies.  Also,
my people are afraid to offend him lest he 'chop'
them, or sell them into the interior."

Sanders nodded and rose to join the *Zaire*.

"Bosambo," he said, "this government put a
price upon this Abdul, even as a certain government
put a price upon you."

"What is his price, lord?" asked Bosambo,
with an awakening of interest.

"One hundred pounds in silver," said Sanders.

"Lord," said Bosambo, "that is a good price."

Two days afterwards, when Arachi came to
Bosambo, this chief was engaged in the purely
domestic occupation of nursing his one small son.

"Greeting, Bosambo," said Arachi, "to you
and to your beautiful son, who is noble in
appearance and very quiet."

"Peace be to you, Arachi.  I have nothing to
lend you," said Bosambo.

"Lord," said Arachi loftily, "I am now a rich
man—richer than chiefs—and I do not borrow."

"Ko, ko!" said Bosambo, with polite incredulity.

"Bosambo," Arachi went on, "I came to you
because I love you, and you are not a talking man,
but rather a wise and silent one."

"All this I know, Arachi," said Bosambo
cautiously.  "And again I say to you that I lend
no man anything."

The exasperated Arachi raised his patient eyes
to heaven.

"Lord Bosambo," he said, in the tone of one hurt,
"I came to tell you of that which I have found,
and to ask your lordship to help me secure it.
For in a certain place I have come across a great
stock of ivory, such as the old kings buried against
their need."

"Arachi," said Bosambo, of a sudden, "you
tell me that you are rich.  Now you are a little
man and I am a chief, yet I am not rich."

"I have many friends," said Arachi, trembling
with pride, "and they give me rods and salt."

"That is nothing," said Bosambo.  "Now I
understand richness, for I have lived amongst
white folk who laugh at rods and throw salt to dogs."

"Lord Bosambo," said the other eagerly, "I
am rich also by white men's rule.  Behold!"

From his waist pouch he took a handful of silver,
and offered it in both hands for the chief's inspection.

Bosambo examined the money respectfully,
turning each coin over gingerly.

"That is good riches," he said, and he breathed a
little faster than was his wont.  "And it is new,
being bright.  Also the devil marks, which you do
not understand, are as they should be."

The gratified Arachi shoved his money back into
his pouch.  Bosambo sat in meditative silence,
his face impassive.

"And you will take me, Arachi, to the place of
buried treasure?" he asked slowly.  "Ko! you
are a generous man, for I do not know why you
should share with me, knowing that I once beat you."

Bosambo put the child down gently.  These
kings' stores were traditional.  Many had been
found, and it was the dream of every properly
constituted man to unearth such.

Yet Bosambo was not impressed, being in his
heart sceptical.

"Arachi," he said, "I believe that you are a
liar!  Yet I would see this store, and, if it be near
by, will see with my own eyes."

It was one day's journey, according to Arachi.

"You shall tell me where this place is," said
Bosambo.

Arachi hesitated.

"Lord, how do I not know that you will not go
and take this store?" he asked.

Bosambo regarded him sternly.

"Am I not an honest man?" he asked.  "Do
not the people from one end of the world to the
other swear by the name of Bosambo?"

"No," said Arachi truthfully.

Yet he told of the place.  It was by the River of
Shadows, near the Crocodile Pool Where-the-Floods
Had-Changed-The-Land.

Bosambo went to his hut to make preparations
for the journey.

Behind his house, in a big grass cage, were many
little pigeons.  He laboriously wrote in his vile
Arabic a laconic message, and attached it to the
leg of a pigeon.

To make absolutely sure, for Bosambo left
nothing to chance, he sent away a canoe secretly
that night for a certain destination.

"And this you shall say to Sandi," said the chief
to his trusted messenger, "that Arachi is rich
with the richness of silver, and that silver has the
devil marks of Zanzibar—being the home of all
traders, as your lordship knows."

Next day, at dawn, Bosambo and his guide
departed.  They paddled throughout the day, taking
the smaller stream that drained the eastern side of
the river, and at night they camped at a place
called Bolulu, which means "the changed land."

They rose with the daylight to resume their
journey.  But it was unnecessary, for, in the
darkness before the dawn, Abdul Hazim had
surrounded the camp, and, at the persuasive muzzle
of a Snider rifle, Bosambo accompanied his captors
ten minutes' journey into the wood where Abdul
awaited him.

The slaver, sitting before the door of his tent on
his silken carpet, greeted his captive in the Ochori
dialect.  Bosambo replied in Arabic.

"Ho, Bosambo!" said Abdul.  "Do you know me?"

"Sheikh," said Bosambo, "I would know you
in hell, for you are the man whose head my master
desires."

"Bosambo," said Abdul calmly, "your head is
more valuable, so they say, for the Liberians will
put it upon a pole, and pay me riches for my enterprise."

Bosambo laughed softly.  "Let the palaver
finish," he said, "I am ready to go."

They brought him to the river again, tied him to
a pole, and laid him in the bottom of a canoe,
Arachi guarding him.

Bosambo, looking up, saw the borrower squatting
on guard.

"Arachi," he said, "if you untie my hands,
it shall go easy with you."

"If I untie your hands," said Arachi frankly,
"I am both a fool and a dead man, and neither of
these conditions is desirable."

"To every man," quoth Bosambo, "there is
an easy kill somewhere,[#] and, if he misses this,
all kills are difficult."


[#] The native equivalent for "opportunity knocks," etc.


Four big canoes composed the waterway caravan.
Abdul was in the largest with his soldiers, and
led the van.

They moved quickly down the tiny stream,
which broadened as it neared the river.

Then Abdul's headman suddenly gasped.

"Look!" he whispered.

The slaver turned his head.

Behind them, paddling leisurely, came four
canoes, and each was filled with armed men.

"Quickly," said Abdul, and the paddlers stroked
furiously, then stopped.

Ahead was the *Zaire*, a trim, white steamer,
alive with Houssas.

"It is God's will," said Abdul.  "These things
are ordained."

He said no more until he stood before Sanders,
and the Commissioner was not especially communicative.

"What will you do with me?" asked Abdul.

"I will tell you when I have seen your stores,"
said Sanders.  "If I find rifles such as the foolish
Lobolo people buy, I shall hang you according to law."

The Arab looked at the shaking Arachi.  The
borrower's knees wobbled fearfully.

"I see," said Abdul thoughtfully, "that this
man whom I made rich has betrayed me."

If he had hurried or moved jerkily Sanders would
have prevented the act; but the Arab searched
calmly in the fold of his *bournous* as though seeking
a cigarette.

His hand came out, and with it a curved knife.

Then he struck quickly, and Arachi went
blubbering to the deck, a dying man.

"Borrower," said the Arab, and he spoke from
the centre of six Houssas who were chaining him,
so that he was hidden from the sobbing figure on
the floor, "I think you have borrowed that which
you can at last repay.  For it is written in the
Sura of the Djinn that from him who takes a life,
let his life be taken, that he may make full repayment."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TAX RESISTERS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE TAX RESISTERS

.. vspace:: 2

Sanders took nothing for granted when
he accounted for native peoples.  These
tribes of his possessed an infinite capacity for
unexpectedness—therein lay at once their danger
and their charm.  For one could neither despair
at their sin nor grow too confidently elated at their
virtue, knowing that the sun which went down on
the naughtiness of the one and the dovelike
placidity of the other, might rise on the smouldering
sacrificial fires in the streets of the blessed village,
and reveal the folk of the incorrigible sitting at
the doors of their huts, dust on head, hands
outspread in an agony of penitence.

Yet it seemed that the people of Kiko were
models of deportment, thrift, and intelligence,
and that the gods had given them beautiful natures.
Kiko, a district of the Lower Isisi, is separated
from all other tribes and people by the Kiko on
the one side, the Isisi River on the other, and on
the third by clumps of forest land set at irregular
intervals in the Great Marsh.

Kiko proper stretches from the marsh to the tongue
of land at the confluence of the Kiko and Isisi,
in the shape of an irregular triangle.

To the eastward, across the Kiko River, are the
unruly N'gombi tribes; to the westward, on the
farther bank of the big river, are the Akasava;
and the Kiko people enjoy an immunity from
sudden attack, which is due in part to its geographical
position, and in part to the remorseless activities
of Mr. Commissioner Sanders.

Once upon a time a king of the N'gombi called
his headmen and chiefs together to a great palaver.

"It seems to me," he said, "that we are children.
For our crops have failed because of the floods,
and the thieving Ochori have driven the game into
their own country.  Now, across the river are
the Kiko people, and they have reaped an oat
harvest; also, there is game in plenty.  Must
we sit and starve whilst the Kiko swell with food?"

A fair question, though the facts were not exactly
stated, for the N'gombi were lazy, and had sown
late; also the game was in their forest for the
searching, but, as the saying is, "The N'gombi
hunts from his bed and seeks only cooked meats."

One night the N'gombi stole across the river
and fell upon Kiko city, establishing themselves
masters of the country.

There was a great palaver, which was attended
by the chief and headman of the Kiko.

"Henceforward," said the N'gombi king—Tigilini
was his name—"you are as slaves to my people,
and if you are gentle and good and work in the
fields you shall have one-half of all you produce,
for I am a just man, and very merciful.  But if
you rebel, I will take you for my sport."

Lest any misunderstanding should exist, he took
the first malcontent, who was a petty chief of a
border village, and performed his programme.

This man had refused tribute, and was led,
with roped hands, before the king, all headmen
having been summoned to witness the happening.

The rebel was bound with his hands behind him,
and was ordered to kneel.  A young sapling was
bent over, and one end of a native rope was fixed
to its topmost branches, and the other about his
neck.  The tree was slowly released till the head
of the offender was held taut.

"Now!" said the king, and his executioner
struck off the head, which was flung fifty yards
by the released sapling.

It fell at the feet of Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
who, with twenty-five Houssas and a machine
gun, had just landed from the *Zaire*.

Sanders was annoyed; he had travelled three
days and four nights with little sleep, and he had
a touch of fever, which made him irritable.

He walked into the village and interrupted an
eloquent address on the obligations of the
conquered, which the N'gombi thief thought it
opportune to deliver.

He stopped half-way through his speech, and lost
a great deal of interest in the proceedings as the
crowd divided to allow of Sanders's approach.

"Lord," said Tigilini, that quick and subtle
man, "you have come at a proper time, for these
people were in rebellion against your lordship,
and I have subdued them.  Therefore, master,
give me rewards as you gave to Bosambo of the
Ochori."

Sanders gave nothing save a brief order, and his
Houssas formed a half circle about the hut of the
king—Tigilini watching the manoeuvre with some
apprehension.

"If," he said graciously.  "I have done anything
which your lordship thinks I should not have
done, or taken that which I should not have taken,
I will undo and restore."

Sanders, hands on hips, regarded him dispassionately.

"There is a body."  He pointed to the stained
and huddled thing on the ground.  "There, by
the path, is a head.  Now, you shall put the head
to that body and restore life."

"That I cannot do," said the king nervously,
"for I am no ju-ju."

Sanders spoke two words in Arabic, and Tigilini
was seized.

They carried the king away, and no man ever
saw his face again, and it is a legend that Tigilini,
the king, is everlastingly chained to the hind leg
of M'shimba M'shamba, the green devil of the
Akasava.  If the truth be told, Tigilini went
no nearer to perdition than the convict prison
at Sierra Leone, but the legend is not without
its value as a deterrent to ambitious chiefs.

Sanders superintended the evacuation of the
Kiko, watched the crestfallen N'gombi retire to
their own lands, and set up a new king without
fuss or ceremony.  And the smooth life of the
Kiko people ran pleasantly as before.

They tilled the ground and bred goats and caught
fish.  From the marsh forest, which was their
backland, they gathered rubber and copal, and
this they carried by canoe to the mouth of the
river and sold.

So they came to be rich, and even the common
people could afford three wives.

Sanders was very wise in the psychology of
native wealth.  He knew that people who grew
rich in corn were dangerous, because corn is an
irresponsible form of property, and had no
ramifications to hold in check the warlike spirit of
its possessors.

He knew, too, that wealth in goats, in cloth, in
brass rods, and in land was a factor for peace,
because possessions which cannot be eaten are
ever a steadying influence in communal life.

Sanders was a wise man.  He was governed by
certain hard and fast rules, and though he was
well aware that failure in any respect to grapple
with a situation would bring him a reprimand,
either because he had not acted according to the
strict letter of the law, or because he "had not used
his discretion" in going outside that same
inflexible code, he took responsibility without fear.

It was left to his discretion as to what part of
the burden of taxation individual tribes should
bear, and on behalf of his government he took
his full share of the Kiko surplus, adjusting his
demands according to the measure of the tribe's
prosperity.

Three years after the enterprising incursion of
the N'gombi, he came to the Kiko country on
his half-yearly visit.

In the palaver house of the city he listened to
complaints, as was his custom.

He sat from dawn till eight o'clock in the morning,
and after the tenth complaint he turned to the
chief of the Kiko, who sat at his side.

"Chief," he said, with that air of bland
innocence which would have made men used to his
ways shake in their tracks, "I observe that all men
say one thing to me—that they are poor.  Now
this is not the truth."

"I am in your hands," said the chief diplomatically;
"also my people, and they will pay taxation
though they starve."

Sanders saw things in a new light.

"It seems," he said, addressing the serried
ranks of people who squatted about, "that there
is discontent in your stomachs because I ask you
for your taxes.  We will have a palaver on this."

He sat down, and a grey old headman, a notorious
litigant and a league-long speaker, rose up.

"Lord," he said dramatically, "justice!"

"Kwai!" cried the people in chorus.

The murmur, deep-chested and unanimous, made
a low, rumbling sound like the roll of a drum.

"Justice!" said the headman.  "For you, Sandi,
are very cruel and harsh.  You take and take
and give us nothing, and the people cry out in
pain."

He paused, and Sanders nodded.

"Go on," he said.

"Corn and fish, gum and rubber, we give you,"
said the spokesman; "and when we ask whither
goes this money, you point to the puc-a-puc[#]
and your soldiers, and behold we are mocked.
For your puc-a-puc comes only to take our taxes,
and your soldiers to force us to pay."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] Steamer.

.. vspace:: 2

Again the applauding murmur rolled.

"So we have had a palaver," said the headman,
"and this we have said among ourselves: 'Let
Sandi remit one-half our taxes; these we will
bring in our canoes to the Village-by-the-Big-Water,
for we are honest men, and let Sandi keep his soldiers
and his puc-a-puc for the folk of the Isisi and the
Akasava and the N'gombi, for these are turbulent
and wicked people.'"

"Kwai!"

It was evidently a popular movement, and
Sanders smiled behind his hand.

"As for us," said the headman, "we are peaceable
folk, and live comfortably with all nations,
and if any demand of us that we shall pay tribute,
behold it will be better to give freely than to pay
these taxes."

Sanders listened in silence, then he turned to
the chief.

"It shall be as you wish," he said, "and I will remit
one half of your taxation—the palaver is finished."

He went on board the *Zaire* that night and lay
awake listening to the castanets of the dancing
women—the Kiko made merry to celebrate the
triumph of their diplomacy.

Sanders left next day for the Isisi, having no
doubt in his mind that the news of his concession
had preceded him.  So it proved, for at Lukalili
no sooner had he taken his place in the speech-house
than the chief opened the proceedings.

"Lord Sandi," he began, "we are poor men,
and our people cry out against taxation.  Now,
lord, we have thought largely on this matter, and
this say the people: 'If your lordship would
remit one-half our taxes we should be happy, for
this puc-a-puc'——"

Sanders waved him down.

"Chiefs and people," he said, "I am patient,
because I love you.  But talk to me more about
taxation and about puc-a-pucs, and I will find a
new chief for me, and you will wish that you had
never been born."

After that Sanders had no further trouble.

He came to the Ochori, and found Bosambo,
wholly engrossed with his new baby, but ripe for
action.

"Bosambo," said the Commissioner, after he
had gingerly held the new-comer and bestowed
his natal present, "I have a story to tell you."

He told his story, and Bosambo found it vastly
entertaining.

Five days later, when Sanders was on his way
home, Bosambo with ten picked men for paddlers,
came sweeping up the river, and beached at Kiko
city.

He was greeted effusively; a feast was prepared
for him, the chief's best hut was swept clean.

"Lord Bosambo," said the Kiko chief, when the
meal was finished, "I shall have a sore heart this
night when you are gone."

"I am a kind man," said Bosambo, "so I will
not go to-night, for the thought of your sorrow
would keep sleep from my eyes."

"Lord," said the chief hastily, "I am not used
to sorrow, and, moreover, I shall sleep heavily,
and it would be shameful if I kept you from your
people, who sigh like hungry men for your return."

"That is true," said Bosambo, "yet I will stay
this night, because my heart is full of pleasant
thoughts for you."

"If you left to-night," said the embarrassed
chief, "I would give you a present of two goats."

"Goats," said Bosambo, "I do not eat, being
of a certain religious faith——"

"Salt I will give you also," said the chief.

"I stay to-night," said Bosambo emphatically;
"to-morrow I will consider the matter."

The next morning Bosambo went to bathe in
the river, and returned to see the chief of the Kiko
squatting before the door of his hut, vastly glum.

"Ho, Cetomati!" greeted Bosambo, "I have
news which will gladden your heart."

A gleam of hope shone in the chief's eye.

"Does my brother go so soon?" he asked pointedly.

"Chief," said Bosambo acidly, "if that be
good news to you, I go.  And woe to you and
your people, for I am a proud man, and my people
are also proud.  Likewise, they are notoriously
vengeful."

The Kiko king rose in agitation.

"Lord," he said humbly, "my words are twisted,
for, behold, all this night I have spent mourning
in fear of losing your lordship.  Now, tell me your
good news that I may rejoice with you."

But Bosambo was frowning terribly, and was
not appeased for some time.

"This is my news, O king!" he said.  "Whilst
I bathed I beheld, far away, certain Ochori canoes,
and I think they bring my councillors.  If this
be so, I may stay with you for a long time—rejoice!"

The Kiko chief groaned.

He groaned more when the canoes arrived
bringing reinforcements to Bosambo—ten lusty
fighting men, terribly tall and muscular.

He groaned undisguisedly when the morrow
brought another ten, and the evening some twenty
more.

There are sayings on the river which are
uncomplimentary to the appetites of the Ochori.

Thus: "Men eat to live fat, but the Ochori
live to eat."  And: "One field of corn will feed
a village for a year, ten goats for a month, and an
Ochori for a day."

Certainly Bosambo's followers were excellent
trenchermen.  They ate and they ate and they
ate; from dawn till star time they alternated
between the preparation of meals and their disposal.
The simple folk of the Kiko stood in a wondering
circle about them and watched in amazement as
their good food vanished.

"I see we shall starve when the rains come,"
said the chief in despair.

He sent an urgent canoe to Sanders, but Sanders
was without sympathy.

"Go to your master," he said to the envoy,
"telling him that all these things are his palaver.
If he does not desire the guests of his house, let
him turn them away, for the land is his, and he
is chief."

Cold comfort for Cetomati this, for the Ochori
sat in the best huts, eating the best foods, finding
the best places at the dance-fires.

The king called a secret palaver of his headmen.

"These miserable Ochori thieves ruin us," he
said.  "Are we men or dogs?  Now, I tell you,
my people and councillors, that to-morrow I send
Bosambo and his robbers away, though I die for it!"

"Kwai!" said the councillors in unison.

"Lord," said one, "in the times of *cala-cala*
the Kiko folk were very fierce and bloody;
perchance if we rouse the people with our eloquence
they are still fierce and bloody."

The king looked dubious.

"I do not think," he said, "that the Kiko people
are as fierce and bloody as at one time, for we
have had many fat years.  What I know, O friend,
is that the Ochori are very fierce indeed, and
Bosambo has killed many men."

He screwed up his courage through the night,
and in the morning put it to the test.

Bosambo, in his most lordly way, had ordered
a big hunting, and he and his men were assembling
in the village street when the king and his councillors
approached.

"Lord," said the king mildly, "I have that within
me which I must tell."

"Say on," said Bosambo.

"Now, I love you, Bosambo," said the chief,
"and the thought that I must speed you on your
way—with presents—is very sad to me."

"More sad to me," said Bosambo ominously.

"Yet lord," said the desperate chief, "I must,
for my people are very fierce with me that I keep
you so long within our borders.  Likewise, there
is much sickness, and I fear lest you and your
beautiful men also become sick, and die."

"Only one man in all the world, chief," said
Bosambo, speaking with deliberation, "has ever
put such shame upon me—and, king, that man—where
is he?"

The king of the Kiko did not say, because he did not
know.  He could guess—oh, very well he could guess!—and
Bosambo's next words justified his guesswork.

"He is dead," said Bosambo solemnly.  "I
will not say how he died, lest you think I am a
boastful one, or whose hand struck him down, for
fear you think vainly—nor as to the manner of
his dying, for that would give you sorrow!"

"Bosambo," said the agitated chief of the Kiko,
"these are evil words——"

"I say no evil words," said Bosambo, "for
I am, as you know, the brother-in-law of Sandi,
and it would give him great grief.  I say nothing,
O little king!"

With a lofty wave of his hand he strode away,
and, gathering his men together, he marched them
to the beach.

It was in vain that the chief of the Kiko had
stored food in enormous quantities and presents
in each canoe, that bags of salt were evenly
distributed amongst the paddlers.

Bosambo, it is true, did not throw them back
upon the shore, but he openly and visibly scorned
them.  The king, standing first on one foot and
then on the other, in his anxiety and embarrassment,
strove to give the parting something of a genial
character, but Bosambo was silent, forbidding, and
immensely gloomy.

"Lord," said the chief, "when shall my heart
again be gladdened at the sight of your pretty face?"

"Who knows?" said Bosambo mysteriously.
"Who can tell when I come, or my friends!  For
many men love me—Isisi, N'gombi, Akasava,
Bongindi, and the Bush people."

He stepped daintily into his canoe.

"I tell you," he said, wagging a solemn forefinger,
"that whatever comes to you, it is no palaver
of mine; whoever steals quietly upon you in the
night, it will not be Bosambo—I call all men to
witness this saying."

And with this he went.

There was a palaver that night, where all men
spoke at once, and the Kiko king did not more
than bite his nails nervously.  It was certain that
attack would come.

"Let us meet them boldly," said the one who
had beforetime rendered such advice.  "For in
times of *cala-cala* the Kiko folk were fierce and
bloody people."

Whatever they might have been once, there
was no spirit of adventure abroad then, and many
voices united to call the genius who had suggested
defiance a fool and worse.

All night long the Kiko stood a nation in arms.

Once the hooting of a bird sent them scampering
to their huts with howls of fear; once a wandering
buffalo came upon a quaking picket and scattered
it.  Night after night the fearful Kiko kept guard,
sleeping as they could by day.

They saw no enemy; the suspense was worse
than the vision of armed warriors.  A messenger
went to Sanders about the fears and apprehensions
of the people, but Sanders was callous.

"If any people attack you, I will come with my
soldiers, and for every man of you who dies, I
will kill one of your enemies."

"Lord," said the messenger, none other than
the king's son, "if we are dead, we care little who
lives or dies.  Now, I ask you, master, to send your
soldiers with me, for our people are tired and timid."

"Be content," said Sanders, "that I have
remitted your taxation—the palaver is finished."

The messenger returned to his dismal nation—Sanders
at the time was never more than a day's
journey from the Kiko—and a sick and weary
people sat down in despair to await the realisation
of their fears.

They might have waited throughout all eternity,
for Bosambo was back in his own city, and had
almost forgotten them, and Isisi and the Akasava,
regarding them for some reason as Sanders' *urglebes*,
would have no more thought of attacking them
than they would have considered the possibility
of attacking Sanders; and as for the N'gombi,
they had had their lesson.

Thus matters stood when the Lulungo people,
who live three days beyond the Akasava, came
down the river looking for loot and trouble.

The Lulungo people are an unlovable race;
"a crabbed, bitter, and a beastly people," Sanders
once described them in his wrath.

For two years the Lulungo folk had lain quiet,
then, like foraging and hungry dogs, they took the
river trail—six canoes daubed with mud and rushes.

They found hospitality of a kind in the fishing
villages, for the peaceable souls who lived therein
fled at the first news of the visitation.

They came past the Ochori warily keeping to
midstream.  Time was when the Ochori would
have supplied them with all their requirements,
but nowadays these men of Bosambo's snapped
viciously.

"None the less," said Gomora, titular chief
of the Lulungo, to his headmen, "since we be so
strong the Ochori will not oppose us—let two canoes
paddle to land."

The long boats were detached from the fleet
and headed for the beach.  A shower of arrows
fell short of them, and they turned back.

The Isisi country they passed, the Akasava they
gave the widest of berths to, for the Lulungo folk are
rather cruel than brave, better assassins than fighting
men, more willing to kill coldly than in hot blood.
They went lurching down the river, seizing such
loot as the unprotected villages gave them.

It was a profitless expedition.

"Now we will go to Kiko," said Gomora; "for
these people are very rich, and, moreover, they
are fearful.  Speak to my people, and say that
there shall be no killing, for that devil Sandi hates
us, and he will incite the tribes against us, as he
did in the days of my father."

They waited till night had fallen, and then,
under the shadow of the river bank, they moved
silently upon their prey.

"We will frighten them," confided Gomora;
"and they will give us what we ask; then we
will make them swear by Iwa that they will not
speak to Sandi—it will be simple."

The Lulungo knew the Kiko folk too well, and
they landed at a convenient place, making their
way through the strip of forest without the display
of caution which such a manoeuvre would have
necessitated had it been employed against a more
warlike nation.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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Sanders, hurrying down stream, his guns swung
out and shotted for action, his armed Houssas
sitting in the bow of the steamer, met two canoes,
unmistakably Lulungo.

He circled and captured them.  In one was
Gomora, a little weak from loss of blood, but more
bewildered.

"Lord," he said bitterly, "all this world is
changed since you have come; once the Ochori
were meat for me and my people, being very
timorous.  Then by certain magic they became
fierce fighters.  And now, lord, the Kiko folk,
who, up and down the river, are known for their
gentleness, have become like devils."

Sanders waited, and the chief went on:

"Last night we came to the Kiko, desiring to
rest with them, and in the dark of the forest they
fell upon us, with great screaming; and, behold! of
ten canoes these men are all I have left, for the
Kiko were waiting for our coming."

He looked earnestly at Sanders.

"Tell me, lord," he said, "what magic do white
men use to make warriors from cowards?"

"That is not for your knowing," said Sanders
diplomatically; "yet you should put this amongst
the sayings of your people, 'Every rat fights in
his hole, and fear is more fierce than hate.'"

He went on to Kiko city, arriving in time to
check an expedition, for the Kiko, filled with
arrogance at their own powers, were assembling
an army to attack the Ochori.

"Often have I told," said the chief, trembling
with pride, "that the Kiko were terrible and
bloody—now, lord, behold!  In the night we
slew our oppressors, for the spirit of our fathers
returned to us, and our enemies could not check us."

"Excellent!" said Sanders in the vernacular.
"Now I see an end to all taxation palaver, for,
truly, you do not desire my soldiers nor the
puc-a-puc.  Yet, lest the Lulungo folk return—for they
are as many as the sands of the river—I will send
fighting men to help you."

"Lord you are as our father and mother," said
the gratified chief.

"Therefore I will prevail upon Bosambo, whose
heart is now sore against you, to come with his
fighting tribes to sit awhile at your city."

The chief's face worked convulsively: he was
as one swallowing a noxious draught.

"Lord," he said, speaking under stress of emotion,
"we are a poor people, yet we may pay your lordship
full taxes, for in the end I think it would be
cheaper than Bosambo and his hungry devils."

"So I think!" said Sanders.





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.. _`THE RISE OF THE EMPEROR`:

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   CHAPTER III


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   THE RISE OF THE EMPEROR

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Tobolaka, the king of the Isisi, was
appointed for his virtues, being a Christian
and a Bachelor of Arts.

For a time he ruled his country wisely and might
have died full of honour, but his enthusiasm got
the better of him.

For Tobolaka had been taken to America when
a boy by an enthusiastic Baptist, had been educated
at a college and had lectured in America and
England.  He wrote passable Latin verse, so I
am told; was a fluent exponent of the Free Silver
Policy of Mr. Bryan, and wore patent leather shoes
with broad silk laces.

In London he attracted the attention of a callow
Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, and
this Under-Secretary was a nephew of the Prime
Minister, cousin of the Minister of War, and
son-in-law of the Lord Chancellor, so he had a pull
which most Under-Secretaries do not ordinarily
possess.

"Mr. Tobolaka," said the Under-Secretary,
"what are your plans?"

Mr. Tobolaka was a little restrained.

"I feel, Mr. Cardow," he said, "that my duties
lie in my land—no, I do not mean that I have any
call to missionary work, but rather to administration.
I am, as you know of the Isisi people—we
are a pure Bantu stock, as far as legend supports
that contention—and I have often thought,
remembering that the Isisi are the dominant race, that
there are exceptional opportunities for an agglomeration
of interests; in fact——"

"A splendid idea—a great idea!" said the
enthusiastic Under-Secretary.

Now it happened that this young Mr. Cardow
had sought for years for some scheme which he
might further to his advantage.  He greatly desired,
after the fashion of all budding Parliamentarians,
to be associated with a movement which would
bring kudos and advertisement in its train, and
which would earn for him the approval or the
condemnation of the Press, according to the shade
of particular opinion which the particular newspapers
represented.

So in the silence of his room in Whitehall Court,
he evolved a grand plan which he submitted to
his chief.  That great man promised to read it
on a given day, and was dismayed when he found
himself confronted with forty folios of typewritten
matter at the very moment when he was hurrying
to catch the 10.35 to the Cotswold Golf Links.

"I will read it in the train," he said.

He crammed the manuscript into his bag and
forgot all about it; on his return to town he
discovered that by some mischance he had left the
great scheme behind.

Nevertheless, being a politician and resourceful,
he wrote to his subordinate.

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAR CARDOW,—I have read your valuable
document with more than ordinary interest.
I think it is an excellent idea,"—he knew it was
an idea because Cardow had told him so—"but
I see many difficulties.  Mail me another copy.
I should like to send it to a friend of mine who
would give me an expert opinion."

.. vspace:: 2

It was a wily letter, but indiscreet, for on the
strength of that letter the Under-Secretary enlisted
the sympathies and practical help of his chief's
colleagues.

"Here we have a native and an educated native,"
he said impressively, "who is patriotic, intelligent,
resourceful.  It is a unique opportunity—a splendid
opportunity.  Let him go back to his country
and get the threads together."

The conversation occurred in the Prime Minister's
room, and there were present three Ministers of
the Crown, including a Home Secretary, who was
frankly bored, because he had a scheme of his
own, and would much rather have discussed his
Artisans' Tenement (19—) Bill.

"Isn't there a Commissioner Sanders in that
part of the world?" he asked languidly.  "I
seem to remember some such name.  And isn't
there likely to be trouble with the minor chiefs
if you set up a sort of Central African Emperor?"

"That can be overcome," said the sanguine
Cardow.  "As for Sanders, I expect him to help.
A dynasty established on the Isisi River might
end all the troubles we have had there."

"It might end other things," said the impatient
Home Secretary.  "Now about this Tenement
Bill.  I think we ought to accept Cronk's
amendment—er——"

A few weeks later Mr. Tobolaka was summoned
to Whitehall Court.

"I think, Mr. Tobolaka," said Cardow complacently,
"I have arranged for a trial of our
plan.  The Government has agreed—after a tough
fight with the permanent officials, I admit—to
establish you on the Isisi as King and Overlord
of the Isisi, Ochori, N'gombi, and Akasava.  They
will vote you a yearly allowance, and will build
a house in Isisi city for you.  You will find
Mr. Sanders—er—difficult, but you must have a great
deal of patience."

"Sir," said Mr. Tobolaka, speaking under stress
of profound emotion, "I'm e-eternally obliged.
You've been real good to me, and I guess I'll make
good."

Between the date of Tobolaka's sailing and his
arrival Sanders ordered a palaver of all chiefs,
and they came to meet him in the city of the
Isisi.

"Chiefs and headmen," said Sanders, "you
know that many moons ago the Isisi people rose
in an evil moment and made sacrifice contrary
to the law.  So I came with my soldiers and took
away the king to the Village of Irons, where he
now sits.  Because the Isisi are foolish people,
my Government sets up a new king, who is Tobolaka,
son of Yoka'n'kema, son of Ichulomo, the son of
Tibilino."

"Lord," gasped an Isisi headman, "this Tobolaka
I remember.  The God-folk took him away to
their own land, where he learnt to be white."

"Yet I promise you that he is black," said
Sanders drily, "and will be blacker.  Also, chiefs
of the Ochori, N'gombi, and Akasava, this new
king will rule you, being paramount king of these
parts, and you shall bring him presents and tribute
according to custom."

There was an ominous silence.

Then O'kara, the chief of the Akasava, an old
and arrogant man, spoke:

"Lord," he said, "many things have I learnt,
such as mysteries and devil magic, yet I have not
learnt in my life that the Akasava pay tribute to
the Isisi, for, lord, in the year of the Floods, the
Akasava fought with the Isisi and made them
run; also, in the year of the Elephants, we defeated
the Isisi on land and water, and would have sat
down in their city if your lordship had not come
with guns and soldiers and tempted us to go home."

The Akasava headmen murmured their approval.

"Alas," said the chief of the N'gombi, "we
people of the N'gombi are fierce men, and often
have we made the Isisi tremble by our mighty
shouts.  Now I should be ashamed to bring
tribute to Tobolaka."

The palaver waited for Bosambo of the Ochori
to speak, but he was silent, for he had not grasped
the bias of the Commissioner's mind.  Other men
spoke at length, taking their cue from their chiefs,
but the men of the Ochori said nothing.

"For how was I to speak?" said Bosambo,
after the palaver.  "No man knows how your
lordship thinks."

"You have ears," said Sanders, a little irritated.

"They are large," admitted Bosambo, "so
large that they hear your beautiful voice, but not
so long that they hear your lordship's loving
thoughts."

Sanders's thoughts were by no means loving,
and they diminished in beauty day by day as
the ship which carried Tobolaka to his empire
drew nearer.

Sanders did not go down to the beach to meet
him; he awaited his coming on the verandah
of the residency, and when Tobolaka arrived,
clad from head to foot in spotless white, with a
helmet of exact colonial pattern on his head, Sanders
swore fluently at all interfering and experimenting
Governments.

"Mr. Sanders, I presume?" said Tobolaka in
English, and extended his hand.

"Chief," said Sanders in the Isisi tongue, "you
know that I am Sandi, so do not talk like a monkey;
speak rather in the language of your people, and
I will understand you better—also you will
understand me."

It so happened that Tobolaka had prepared
a dignified little speech, in the course of which
he intended congratulating Sanders on the
prosperity of the country, assuring him of
whole-hearted co-operation, and winding up with an
expression of his wishes that harmonious relation
should exist between himself and the State.

It was founded on a similar speech delivered
by King Peter of Servia on his assuming the crown.
But, unfortunately, it was in English, and the
nearest Isisi equivalent for congratulation is an
idiomatic phrase which literally means,
"High-man-look-kindly-on-dog-slave-who-lies-at-feet."  And
this, thought Tobolaka, would never do at all,
for he had come to put the Commissioner in his place.

Sanders condescended to talk English later
when Tobolaka was discussing Cabinet Ministers.

"I shall—at the Premier's request—endeavour
to establish district councils," he said.  "I think
it is possible to bring the native to a realisation
of his responsibility.  As Cicero said——"

"Do not bother about Cicero," said Sanders
coldly.  "It is not what Cicero said, but what
Bosambo will say: there are philosophers on
this river who could lose the ancients."

Tobolakat in a canoe sent for him by the Isisi
folk, went to his new home.  He hinted broadly
that a state entrance in the *Zaire* would be more
in keeping with the occasion.

"And a ten-gun salute, I suppose!" snarled
Sanders in Isisi.  "Get to your land, chief, before
I lose my patience, for I am in no mood to palaver
with you."

Tobolaka stopped long enough at headquarters
to write privately to the admirable Mr. Cardow,
complaining that he had received "scant courtesy"
at the hands of the Commissioner.  He had shown
"deplorable antagonism."  The letter concluded
with respectful wishes regarding Mr. Cardow's
health, and there was a postscript, significant
and ominous to the effect that the writer hoped
to cement the good feeling which already existed
between Great Britain and the United States of
America by means which he did not disclose.

The excellent Mr. Cardow was frankly puzzled
by the cryptic postscript, but was too much
occupied with a successful vote of censure on
the Government which had turned him into the
cold shades of Opposition to trouble to reply.

Tobolaka came to his city and was accorded a
rapturous welcome by a people who were prepared
at any given hour of the day or night to jubilate
over anything which meant dances and feasts.

He sat in the palaver house in his white duck
suit and his white helmet, with a cavalry sword
(this Sanders had not seen) between his knees,
his white-gloved hands resting on the hilt.

And he spoke to the people in Isisi, which they
understood, and in English, which they did not
understand, but thought wonderful.  He also recited
as much of the "Iliad" as he could remember,
and then, triumphant and a little hoarse, he was
led to the big hut of chieftainship, and was waited
upon by young girls who danced for his amusement.

Sanders heard of these things and more.

He learnt that the Isisi were to be ruled in
European fashion.  To Tobolaka came Cala, a
sycophantic old headman from the village of
Toroli, with soft and oily words.  Him the king
promoted to be Minister of Justice, though he was
a notorious thief.  Mijilini, the fisher chief,
Tobolaka made his Minister of War; he had a Home
Secretary, a Minister of Agriculture, and a Fishery
Commissioner.

Sanders, steaming up-river, was met by the
canoe of Limibolo, the Akasava man, and his canoe
was decorated with clothes and spears as for a
wedding.

"Lord," said the dignified Limibolo, "I go
to my village to hold a palaver, for my lord the
king has called me by a certain name which I do
not understand, but it has to do with the hanging
of evil men, and, by Iwa!  I know two men in
my village who owe me salt, and they shall hang
at once, by Death!"

"Then will I come and you shall hang also!"
said Sanders cheerlessly.  "Be sure of that."

It transpired that the light-hearted Limibolo
had been created sheriff.

Tobolaka was on the point of raising an army
for his dignity, when Sanders came upon the scene.

He arrived without warning, and Tobolaka
had no opportunity for receiving him in the state
which the king felt was due equally to himself
and to the representative of Government.

But he had ample time to come to the beach
to greet the Commissioner according to custom.
Instead, he remained before his hut and sent his
minister in attendance, the ignoble Cala.

"O Cala!" said Sanders as he stepped ashore
across the *Zaire's* narrow gangway, "what are
you in this land?"

"Lord," said Cala, "I am a great catcher of
thieves by order of our lord; also, I check evil
in every place."

"O Ko!" said Sanders offensively, "now
since you are the biggest thief of all, I think you
had best catch yourself before I catch you."

He walked through Isisi city.

The king had been busy.  Rough boards had
been erected at every street corner.

There was a "Downing Street," a "Fifth Avenue,"
a "Sacramento Street," a "Piccadilly," and a
"Broadway."

"These," explained Cala, "are certain devil
marks which my king has put up to warn witches
and spirits, and they have much virtue, for, lord,
my son, who was troubled with pains in his stomach,
as there"—he indicated "Broadway"—"and the
pain left him."

"It would," said Sanders.

Tobolaka rose from his throne and offered his
hand.

"I am sorry, Mr. Sanders," he began, "you
did not give us notice of your coming."

"When I come again, Tobolaka," said Sanders,
staring with his passionate grey eyes at the
white-clad figure, "you shall come to the beach to
meet me, for that is the custom."

"But not the law," smiled the king.

"My custom is the law," said Sanders.  He
dropped his voice till it was so soft as to be little
above a whisper.

"Tobolaka," he said, "I hanged your father
and, I believe, his father.  Now I tell you
this—that you shall play this king game just so long
as it amuses your people, but you play it without
soldiers.  And if you gather an army for
whatever purpose, I shall come and burn your city
and send you the way of your ancestors, for there
is but one king in this land, and I am his chief
minister."

The face of the king twitched and his eyes fell.

"Lord," he said, using the conventional "Iwa"
of his people, "I meant no harm.  I desired only
to do honour to my wife."

"You shall honour her best," said Sanders,
"by honouring me."

"Cicero says——" began Tobolaka in English.

"Damn Cicero!" snapped Sanders in the same
language.

He stayed the day, and Tobolaka did his best
to make reparation for his discourtesy.  Towards
evening Sanders found himself listening to
complaints.  Tobolaka had his troubles.

"I called a palaver of all chiefs," he explained,
"desiring to inaugurate a system analogous to
county councils.  Therefore I sent to the Akasava,
the N'gombi, and the Ochori, their chiefs.  Now,
sir," said the injured Tobolaka, relapsing into
English, "none of these discourteous fellows——"

"Speak in the language of the land, Tobolaka,"
said Sanders wearily.

"Lord, no man came," said the king; "nor
have they sent tribute.  And I desired to bring
them to my marriage feast that my wife should
be impressed; and, since I am to be married in
the Christian style, it would be well that these
little chiefs should see with their eyes the practice
of God-men."

"Yet I cannot force these chiefs to your palaver,
Tobolaka," said Sanders.

"Also, lord," continued the chief, "one of
these men is a Mohammedan and an evil talker,
and when I sent to him to do homage to me
he replied with terrible words, such as I would
not say again."

"You must humour your chiefs, king," said
Sanders, and gave the discomfited monarch no
warmer cheer.

Sanders left next day for headquarters, and
in his hurry forgot to inquire further into the
forthcoming wedding feast.

"And the sooner he marries the better," he
said to the Houssa captain.  "Nothing tires me
quite so much as a Europeanised-Americanised
native.  It is as indecent a spectacle as a niggerised
white man."

"He'll settle down; there's no stake in a country
like a wife," said the Houssa.  "I shouldn't wonder
if he doesn't forget old man Cicero.  Which chief's
daughter is to be honoured?"

Sanders shook his head.

"I don't know, and I'm not interested.  He
might make a good chief—I'm prejudiced against
him, I admit.  As likely as not he'll chuck his
job after a year if they don't 'chop' him—they're
uncertain devils, these Akasavas.  Civilisation has
a big big call for him; he's always getting letters
from England and America."

The Houssa captain bit off the end of a cigar.

"I hope he doesn't try Cicero on Bosambo,"
he said significantly.

The next day brought the mail—an event.

Usually Sanders was down on the beach to meet
the surf-boat that carries the post, but on this
occasion he was interviewing two spies who had
arrived with urgent news.

Therefore he did not see the passenger whom
the *Castle Queen* landed till she stood on the stoep
before the open door of the residency.

Sanders, glancing up as a shadow fell across
the wooden stoep, rose and temporarily dismissed
the two men with a gesture.

Then he walked slowly to meet the girl.

She was small and pretty in a way, rather flushed
by the exertion of walking from the beach to the
house.

Her features were regular, her mouth was small,
her chin a little weak.  She seemed ill at ease.

"How do you do?" said Sanders, bewildered
by the unexpectedness of the vision.  He drew
a chair for her, and she sank into it with a grateful
little smile, which she instantly checked, as though
she had set herself an unpleasant task and was
not to be conciliated or turned aside by any act
of courtesy on his part.

"And exactly what brings you to this unlikely
place?" he asked.

"I'm Millie Tavish," she said.  "I suppose
you've heard about me?"

She spoke with a curious accent.  When she
told him her name he recognised it as Scottish,
on which American was imposed.

"I haven't heard about you," he said.  "I
presume you are going up-country to a missionary
station.  I'm sorry—I do not like lady missionaries
in the country."

She laughed a shrill, not unmusical laugh.

"Oh, I guess I'm not a missionary," she said
complacently.  "I'm the queen."

Sanders looked at her anxiously.  To women
in his country he had conscientious objections;
mad women he barred.

"I'm the queen," she repeated, evidently pleased
with the sensation she had created.  "My!  I
never thought I should be a queen.  My grandfather
used to be a gardener of Queen Victoria's before
he came to N'York——"

"But——" said the staggered Commissioner.

"It was like this," she rattled on.  "When
Toby was in Philadelphia at the theological
seminary I was a help at Miss Van Houten's—that's
the boarding house—an' Toby paid a lot
of attention to me.  I thought he was joshin'
when he told me he was going to be a king, but
he's made good all right.  And I've written to
him every week, and he's sent me the money to
come along——"

"Toby?" said Sanders slowly.  "Who is Toby?"

"Mr. Tobolaka—King Tobolaka," she said.

A look of horror, which he did not attempt to
disguise, swept over the face of the Commissioner.

"You've come out to marry him—a black
man?" he gasped.

The girl flushed a deep red.

"That's my business," she said stiffly.  "I'm
not asking advice from you.  Say, I've heard
about you—your name's mud along this old coast,
but I'm not afraid of you.  I've got a permit to
go up the Isisi, and I'm goin'."

She was on her feet, her arms akimbo, her eyes
blazing with anger, for, womanlike, she felt the
man's unspoken antagonism.

"My name may be mud," said Sanders quietly,
"and what people say about me doesn't disturb
my sleep.  What they would say about me if I'd
allowed you to go up-country and marry a black
man would give me bad nights.  Miss Tavish,
the mail-boat leaves in an hour for Sierra Leone.
There you will find a steamer to take you to England.
I will arrange for your passage and see that you
are met at Southampton and your passage provided
for New York."

"I'll not go," she stormed; "you don't put
that kind of bluff on me.  I'm an American
citizeness and no dud British official is going
to boss me—so there!"

Sanders smiled.

He was prepared to precipitate matters now
to violate treaties, to create crises, but he was not
prepared to permit what he regarded as an outrage.
In turn she bullied and pleaded; she even wept,
and Sanders's hair stood on end from sheer fright.
To make the situation more difficult, a luxurious
Isisi canoe with twenty paddlers had arrived to
carry her to the city, and the headman in charge
had brought a letter from her future lord welcoming
her in copper-plate English.  This letter Sanders
allowed the man to deliver.

In the end, after a hasty arrangement, concluded
by letter with the captain of the boat, he escorted
Millie Tavish to the beach.

She called down on his head all the unhappiness
her vocabulary could verbalise; she threw with
charming impartiality the battle of Bannockburn
and Bunker's Hill at his stolid British head.  She
invoked the shades of Washington and William
Wallace.

"You shall hear of this," she said as she stepped
into the surf-boat.  "I'm going to tell the story
to every paper."

"Thank you!" said Sanders, his helmet in
his hand.  "I feel I deserve it."

He watched the boat making a slow progress
to the ship and returned to his bungalow.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FALL OF THE EMPEROR`:

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   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FALL OF THE EMPEROR

.. vspace:: 2

"My poor soul!" said the Houssa captain.

He looked down into the long-seated
chair where Sanders sprawled limply.

"And is the owdacious female gone?" asked
the soldier.

"She's gone," said Sanders.

The Houssa clapped his hands, not in applause,
but to summon his orderly.

"Ahmet," he said gravely, speaking in Arabic,
"mix for the lord Sandi the juice of lemons with
certain cunning ingredients such as you know
well; let it be as cool as the hand of Azrael, as
sweet as the waters of Nir, and as refreshing as
the kisses of houris—go with God."

"I wish you wouldn't fool," said Sanders, irritated.

"This is a crisis of our affairs," said Hamilton
the Houssa.  "You need a tonic.  As for myself,
if this had happened to me, I should have been
in bed with a temperature.  Was she very angry?"

Sanders nodded.

"She called me a British loafer and a Jew in
the same breath.  She flung in my face every
British aristocrat who had ever married an American
heiress; she talked like the New York correspondent
of an Irish paper for five minutes.  She threatened
me with the whole diplomatic armoury of America
and the entire strength of Scottish opinion; if she
could have made up her mind whether she was
Scot or just Philadelphia I could have answered
her, but when she goaded me into a retort about
American institutions she opened her kailyard
batteries and silenced me."

The Houssa walked up and down the long bungalow.

"It was impossible, of course," he said seriously.
"absolutely impossible.  She'll land at Sierra Leone
and interview Tullerton—he's the U.S. Consul.  I
think she'll be surprised when she hears Tullerton's
point of view."

Sanders stayed to tiffin, and the discussion of
Millie Tavish continued intermittently throughout
the meal.

"If I hadn't given Yoka permission to overhaul
the engines of the *Zaire*" said Sanders, "I'd
start right away for the Isisi and interview
Tobolaka.  But by this time he'll have her cylinders
open.  By the way, I've remembered something,"
he said, suddenly.

He clapped his hands, and Hamilton's orderly came.

"Ahmet," said Sanders, "go quickly to Sergeant
Abiboo and tell him to give food to the Isisi
boatmen who came this morning.  Also that he shall
tell them to stay with us, for I have a 'book'
to write to the king."

"On my life," said Ahmet conventionally, and
went out.

"I will say what I have to say by letter," said
the Commissioner, when the man had gone at a
jog-trot across the compound; "and, since he
has a swift canoe, he will receive evidence of my
displeasure earlier than it would otherwise reach
him."

Ahmet came back in five minutes, and with
him Abiboo.

"Lord," said the latter, "I could not do as you
wish, for the Isisi have gone."

"Gone!"

"Lord, that is so, for when the lady came back
from the ship she went straight away to the canoe
and——"

Sanders was on his feet, his face white.

"When the lady came back from the ship,"
he repeated slowly, "Did she come back?"

"Master, an hour since.  I did not see her, for
she came by the short way from the beach to the
river-landing.  But many saw her."

Sanders nodded.

"Go to Yoka and let him have steam against
my coming."

The sergeant's face was blank.

"Lord, Yoka has done many things," he said,
"such as removing the *shh-shh* of the engine"—Sanders
groaned—"yet will I go to him and speak
with him for steam."

"If he's got the cylinder dismantled," said Sanders
in despair, "it will be hours before the *Zaire* is
ready, and I haven't a canoe that can overtake
them."

A Houssa came to the door.

"A telegram for you," said Hamilton, taking
the envelope from the man.

Sanders tore it open and read.  It was from
London:

.. vspace:: 2

"Washington wires: 'We learn American
girl gone to Isisi, West Africa, to marry native
king.  Government request you advise authorities
turn her back at all costs; we indemnify you
against any act of arrest to prevent her carrying
plan into execution.'  Use your discretion and
act.  Have advised all magistrates.  Girl's name
Tavish.—Colonial Office."

.. vspace:: 2

He had finished reading when Abiboo returned.

"'To-morrow, two hours before the sun, there
will be steam, master,' so said Yoka."

"It can't be helped," said Sanders; "we'll have
to try another way."

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.. vspace:: 1



By swift canoe the Isisi is three days' journey
from headquarters.  From the Isisi to Ochori city
is one day.  Tobolaka had time to make a last effort
to secure magnificence for his wedding feast.

He sent for his councillor, Cala, that he might
carry to Bosambo fine words and presents.

"If he refuses to come for my honour," said
Tobolaka, "you shall say to him that I am a man who
does not forgive, and that one day I will come to
with an army and there will be war."

"Lord king," said the old man, "you are like an
elephant, and the world shakes under your feet."

"That is so," said the king; "also I would have
you know that this new wife of mine is white and
a great person in her own country."

"Have no fear, lord," said Gala sagely; "I will
lie to him."

"If you tell me I lie, I will beat you to death, old
monkey," said the wrathful Tobolaka.  "This is
true that I tell you."

The old man was dazed.

"A white woman," he said, incredulously.  "Lord,
that is shame."

Tobolaka gasped.  For here was a sycophant of
sycophants surprised to an expression of opinion
opposed to his master's.

"Lord," stammered Cala, throwing a lifetime's
discretion to the winds, "Sandi would not have
this—nor we, your people.  If you be black and she be
white, what of the children of your lordship?  By
Death! they would be neither black nor white, but
a people apart!"

Tobolaka's fine philosophy went by the board.

He was speechless with rage.  He, a Bachelor of
Arts, the favoured of Ministers, the Latinist, the
wearer of white man's clothing, to be openly
criticised by a barbarian, a savage, a wearer of no
clothes, and, moreover, a worshipper of devils.

At a word, Cala was seized and flogged.  He was
flogged with strips of raw hide, and, being an old man,
he died.

Tobolaka, who had never seen a man die of
violence, found an extraordinary pleasure in the
sight.  There stirred within his heart sharp
exultation, fierce joys which he had never experienced
before.  Dormant weeds of unreasoning hate and
cruelty germinated in a second to life.  He found
himself loosening the collar of his white drill jacket
as the bleeding figure pegged to the ground writhed
and moaned.

Then, obeying some inner command, he stripped
first the coat and then the silk vest beneath from his
body.  He tugged and tore at them, and threw
them, a ragged little bundle, into the hut behind
him.

Thus he stood, bareheaded, naked to the waist.

His headmen were eyeing him fearfully.  Tobolaka
felt his heart leap with the happiness of a
new-found power.  Never before had they looked at him
thus.

He beckoned a man to him.

"Go you," he said haughtily, "to Bosambo of
the Ochori and bid him, on his life, come to me.
Take him presents, but give them proudly."

"I am your dog," said the man, and knelt at
his feet.

Tobolaka kicked him away and went into the
hut of his women to flog a girl of the Akasava, who,
in the mastery of a moment, had mocked him that
morning because of his white man's ways.

Bosambo was delivering judgment when the
messenger of the king was announced.

"Lord, there comes an Isisi canoe full of
arrogance," said the messenger.

"Bring me the headman," said Bosambo.

They escorted the messenger, and Bosambo saw,
by the magnificence of his garb, by the four red
feathers which stood out of his hair at varying angles,
that the matter was important.

"I come from the king of all this land," said the
messenger; "from Tobolaka, the unquenchable
drinker of rivers, the destroyer of the evil and the
undutiful."

"Man," said Bosambo, "you tire my ears."

"Thus says my king," the messenger went on:
"'Let Bosambo come to me by sundown that he
may do homage to me and to the woman I take to
wife, for I am not to be thwarted, nor am I to be
mocked.  And those who thwart me and mock me
I will come up against with fire and spear.'"

Bosambo was amused.

"Look around, Kilimini," he said, "and see my
soldiers, and this city of the Ochori, and beyond
by those little hills the fields where all things grow
well; especially do you look well at those fields
by the little hills."

"Lord, I see these," said the messenger.

"Go back to Tobolaka, the black man, and tell
him you saw those fields which are more abundant
than any fields in the world—and for a reason."

He smiled at the messenger, who was a little out
of his depth.

"This is the reason, Kilimini," said Bosambo.
"In those fields we buried many hundreds of the
Isisi who came against my city in their folly—this
was in the year of the Elephants.  Tell your king
this: that I have other fields to manure.  The
palaver is finished."

Then out of the sky in wide circles dropped a bird,
all blue and white.

Raising his eyes, Bosambo saw it narrowing the
orbit of its flight till it dropped wearily upon a
ledge that fronted a roughly-made dovecot behind
Bosambo's house.

"Let this man have food," said Bosambo, and
hastened to examine the bird.

It was drinking greedily from a little trough of
baked clay.  Bosambo disturbed his tiny servant
only long enough to take from its red legs a paper
that was twice the size, but of the same substance,
as a cigarette-paper.

He was no great Arabic scholar, but he read this
readily, because Sanders wrote beautiful characters.

"To the servant of God, Bosambo.

"Peace be upon your house.  Take canoe and
go quickly down-river.  Here is to be met the canoe
of Tobolaka, the king of Isisi, and a white woman
travels therein.  You shall take the white woman,
though she will not go with you; nevertheless you
shall take her, and hold her for me and my king.
Let none harm her, on your head.  Sanders, of the
River and the People, your friend, writes this.

"Obey in the name of God."

Bosambo came back to the king's messenger.

"Tell me, Kilimini," he said, "what palaver is
this that the king your master has?"

"Lord, it is a marrying palaver;" said the man,
"and he sends you presents."

"These I accept," said Bosambo; "but tell me,
who is this woman he marries?"

The man hesitated.

"Lord," he said reluctantly, "they speak of a
white woman whom my lord loved when he was
learning white men's ways."

"May he roast in hell!" said Bosambo, shocked
to profanity.  "But what manner of dog is your
master that he does so shameful a thing?  For
between night and day is twilight, and twilight is the
light of evil, being neither one thing nor the other;
and between men there is this same.  Black is black
and white is white, and all that is between is foul
and horrible; for if the moon mated with the sun
we should have neither day nor night, but a day
that was too dark for work and a night that was too
light for sleep."

Here there was a subject which touched the
Monrovian deeply, pierced his armour of superficial
cynicism, overset his pinnacle of self-interest.

"I tell you, Kilimini," he said, "I know white
folk, having once been on ship to go to the edge of
the world.  Also, I have seen nations where white
and black are mingled, and these people are without
shame, with no pride, for the half of them that is
proud is swallowed by the half of them that is
shameful, and there is nothing of them but white
man's clothing and black man's thoughts."

"Lord," said Kilimini timidly, "this I know,
though I fear to say such things, for my king is
lately very terrible.  Now we Isisi have great sorrow
because he is foolish."

Bosambo turned abruptly.

"Go now, Kilimini," he said.  "Later I shall
see you."

He waved the messenger out of his thoughts.
Into his hut, through this to his inner hut, he
went.

His wife sat on the carpeted floor of Bosambo's
harem, her brown baby on her knees.

"Heart of gold," said Bosambo, "I go to a war
palaver, obeying Sandi.  All gods be with you and
my fine son.

"And with you, Bosambo, husband and lord,"
she said calmly; "for if this is Sandi's palaver it
is good."

He left her, and sent for his fighting headman, the
one-eyed Tembidini, strong in loyalty.

"I shall take one war canoe to the lower river,"
said Bosambo.  "See to this: fifty fighting men
follow me, and you shall raise the country and bring
me an army to the place where the Isisi River turns
twice like a dying snake."

"Lord, this is war," said his headman.

"That we shall see," said Bosambo.

"Lord, is it against the Isisi?"

"Against the king.  As to the people, we shall
know in good time."

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.. vspace:: 1



Miss Millie Tavish, seated luxuriously upon soft
cushions under the thatched roof of a deck-house,
dreamt dreams of royalty and of an urbane negro
who had raised his hat to her.  She watched the
sweating paddlers as they dug the water rhythmically
singing a little song, and already she tasted the joys
of dominion.

She had the haziest notion of the new position
she was to occupy.  If she had been told that she
would share her husband with half-a-dozen other
women—and those interchangeable from time to
time—she would have been horrified.

Sanders had not explained that arrangement to
her, partly because he was a man with a delicate
mind, and partly because he thought he had solved
the problem without such explanation.

She smiled a triumphant little smile every time
she thought of him and her method of outwitting
him.  It had been easier than she had anticipated.

She had watched the Commissioner out of sight
and had ordered the boat to return to shore, for
standing an impassive witness to her embarkation
had been the headman Tobolaka had sent.  Moreover,
in the letter of the king had been a few simple
words of Isisi and the English equivalent.

She thought of many things—of the busy city
she had left, of the dreary boarding-house, of the
relations who had opposed her leaving, of the little
legacy which had come to her just before she sailed,
and which had caused her to hesitate, for with that
she could have lived in fair comfort.

But the glamour of a throne—even a Central
African throne—was upon her—she—Miss
Tavish—Millie Tavish—a hired help——

And here was the actuality.  A broad river,
tree-fringed banks, high rushes at the water edge, the
feather-headed palms of her dreams showing at
intervals, and the royal paddlers with their plaintive
song.

She came to earth as the paddlers ceased, not
together as at a word of command but one by one as
they saw the obstruction.

There were two canoes ahead, and the locked
shields that were turned to the king's canoe were
bright with red n'gola—and red n'gola means war.

The king's headman reached for his spear
half-heartedly.  The girl's heart beat faster.

"Ho, Soka!"

Bosambo, standing in the stern of the canoe, spoke:

"Let no man touch his spear, or he dies!" said
Bosambo.

"Lord, this is the king's canoe," spluttered Soka,
wiping his streaming brow, "and you do a shameful
thing, for there is peace in the land."

"So men say," said Bosambo evasively.

He brought his craft round so that it lay alongside
the other.

"Lady," he said in his best coast-English, "you
lib for go with me one time; I be good feller; I
be big chap—no hurt 'um—no fight 'um."

The girl was sick with terror.  For all she knew,
and for all she could gather, this man was a cruel
and wicked monster.  She shrank back and screamed.

"I no hurt 'um," said Bosambo.  "I be dam good
chap; I be Christian, Marki, Luki, Johni; you
savee dem fellers?  I be same like."

She fainted, sinking in a heap to the bottom of
the canoe.  In an instant Bosambo's arm was around
her.  He lifted her into his canoe as lightly as though
she was a child.

Then from the rushes came a third canoe with a
full force of paddlers and, remarkable of a savage
man's delicacy, two women of the Ochori.

She was in this canoe when she recovered
consciousness, a woman bathing her forehead from the
river.  Bosambo, from another boat, watched the
operation with interest.

"Go now," he said to the chief of the paddlers,
"taking this woman to Sandi, and if ill comes to
her, behold, I will take your wives and your children
and burn them alive—go swiftly."

Swiftly enough they went, for the river was high,
and at the river head the floods were out.

"As for you," said Bosambo to the king's headman,
"you may carry word to your master, saying
thus have I done because it was my pleasure."

"Lord," said the head of the paddlers, "we men
have spoken together and fear for our lives; yet
we will go to our king and tell him, and if he illtreats
us we will come back to you."

Which arrangement Bosambo confirmed.

King Tobolaka had made preparations worthy of
Independence Day to greet his bride.  He had
improvised flags at the expense of his people's scanty
wardrobe.  Strings of tattered garments crossed the
streets, but beneath those same strings people stood
in little groups, their arms folded, their faces lowering,
and they said things behind their hands which
Tobolaka did not hear.

For he had outraged their most sacred
tradition—outraged it in the face of all protest.  A rent garment,
fluttering in the wind—that was the sign of death and
of graves.  Wherever a little graveyard lies, there
will be found the poor wisps of cloth flapping sadly
to keep away devils.

This Tobolaka did not know or, if he did know,
scorned.

On another such occasion he had told his
councillors that he had no respect for the
"superstitions of the indigenous native," and had quoted
a wise saying of Cicero, which was to the effect
that precedents and traditions were made only to
be broken.

Now he stood, ultra-magnificent, for a *lokali*
sounding in the night had brought him news of his
bride's progress.

It is true that there was a fly in the ointment of
his self-esteem.  His invitation, couched in the
choicest American, to the missionaries had been
rejected.  Neither Baptist nor Church of England
nor Jesuit would be party to what they, usually
divergent in their views, were unanimous in regarding
as a crime.

But the fact did not weigh heavily on Tobolaka.
He was a resplendent figure in speckless white.
Across his dress he wore the broad blue ribbon of
an Order to which he was in no sense entitled.

In places of vantage, look-out men had been
stationed, and Tobolaka waited with growing
impatience for news of the canoe.

He sprang up from his throne as one of the
watchers came pelting up the street.

"Lord," said the man, gasping for breath, "two
war canoes have passed."

"Fool!" said Tobolaka.  "What do I care for
war canoes?

"But, lord," persisted the man, "they are of the
Ochori and with them goes Bosambo, very terrible
in his war dress; and the Ochori have reddened
their shields."

"Which way did he come?" asked Tobolaka,
impressed in spite of himself.

"Lord," said the man, "they came from below
to above."

"And what of my canoe?" asked Tobolaka.

"That we have not seen," replied the man.

"Go and watch."

Tobolaka was not as perturbed as his councillors,
for he had never looked upon reddened shields or
their consequences.  He waited for half an hour,
and then the news came that the canoe was rounding
the point, but no woman was there.

Half mad with rage and chagrin, Tobolaka struck
down the man who brought the intelligence.  He
was at the beach to meet the crestfallen headman,
and heard his story in silence.

"Take this man," said Tobolaka, "and all the
men who were with him, and bind them with ropes.
By Death! we will have a feast and a dance and
some blood!"

That night the war drums of the Isisi beat from
one end of the land to the other, and canoes filled
with armed men shot out of little creeks and paddled
to the city.

Tobolaka, naked save for his skin robe and his
anklets of feathers, danced the dance of quick
killing, and the paddlers of the royal canoe were
publicly executed—with elaborate attention to
detail.

In the dark hours before the dawn the Isisi went
out against the Ochori.  At the first flash of
daylight they landed, twelve thousand strong, in Ochori
territory.  Bosambo was strongly placed, and his
chosen regiments fell on the Isisi right and crumpled
it up.  Then he turned sharply and struck into the
Isisi main body.  It was a desperate venture, but
it succeeded.  Raging like a veritable devil, Tobolaka
sought to rally his personal guard, but the men of
the Isisi city who formed it had no heart for the
business.  They broke back to the river.

Whirling his long-handed axe (he had been a
famous club swinger in the Philadelphia seminary),
Tobolaka cut a way into the heart of the Ochori
vanguard.

"Ho, Bosambo!" he called, and his voice was
thick with hate.  "You have stolen my wife; first
I will take your head, then I will kill Sandi, your
master."

Bosambo's answer was short, to the point, and
in English:

"Dam nigger!" he said.

It needed but this.  With a yelp like the howl of
a wolf, Tobolaka, B.A., sprang at him, his axe
swirling.

But Bosambo moved as only a Krooman can move.

There was the flash of a brown body, the thud of
an impact, and Tobolaka was down with a steel
grip at his throat and a knee like a battering-ram
in his stomach.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The *Zaire* came fussing up, her decks black with
Houssas, the polished barrels of her guns swung
out.  Sanders interviewed King Tobolaka the
First—and last.

The latter would have carried the affair off with
a high hand.

"Fortune of war, Mr. Sanders," he said airily.
"I'm afraid you precipitated this conduct by your
unwarrantable and provocative conduct.  As Cicero
says somewhere——"

"Cut it out," said Sanders.  "I want you,
primarily for the killing of Cala.  You have behaved
badly."

"I am a king and above criticism," said Tobolaka
philosophically.

"I am sending you to the Coast for trial," said
Sanders promptly.  "Afterwards, if you are lucky,
you will probably be sent home—whither Miss
Tavish has already gone."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE KILLING OF OLANDI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE KILLING OF OLANDI

.. vspace:: 2

Chief of Sanders's spies in the wild country was
Kambara, the N'gombi man, resolute, fearless,
and very zealous for his lord.  He lived in the
deep of the N'gombi forest, in one of those unexpected
towns perched upon a little hill with a meandering
tributary to the great river, half ringing its base.

His people knew him for a wise and silent chief,
who dispensed justice evenhandedly, and wore
about his neck the chain and medal of his office
(a wonder-working medal with a bearded face in
relief and certain devil marks).

He made long journeys, leaving his village without
warning and returning without notice.  At night
he would be sitting before his fire, brooding and
voiceless; in the morning he would be missing.
Some of his people said that he was a witch-doctor,
practising his magic in hidden places of the forest;
others that he changed himself into a leopard by
his magic and went hunting men.  Figuratively
speaking, the latter was near the truth, for Kambara
was a great tracker of criminals, and there was
none so wily as could escape his relentless search.

Thus, when Bolobo, the chief, plotted a rising,
it was Kambara's word which brought Sanders and
his soldiers, to the unbounded dismay of Bolobo,
who thought his secret known only to himself and
his two brothers.

It was Kambara who accomplished the undoing
of Sesikmi, the great king; it was Kambara who
held the vaguely-defined border line of the N'gombi
country more effectively than a brigade of infantry
against the raider and the Arab trader.

Sanders left him to his devices, sending such
rewards as his services merited, and receiving in
exchange information of a particularly valuable
character.

Kambara was a man of discretion.  When Olandi
of the Akasava came into the N'gombi forest,
Kambara lodged him regally, although Olandi was
breaking the law in crossing the border.  But Olandi
was a powerful chief and, ordinarily, a law-abiding
man, and there are crimes which Kambara preferred
to shut his eyes upon.

So he entertained Olandi for two days—not
knowing that somewhere down the little river, in
Olandi's camp, was a stolen woman who moaned
and wrung her hands and greatly desired death.

For Olandi's benefit the little village made merry,
and Tisini, the wife of Kambara, danced the dance
of the two buffaloes—an exhibition which would
have been sufficient to close the doors of any
London music-hall and send its manager to hard
labour.

At the same time that Olandi departed, Kambara
disappeared; for there were rumours of raiding on
the frontier, and he was curious in the interests of
government.

Three weeks afterwards a man whose face none
saw came swiftly and secretly to the frontiers of the
Akasava country, and with him came such of his
kindred as were closely enough related to feel the
shame which Olandi had put upon them.

For Olandi of the Akasava had carried off the
favourite wife of the man, though not against
her will.

This Olandi was a fine animal, tall and broad of
shoulder, muscled like an ox, arrogant and pitiless.
They called him the native name for leopard because
he wore robes of that beast's skin, two so cunningly
joined that a grinning head lay over each broad
shoulder.

He was a hunter and a fighting man.  His shield
was of wicker, delicately patterned and polished
with copal; his spears were made by the greatest
of the N'gombi craftsmen, and were burnished till
they shone like silver; and about his head he wore
a ring of silver.  A fine man in every way.

Some say that he aspired to the kingship of the
Akasava, and that Tombili's death might with
justice be laid at his door; but as to that we have
no means of knowing the truth, for Tombili was
dead when they found him in the forest.

Men might tolerate his tyrannies, sit meekly under
his drastic judgments, might uncomplainingly accept
death at his hands; but no man is so weak that he
would take the loss of his favourite wife without
fighting, and thus it came about that these men
came paddling furiously through the black night.

Save for the "flip-flap" of the paddles, as they
struck the water, and the little groan which
accompanied each stroke, there was no sound.

They came to the village where Olandi lorded it
just as the moon cleared the feathery tops of the
N'gombi woods.

Bondondo lay white and silent under the moon,
two rows of roofs yellow thatched, and in the centre
the big rambling hut of the chief, with its verandah
propped with twisted saplings.

The secret man and his brothers made fast their
two canoes and leapt lightly to land.  They made
no sound, and their leader guiding them, they went
through the street like ghostly shadows.

Before the chief's hut the embers of a dull fire
glowed.  He hesitated before the doors.  Three huts
built to form a triangle composed the chief's
habitation.  To the right and left was an entrance
with a hanging curtain of skins.

Likely as not Olandi slept in the third hut, which
opened from either of these.

He hesitated a moment, then he drew aside the
curtains of the right-hand door and went in, his
brother, his uncle, and his two cousins following.

A sleepy voice asked who was there.

"I come to see the lord Olandi," said the intruder.

He heard a rustle at the farthermost end of the
room and the creaking of a skin bed.

"What seek you?" said a voice, and it was that
of a man used to command.

"Is that my lord?" demanded the visitor.

He had a broad-bladed elephant sword gripped
fast, so keen of edge that a man might shave the
hair from the back of his hand therewith.

"I am Olandi," said the man in the darkness,
and came forward.

There was absolute stillness.  They who waited
could hear the steady breathing of the sleepers;
they heard, too, a "whish!" such as a civilised
man hears when his womenfolk thrust a hatpin
through a soft straw shape.

Another tense silence, then:

"It is as it should be," said the murderer calmly,
and softly called a name.  Somebody came blundering
from the inner room sobbing with chokes and
gulps.

"Come," said the man, then: "Is the foreign
woman there also?  Let her also go with us."

The girl called another in a low voice, and a
woman joined them.  Olandi was catholic in his
tastes and raided indiscriminately.

The first girl shrank back as her husband laid his
hand on her arm.

"Where is my lord?" she whimpered.

"I am your lord," said the secret man dryly;
"as for the other, he has no need of women, unless
there be women in hell, which is very likely."

None attempted to stop the party as it went
through the street and back to the canoes, though
there were wails and moanings in Olandi's hut and
uneasy stirrings in the villages.

Men hailed them sharply as they passed, saying,
"Oilo?" which means, "Who walks?"  But they
made no reply.

Then with the river and safety before them, there
arose the village watchman who challenged the party.

He had heard the faint death-cry from Olandi's
hut, and advanced his terrible cutting-spear to
emphasise his challenge.

The leader leapt at him, but the watchman
parried the blow skilfully and brought the blade
of his spear down as a man of olden times might
sweep his battle-axe.

The other's sword had been struck from his hold,
and he put up his defenceless arm to ward off the
blow.

Twice the sharp edge of the spear slashed his hand,
for in the uncertain light of the moon the watchman
misjudged his distance.

Then, as he recovered for a decisive stroke, one of
the kinsmen drove at his throat, and the watchman
went down, his limbs jerking feebly.

The injured man stopped long enough roughly
to dress his bleeding palm, then led his wife, shivering
and talking to herself like a thing demented, to the
canoe, the second wife following.

In the early hours before the dawn four swift
paddlers brought the news to Sanders, who was
sleeping aboard the *Zaire*, made fast to the beach
of Akasava city.

Sanders sat on the edge of his tiny bed, dangling
his pyjama'd legs over the side, and listened
thoroughly—which is a kind of listening which
absorbs not only the story, but takes into account
the inflexion of the teller's voice, the sympathy—or
lack of it—the rage, the despair, or the resignation
of the story-teller.

"So I see," said Sanders when the man had
finished, for all four were hot with the news and
eager to supply the deficiencies of the others, "this
Olandi was killed by one whose wife he had stolen,
also the watchman was killed, but none other was
injured."

"None, lord," said one of the men, "for we were
greatly afraid because of the man's brethren.  Yet
if he had sought to stop him, many others would
have been killed."

"'If the sun were to set in the river, the waters
would boil fish,'" quoted Sanders.  "I will find this
man, whoever he be, and he shall answer for his
crime."

He reached the scene of the killing and made
prompt inquiry.  None had seen the face of the
secret man save the watchman—and he was dead.
As for the women—the villagers flapped their arms
hopelessly.  Who could say from what nation, from
what tribes, Olandi stole his women?

One, so other inmates of Olandi's house said, was
undoubtedly Ochori; as to the other, none knew
her, and she had not spoken, for, so they said, she
loved the dead man and was a willing captive.

This Olandi had hunted far afield, and was a
hurricane lover and a tamer of women; how perfect
a tamer Sanders discovered, for, as the Isisi saying
goes, "The man who can bribe a woman's tongue
could teach a snake to grind corn."

In a civilised country he would have found written
evidence in the chief's hut, but barbarous man
establishes no clues for the prying detective, and
he must needs match primitive cunning with such
powers of reason and instinct as his civilisation had
given to him.

A diligent search of the river revealed nothing.
The river had washed away the marks where the
canoes had been beached.  Sanders saw the bodies
of both men who had fallen without being very
much the wiser.  It was just before he left the
village that Abiboo the sergeant made a discovery.

There is a certain tree on the river with leaves
which are credited with extraordinary curative
powers.  A few paces from where the watchman fell
such a tree grew.

Abiboo found beneath its low branches a number
of leaves that had been newly plucked.  Some were
stained with blood, and one bore the clear impression
of a palm.

Sanders examined it carefully.  The lines of the
hand were clearly to be seen on the glossy surface
of the leaf, and in the centre of the palm was an
irregular cut, shaped like a roughly-drawn
St. Andrew's Cross.

He carefully put the leaf away in his safe and went
on to pursue his inquiries.

Now, of all crimes difficult to detect, none offers
such obstacles as the blood feud which is based on a
woman palaver.

Men will speak openly of other crimes, tell all
there is to be told, be willing—nay, eager—to put
their sometime comrade's head in the noose, if the
murder be murder according to accepted native
standards.  But when murder is justice, a man does
not speak; for, in the near future, might not he
stand in similar case, dependent upon the silence of
his friends for very life?

Sanders searched diligently for the murderers, but
none had seen them pass.  What direction they
took none knew.  Indeed, as soon as the motive
for the crime became evident, all the people of the
river became blind.  Then it was that Sanders
thought of Kambara and sent for him, but Kambara
was on the border, importantly engaged.

Sanders pursued a course to the Ochori country.

"One of these women was of your people," he
said to Bosambo the chief.  "Now I desire that you
shall find her husband."

Bosambo shifted his feet uneasily.

"Lord," he said, "it was no man of my people
who did this.  As to the woman, many women are
stolen from far-away villages, and I know nothing.
And in all these women palavers my people are as
dumb beasts."

Bosambo had a wife who ruled him absolutely,
and when Sanders had departed, he writhed
helplessly under her keen tongue.

"Lord and chief," she said, "why did you speak
falsely to Sandi, for you know the woman of the
Ochori who was stolen was the girl Michimi of Tasali
by the river?  And, behold, you yourself were in
search of her when the news of Olandi's killing
came."

"These things are not for women," said Bosambo:
"therefore, joy of my life, let us talk of other
things."

"Father of my child," persisted the girl, "has
Michimi no lover who did this killing, nor a husband?
Will you summon the headman of Tasali by the
river and question him?"

She was interested—more interested than Bosambo.

"God is all-seeing and beneficent," he said
devoutly.  "Leave me now, for I have holy thoughts
and certain magical ideas for finding this killer of
Olandi, though I wish him no harm."

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Sanders had a trick of accepting alarming
statements with a disconcerting calm.

People who essayed the task of making his flesh
creep had no reward for their labours; his politely
incredulous "O, ko!" which, uttered in certain
tones, means, "Oh, indeed!" made his informant
curl up inwardly.

Komo, pompous to a degree, anxious to impress
his lord with the fact that he, Komo, was no ordinary
chief, but a watchful, zealous, and conscientious
regent, came fussing down the river in a glad sweat
to speak of happenings on the edge of his territory.

Sanders granted the man an immediate audience,
though he arrived in the dark hours of the night.

If you will visualise the scene, you have Sanders
sitting up in bed in his pyjamas, and two Houssas
splashed with rain—for a thunderstorm was raging—one
of whom holds a lantern, all the light necessary
to reveal a reeking Komo, shiny and wet, who,
squatting on the floor, is voluble and ominous.

"As is my practice, lord," said Komo, "I watch
men and things for your honour's comfort, being
filled with a desire to serve you.  And thus it is
that I have learnt of certain things, dances and spells
of evil, which are practised by the Ochori."

"The Ochori?"

Sanders was puzzled.

"By the Ochori—the trusted."

There was no mistaking the arch turn to his
speech; the two words were charged with gentle irony.

"Is Bosambo dead that these things should be?"
asked Sanders dryly.  "Or has he perchance joined
with the dancers?"

"Lord," said Komo impressively, "Bosambo
dances with his people.  For, being chief, he is the
first to stamp his foot and say 'Ho!'  He, too,
assists at sacrifices and is ripe for abominable
treachery."

"Oh, indeed!" said Sanders, with an inward sigh
of relief.  "Now I tell you this, Komo; there was
once a great lord who trusted no man, nor did he
trust his household, his wives, nor his slaves, and
he walked ever with his back to the sun so that his
shadow should run before him, for he did not trust
his shadow.  And one day he came to a river in
flood, and behold! his shadow lay before him.  And
because he feared to turn his back upon his shadow,
he plunged in and was drowned."

"Lord, I have heard the story.  He was a king,
and a great one," said Komo.  Sanders nodded.

"Therefore, Komo, heed this: I trust all men—a
little.  I trust Bosambo much, for he has been
my man in fair weather and foul."  He turned to the
silent Houssas.  "Let this man be lodged according
to his dignity and give him a present of cloth.  The
palaver is finished."

And Sanders, drawing the bedclothes up to his
neck, the night being cold, turned over and was
asleep before the chief and his escort had cleared
the verandah.

"A busybody," was Sanders's verdict on Komo;
yet, since there is no smoke without fire, he deemed
it advisable to investigate at first hand.

Two days after the crestfallen chief had started
on his way home the *Zaire* passed his canoe in
mid-stream, going the same way, and the sight of her
white hull and twin smokestacks brought
consolation to Komo.

"My lord has considered my words," said he to
his headman; "for at his village they said that
the puc-a-puc did not leave till the new moon came,
and here he comes, though the old moon is still
sowing his rind."

"Chief," said the headman, "you are great in
council, and even Sandi hearkens and obeys.  You
are wiser than an owl, swift and terrible as a hawk,
and your voice is like the winds of a storm."

"You speak truly," said Komo, who had no false
sense of modesty.  "I am also very cunning, as
you shall see."

Sanders was indeed beating up to the Ochori
country.  He was perturbed, not by reason of
Komo's sinister suggestion, but because his spies
had been silent.  If there were dances in the Ochori
country he should have been told, however innocent
those dances were.

Pigeons had gone ahead of him to tell of his
journey, and he found the first of his agents awaiting
him at the junction of the Ikeli with the Isisi.

"Lord, it is true that the Ochori dance," said the
man, "yet, knowing your lordship trusted Bosambo,
I did not make report."

"There you did wrong," said Sanders; "for I
tell you that if a hawk kills a parrot, or the
crocodiles find new breeding-places, I wish to know what
there is to know."

He gleaned more of these mysterious revels which
Bosambo held in the forest as he grew nearer to the
Ochori country, and was more puzzled than ever.

"Master," said the chief of the N'gombi village,
"many folk go to the Ochori dance, for Bosambo
the chief has a great magic."

"What manner of magic?"

"Lord, it is a magic with whiteness," and he
exhibited his hand proudly.

Straight across the reddish-brown palm was an
irregular streak of white paint.

"This the lord Bosambo did," he said, "and,
behold, every day this remains will be fortunate
for me."

Sanders regarded the sign with every evidence of
strong emotion.

Two months before Sanders had sent many tins
of white paint with instructions to the Ochori chief
that his men should seek out the boundary posts of
his kingdom—and particularly those that impinged
upon foreign territories—and restore them to startling
freshness.

"Many people of the Isisi, N'gombi, and Akasava
go to Bosambo," the little chief continued; "for,
behold, this magic of Bosambo's wipes away all
soil.  And if a man has been guilty of wickedness
he is released of punishment.  I," he added proudly,
"once killed my wife's father *cala cala*, and
frequently I have sorrowed because of this and because
my wife often reminds me.  Now, lord, I am a
clean man, so clean that when the woman spoke
to me this morning about my faraway sin, I hit her
with my spear, knowing that I am now innocent."

Sanders thought rapidly.

"And what do you pay Bosambo for this?" he asked.

"Nothing, lord," said the man.

"Nothing!" repeated Sanders incredulously.

"Lord, Bosambo gives his magic freely, saying
he has made a vow to strange gods to do this; and
because it is free, many men go to his dance for
purification.  The lord Kambara, the Silent One,
he himself passed at sunrise to-day."

Sanders smiled to himself.  Kambara would have
an interest in stray confessions of guilt——

That was it!  The meaning of Bosambo's practice
came to him in a flash.  The painting of hands—the
lure of purification; Bosambo was waiting for
the man with the scarred hand.

Sanders continued his journey, tied up five miles
short of the Ochori city, and went on foot through
the forest to the place of meeting.

It was dark by the time he had covered half the
journey, but there was no need of compass to guide
him, even had the path been more difficult to follow.
Ahead was a dull red glow in the sky where Bosambo's
fires burnt.

Four fires there were, set at the points of an
imaginary square.  In the centre a round circle of
stones, and in the centre again three spears with
red hafts.

Bosambo had evidently witnessed, or been participant
in, an initiation ceremony of a Monrovian
secret society.

Within the circle moved Bosambo, and without
it, two or three deep, the moving figures of those
who sought his merciful services.

Slowly he moved.  In one hand a bright tin of
Government paint, in the other a Government
brush.

Sanders, from his place of observation, grinned
approvingly at the solemnity in which Bosambo
clothed the ceremony.

One by one he daubed the men—a flick of the
brush, a muttered incantation, and the magic was
performed.

Sanders saw Kambara in the front rank and was
puzzled, for the man was in earnest.  If he had
come to scoff he remained to pray.  Big beads of
perspiration glistened on his forehead, the
outstretched hands were shaking.

Bosambo approached him, lifted his brush, peered
down, then with a sweep of his arm he drew the
N'gombi chief to him.

"Brother," he said pleasantly, "I have need of you."

Sanders saw what it meant, and went crashing
through the undergrowth to Bosambo's side, and
the yelling throng that had closed round the
struggling pair drew back.

"Lord, here is your man!" said Bosambo, and
forcibly pulled forward Kambara's palm.

Sanders took his prisoner back to the *Zaire*, and
from thenceforward, so far as the crime was
concerned, there was no difficulty, for Kambara told
the truth.

"Lord," he said, "my hand alone is in fault;
for, though my people were with me, none struck
Olandi but I.  Now do with me what you will, for
my wife hates me and I am sick for sleep."

"This is a bad palaver," said Sanders gravely,
"for I trusted you."

"Lord, you may trust no man," said Kambara,
"when his woman is the palaver.  I shall be glad to
die, for I was her dog.  And Olandi came and stayed
one night in my village, and all that I was to her
and all that I have given her was as nothing.  And now
she weeps all day for him, as does the Ochori woman
I took with her.  And, lord, if women worship only
the dead, make an end, for I am sick of her scorn."

Sanders, with his head sunk, his hands clasped
behind, his eyes examining the floor of his cabin—they
were on board the *Zaire*—whistled a tune, a
trick of his when he was worried.

"Go back to your village," he said.  "You shall
pay the family of Olandi thirty goats and ten bags
of salt for his blood."

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"Master," said Bosambo.  "I have great joy
in my heart that you did not hang this man, for it
seems that Olandi did not die too soon.  As for
the Ochori girl," he went on, "I would have killed
Olandi on her account—only Kambara was there
first.  This," he added, "I tell you, lord, for your
secret hearing, for I knew this girl."

Sanders looked at Bosambo keenly.

"They tell me that you have but one wife,
Bosambo," he said.

"I have one," said Bosambo evasively, "but in
my lifetime I have many perils, of which the woman
my wife knows nothing, for it is written in the Sura
of the Djinn, 'Men know best who know most, but
a woman's happiness lies in her delusions.'"





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.. _`THE PEDOMETER`:

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   CHAPTER VI


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   THE PEDOMETER

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Bosambo, the chief of the Ochori, was wont
to style himself in moments of magnificent
conceit, King of the Ochori, Lord Chief of
the Elebi River, High Herd of Untamable Buffaloes
and of all Goats.

There were other titles which I forget, but I
merely mention his claims in order that I may remark
that he no longer refers to the goats of his land.
There is a reason.

Hikilari, the wise old chief of the Akasava, went
hunting in strange territories.  That was the year
when game went unaccountably westward, some say
through the spell of M'Shimba M'Shamba; but, as
Sanders knew, because of the floods.

Hikilari went by river for three days and across
a swamp, he and his hunters, before they found
elephant.  Then they had a good kill, and his
bearers came rollicking back to Akasava city, laden
with good teeth, some weighing as much as two
hundred kilos.

It was good fortune, but he paid for it
tremendously, for when he yearned to return he was
troubled with extraordinary drowsiness, and had
strange pains in his head.  For this he employed
the native remedy, which was binding a wire tightly
round his head.  None the less he grew no better,
and there came a time when Hikilari, the Wise One,
rose in the middle of the night and, going out into
the main street of the village, danced and sang
foolishly, snapping his fingers.

His sons, with his nephews and his brothers, held
a palaver, and the elder of his sons, M'Kovo, an
evil man, spoke thuswise:

"It seems that my father is sick with the sickness
mongo, for he is now foolish, and will soon be dead.
Yet I desire that no word of this shall go to Sandi.
Let us therefore put my father away safely, saying
he has gone a long journey; and, whilst he is
absent, there are many things we may do and many
enemies of whom we may rid ourselves.  And if
Sandi comes with the soldiers and says, 'Why did
you these things?' we shall say, 'Lord, who is
chief here?  A madman.  We did as he bid; let
it be on his head.'"

The brother of the sick king thought it would
be best to kill him privily, but against this the king's
son set his face.

"Whilst he is alive he is chief," he said
significantly; "if he be dead, be sure Sandi will find
somebody to punish, and it may well be me."

For three days they kept the king to his hut, whilst
witch-doctors smeared him with red clay and ingola
and chanted and put wet clay on his eyes.  At the
end of that time they removed him by night to a
hastily thatched hut in the forest, and there he was
left to M'Kovo's creatures.

Sanders, who knew many things of which he was
supposed to be ignorant, did not know this.  He
knew that Hikilari was a wise man; that he had
been on a journey; that there were no reasons why
he (Sanders) should not make a tour to investigate
affairs in the Akasava.

He was collecting hut tax in the N'gombl
country from a simple pastoral people who objected
on principle to pay anything, when the news came
to him that a party of Akasava folk had crossed the
Ochori border, raided a village, and, having killed
the men, had expeditiously carried away the women
and goats.

Sanders was in the midst of an interminable
palaver when the news came, and the N'gombi
people who squatted at his feet regarded him with
expectant hope, a hope which was expressed by a
small chief who at the moment had the ear of the
assembly.

"Lord, this is bad news," he said in the friendly
manner of his kind, "and we will not trouble your
lordship any farther with our grievances, which are
very small.  So, therefore, if on account of our bad
crops you remit a half of our taxation, we will go
peaceably to our villages saying good words about
your honour's justice."

"You shall pay all your taxation," said Sanders
brusquely.  "I waste my time talking with you."

"Remit one-third," murmured the melancholy
speaker.  "We are poor men, and there has been
no fish in the river——"

Sanders rose from his seat of state wearily.

"I will return with the moon," he said, "and if
all taxes be not paid, there will be sad hearts in this
village and sore backs, believe me.  The palaver is
finished."

He sent one messenger to the chief of the Akasava,
and he himself went by a short cut through the forest
to the Ochori city, for at the psychological moment
a cylinder head on the *Zaire* had blown out.

He reached the Ochori by way of Elebi River,
through Tunberi—which was swamp, owing to
unexpected, unseasonable, and most atrocious rains.
Three days he waded, from knee-deep to waist-high,
till his arms ached maddeningly from holding his
rifle above the black ooze and mud.

And he came upon hippo and water-snake, and
once the "boy" who walked ahead yelled shrilly
and went down, and Sanders himself was nearly
knocked off his feet by the quick rush of the crocodile
bearing his victim to the near-by river.

At the end of three days Sanders came to the
higher land, where a man might sleep elsewhere than
in trees, and where, too, it was possible to bathe in
spring water, unpack shirts from headborne loads
and count noses.

He was now a day's march from the Ochori, but
considerably less than a day's march from the Ochori
army, for two hours after he had resumed his journey
he came upon the chief Bosambo and with him a
thousand spears.

And Bosambo was naked, save for his kilt of
monkey-tails, and in the crook of the arm which carried
his wicker shield, he carried his five fighting spears.

He halted his army at the sight of Sanders, and
came out to meet him.

"Bosambo," said Sanders quietly, "you do me
honour that you bring the pick of your fighting
men to guard me."

"Lord," said Bosambo with commendable frankness,
"this is no honour to you, for I go to settle
an account with the King of the Akasava."

Sanders stood before him, his head perched on
one side like a bird's, and he slapped his leg
absent-mindedly with his pliant cane.

"Behold," he said, "I am he who settles all
accounts as between kings and kings and men and
men, and I tell you that you go back to your city and
sit in patience whilst I do the work for which my
lord the King appointed me."

Bosambo hesitated.  He was pardonably annoyed.

"Go back to your city, Bosambo," said Sanders gently.

The chief squared his broad shoulders.

"I am your man," he said, and turned without
another word.

Sanders stopped him before he had taken half a
dozen paces.

"Give me twenty fighting men," he said, "and
two canoes.  You shall hold your men in check
whilst I go about the King's business."

An hour later he was going down-stream as fast
as a five-knot current and his swift paddlers could
take him.

He came to the Akasava city at noon of the
following day, and found it peaceable enough.

M'Kovo, the king's son, came to the beach to
meet him.

"Lord Sandi," he said with an extravagant
gesture of surprise, "I see that the summer comes
twice in one season, for you——"

Sanders was in no mood for compliments.

"Where is the old chief, your father?" he asked.

"Master," said M'Kovo earnestly, "I will not
lie to you.  My father has taken his warriors into
the forest, and I fear that he will do evil."

And he told a story which was long and circumstantial,
of the sudden flaming up of an old man's
rages and animosities.

Sanders listened patiently.

An unwavering instinct, which he had developed
to a point where it rose superior to reason, told him
that the man was lying.  Nor was his faith in his
own judgment shaken when M'Kovo produced his
elder men and witnesses to his sire's sudden fit of
depravity.

But Sanders was a cunning man and full of guile.

He dropped his hand of a sudden upon the other's
shoulder.

"M'Kovo," he said mildly, "it seems that your
chief and father is no longer worthy.  Therefore
you shall dwell in the chief's hut.  Yet first you shall
bring me the chief Hikilari, and you shall bring
him unhurt and he shall have his eyes.  Bring him
quickly, M'Kovo."

"Lord," said M'Kovo sullenly, "he will not come,
and how may I force him, for he has many warriors
with him?"

Sanders thought the matter out.

"Go now," he said after a while, "and speak
with him, telling him that I await him."

"Lord, that I will do," said M'Kovo, "but I
cannot go till night because I fear your men will
follow me, and my father, seeing them, will put me
to death."

Sanders nodded.

That night M'Kovo came to him ready for his
journey, and Sanders took from his pocket a round
silver box.

"This you shall hang about your neck," he said,
"that your father may know you come from me."

M'Kovo hung the round box by a piece of string
and walked quickly toward the forest.

Two miles on the forest path he met his cousins
and brothers, an apprehensive assembly.

"My stomach is sick with fear," said his elder
cousin Tangiri; "for Sandi has an eye that sees
through trees."

"You are a fool," snarled M'Kovo; "for Sandi is
a bat who sees nothing.  What of Hikilari, my
father?"

His younger brother extended the point of his
spear and M'Kovo saw that it was caked brown
with blood.

"That was best," he said.  "Now we will all
go to sleep, and in the morning I will go back to
Sandi and tell him a tale."

In the morning his relatives scratched his legs
with thorns and threw dust over him, and an hour
later, artificially exhausted, he staggered to the hut
before which Mr. Commissioner Sanders sat at
breakfast.

Sanders glanced keenly at the travel-worn figure.

"My friend," he said softly, "you have come a
long way?"

"Lord," said M'Kovo, weak of voice, "since I left
you I have not rested save before my father, who sent
me away with evil words concerning your honour."

And the exact and unabridged text of those "evil
words" he delivered with relish.

Sanders reached down and took the little silver
box that lay upon the heaving chest.

"And this you showed to your father?" he asked.

"Lord, I showed him this," repeated the man.

"And you travelled through the night—many miles?"

"Master, I did as I have told," M'Kovo replied.

Sanders touched a spring, and the case of the box
flew open.  There was revealed a dial like that of a
watch save that it contained many little hands.

M'Kovo watched curiously as Sanders examined
the instrument.

"Look well at this, M'Kovo," said Sanders dryly;
"for it is a small devil which talks truly—and
it tells me that you have travelled no farther than
a man may walk in the time that the full moon
climbs a tree."

The *Zaire* had arrived during the night, and a
Houssa guard stood waiting.

Sanders slipped the pedometer into his pocket,
gave a characteristic jerk of his head, and Sergeant
Abiboo seized his prisoner.

"Let him sit in irons," said Sanders in Arabic,
"and take six men along the forest road and bring
me any man you may find."

Abiboo returned in an hour with four prisoners,
and they were very voluble—too voluble for the safety
of M'Kovo and his younger brother, for by night
Sanders had discovered a forest grave where Hikilari
the wise chief lay.

It was under a tree with wide-spreading branches,
and was eminently suitable for the sequel to that
tragedy.

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Bosambo was not to blame for every crime laid
at his door.  He had a feud with the Akasava,
not without reason.  The death of M'Kovo his enemy
was not sufficient to extinguish the obligation, for
the Akasava had spilt blood, and that rankled for
many months.  He was by nature a thief, being a
Krooman from the Liberian coast before he came
to be king over the simple and fearful Ochori.

So when all the trouble between the Akasava
and Ochori seemed at rest, Sanders had occasion to
come to the Ochori country in a hurry—and the
river was low.

There is no chart of the big river worth two cents
in the dry season, because unexpected sand banks
come barking up in the fairway, and there are whole
stretches of river wherein less than a fathom of
water runs.  Sometimes the boy sitting on the bow
of the *Zaire*, thrusting a pliant rod into the stream,
would cry through his nose that there were two
fathoms of water when there was but one.

He was, as I have beforetime said, of the Kano
folk, and somewhat religious, dreaming of a pilgrimage
to Mecca, and a green band round his tarboosh.

"I declare to you the glory of God and a fathom
and a little."

Bump!

"Get overboard, you talkative devil!" said
Sanders, who was more annoyed because this was
the fourteenth bank he had struck since he left
headquarters.  So the whole crew jumped waist
deep into the water, and singing a little song as
they toiled, pushed the boat clear.

Sanders struck his thirty-ninth bank just before
he came to the village of Ochori, and he landed in a
most unamiable mood.

"Bosambo," he said, "I have two minds about
you—the one is to hang you for your many
wickednesses, the other is to whip you."

"Master," said Bosambo with grave piety, "all
things shall be as ordained."

"Have no fear but that it will be one or the other,"
warned the Commissioner.  "I am no dog that
I should run from one end of the state to the other
because a thieving black man raids in forbidden
territory."

Bosambo, whose guilty conscience suggested
many reasons for the unexpected visit of the
Commissioner, seemed less genuinely astonished.

"Master, I am no nigger," he said, "being related
by birth and previous marriages to several kings,
also——"

"You are a liar," said Sanders, fuming, "and
related by birth and marriage to the father of liars;
and I did not come to talk about your uninteresting
family, but rather to discuss a matter of night
raiding."

"As to night raiding" said Bosambo frankly,
"I know nothing about that.  I went with my
councillors to the Akasava, being anxious to see the
new chief and tell him of my love; also," he said
piously, "to say certain Christian prayers by the
grave of my enemy, for, as you know, lord, our faith
teaches this."

"By night you went," said Sanders, ignoring the
challenge of "our faith," "and Akasava city may
easily be gained in broad daylight; also, when the
Akasava fell upon you, you had many goats tied
up in your canoes.

"They were my goats," said Bosambo with
dignity.  "These I brought with me as a present
to the new chief."

In his exasperation Sanders swore long and fluently.

"Blood has paid for blood," he said wrathfully,
"and there shall be no more raidings.  More than
this, you shall stay in this city and shall not move
therefrom till you have my word."

"Lord Sandi," said Bosambo, "I hear to obey."

A light of unholy joy came momentarily into the
eyes of the Commissioner, flickered a moment, and
was gone, leaving his face impassive.

"You know, Bosambo," he said mildly—for him,
"that I have great faith in you; therefore I leave you
a powerful fetish, who shall be as me in my absence."

He took from the pocket of his uniform jacket a
certain round box of silver, very pleasant to the
touch, being somewhat like a flattened egg.

Sanders had set his pedometer that morning.

"Take this and wear it for my sake," he said.

Bosambo threaded a chain through its loop of
silver and hung it about his neck.

"Lord," he said gratefully, "you have done this
thing before the eyes of my people, and now they
will believe all I tell them regarding your love for me."

Sanders left the Ochori city next morning.

"Remember," he warned, "you do not go beyond
the borders of your city."

"Master," said Bosambo, "I sit fasting and
without movement until your lordship returns."

He watched the *Zaire* until she was a white speck on
the placid face of the water; then he went to his hut.

Very carefully he removed the silver case from
his neck and laid it in the palm of his hand.

"Now, little devil," he addressed it, "who
watches the coming and going of men, I think I will
learn all about you.  O hanger of M'Kovo!"

He pressed the knob—he had once possessed a
watch, and was wise in the way of stem springs—the
case flew open, and showed him the little dials.

He shook the instrument violently, and heard a
faint clicking.  He saw a large hand move across
the second of a circle.

Bearing the pedometer in his hand, he paced the
length of the village street, and at every pace the
instrument clicked and the hand moved.  When he
was still it did not move.

"Praise be to all gods!" said Bosambo.  "Now
I know you, O Talker!  For I have seen your wicked
tongue wagging, and I know the manner of your
speech."

He made his way slowly back to his hut.

Before the door his new baby, the light of his
eyes, sprawled upon a skin rug, clutching frantically
at the family goat, a staid veteran, tolerant of the
indignities which a small brown man-child might
put upon him.  Bosambo stopped to rub the child's
little brown head and pat the goat's sleek neck.

Then he went into the hut, carefully removed the
tell-tale instrument from the chain at his neck, and
hid it with other household treasures in a hole beneath
his bed.

At sundown his *lokali* brought the fighting men
together.

"We go to the Akasava," he said, addressing
them briefly, "for I know a village that is fat with
corn and the stolen goats of the Ochori.  Also the
blood of our brothers calls us, though not so loudly
as the goats."

He marched away, and was gone three days, at
the end of which time he returned minus three men—for
the Akasava village had resisted his attentions
strenuously—but bringing with him some notable
loot.

News travels fast on the river, especially bad
news, and this reached Sanders, who, continuing
his quest for hut tax, had reached the Isisi.

On the top of this arrived a messenger from the
Akasava chief, and Sanders went as fast as the
*Zaire* could carry him to the Ochori city.

Bosambo heard of his coming.

"Bring me, O my life and pride," he said to his
wife, "a certain silver box which is under my bed;
it is so large and of such a shape."

"Lord," said his wife, "I know the box well."

He slipped the loop of the string that held it over
his head, and in all calmness awaited his master's
coming.

Sanders was very angry indeed, so angry that he
was almost polite to his erring chief.

"Lord," said Bosambo, when the question was
put to him, "I have not left my city by day or by
night.  As you find me, so have I been—sitting
before my hut thinking of holy things and your
lordship's goodness."

"Give me that box," said Sanders.

He took it in his hand and snapped it open.
He looked at the dials for a long time; then he
looked at Bosambo, and that worthy man returned
his glance without embarrassment.

"Bosambo," said Sanders, "my little devil tells
me that you have travelled for many miles——"

"Lord," said the bewildered chief, "if it says
that it lies."

"It is true enough for me," said Sanders.  "Now
I tell you that you have gone too far, and therefore
I fine you and your people fifty goats, also I increase
your taxation, revoke your hunting privileges in
the Isisi forest, and order you to find me fifty
workmen every day to labour in the Government service."

"Oh, ko!" groaned Bosambo, standing on one
leg in his anguish.  "That is just, but hard, for I
tell you, Lord Sandi, that I did raid the Akasava,
yet how your devil box should know this I cannot
tell, for I wrapped it in cloth and hid it under
my bed."

"You did not carry it?" asked Sanders incredulously.

"I speak the truth, and my wife shall testify,"
said Bosambo.

He called her by name, and the graceful Kano
girl who domineered him came to the door of his hut.

"Lord, it is true," she said, "for I have seen it,
and all the people have seen it, even while my lord
Bosambo was absent."

She stooped down and lifted her fat baby from
the dust.

"This one also saw it," she said, the light of
pride in her eyes, "and to please my Lord Bosambo's
son, I hung it round the neck of Neta the goat.  Did
I wrong?"

"Bright eyes," said Bosambo, "you can do no
wrong, yet tell me, did Neta the goat go far from
the city?"

The woman nodded.

"Once only," she said.  "She was gone for a
day and a night, and I feared for your box, for this
is the season when goats are very restless."

Bosambo turned to his overlord.

"You have heard, O Sandi," he said.  "I am in
fault, and will pay the price."

"That you will," said Sanders, "for the other goat
has done no wrong."





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.. _`THE BROTHER OF BOSAMBO`:

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   CHAPTER VII


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   THE BROTHER OF BOSAMBO

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Bosambo was a Monrovian.  Therefore he was
a thief.  For just as most Swedes are born
fair and with blue eyes, and most Spaniards
come into this world with swarthy skins, so all
Monrovians come into this life constitutionally
dishonest.

In another place I have told the story of the chief's
arrival in Sanders's territory, of the audacious
methods by which he usurped the throne, of that
crazy stool of chieftainship, and I hinted at the
sudden and unexpected ends, discreditable to
Bosambo, which befell the rightful heirs to the
chieftainship.

Bosambo was a good man by many standards—Christian
and pagan.  He ruled his people wisely,
and extracted more revenue in one year than any
previous chief had taken from the lazy Ochori in
ten years.

Incidentally he made an excellent commission,
for it was Bosambo's way to collect one for the
Government and two for himself.  He had in those
far-off days, if I remember rightly, been an unruly
subject of the President of Liberia.  Before a
solemn tribunal he had been convicted of having
stolen a buoy-bell which had been placed in the
fairway to warn navigators of a wreck, and had
converted the same to his own use.  He had escaped
from captivity and, after months of weary travelling,
had arrived in the Ochori country.

Sanders had found him a loyal man, and trusted
him in all matters affecting good government.  There
were others who did not trust Bosambo at all—notably
certain chiefs of the Isisi, of the Akasava,
and of the N'gombi.

These men had measured their wits with the
foreigner, the ruler of the Ochori, and been worsted.
And because of certain courageous acts performed
in the defence of his country it was well known from
one end of the territories to the other that Bosambo
was "well loved by Sandi," who rumour said—in
no complimentary manner—was related to the chief.

As to how this rumour arose Bosambo knows
best.  It is an elementary fact that travelling news
accumulates material in its transit.

Thus it came about that in Monrovia, and in
Liberia itself, the fame of the ex-convict grew apace,
and he was exalted to a position which he never
pretended to occupy.  I believe a Liberian journal,
published by a black man, or men, so far forgot
the heinous offence of which Bosambo stood
convicted as to refer to him as "our worthy
fellow-citizen, Mr. Bosambo, High Commissioner for the
Ochori."

He was a wealthy prince; he was a king.  He
was above Commissioner Sanders in point of
importance.  He was even credited with exercising an
influence over the Home Government which was
without parallel in the history of the Coast.

Bosambo had relatives along the Coast, and these
discovered themselves in ratio with his greatness.
He had a brother named Siskolo, a tall, bony, and
important man.

Siskolo was first in importance by reason of the
fact that he had served on one of his Majesty's ships
as a Krooman, that he had a smattering of English,
and that he had, by strict attention to business
during the period of his contact with white men,
stolen sufficient to set him up in Liberia as a native
storekeeper.

He was called Mr. Siskolo, and had ambitions at
some future period to become a member of the
Legislative Council.

It cannot be said with truth that the possession
of a brother such as Bosambo was gave him any
cause for pride or exaltation during the time when
Bosambo's name in Liberia was synonymous with
mud.  It is even on record that after having denied
the relationship he referred to Bosambo—when the
relationship was a certainty beyond dispute—as a
"low nigger."

When the Liberian Government, in its munificence,
offered an adequate reward for the arrest of this
law-breaker, Mr. Siskolo, in the most public-spirited
way, through the columns of the Press, offered to
add a personal reward of his own.

Then the public attitude of Liberia changed
towards Bosambo, and with this change Siskolo's
views upon his brother also underwent a change.
Then came a time when Bosambo was honoured in
his own land, and men spoke of him proudly, and,
as I have indicated, even the public Press wrote of
him in terms of pride.

Now Mr. Siskolo, as is recounted, gathered around
him all people who were nearly or distantly related
to him, and they ranged from the pure aboriginal
grandfather to the frock-coated son-in-law, who ran
a boot factory in Liberia.

"My friends and my comrades," said Mr. Siskolo
oracularly, "you all know that my dear brother
Bosambo has now a large territory, and is honoured
beyond any other coloured man upon this coast.
Now I have loved Bosambo for many years, and
often in the night I have wrestled in prayer for his
safety.  Also, I have spoken well about him to all
the white men I have met, and I have on many
occasions sent him large sums of money by messenger.
If this money has not been received," continued
Mr. Siskolo stoutly, "it is because the messengers were
thieves, or robbers may have set upon them by the
wayside.  But all my clerks and the people who
love me know that I sent this money, also I have
sent him letters praising him, and giving him great
riches."

He paused, did Mr. Siskolo, and thrust a bony
hand into the pockets of the dress trousers he had
acquired from the valet of the French Consul.

"I have called you together," he said slowly,
"because I am going to make a journey into the
country, and I am going to speak face to face with
my beloved brother.  For I hear that he has many
treasures in his land, and it is not good that he
should be so rich, and we, all of us who are related
to him in blood, and have loved him and prayed for
him for so many years, should be poor."

None of the relations who squatted or sat about
the room denied this.  Indeed, there was a murmur
of applause, not unmixed, however, with suspicion,
which was voiced by one Lakiro, popularly supposed
to be learned in the law.

"All this is fine talk, Siskolo," he said; "yet
how shall we know in what proportion our dear
relation Bosambo will desire to distribute his wealth
amongst those of us who love him?"

This time the applause was unmistakable.

Mr. Siskolo said haughtily: "After I have
received treasure from my dear brother Bosambo—my
own brother, related to me in blood, as you will
all understand, and no cousin, as you are—after
this brother of mine, whom I have loved so dearly
and for so long, has given me of his treasure, I will
take my half, and the other half I will distribute
evenly among you."

Lakiro assumed his most judicial air.

"It seems to me," he said, "that as we are all
blood relations, and have brought money for this
journey which you make, Siskolo, and you yourself,
so far as I know, are not finding so much as a dollar,
our dear friend and relative Bosambo would be
better pleased if his great gifts were distributed
equally, though perhaps"—and he eyed the
back-country brethren who had assembled, and who were
listening uncomprehendingly to a conversation
which was half in English and half in Monrovian—"it
would be better to give less to those who have
no need of money, or less need than we who have
acquired by our high education, expensive and
luxurious tastes, such as champagne, wine and other
noble foods."

For two days and the greater part of two nights
the relations of Bosambo argued over the distribution
of the booty which they so confidently anticipated.
At the end of a fortnight Siskolo departed
from Liberia on a coasting steamer, and in the
course of time he arrived at Sanders's headquarters.

Now it may be said that the civilised native—the
native of the frock coat and the top hat—was
Mr. Commissioner Sanders's pet abomination.  He
also loathed all native men who spoke English—however
badly they spake it—with the sole exception
of Bosambo himself, whose stock was exhausted
within fifty words.  Yet he listened patiently as
Siskolo unfolded his plan, and with the development
of the scheme something like a holy joy took its
place in Sanders's soul.

He even smiled graciously upon this black man.

"Go you, Siskolo," he said gently.  "I will send
a canoe to carry you to your brother.  It is true,
as you say, that he is a great chief, though how rich
he may be I have no means of knowing.  I have not
your wonderful eyes."

Siskolo passed over the insult without a word.

"Lord Sandi," he said, dropping into the
vernacular, for he received little encouragement to
proceed in the language which was Sanders's own.
"Lord Sandi, I am glad in my heart that I go to
see my brother Bosambo, that I may take him by
the hand.  As to his treasure, I do not doubt that
he has more than most men, for Bosambo is a very
cunning man, as I know.  I am taking him rich
presents, amongst them a clock, which goes by
machinery, from my own store, which could not
be bought at any Coast port under three dollars,
and also lengths and pieces of cloth."

Mr. Siskolo was up early in a morning of July.
Mr. Siskolo in a tall hat—his frock coat carefully
folded and deposited in the little deckhouse on the
canoe, and even his trousers protected against the
elements by a piece of cardboard box—set out on
the long journey which separated him from his
beloved brother.

In a country where time does not count, and where
imagination plays a very small part, travelling is a
pleasant though lengthy business.  It was a month
and three days before Siskolo came to the border
of his brother's territory.  He was two miles from
Ochori city when he arrayed himself in the hat, the
frock coat, and the trousers of civilisation that he
might make an entry in a manner befitting one who
was of kin to a great and wealthy prince.

Bosambo received the news of his brother's arrival
with something akin to perturbation.

"If this man is indeed my brother," he said, "I
am a happy man, for he owes me four dollars he
borrowed *cala-cala* and has never repaid."

Yet he was uneasy.  Relations have a trick of
producing curious disorder in their hosts.  This is
not peculiar to any race or colour, and it was with
a feeling of apprehension that Bosambo in his state
dress went solemnly in procession to meet his
brother.

In his eagerness Siskolo stepped out of the canoe
before it was grounded, and waded ashore to greet
his brother.

"You are indeed my brother—my own brother
Bosambo," he said, and embraced him tenderly.
"This is a glorious day to me."

"To me," said Bosambo, "the sun shines twice
as bright and the little birds sing very loudly,
and I feel so glad, that I could dance.  Now tell
me, Siskolo," he went on, striking a more practical
note, "why did you come all this way to see me?
For I am a poor man, and have nothing to give you."

"Bosambo," said Siskolo reproachfully, "I bring
you presents of great value.  I do not desire so
much as a dollar.  All I wish is to see your beautiful
face and to hear your wise words which men speak
about from one end of the country to the other."

Siskolo took Bosambo's hands again.

There was a brief halt whilst Siskolo removed
the soaked trousers—"for," he explained, "these
cost me three dollars."

Thus they went into the city of the Ochori—arm
in arm, in the white man's fashion—and all
the city gazed spellbound at the spectacle of a
tall, slim man in a frock coat and top hat with a
wisp of white shirt fluttering about his legs walking
in an attitude of such affectionate regard with
Bosambo their chief.

Bosambo placed at the disposal of his brother
his finest hut.  For his amusement he brought
along girls of six different tribes to dance before this
interested member of the Ethiopian Church.
Nothing that he could devise, nothing that the
unrewarded labours of his people could perform,
was left undone to make the stay of his brother a
happy and a memorable time.

Yet Siskolo was not happy.  Despite the enjoyment
he had in all the happy days which Bosambo
provided of evidence of his power, of his popularity,
there still remained a very important proof which
Siskolo required of Bosambo's wealth.

He broached the subject one night at a feast
given in his honour by the chief, and furnished,
it may be remarked in parenthesis, by those who
sat about and watched the disposal of their most
precious goods with some resentment.

"Bosambo, my brother," said Siskolo, "though
I love you, I envy you.  You are a rich man, and
I am a very poor man and I know that you have
many beautiful treasures hidden away from view."

"Do not envy me, Siskolo," said Bosambo
sadly, "for though I am a chief and beloved by
Sandi, I have no wealth.  Yet you, my brother,
and my friend, have more dollars than the grains
of the sand.  Now you know I love you," Bosambo
went on breathlessly, for the protest was breaking
from the other's lips, "and I do these things
without desire of reward.  I should feel great pain
in my heart if I thought you should offer me little
pieces of silver.  Yet, if you do so desire, knowing
how humble I am before your face, I would take
what you gave me not because I wish for riches at
your hands, but because I am a poor man."

Siskolo's face was lengthening.

"Bosambo," he said, and there was less geniality
in his tone, "I am also a poor man, having a large
family and many relations who are also your
relations, and I think it would be a good thing
if you would offer me some fine present that I
might take back to the Coast, and, calling all the
people together, say 'Behold, this was given to
me in a far country by Bosambo, my brother,
who is a great chief and very rich.'"

Bosambo's face showed no signs of enthusiasm.

"That is true," he said softly, "it would be a
beautiful thing to do, and I am sick in my heart
that I cannot do this because I am so poor."

This was a type of the conversation which occupied
the attention of the two brothers whenever the
round of entertainments allowed talking space.

Bosambo was a weary man at the end of ten
days, and cast forth hints which any but Bosambo's
brother would have taken.

It was:

"Brother," he said, "I had a dream last night
that your family were sick and that your business
was ruined.  Now I think that if you go swiftly
to your home——"

Or:

"Brother, I am filled with sorrow, for the season
approaches in our land when all strangers suffer
from boils."

But Siskolo countered with neatness and
resolution, for was he not Bosambo's brother?

The chief was filled with gloom and foreboding.
As the weeks passed and his brother showed no
signs of departing, Bosambo took his swiftest
canoe and ten paddlers and made his way to the
I'kan where Sanders was collecting taxes.

"Master," said Bosambo, squatting on the
deck before the weary Commissioner, "I have a tale
to tell you."

"Let it be such a tale," said Sanders, "as may
be told between the settling of a mosquito and the
sting of her."

"Lord, this is a short tale," said Bosambo sadly,
"but it is a very bad tale—for me."

And he told the story of the unwelcome brother.

"Lord," he went on, "I have done all that a
man can do, for I have given him food that was
not quite good; and one night my young men
played a game, pretending, in their love of me,
that they were certain fierce men of the Isisi,
though your lordship knows that they are not
fierce, but——"

"Get on!  Get on!" snarled Sanders, for the
day had been hot, and the tax-payers more than
a little trying.

"Now I come to you, my master and lord,"
said Bosambo, "knowing that you are very wise
and cunning, and also that you have the powers of
gods.  Send my brother away from me, for I
love him so much that I fear I will do him an
injury."

Sanders was a man who counted nothing too
small for his consideration—always excepting the
quarrels of women.  For he had seen the beginnings
of wars in pin-point differences, and had
watched an expedition of eight thousand men
march into the bush to settle a palaver concerning
a cooking-pot.

He thought deeply for a while, then:

"Two moons ago," he said, "there came to me a
hunting man of the Akasava, who told me that
in the forest of the Ochori, on the very border
of the Isisi, was a place where five trees grew in
the form of a crescent——"

"Praise be to God and to His prophet Mohammed,"
said the pious Bosambo, and crossed himself
with some inconsequence.

"In the form of a crescent," Sanders went on,
"and beneath the centre tree, so said this young
man of the Akasava, is a great store of dead ivory"
(*i.e.*, old ivory which has been buried or stored).

He stopped and Bosambo looked at him.

"Such stories are often told," he said.

"Let it be told again," said Sanders significantly.

Intelligence dawned on Bosambo's eyes.

Two days later he was again in his own city,
and at night he called his brother to a secret
palaver.

"Brother," he said, "for many days have I
thought about you and how I might serve you
best.  As you know, I am a poor man."

"'A king is a poor man and a beggar is poorer,'"
quoted Siskolo, insolently incredulous.

Bosambo drew a long breath.

"Now I will tell you something," he said,
lowering his voice.  "Against my old age and the
treachery of a disloyal people I have stored great
stores of ivory.  I have taken this ivory from
my people.  I have won it in bloody battles.  I
have hunted many elephants.  Siskolo, my
brother," he went on, speaking under stress of
emotion, "all this I give you because I love you
and my beautiful relations.  Go now in peace,
but do not return, for when my people learn that
you are seeking the treasures of the nation they
will not forgive you and, though I am their chief,
I cannot hold them."

All through the night they sat, Bosambo mournful
but informative, Siskolo a-quiver with excitement.

At dawn the brother left by water for the border-line
of the Isisi, where five trees grew in the form
of a crescent.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



"Lord," said Bosambo, a bitter and an injured
man, "I have been a Christian, a worshipper of
devils, a fetish man, and now I am of the true
faith—though as to whether it is true I have reason
to doubt."  He stood before Sanders at headquarters.

Away down by the little quay on the river his
sweating paddlers were lying exhausted, for
Bosambo had come by the river day and night.

Sanders did not speak.  There was a twinkle
in his eye, and a smile hovered at the corners of
his mouth.

"And it seems to me," said Bosambo tragically,
"that none of the gods loves me."

"That is your palaver," said Sanders, "and
remember your brother loves you more than ever."

"Master," said Bosambo, throwing out his arms
in despair, "did I know that beneath the middle
tree of five was buried ten tusks of ivory?  Lord,
am I mad that I should give this dog such blessed
treasure?  I thought——"

"I also thought it was an old man's story,"
said Sanders gently.

"Lord, may I look?"

Sanders nodded, and Bosambo walked to the end
of the verandah and looked across the sea.

There was a smudge of smoke on the horizon.
It was the smoke of the departing mail-boat which
carried Siskolo and his wonderful ivory back to
Monrovia.

Bosambo raised a solemn fist and cursed the
disappearing vessel.

"O brother!" he wailed.  "O devil!  O snake!
Nigger!  Nigger!  Dam' nigger!"

Bosambo wept.





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.. _`THE CHAIR OF THE N'GOMBI`:

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   CHAPTER VIII


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   THE CHAIR OF THE N'GOMBI

.. vspace:: 2

The N'gombi people prized a certain chair
beyond all other treasures.

For it was made of ivory and native
silver, in which the N'gombi are clever workers.

Upon this chair sat kings, great warriors, and
chiefs of people; also favoured guests of the land.

Bosambo of the Ochori went to a friendly palaver
with the king of the N'gombi, and sat upon the
chair and admired it.

After he had gone away, four men came to the
village by night and carried off the treasure, and
though the King of N'gombi and his councillors
searched the land from one end to the other the
chair was never found.

It might never have been found but for a
Mr. Wooling, a trader and man of parts.

He was known from one end of the coast to
the other as a wonderful seller of things, and was
by all accounts rich.

One day he decided to conquer new worlds and
came into Sanders's territory with complete faith
in his mission, a cargo of junk, and an intense
curiosity.

Hitherto, his trading had been confined to the
most civilized stretches of the country—to places
where the educated aboriginal studied the rates
of exchange and sold their crops forward.

He had long desired to tread a country where
heathenism reigned and where white men were
regarded as gods and were allowed to swindle on
magnificent scale.

Wooling had many shocks, not the least of which
was the discovery that gin, even when it was German
gin in square bottles, gaudily labelled and enclosed
in straw packets, was not regarded as a marketable
commodity by Sanders.

"You can take anything you like," said Sanders,
waving his fly-whisk lazily, "but the bar is up
against alcohol and firearms, both of which, in
the hands of an enthusiastic and experimental
people, are peculiarly deadly."

"But, Mr. Sanders!" protested the woolgatherer,
with the confident little smile which represented
seventy-five per cent. of his stock-in-trade.  "I
am not one of these new chums straight out from
home!  Damn it!  I know the people, I speak
all their lingo, from Coast talk to Swaheli."

"You don't speak gin to them, anyway," said
Sanders; "and the palaver may be regarded as
finished."

And all the persuasive eloquence of Mr. Wooling
did not shift the adamantine Commissioner; and
the trader left with a polite reference to the weather,
and an unspoken condemnation of an officious
swine of a British jack-in-office which Sanders
would have given money to have heard.

Wooling went up-country and traded to the best
of his ability without the alluring stock, which
had been the long suit in his campaign, and if the
truth be told—and there is no pressing reason
why it should not—he did very well till he tied
up one morning at Ochori city and interviewed a
chief whose name was Bosambo.

Wooling landed at midday, and in an hour he
had arrayed his beautiful stores on the beach.

They included Manchester cotton goods from
Belgium, genuine Indian junk from Birmingham,
salt which contained a sensible proportion of good
river sand, and similar attractive bargains.

His visit to the chief was something of an event.
He found Bosambo sitting before his tent in a
robe of leopard skins.

"Chief," he said in the flowery manner of his
kind, "I have come many weary days through
the forest and against the current of the river, that
I may see the greatness of all kings, and I bring you
a present from the King of England, who is my
personal friend and is distantly related to me."

And with some ceremony he handed to his host
a small ikon representing a yellow St. Sebastian
perforated with purple arrows—such as may be
purchased from any manufacturer on the Baltic
for three cents wholesale.

Bosambo received the gift gravely.

"Lord," he said, "I will put this with other
presents which the King has sent me, some of
which are of great value, such as a fine bedstead
of gold, a clock of silver, and a crown so full of
diamonds that no man has ever counted them."

He said this easily; and the staggered Mr. Wooling
caught his breath.

"As to this beautiful present," said Bosambo,
handling the ikon carelessly, and apparently
repenting of his decision to add it to his collection,
"behold, to show how much I love you—as I love
all white lords—I give it to you, but since it is a
bad palaver that a present should be returned,
you shall give me ten silver dollars: in this way
none of us shall meet with misfortune."

"Chief," said Mr. Wooling, recovering himself
with a great effort, "that is a very beautiful
present, and the King will be angry when he hears
that you have returned it, for there is a saying,
'Give nothing which has been given,' and that is
the picture of a very holy man."

Bosambo looked at the ikon.

"It is a very holy man," he agreed, "for I see
that it is a picture of the blessed Judas—therefore
you shall have this by my head and by my soul."

In the end Mr. Wooling compromised reluctantly
on a five-dollar basis, throwing in the ikon
as a sort of ecclesiastical makeweight.

More than this, Bosambo bought exactly ten
dollars' worth of merchandise, including a length
of chiffon, and paid for them with money.
Mr. Wooling went away comforted.

It was many days before he discovered amongst
his cash ten separate and distinct dollar pieces
that were unmistakably bad and of the type which
unscrupulous Coast houses sell at a dollar a dozen
to the traders who deal with the unsophisticated
heathen.

Wooling got back to the Coast with a profit
which was fairly elusive unless it was possible to
include experience on the credit side of the ledger.
Six months later, he made another trip into the
interior, carrying a special line of talking-machines,
which were chiefly remarkable for the fact that the
sample machine which he exhibited was a more
effective instrument than the one he sold.
Here again he found himself in Ochori city.
He had, in his big trading canoe, one
phonograph and twenty-four things that looked like
phonographs, and were in point of fact phonographs
with this difference, that they had no workable
interiors, and phonographs without mechanism
are a drug upon the African market.

Nevertheless, Bosambo purchased one at the
ridiculously low price offered, and the chief viewed
with a pained and reproachful mien the exhaustive
tests which Mr. Wooling applied to the purchase
money.

"Lord," said Bosambo, gently, "this money is
good money, for it was sent to me by my
half-brother Sandi."

"Blow your half-brother Sandi," said Wooling,
in energetic English, and to his amazement the
chief replied in the same language:

"You make um swear—you lib for hell one
time—you say damn words you not fit for make
angel."

Wooling, arriving at the next city—which was
N'gombi—was certainly no angel, for he had
discovered that in some mysterious fashion he had
sold Bosambo the genuine phonograph, and had
none wherewith to beguile his new client.

He made a forced journey back to Ochori city
and discovered Bosambo entertaining a large
audience with a throaty presentment of the "Holy
City."

As the enraged trader stamped his way through
the long, straggling street, there floated to him on
the evening breeze the voice of the far-away tenor:

   |  Jer-u-salem!  Jer-u-salem!
   |  Sing for the night is o'er!
   |

"Chief!" said Mr. Wooling hotly, "this is a
bad palaver, for you have taken my best devil
box, which I did not sell you."

   |  Last night I lay a sleeping,
   |  There came a dream so fair.

sang the phonograph soulfully.

"Lord," said Bosambo, "this devil box I bought—paying
you with dollars which your lordship ate
fearing they were evil dollars."

"By your head, you thief!" swore Wooling.
"I sold you this."  And he produced from under
his arm the excellent substitute.

"Lord," said Bosambo, humbly enough, "I
am sorry."

He switched off the phonograph.  He dismounted
the tin horn with reluctant fingers; with
his own hands he wrapped it in a piece of the
native matting and handed it to the trader, and
Wooling, who had expected trouble, "dashed"
his courteous host a whole dollar.

"Thus I reward those who are honest," he said
magnificently.

"Master," said Bosambo, "that we may remember
one another kindly, you shall keep one half
of this and I the other."

And with no effort he broke the coin in half,
for it was made of metal considerably inferior
to silver.

Wooling was a man not easily abashed, yet it
is on record that in his agitation he handed over
a genuine dollar and was half way back to Akasava
city before he realised his folly.  Then he laughed
to himself, for the phonograph was worth all the
trouble, and the money.

That night he assembled the Akasava to hear the
"Holy City"—only to discover that he had again
brought away from Ochori city the unsatisfactory
instrument he had taken.

In the city of the Ochori all the night a wheezy
voice acclaimed Jerusalem to the admiration and
awe of the Ochori people.

"It is partly your own fault," said Sanders,
when the trader complained.  "Bosambo was
educated in a civilised community, and naturally
has a way with his fingers which less gifted people
do not possess."

"Mr. Sanders," said the woolgatherer earnestly,
"I've traded this coast, man and boy, for sixteen
years, and there never was and there never will be,"
he spoke with painful emphasis, "an eternally
condemned native nigger in this
inevitably-doomed-by-Providence world who can get the
better of Bill Wooling."

All this he said, employing in his pardonable
exasperation, certain lurid similes which need not
be reproduced.

"I don't like your language," said Sanders,
"but I admire your determination."

Such was the determination of Mr. Wooling,
in fact, that a month later he returned with a
third cargo, this time a particularly fascinating
one, for it consisted in the main of golden chains
of surprising thickness which were studded at
intervals with very rare and precious pieces of
coloured glass.

"And this time," he said to the unmoved
Commissioner, who for want of something better to
do, had come down to the landing-stage to see the
trader depart, "this time this Bosambo is going
to get it abaft the collar."

"Keep away from the N'gombi people," said
Sanders, "they are fidgety—that territory is barred
to you."

Mr. Wooling made a resentful noise, for he had
laid down an itinerary through the N'gombi
country, which is very rich in gum and rubber.

He made a pleasant way through the territories,
for he was a glib man and had a ready explanation
for those who complained bitterly about the
failing properties of their previous purchases.

He went straight to the Ochori district.  There
lay the challenge to his astuteness and especial
gifts.  He so far forgot the decencies of his calling
as to come straight to the point.

"Bosambo," he said, "I have brought you very
rare and wonderful things.  Now I swear to you
by," he produced a bunch of variegated deities
and holy things with characteristic glibness, "that
these chains," he spread one of particular beauty
for the other's admiration, "are more to me than
my very life.  Yet for one tusk of ivory this chain
shall be yours."

"Lord," said Bosambo, handling the jewel
reverently, "what virtue has this chain?"

"It is a great killer of enemies," said Wooling
enthusiastically; "it protects from danger and
gives courage to the wearer; it is worth two teeth,
but because I love you and because Sandi loves
you I will give you this for one."

Bosambo pondered.

"I cannot give you teeth," he said, "yet I
will give you a stool of ivory which is very
wonderful."

And he produced the marvel from a secret place
in his hut.

It was indeed a lovely thing and worth many
chains.

"This," said Bosambo, with much friendliness,
"you will sell to the N'gombi, who are lovers of
such things, and they will pay you well."

Wooling came to the N'gombi territory with
the happy sense of having purchased fifty pounds
for fourpence, and entered it, for he regarded
official warnings as the expression of a poor form
of humour.

He found the N'gombi (as he expected) in a
mild and benevolent mood.  They purchased by
public subscription one of his beautiful chains to
adorn the neck of their chief, and they fêted him,
and brought dancing women from the villages
about, to do him honour.

They expressed their love and admiration for
Sandi volubly, until, discovering that their
enthusiasm awoke no responsive thrill in the heart
or the voice of their hearer, they tactfully
volunteered the opinion that Sandi was a cruel and
oppressive master.

Whereupon Wooling cursed them fluently, calling
them eaters of fish and friends of dogs; for it
is against the severe and inborn creed of the Coast
to allow a nigger to speak disrespectfully of a white
man—even though he is a Government officer.

"Now listen all people," said Wooling; "I
have a great and beautiful object to sell you——"

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Over the tree-tops there rolled a thick yellow
cloud which twisted and twirled into fantastic
shapes.

Sanders walked to the bow of the *Zaire* to
examine the steel hawser.  His light-hearted crew
had a trick of "tying-up" to the first dead and
rotten stump which presented itself to their eyes.

For once they had found a firm anchorage.  The
hawser was clamped about the trunk of a strong
young copal which grew near the water's edge.
An inspection of the stern hawser was as satisfactory.

"Let her rip," said Sanders, and the elements
answered *instanter*.

A jagged blue streak of flame leapt from the
yellow skies, a deafening crack-crash of thunder
broke overhead, and suddenly a great wind smote
the little steamer at her shelter, and set the tops
of the trees bowing with grave unanimity.

Sanders reached his cabin, slid back the door,
and pulled it back to its place after him.

In the stuffy calm of his cabin he surveyed the
storm through his window, for his cabin was on
the top deck and he could command as extensive
a view of the scene as it was possible to see from
the little bay.

He saw the placid waters of the big river lashed
to waves; saw tree after tree sway and snap as
M'shimba M'shamba stalked terribly through the
forest; heard the high piercing howl of the tempest
punctuated by the ripping crack of the thunder,
and was glad in the manner of the Philistine that
he was not where other men were.

Night came with alarming swiftness.

Half an hour before, at the first sign of the cyclone,
he had steered for the first likely mooring.  In
the last rays of a blood-red sun he had brought his
boat to land.

Now it was pitch dark—almost as he stood
watching the mad passion of the storm it faded first
into grey, then into inky blue—then night
obliterated the view.

He groped for the switch and turned it, and the
cabin was filled with soft light.  There was a small
telephone connecting the cabin with the Houssa
guard, and he pressed the button and called the
attention of Sergeant Abiboo to his need.

"Get men to watch the hawsers," he instructed,
and a guttural response answered him.

Sanders was on the upper reaches of the Tesai,
in terra incognita.  The tribes around were frankly
hostile, but they would not venture about on a
night like this.

Outside, the thunder cracked and rolled and
the lightning flashed incessantly.

Sanders found a cheroot in a drawer and lighted
it, and soon the cabin was blue with smoke, for
it had been necessary to close the ventilator.
Dinner was impossible under the conditions.  The
galley fire would be out.  The rain which was now
beating fiercely on the cabin windows would have
long since extinguished the range.

Sanders walked to the window and peered out.
He switched off the light, the better to observe
the condition outside.  The wind still howled,
the lightning flickered over the tree-tops, and above
the sound of wind and rushing water came the
sulky grumble of thunder.

But the clouds had broken, and fitful beams of
moonlight showed on the white-crested waves.
Suddenly Sanders stepped to the door and slid
it open.

He sprang out upon the deck.

The waning forces of the hurricane caught him
and flung him back against the cabin, but he
grasped a convenient rail and pulled himself to
the side of the boat.

Out in mid-stream he had seen a canoe and had
caught a glimpse of a white face.

"Noka!  Abiboo!" he roared.  But the wind
drowned his voice.  His hand went to his hip—a
revolver cracked, men came along the deck,
hand over hand, grasping the rails.

In dumb show he indicated the boat.

A line was flung, and out of the swift control
current of the stream they drew all that was left
of Mr. Wooling.

He gained enough breath to whisper a word—it
was a word that set the *Zaire* humming with
life.  There was steam in the boiler—Sanders
would not draw fires in a storm which might snap
the moorings and leave the boat at the mercy of
the elements.

"... they chased me down river ... I shot
a few ... but they came on ... then the storm
struck us ... they're not far away."

Wrapped in a big overcoat and shivering in spite
of the closeness of the night, he sat by Sanders,
as he steered away into the seething waters of the
river.

"What's the trouble?"

The wind blew his words to shreds, but the
huddled figure crouching at his side heard him
and answered.

"What's that?" asked Sanders, bending his head.

Wooling shouted again.

Sanders shook his head.

The two words he caught were "chair" and "Bosambo."

They explained nothing to Sanders at the moment.





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.. _`THE KI-CHU`:

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   CHAPTER IX


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   THE KI-CHU

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The messenger from Sakola, the chief of
the little folk who live in the bush, stood up.
He was an ugly little man, four feet in height
and burly, and he wore little save a small kilt of
grass.

Sanders eyed him thoughtfully, for the
Commissioner knew the bush people very well.

"You will tell your master that I, who govern
this land for the King, have sent him lord's pleasure
in such shape as rice and salt and cloth, and that
he has sworn by death to keep the peace of the
forest.  Now I will give him no further present——"

"Lord," interrupted the little bushman outrageously,
"he asks of your lordship only this cloth
to make him a fine robe, also ten thousand beads
for his wives, and he will be your man for ever."

Sanders showed his teeth in a smile in which
could be discovered no amusement.

"He shall be my man," he said significantly

The little bushman shuffled his uneasy feet.

"Lord, it will be death to me to carry your
proud message to our city, for we ourselves are
very proud people, and Sakola is a man of greater
pride than any."

"The palaver is finished," said Sanders, and
the little man descended the wooden steps to the
sandy garden path.

He turned, shading his eyes from the strong
sun in the way that bushmen have, for these folk
live in the solemn half-lights of the woods and do
not love the brazen glow of the heavens.

"Lord," he said timidly, "Sakola is a terrible
man, and I fear that he will carry his spears to a
killing."

Sanders sighed wearily and thrust his hands
into the deep pockets of his white jacket.

"Also I will carry my spears to a killing," he
said.  "O ko!  Am I a man of the Ochori that I
should fear the chattering of a bushman?"

Still the man hesitated.

He stood balancing a light spear on the palm
of his hand, as a man occupied with his thoughts
will play with that which is in reach.  First he set
it twirling, then he spun it deftly with his finger
and thumb.

"I am the servant of Sakola," he said simply.

Like a flash of light his thin brown arm swung
out, the spear held stiffly.

Sanders fired three times with his automatic
Colt, and the messenger of the proud chief Sakola
went down sideways like a drunken man.

Sergeant Abiboo, revolver in hand, leapt through
a window of the bungalow to find his master moving
a smouldering uniform jacket—you cannot fire
through your pocket with impunity—and eyeing
the huddled form of the fallen bushman with a
thoughtful frown.

"Carry him to the hospital," said Sanders.
"I do not think he is dead."

He picked up the spear and examined the point.

There was lock-jaw in the slightest scratch of
it, for these men are skilled in the use of tetanus.

The compound was aroused.  Men had come
racing over from the Houssa lines, and a rough
stretcher was formed to carry away the débris.

Thus occupied with his affairs Sanders had no
time to observe the arrival of the mail-boat, and
the landing of Mr. Hold.

The big American filled the only comfortable
seat in the surf-boat, but called upon his familiar
gods to witness the perilous character of his sitting.

He was dressed in white, white irregularly splashed
with dull grey patches of sea-water, for the Kroomen
who manipulated the sweeps had not the finesse,
nor the feather stroke, of a Harvard eight, and
they worked independently.

He was tall and broad and thick—the other way.
His face was clean-shaven, and he wore a cigar
two points south-west.

Yet, withal, he was a genial man, or the lines
about his face lied cruelly.

Nearing the long yellow beach where the waters
were engaged everlastingly in a futile attempt to
create a permanent sea-wall, his references to home
ceased, and he confined himself to apprehensive
"huh's!"

"Huh!" he grunted, as the boat was kicked
into the air on the heels of a playful roller.  "Huh!"
he said, as the big surfer dropped from the ninth
floor to a watery basement.  "Huh—oh!" he
exclaimed—but there was no accident; the boat
was gripped by wading landsmen and slid to safety.

Big Ben Hold rolled ashore and stood on the
firm beach looking resentfully across the two miles
of water which separated him from the ship.

"Orter build a dock," he grumbled.

He watched, with a jealous eye, the unloading
of his kit, checking the packing cases with a piece
of green chalk he dug up from his waistcoat pocket
and found at least one package missing.  The
only important one, too.  Is this it?  No!  Is that
it?  No!  Is that—ah, yes, that was it.

He was sitting on it.

"Suh," said a polite Krooman, "you lib for dem
k'miss'ner?"

"Hey?"

"Dem Sandi—you find um?"

"Say," said Mr. Hold, "I don't quite get you—I
want the Commissioner—the Englishman—savee."

Later, he crossed the neat and spotless compound
of the big, cool bungalow, where, on the shaded
verandah, Mr. Commissioner Sanders watched the
progress of the newcomer without enthusiasm.

For Sanders had a horror of white strangers;
they upset things; had fads; desired escorts for
passing through territories where the natural desire
for war and an unnatural fear of Government
reprisal were always delicately balanced.

"Glad to see you.  Boy, push that chair along;
sit down, won't you?"

Mr. Hold seated himself gingerly.

"When a man turns the scale at two hundred and
thirty-eight pounds," grumbled Big Ben pleasantly,
"he sits mit circumspection, as a Dutch friend of
mine says."  He breathed a long, deep sigh of
relief as he settled himself in the chair and discovered
that it accepted the strain without so much as
a creak.

Sanders waited with an amused glint in his eyes.

"You'd like a drink?"

Mr. Hold held up a solemn hand.  "Tempt me
not," he adjured.  "I'm on a diet—I don't look
like a food crank, do I?"

He searched the inside pocket of his coat with
some labour.  Sanders had an insane desire to
assist him.  It seemed that the tailor had taken
a grossly unfair advantage of Mr. Hold in building
the pocket so far outside the radius of his short
arm.

"Here it is!"

Big Ben handed a letter to the Commissioner,
and Sanders opened it.  He read the letter very
carefully, then handed it back to its owner.  And
as he did so he smiled with a rare smile, for Sanders
was not easily amused.

"You expect to find the ki-chu here?" he asked.

Mr. Hold nodded.

"I have never seen it," said Sanders; "I have
heard of it; I have read about it, and I have listened
to people who have passed through my territories
and who have told me that they have seen it with,
I am afraid, disrespect."

Big Ben leant forward, and laid his large and
earnest hand on the other's knee.

"Say, Mr. Sanders," he said, "you've probably
heard of me—I'm Big Ben Hold—everybody knows
me, from the Pacific to the Atlantic.  I am the
biggest thing in circuses and wild beast expositions
the world has ever seen.  Mr. Sanders, I have made
money, and I am out of the show business for a
million years, but I want to see that monkey
ki-chu——"

"But——"

"Hold hard."  Big Ben's hand arrested the other.
"Mr. Sanders, I have made money out of the
ki-chu.  Barnum made it out of the mermaid, but
my fake has been the tailless ki-chu, the monkey
that is so like a man that no alderman dare go
near the cage for fear people think the ki-chu has
escaped.  I've run the ki-chu from Seattle to
Portland, from Buffalo to Arizona City.  I've had
a company of militia to regulate the crowds to see
the ki-chu.  I have had a whole police squad to
protect me from the in-fu-ri-ated populace when
the ki-chu hasn't been up to sample.  I have had
ki-chus of every make and build.  There are old
ki-chus of mine that are now raising families an'
mortgages in the Middlewest; there are ki-chus
who are running East-side saloons with profit to
themselves and their dude sons, there——"

"Yes, yes!" Sanders smiled again.  "But why?"

"Let me tell you, sir," again Big Ben held up
his beringed hand, "I am out of the business—good!
But, Mr. Sanders, sir, I have a conscience."  He
laid his big hand over his heart and lowered
his voice.  "Lately I have been worrying over
this old ki-chu.  I have built myself a magnificent
dwelling in Boston; I have surrounded myself with
the evidences and services of luxury; but there
is a still small voice which penetrates the
sound-proof walls of my bedroom, that intrudes upon
the silences of my Turkish bath—and the voice says,
'Big Ben Hold—there aren't any ki-chu; you're
a fake; you're a swindler; you're a green goods
man; you're rollin' in riches secured by
fraud.'  Mr. Sanders, I must see a ki-chu; I must have
a real ki-chu if I spend the whole of my fortune
in getting it"; he dropped his voice again, "if
I lose my life in the attempt."

He stared with gloom, but earnestness, at Sanders,
and the Commissioner looked at him thoughtfully.
And from Mr. Hold his eyes wandered to the gravelled
path outside, and the big American, following his
eyes, saw a discoloured patch.

"Somebody been spillin' paint?" he suggested.
"I had——"

Sanders shook his head.

"That's blood," he said simply, and Mr. Hold
jerked.

"I've just shot a native," said Sanders, in a
conversational tone.  "He was rather keen on
spearing me, and I was rather keen on not being
speared.  So I shot him."

"Dead?"

"Not very!" replied the Commissioner.  "As
a matter of fact I think I just missed putting him
out—there's an Eurasian doctor looking him over
just now, and if you're interested, I'll let you
know how he gets along."

The showman drew a long breath.

"This is a nice country," he said.

Sanders nodded.  He called his servants and
gave directions for the visitor's comfortable housing.

A week later, Mr. Hold embarked for the upper
river with considerable misgiving, for the canoe
which Sanders had placed at his disposal seemed,
to say the least, inadequate.

It was at this time that the Ochori were in some
disfavour with the neighbouring tribes, and a
small epidemic of rebellion and warfare had
sustained the interest of the Commissioner in his
wayward peoples.

First, the N'gombi people fought the Ochori,
then the Isisi folk went to war with the Akasava
over a question of women, and the Ochori went
to war with the Isisi, and between whiles, the
little bush folk warred indiscriminately with
everybody, relying on the fact that they lived in the
forest and used poisoned arrows.

They were a shy, yet haughty people, and they
poisoned their arrows with tetanus, so that all
who were wounded by them died of lock-jaw after
many miserable hours.

They were engaged in harrying the Ochori people,
when Mr. Commissioner Sanders, who was not
unnaturally annoyed, came upon the scene with
fifty Houssas and a Maxim gun, and although the
little people were quick, they did not travel as
fast as a well-sprayed congregation of .303 bullets,
and they sustained a few losses.

Then Timbani, the little chief of the Lesser Isisi,
spoke to his people assembled:

"Let us fight the Ochori, for they are insolent,
and their chief is a foreigner and of no consequence."

And the fighting men of the tribe raised their
hands and cried, "Wa!"

Timbani led a thousand spears into the Ochori
country, and wished he had chosen another method
of spending a sultry morning, for whilst he was
burning the village of Kisi, Sanders came with
vicious unexpectedness upon his flank, from the
bush country.

Two companies of Houssas shot with considerable
accuracy at two hundred yards, and when
the spears were stacked and the prisoners squatted,
resigned but curious, in a circle of armed guards,
Timbani realised that it was a black day in his
history.

"I only saw this, lord," he said, "that Bosambo
has made me a sorrowful man, for if it were not for
his prosperity, I should never have led my men
against him, and I should not be here before your
lordship, wondering which of my wives would mourn
me most."

"As to that, Timbani," said Sanders, "I have no
means of knowing.  Later, when you work in the
Village of Irons, men will come and tell you."

Timbani drew a deep breath.  "Then my lord
does not hang me?" he asked.

"I do not hang you because you are a fool," said
Sanders.  "I hang wicked men, but fools I send to
hard labour."

The chief pondered.  "It is in my mind, Lord
Sandi," he said, "that I would as soon hang for
villainy as live for folly."

"Hang him!" said Sanders, who was in an
obliging mood.

But when the rope was deftly thrown across the
limb of a tree, Timbani altered his point of view,
electing to drag out an ignominious existence.
Wherein he was wise, for whilst there is life there is
scope, if you will pardon the perversion.

To the Village of Irons went Timbani, titular
chief of the Lesser Isisi, and found agreeable
company there, and, moreover, many predecessors, for
the Isisi folk are notoriously improvident in the
matter of chiefs.

They formed a little community of their own,
they and their wives, and at evening time they
would sit round a smouldering log of gum wood,
their red blankets about their shoulders, and tell
stories of their former grandeur, and as they moved
the loose shackles about their feet would jingle
musically.

On a night when the Houssa sentries, walking
along raised platforms, which commanded all views
of the prisoners' compound, were unusually lax,
Timbani effected his escape, and made the best of
his way across country to the bush lands.  The
journey occupied two months in time, but native
folk are patient workers, and there came a spring
morning, when Timbani, lean and muscular, stood
in the presence of Sakola, the bush king.

"Lord," said he, though he despised all bushmen,
"I have journeyed many days to see you, knowing
that you are the greatest of all kings."

Sakola sat on a stool carved crudely to represent
snakes.  He was under four feet in height, and was
ill-favoured by bush standards—and the bush
standard is very charitable.  His big head, his
little eyes, the tuft of wiry whisker under his chin,
the high cheek bones, all contributed to the unhappy
total of ugliness.

He was fat in an obvious way, and had a trick of
scratching the calf of his leg as he spoke.

He blinked up at the intruder—for intruder he
was, and the guard at each elbow was eloquent of
the fact.

"Why do you come here?" croaked Sakola.

He said it in two short words, which literally mean,
"Here—why?"

"Master of the forest," explained Timbani glibly,
"I come because I desire your happiness.  The
Ochori are very rich, for Sandi loves them.  If you
go to them Sandi will be sorry."

The bushman sniffed.  "I went to them and I
was sorry," he said, significantly.

"I have a ju-ju," said the eager Timbani, alarmed
at the lack of enthusiasm.  "He will help you;
and will give you signs."

Sakola eyed him with a cold and calculating eye.
In the silence of the forest they stared at one another,
the escaped prisoner with his breast filled with
hatred of his overlord, and the squat figure on the
stool.

Then Sakola spoke.

"I believe in devils," he said, "and I will try
your ju-ju.  For I will cut you a little and tie you to
the top of my tree of sacrifice.  And if you are alive
when the sun sets, behold I will think that is a
good sign, and go once again into the Ochori land.
But if you are dead, that shall be a bad sign, and
I will not fight."

When the sun set behind the golden green of the
tree tops, the stolid crowd of bushmen who stood
with their necks craning and their faces upturned,
saw the poor wreck of a man twist slowly.

"That is a good sign," said Sakola, and sent
messengers through the forest to assemble his
fighting men.

Twice he flung a cloud of warriors into the Ochori
territory.  Twice the chiefs of the Ochori hurled
back the invader, slaying many and taking prisoners.

About these prisoners.  Sanders, who knew
something of the gentle Ochori, had sent definite
instructions.

When news of the third raid came, Bosambo gave
certain orders.

"You march with food for five days," he said to
the heads of his army, "and behold you shall feed
all the prisoners you take from the grain you carry,
giving two hands to each prisoner and one to
yourself."

"But, lord," protested the chief, "this is madness,
for if we take many prisoners we shall starve."

Bosambo waved him away.  "M'bilini," he said,
with dignity, "once I was a Christian—just as my
brother Sandi, was once a Christian—and we
Christians are kind to prisoners."

"But, lord Bosambo," persisted the other, "if
we kill our prisoners and do not bring them back it
will be better for us."

"These things are with the gods," said the pious
Bosambo vaguely.

So M'bilini went out against the bushmen and
defeated them.  He brought back an army well fed,
but without prisoners.

Thus matters stood when Big Ben Hold came
leisurely up the river, his canoe paddled close in
shore, for here the stream does not run so swiftly.

It had been a long journey, and the big man in
the soiled white ducks showed relief as he stepped
ashore on the Ochori beach and stretched his legs.

He had no need to inquire which of the party
approaching him was Bosambo.  For the chief wore
his red plush robe, his opera hat, his glass bracelets,
and all the other appurtenances of his office.

Big Ben had come up the river in his own good
time and was now used to the way of the little
chiefs.

His interpreter began a conversational oration,
but Bosambo cut him short.

"Nigger," he said, in English, "you no speak
'um—I speak 'um fine English.  I know Luki, Marki,
John, Judas—all fine fellers.  You, sah," he addressed
the impressed Mr. Hold, "you lib for me?  Sixpence—four
dollar, good-night, I love you, mister!"

He delivered his stock breathlessly.

"Fine!" said Mr. Hold, awestricken and dazed.

He felt at home in the procession which marched
in stately manner towards the chief's hut; it was
as near a circus parade as made no difference.

Over a dinner of fish he outlined the object of his
search and the reason for his presence.

It was a laborious business, necessitating the
employment of the despised and frightened
interpreter until the words "ki-chu" were mentioned,
whereupon Bosambo brightened up.

"Sah," interrupted Bosambo, "I savee al dem
talk; I make 'um English one time good."

"Fine," said Mr. Hold gratefully, "I get you,
Steve."

"You lookum ki-chu," continued Bosambo, "you
no find 'um; I see 'um; I am God-man—Christian;
I savee Johnny Baptist; Peter cut 'um head
off—dam' bad man; I savee Hell an' all dem fine
fellers."

"Tell him——" began Big Ben.

"I spik English same like white man!" said the
indignant Bosambo.  "You no lib for make dem
feller talky talk—I savee dem ki-chu."

Big Ben sighed helplessly.  All along the river the
legend of the ki-chu was common property.  Everybody
knew of the ki-chu—some had seen those who
had seen it.  He was not elated that Bosambo should
be counted amongst the faithful.

For the retired showman had by this time almost
salved his conscience.  It was enough, perhaps, that
evidence of the ki-chu's being should be afforded—still
he would dearly have loved to carry one of the
alleged fabulous creatures back to America with him.

He had visions of a tame ki-chu chained to a
stake on his Boston lawn; of a ki-chu sitting behind
gilded bars in a private menagerie annexe.

"I suppose," said Mr. Hold, "you haven't seen
a ki-chu—you savee—you no look 'um?"

Bosambo was on the point of protesting that the
ki-chu was a familiar object of the landscape when
a thought occurred to him.

"S'pose I find 'um ki-chu you dash[#] me plenty
dollar?" he asked.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] Give.

.. vspace:: 2

"If you find me that ki-chu," said Mr. Hold
slowly, and with immense gravity, "I will pay you
a thousand dollars."

Bosambo rose to his feet, frankly agitated.

"Thousan' dollar?" he repeated.

"A thousand dollars," said Big Ben with the
comfortable air of one to whom a thousand dollars
was a piece of bad luck.

Bosambo put out his hand and steadied himself
against the straw-plaited wall of his hut.

"You make 'um hundred dollar ten time?" he
asked, huskily, "you make 'um book?"

"I make 'um book," said Ben, and in a moment
of inspiration drew a note-book from his pocket and
carefully wrote down the substance of his offer.

He handed the note to the chief, and Bosambo
stared at it uncomprehendingly.

"And," said Big Ben, confidentially leaning
across and tapping the knee of the standing chief
with the golden head of his cane, "if you——"

Bosambo raised his hand, and his big face was
solemn.

"Master," he said, relapsing into the vernacular
in his excitement, "though this ki-chu lives in a
village of devils, and ghosts walk about his hut, I
will bring him."

The next morning Bosambo disappeared, taking
with him three hunters of skill, and to those who
met him and said, "Ho!  Bosambo; where do you
walk?" he answered no word, but men who saw
his face were shocked, for Bosambo had been a
Christian and knew the value of money.

Eight days he was absent, and Big Ben Hold
found life very pleasant, for he was treated with all
the ceremony which is usually the privilege of kings.

On the evening of the eighth day Bosambo
returned, and he brought with him the ki-chu.

Looking at this wonder Big Ben Hold found his
heart beating faster.

"My God!" he said, and his profanity was almost
excusable.

For the ki-chu exceeded his wildest dreams.  It
was like a man, yet unlike.  Its head was almost bald,
the stick tied bit-wise between his teeth had been
painted green and added to the sinister appearance
of the brute.  Its long arms reaching nearly to its
knees were almost human, and the big splayed feet
dancing a never-ceasing tattoo of rage were less
than animal.

"Lord," said Bosambo proudly, "I have found
the ki-chu!"

The chief's face bore signs of a fierce encounter.
It was gashed and lacerated.  His arms, too, bore
signs of rough surgical dressing.

"Three hunters I took with me," said Bosambo,
"and one have I brought back, for I took the ki-chu
as he sat on a tree, and he was very fierce."

"My God!" said Big Ben again, and breathed heavily.

They built a cage for the ki-chu, a cage of heavy
wooden bars, and the rare animal was screened from
the vulgar gaze by curtains of native cloth.

It did not take kindly to its imprisonment.

It howled and gibbered and flung itself against the
bars, and Bosambo viewed its transports with interest.

"Lord," he said, "this only I ask you: that you
take this ki-chu shortly from here.  Also, you shall
not show it to Sandi lest he be jealous that we send
away from our country so rare a thing."

"But," protested Mr. Hold to the interpreter,
"you tell the chief that Mr. Sanders just wants me
to catch the ki-chu—say, Bosambo, you savee,
Sandi wantee see dem ki-chu?"

They were sitting before the chief's hut on the
ninth day of the American's visit.  The calm of
evening lay on the city, and save for the unhappy
noises of the captive no sound broke the Sabbath
stillness of the closing day.

Bosambo was sitting at his ease, a bundle of
English banknotes suspended by a cord about his
neck, and the peace of heaven in his heart.

He had opened his mouth to explain the
idiosyncrasies of the Commissioner when——

"Whiff—snick!"

Something flicked past Big Ben's nose—something
that buried its head in the straw of the hut with a
soft swish!

He saw the quivering arrow, heard the shrill call
of alarm and the dribbling roll of a skin-covered
drum.

Then a hand like steel grasped his arm and flung
him headlong into the hut, for Sakola's headman
had come in person to avenge certain indignities
and the city of the Ochori was surrounded by twenty
thousand bushmen.

Night was falling and the position was desperate.
Bosambo had no doubt as to that.  A wounded
bushman fell into his hands—a mad little man,
who howled and spat and bit like a vicious little
animal.

"Burn him till he talks," said Bosambo—but
at the very sight of fire the little man told all—and
Bosambo knew that he spoke the truth.

The *lokali* on the high watch tower of the city
beat its staccato call for help and some of the
villagers about answered.

Bosambo stood at the foot of the rough ladder
leading to the tower, listening.

From east and south and north came the replies—from
the westward—nothing.  The bushmen had
swept into the country from the west, and the *lokalis*
were silent where the invader had passed.

Big Ben Hold, an automatic pistol in his hand,
took his part in the defence of the city.  All through
that night charge after charge broke before the
defences, and at intervals the one firearm of the
defending force spat noisily out into the darkness.

With the dawn came an unshaven Sanders.  He
swept round the bend of the river, two Hotchkiss
guns banging destructively, and the end of the bush
war came when the rallied villagers of the Ochori
fell on the left flank of the attackers and drove them
towards the guns of the *Zaire*.

Then it was that Bosambo threw the whole
fighting force of the city upon the enemy.

Sanders landed his Houssas to complete the
disaster; he made his way straight to the city and
drew a whistling breath of relief to find Big Ben
Hold alive, for Big Ben was a white man, and
moreover a citizen of another land.  The big man held
out an enormous hand of welcome.

"Glad to see you," he said.

Sanders smiled.

"Found that ki-chu?" he asked derisively, and
his eyes rose incredulously at the other's nod.

"Here!" said Mr. Hold triumphantly, and he
drew aside the curtains of the cage.

It was empty.

"Hell!" bellowed Big Ben Hold, and threw his
helmet on the ground naughtily.

"There it is!"  He pointed across the open
stretch of country which separated the city from
the forest.  A little form was running swiftly
towards the woods.  Suddenly it stopped, lifted
something from the ground, and turned towards
the group.  As its hands came up, Sergeant Abiboo
of the Houssas raised his rifle and fired; and the
figure crumpled up.

"My ki-chu!" wailed the showman, as he looked
down at the silent figure.

Sanders said nothing.  He looked first at the dead
Sakola, outrageously kidnapped in the very midst
of his people, then he looked round for Bosambo,
but Bosambo had disappeared.

At that precise moment the latter was feverishly
scraping a hole in the floor of his hut wherein to
bank his ill-gotten reward.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CHILD OF SACRIFICE`:

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   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CHILD OF SACRIFICE

.. vspace:: 2

Out of the waste came a long, low wail of infinite
weariness.  It was like the cry of a little
child in pain.  The Government steamer was
drifting at the moment.  Her engine had stopped
whilst the engineer repaired a float which had
been smashed through coming in contact with a
floating log.

Assistant-Commissioner Sanders, a young man in
those days, bent his head, listening.  Again the
wail arose; this time there was a sob at the end of
it.  It came from a little patch of tall, coarse elephant
grass near the shore.

Sanders turned to his orderly.

"Take a canoe, O man," he said in Arabic, "and
go with your rifle."  He pointed.  "There you will
find a monkey that is wounded.  Shoot him, that
he may suffer no more, for it is written, 'Blessed is
he that giveth sleep from pain.'"

Obedient to his master's order, Abiboo leapt into
a little canoe, which the *Zaire* carried by her side,
and went paddling into the grass.

He disappeared, and they heard the rustle of
elephant grass; but no shot came.

They waited until the grass rattled again, and

Abiboo reappeared with a baby boy in the crook
of his arm, naked and tearful.

This child was a first-born, and had been left on
a sandy spit so that a crocodile might come and
complete the sacrifice.

This happened nearly twenty years ago, and the
memory of the drastic punishment meted out to
the father of that first-born is scarcely a memory.

"We will call this child 'N'mika,'" Sanders had
said, which means "the child of sacrifice."

N'mika was brought up in the hut of a good man,
and came to maturity.

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.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



When the monkeys suddenly changed their abiding-place
from the little woods near by Bonganga, on
the Isisi, to the forest which lies at the back of the
Akasava, all the wise men said with one accord that
bad fortune was coming to the people of Isisi.

N'mika laughed at these warnings, for he was in
Sanders's employ, and knew all things that happened
in his district.

Boy and man he served the Government faithfully;
loyalty was his high fetish, and Sanders
knew this.

The Commissioner might have taken this man
and made him a great chief; and had N'mika
raised the finger of desire, Sanders would have
placed him above all others of his people; but the
man knew where he might serve best, and at nineteen
he had scotched three wars, saved the life of Sanders
twice, and had sent three petty chiefs of enterprising
character to the gallows.

Then love came to N'mika.

He loved a woman of the Lesser Isisi—a fine,
straight girl, and very beautiful by certain standards.
He married her, and took her to his hut, making her
his principal wife, and investing her with all the
privileges and dignity of that office.

Kira, as the woman was called, was, in many
ways, a desirable woman, and N'mika loved her as
only a man of intelligence could love her; and she
had ornaments of brass and of beads exceeding in
richness the possessions of any other woman in the
village.

Now, there are ways of treating a woman the world
over, and they differ in very little degree whether
they are black or white, cannibal or vegetarian, rich
or poor.

N'mika treated this woman too well.  He looked
in the forest for her wishes, as the saying goes, and
so insistent was this good husband on serving his
wife, that she was hard put to it to invent
requirements.

"Bright star reflected in the pool of the world,"
he said to her one morning, "what is your need
this day?  Tell me, so that I may go and seek
fulfilment."

She smiled.  "Lord," she said, "I desire the tail
of a white antelope."

"I will find this tail," he said stoutly, and went
forth to his hunting, discouraged by the knowledge
that the white antelope is seen once in the year,
and then by chance.

Now this woman, although counted cold by many
former suitors, and indubitably discovered so by
her husband, had one lover who was of her people,
and when the seeker of white antelope tails had
departed she sent a message to the young man.

That evening Sanders was "tied up" five miles
from the village, and was watching the sun sinking
in the swamp which lay south and west of the
anchorage, when N'mika came down river in his
canoe, intent on his quest, but not so intent that
he could pass his lord without giving him due
obeisance.

"Ho, N'mika!" said Sanders, leaning over the
rail of the boat, and looking down kindly at the
solemn figure in the canoe, "men up and down the
river speak of you as the wonderful lover."

"That is true, lord," said N'mika simply; "for,
although I paid two thousand matakos for this
woman, I think she is worth more rods than have
ever been counted."

Sanders nodded, eyeing him thoughtfully, for he
suspected the unusual whenever women came into
the picture, and was open to the conviction that
the man was mad.

"I go now, lord, to serve her," N'mika said, and
he played with one of the paddles with some
embarrassment; "for my wife desires a tail of a white
antelope, and there is no antelope nearer than the
N'gombi country—and white antelopes are very
little seen."

Sanders's eyebrows rose.

"For many months," continued N'mika, "I must
seek my beautiful white swish; but I am pleased,
finding happiness in weariness because I serve her."

Sanders made a sign, and the man clambered
on deck.

"You have a powerful ju-ju," he said, when
N'mika stood before him, "for I will save you all
weariness and privation.  Three days since I shot
a white antelope on the edge of the Mourning Pools,
and you shall be given its tail."

Into the hands of the waiting man he placed the
precious trophy, and N'mika sighed happily.

"Lord," he said simply, "you are as a god to
me—and have been for all time; for you found me,
and named me the 'Child of Sacrifice,' and I hope,
my fine master, to give my life in your service.  This
would be a good end for me."

"This is a little thing, N'mika," said Sanders
gently; "but I give you now a greater thing, which
is a word of wisdom.  Do not give all your heart to
one woman, lest she squeeze it till you are dead."

"That also would be a great end," said N'mika
and went his way.

It was a sad way, for it led to knowledge.

Sanders was coming up the river at his leisure.
Two days ahead of him had gone a canoe, swiftly
paddled, to summon to the place of snakes, near
the elephants' ground where three small rivers meet
(it was necessary to be very explicit in a country
which abounded in elephants' playgrounds and
haunts of snakes, and was, moreover, watered by
innumerable rivers), a palaver of the chiefs of his
land.

To the palaver in the snake-place came the chiefs,
high and puisne, the headmen, great and small, in
their various states.  Some arrived in war canoes,
with *lokali* shrilling, announcing the dignity and
pride of the lazy figure in the stern.  Some came in
patched canoes that leaked continually.  Some
tramped long journeys through the forest—Isisi,
Ochori, Akasava, Little N'gombi and Greater Isisi.
Even the shy bushmen came sneaking down the
river, giving a wide berth to all other peoples, and
grasping in their delicate hands spears and arrows
which, as a precautionary measure, had been
poisoned with tetanus.

Egili of the Akasava, Tombolo of the Isisi,
N'rambara of the N'gombi, and, last but not least,
Bosambo of the Ochori, came, the last named being
splendid to behold; for he had a robe of green
velvet, sent to him from the Coast, and about his
neck, suspended by a chain, jewelled at intervals
with Parisian diamonds, was a large gold-plated
watch, with a blue enamel dial, which he consulted
from time to time with marked insolence.

They sat upon their carved stools about the
Commissioner, and he told them many things which
they knew, and some which they had hoped he
did not know.

"Now, I tell you," said Sanders, "I call you
together because there is peace in the land, and no
man's hand is against his brother's, and thus it has
been for nearly twelve moons, and behold! you all
grow rich and fat."

"Kwai!" murmured the chiefs approvingly.

"Therefore," said Sanders, "I have spoken a
good word to Government for you, and Government
is pleased; also my King and yours has sent you a
token of his love, which he has made with great
mystery and intelligence, that you may see him
always with you, watching you."

He had brought half a hundred oleographs of His
Majesty from the headquarters, and these he had
solemnly distributed.  It was a head-and-shoulder
photograph of the King lighting a cigarette, and had
been distributed gratis with an English Christmas
number.

"Now all people see!  For peace is a beautiful
thing, and men may lie down in their huts and fear
nothing of their using.  Also, they may go out to
their hunting and fear nothing as to their return,
for their wives will be waiting with food in their
hands."

"Lord," said a little chief of the N'gombi, "even
I, a blind and ignorant man, see all this.  Now,
I swear by death that I will hold the King's peace
in my two hands, offending none; for though my
village is a small one, I have influence, owing to my
wife's own brother, by the same father and of the
same mother, being the high chief of the
N'gombi-by-the-River."

"Lord Sandi," said Bosambo, and all eyes were
fixed upon a chief so brave and so gallantly arrayed,
who was, moreover, by all understanding, related
too nearly to Sandi for the Commissioner's ease.
"Lord Sandi," said Bosambo, "that I am your
faithful slave all men know.  Some have spoken
evilly of me, but, lo! where are they?  They
are in hell, as your lordship knows, for we were
both Christians before I learnt the true way and
worshipped God and the Prophet.  Nevertheless,
lord, Mussulman and Christian are one alike in
this, that they have a very terrible hell to which
their enemies go——"

"Bosambo," said Sanders interrupting, "your
voice is pleasant, and like the falling of rain after
drought, yet I am a busy man, and there are many
to speak."

Bosambo inclined his head gravely.  The conference
looked at him now in awe, for he had earned
an admonition from Sandi, and still lived—nay! still
preserved his dignity.

"Lord," said Bosambo.  "I speak no more now,
for, as you say, we have many private palavers,
where much is said which no man knows; therefore
it is unseemly to stand between other great
speakers and your honour."  He sat down.

"You speak truly, Bosambo," said Sanders
calmly.  "Often we speak in private, you and I,
for when I speak harshly to chiefs it is thus—in
the secrecy of their huts that I talk, lest I put
shame upon them in the eyes of their people."

"O, ko!" said the dismayed Bosambo under
his breath, for he saw the good impression his
cryptic utterance had wrought wearing off with
some rapidity.

After the palaver had dispersed, a weary Sanders
made his way to the *Zaire*.  A bath freshened
him, and he came out to a wire-screened patch
of deck to his dinner with some zest.  A chicken
of microscopic proportions had been the main
dish every night for months.

He ate his meal in solitude, a book propped up
against a bottle before him, a steaming cup of tea
at one elbow, and a little electric hand-lamp at
the other.

He was worried.  For nine months he had kept a
regiment of the Ochori on the Isisi border
prepared for any eventualities.  This regiment had
been withdrawn.  Sanders had an uncomfortable
feeling that he had made a bad mistake.  It would
take three weeks to police the border again.

Long after the meal had been cleared away he
sat thinking, and then a familiar voice, speaking
with Abiboo on the lower deck, aroused him.

He turned to the immobile Houssa orderly who
squatted outside the fly wire.

"If that voice is the voice of the chief Bosambo,
bring him to me."

A minute later Bosambo came, standing before
the meshed door of the fly-proof enclosure.

"Enter, Bosambo," said Sanders, and when he
had done so: "Bosambo," he said, "you are a
wise man, though somewhat boastful.  Yet I
have some faith in your judgment.  Now you have
heard all manner of people speaking before me,
and you know that there is peace in this land.
Tell me, by your head and your love, what things
are there which may split this friendship between
man and man?"

"Lord," said Bosambo, preparing to orate at
length, "I know of two things which may bring
war, and the one is land and such high matters as
fishing rights and hunting grounds, and the other
is women.  And, lord, since women live and are
born to this world every hour of the day, faster—as
it seems to me—than they die, there will always
be voices to call spears from the roof."

Sanders nodded.  "And now?" he asked.

Bosambo looked at him swiftly.  "Lord," he
said suavely, "all men live in peace, as your
lordship has said this day, and we love one another
too well to break the King's peace.  Yet we keep a
regiment of my Ochori on the Akasava border to
keep the peace."

"And now?" said Sanders again, more softly.

Bosambo shifted uncomfortably.  "I am your
man," he said, "I have eaten your salt, and have
shown you by various heroic deeds, and by terrible
fighting, how much I love you, lord Sandi."

"Yet," said Sanders, speaking rather to the
swaying electric bulb hanging from the awning,
"and yet I did not see the chief of the little Isisi
at my palaver."

Bosambo was silent for a moment.  Then he
heaved a deep sigh.

"Lord," he said, with reluctant admiration,
"you have eyes all over your body.  You can see
the words of men before they are uttered, and are
very quick to read thoughts.  You are all eyes,"
he went on extravagantly, "you have eyes on the
top of your head and behind your ears.  You have
eyes——"

"That will do," said Sanders quietly.  "I think
that will do, Bosambo."

There was another long pause.

"And I tell you this, because there are no secrets
between you and me.  It was I who persuaded
the little chief not to come."

Sanders nodded.  "That I know," he said.

"For, lord, I desired that this should be a very
pleasant day for your lordship, and that you should
go away with your heart filled with gladness,
singing great songs; also, as your lordship knows,
the Ochori guard has left the Akasava border."

There was no mistaking the significance.

"Why should Bimebibi make me otherwise?"
asked Sanders, ignoring the addition.

"Lord," said Bosambo loftily, "I am, as you
know, of the true faith, believing neither in devils
nor spells, save those which are prescribed by the
blessed Prophet, it is well known that Bimebibi
is a friend of ghosts, and has the eye which withers
and kills.  Therefore, lord, he is an evil man, and
all the chiefs and peoples of this land are for
chopping him—all save the people of the Lesser Isisi,
who greatly love him."

Again Sanders nodded.

The Lesser Isisi were the fighting Isisi; they
held the land between the Ochori and the Akasava,
and were fierce men in some moments, though
gentle enough in others.  Yet he had had no word
from N'mika that trouble was brewing.  This
was strange.  Sanders sat in thought for the
greater part of ten minutes.  Then he spoke.

"War is very terrible," he said, "for if one mad
man comes up against five men who are not mad,
behold! they become all mad together.  I tell you
this, Bosambo, if you do well for me in this matter,
I will pay you beyond your dreams."

"How can a man do well?" asked Bosambo.

"He shall hold this war," said Sanders.

Bosambo raised his right arm stiffly.

"This I would do, lord," he said gravely; "but
it is not for me, for Bimebibi will cross with the
Akasava just as soon as he knows that the Ochori
do not hold the border."

"He must never know until I bring my soldiers,"
said Sanders; "and none can tell him."  He looked
up quietly, and met the chief's eye.  "And none
can tell him?" he challenged.

Bosambo shook his head.  "N'mika sits in
his village, lord," said he; "and N'mika is a great
lover of his wife by all accounts."

Sanders smiled.  "If N'mika betrays me," he
said, "there is no man in the world I will ever
trust."

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N'mika faced his wife.  He wore neither frown
nor smile, but upon her face was the terror of death.
On a stool in the centre of the hut was the tail of
the white antelope, but to this she gave no
attention, for her mind was busy with the thoughts of
terrible reprisals.

They sat in silence; the fire in the centre of the
big hut spluttered and burnt, throwing weird
shadows upon the wattle walls.

When N'mika spoke his voice was even and calm.

"Kira, my wife," he said, "you have taken my
heart out of me, and left a stone, for you do not
love me."

She licked her dry lips and said nothing.

"Now, I may put you away," he went on, "for
the shame you have brought, and the sorrow, and
the loneliness."

She opened her mouth to speak.  Twice she
tried, but her tongue refused.  Then, again:

"Kill me," she whispered, and kept her staring
eyes on his.

N'mika, the Wonderful Lover, shook his head.

"You are a woman, and you have not my
strength," he said, half to himself, "and you are
young.  I have trusted you, and I am afraid."

She was silent.

If the man, her lover, did what she had told him
to do in the frantic moment when she had been
warned of her husband's return, she might have
saved her life—and more.

He read her thoughts in part.

"You shall take no harm from me," he said;
"for I love you beyond understanding; and
though I stand on the edge of death for my
kindness, I will do no ill to you."

She sprang up.  The fear in her eyes was gone;
hate shone there banefully.  He saw the look, and
it scorched his very soul—and he heard.

It was the soft pad-pad of the king's guard, and
he turned to greet Bimebibi's head chief.

His wife would have run to the guard, but N'mika's
hand shot out and held her.

"Take him—take him!" she cried hoarsely
"He will kill me—also he plots against the king,
for he is Sandi's man!"

Chekolana, the king's headman, watched her
curiously, but no more dispassionate was the face
her husband turned upon her.

"Kira," he said, "though you hate me, I love
you.  Though I die for this at the hands of the
king, I love you."

She laughed aloud.

She was safe—and N'mika was afraid.  Her
outstretched finger almost touched his face.

"Tell this to the king," she cried, "N'mika
is Sandi's man, and knows his heart——"

The headman, Chekolana, made a step forward
and peered into N'mika's face.

"If this is true," he said, "you shall tell
Bimebibi all he desires to know.  Say, N'mika, how
many men of the Ochori hold the border?"

N'mika laughed.

"Ask Sandi that," he said.

"Lord! lord!"—it was the woman, her eyes
blazing—"this I will tell you, if you put my man
away.  On the border there is——"

She gasped once and sighed like one grown weary,
then she slid down to the floor of the hut—dead,
for N'mika was a quick killer, and his
hunting-knife very sharp.

"Take me to the king," he said, his eyes upon
the figure at his feet, "saying N'mika has slain the
woman he loved; N'mika, the Wonderful Lover;
N'mika, the Child of Sacrifice, who loved his wife
well, and loved his high duty best."

No other word spoke N'mika.

They crucified him on a stake before the chief's
hut, and there Sanders found him three days later,
Bimebibi explained the circumstances.

"Lord, this man murdered a woman, so I killed
him," he said.

He might have saved his breath, for he had need
of it.





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.. _`"THEY"`:

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   CHAPTER XI


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   "THEY"

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In the Akarti country they worshipped many
devils, and feared none, save one strange
devil, who was called "Wu," which in our
language means "They."

"Remember this," said Sanders of the River,
as he grasped the hand of Grayson Smith, his
assistant.

"I will not forget," said that bright young man;
"and, by the way, if anything happens to me,
you might find out how it all came about, and drop
a note to my people—suppressing the beastly
details."

Sanders nodded.

"I will make it a pretty story," he said; "and,
whatever happens, your death will be as instantaneous
and as painless as my fountain-pen can make it."

"You're a brick!" said Grayson Smith, and
turned to swear volubly in Swaheli at his
headman—for Smith, albeit young, was a great linguist.

Sanders watched the big canoe as it swung
into the yellow waters of the Fasai; watched it
until it disappeared round a bank, then sent his
steamer round to the current, and set his course
homeward.

To appreciate the full value of the Akartis'
independence, and their immunity from all attack,
it must be remembered that the territory ranged
from the Forest-by-the-Waters to the
Forest-by-the-Mountains.  It was a stretch of broad,
pastoral lands, enclosed by natural defences.  Forest
and swamp on the westward kept back the
rapacious people of the Great King, mountain and
forest on the south held the Ochori, the Akasava,
and the Isisi.

The boldest of the N'gombi never ventured
across the saw-shaped peaks of the big mountains,
even though loot and women were there for the
taking.

The king of the Akarti was undisputed lord
of vast territories, and he had ten regiments of
a thousand men, and one regiment of women,
whom he called his "Angry Maidens," who drank
strong juices, and wrestled like men.

Since he was king from the Forest-by-the-Mountains
to the Forest-by-the-Waters he was
powerful and merciless, and none said "nay"
to N'raki's "yea," for he was too fierce, and too
terrible a man to cross.

Culuka of the Wet Lands once came down into
N'raki's territory, and brought a thousand spears.

Now the Wet Lands are many miles from the
city of the king, and the raid that Culuka planned
injured none, for the raided territories were poor
and stony.

But N'raki, the killer, was hurt in his tenderest
spot, and he led his thousands across the swamps
to the city of Culuka, and he fought him up to the
stockades and beyond.  The city he burnt.  The
men and children he slew out of hand.  Culuka
he crucified before his flaming hut, and, thereafter,
the borders of the killer were immune from
attack.

This was a lesson peculiarly poignant, and when
the French Government—for Culuka dwelt in
a territory which was nominally under the
tricolour—sent a mission to inquire into the
wherefores of the happening, N'raki cut off the head
of the leader, and sent it back with unprintable
messages intended primarily for the governor
of French West Africa, and eventually for the
Quai d'Orsay.

N'raki lived, therefore, undisturbed, for the
outrage coincided with the findings of the
Demarcation Commission which had been sitting for two
years to settle certain border-line questions.  By
the finding of the Commission all the Akarti country
became, in the twinkling of an eye, British
territory, and N'raki a vassal of the King of
England—though he was sublimely unconscious of the
honour.

N'raki was an autocrat of autocrats, and of his
many battalions of skilled fighting men, all very
young and strong, with shining limbs and feathered
heads, he was proudest of his first regiment.

These were the tallest, the strongest, the fleetest,
and the fiercest of fighters, and he forbade them
to marry, for all men know that women have an
evil effect upon warriors; and no married man
is brave until he has children to defend, and by
that time he is fat also.

So this austere regiment knew none of the
comforts or languor of love, and they were proud
that their lord, the king, had set them apart
from all other men, and had so distinguished them.

At the games they excelled, because they were
stronger and faster, knowing nothing of women's
influence; and the old king saw their excellence,
and said "Wa!"

There was a man of the regiment whose name
was Taga'ka, who was a fine man of twenty.
There was also in the king's city a woman of
fifteen, named Lapai, who was a straight, comely
girl, and a great dancer.

She was a haughty woman, because her uncle
was the chief witch-doctor, and such was her power
that she had put away two husbands.

One day, at the wells, she saw Taga'ka, and
loved him; and meeting him alone in the forest,
she fell down before him and clasped his feet.

"Lord Taga'ka," said she, "you are the one
man in the world I desire."

"I am beyond desire," said Taga'ka, in his
arrogant pride; "for I am of the king's regiment,
and women are grass for our feet."

And not all her allurements could tempt him
to so much as stroke her face; and the heart of
the woman was wild with grief.

Then the king fell sick, and daily grew worse.

The witch-doctors made seven sacrifices, and
learnt from grisly portents, which need not be
described in detail, that the king should take a
long journey to the far end of his kingdom, where
he should meet a man with one eye, who would
live in the shadow of the royal hut.

This he did, journeying for three months, till
he came to the appointed place, where he met a
man afflicted in accordance with the prediction.
And the man sat in the shadow of the king's hut.

Now, it is a fact, which none will care to deny,
that the niece of the chief witch-doctor had planned
the treatment of the king.  She had planned it
with great cleverness, and she it was who saw to
it that the deformed man waited at the king's hut.

For she loved Taga'ka with all the passion of
her soul, and when the long months passed, and
the king remained far away, and Lapai whispered
into the young man's ear, he took her to wife,
though death would be his penalty for his wrong-doing.

The other men of the royal regiment, who held
Taga'ka a model in all things austere, seeing this
happen, said: "Behold!  Taga'ka, the favourite
of the king, has taken a woman to himself.  Now,
if we all do this, it would be better for Taga'ka,
and better for us.  The king, the old man, will
forgive him, and not punish us."

It might have been that N'raki, the king, would
have ended his days in the place to which his
medicine-man had sent him, but there arose in
that district a greater magician than any—a
certain wild alien of the Wet Lands, who possessed
magical powers, and cured pains in the king's legs
by a no more painful process than the laying on
of hands, and whom the king appointed his chief
magician.  And this was the end of the uncle of
Lapai; for, if no two kings can rule in one land,
most certainly no two witch-doctors can hold
power.

And they killed the deposed uncle of Lapai, and
used the blood for making spells.

One morning the new witch-doctor stood in the
presence of N'raki the king.

"Lord king," he said, "I have had a dream,
and it says that your lordship shall go back to your
city, and that you shall travel secretly, so that
the devils who guard the way shall not lay hands
upon you."

N'raki, the king, went back to his city unattended,
save by his personal guard, and unheralded, to
the discomfort of the royal regiment.

And when he learnt what he learnt, he administered
justice swiftly.  He carried the forbidden
wives to the top of a high mountain and cast them
over a cliff, one by one, to the number of six hundred.

And that mountain is to this day called "The
Mountain of Sorrowful Women."

One alone he spared—Lapai.  Before the
assembled people in judgment he spared her.

"Behold this woman, people of the Akarti!"
he said; "she that has brought sorrow and death
to my regiment.  To-day she shall watch her
man, Taga'ka, burn; and from henceforth she shall
live amongst you to remind you that I am a very
jealous king, and terrible in my anger."

The news of the massacre filtered slowly through
the territories.  It came to the British Government,
but the British Government is a cautious Government
where primitive natives are concerned.

Sanders, sitting between Downing Street and the
District Commissioners of many far-away and
isolated spots, realised the futility of an
expedition.  He sent two special messages, one of which
was to a young man named Farquharson, who,
at the moment, was shooting snipe on the big
swamp south of the Ambalina Mountains.  And
this young man swore like a Scotsman because
his sport had been interrupted, but girded up his
loins, and, with half a company of the King's
African Rifles, trekked for the city.

On his way he ran into an ambush, and swore
still more, for he realised that death had
overtaken him before he had had his annual holiday.

He called for his orderly.

"Hafiz," he said in Arabic, "if you should
escape, cross the country to the Ochori land by
the big river.  There you will find Sandi; give
him my dear love, and say that Fagozoni sent a
cheerful word, also that the Slayer of Regiments
is killing his people."

An hour later Farquharson, or Fagozoni, as
they called him, was lying before the king, his
unseeing eyes staring at the hard, blue heavens,
his lips parted in the very ghost of a smile.

"This is a bad palaver," said the king, looking
at the dead man.  "Now they will come, and I
know not what will happen."

In his perturbation he omitted to take into his
calculations the fact that he had in his city a
thousand men sick with grief at the loss of their wives.

N'raki, the king, was no coward.  There was a
prompt smelling out of all suspicious characters.
Even the councillors about his person were not
exempt, for the new witch-doctor found traces of
disloyalty in every one.

With the aid of his regiment of virgins, he held
his city, and ruthlessly disposed of secret critics.
These included men who stood at his very elbow,
and there came a time when he found none to whom
he might transmit his thoughts with any feeling
of security.

News came to him that there was an Arab caravan
traversing his western border, trading with his
people, and the report he received was flattering
to the intelligence and genius of the man in charge
of the party.

N'raki sent messengers with gifts and kind
words to the intruder, and on a certain day there
was brought before him the slim Arab, Ussuf.

"O Ussuf," said the king, "I have heard of you,
and of your wisdom.  Often you have journeyed
through my territories, and no man has done you hurt."

"Lord king," said the Arab, "that is true."

The king looked at him thoughtfully.  N'raki,
in those days, had reached his maturity; he was
a wise, cunning man, and had no illusions.

"Arabi," he said, "this is in my mind: that
you shall stay here with me, living in the shadow
of my hut, and be my chief man, for you are very
clever, and know the ways of foreign people.  You
shall have treasures beyond your dreams, for in
this land there is much dead ivory hidden by the
people of my fathers."

"Lord king," said Ussuf, "this is a very great
honour, and I am too mean and small a man to
serve you.  Yet it is true I know the ways of
foreign people, and I am wise in the government
of men."

"This also I say to you," the king went on
slowly, "that I do not fear men or devils, yet I
fear 'They,' because of their terrible cruelty.  Now
if you will serve me, so that I avert the wrath
of these, you shall sit down here in peace and
happiness."

Thus it came about that Ussuf, the Arab,
became Prime Minister to the King of Akarti, and
two days after his arrival the new witch-doctor
was put away with promptitude and dispatch
by a king who had no further use for him.

All the news that came from the territories to
Sanders was that the country was being ruled
with some wisdom.  The fear of "They" was
an ever-present fear with the king.  The long
evenings he sat with his Arab counsellor, thinking
of that mysterious force which lay beyond the
saw-back.

"I tell you this, Ussuf," he said, "that my heart
is like water within me when I think of 'They,'
for it is a terrible devil, and I make sacrifices at
every new moon to appease its anger."

"Lord king," said Ussuf, "I am skilled in the
way of 'They,' and I tell you that they do not
love sacrifices."

The king shifted on his stool irritably.

"That is strange," he said, "for the gods told
me in a dream that I must sacrifice Lapai."

He shot a swift glance at the Arab, for this Ussuf
was the only man in the city who did not deal
scornfully with the lonely, outcast woman, whose
every day was a hell.

It was the king's order that she should walk
through the city twice between sunrise and
sunset, and it was the king's pleasure that every man
she met should execrate her; and although the
native memory is short, and the recollection of
the tragedy had died, men feared the king too much
to allow her to pass without a formal curse.

Ussuf alone had walked with her, and men had
gasped to see the kindly Arabi at her side.

"You may have this woman," said the king
suddenly, "and take her into your house."

The Arab turned his calm eyes upon the wizened
face of the other.

"Lord," he said, "she is not of my faith, being
an unbeliever and an infidel, and, according to my
gods, unworthy."

He was wise to the danger his undiplomatic
friendship had brought him.  He knew the reigns
of Prime Ministers were invariably short.

He had become less indispensable than he had
been, for the king had regained some of his lost
confidence in the loyalty of his people;
moreover, he had aroused suspicion in the Akartis'
mind, and that was fatal.

The king dismissed him, and Ussuf went back
to his hut, where his six Arab followers were.

"Ahmed," he said to one of these, "it is written
in the blessed Word that the life of man is very
short.  Now I particularly desire that it shall be
no shorter than the days our God has given to me.
Be prepared to-morrow, therefore, to leave this
city, for I see an end to my power."

He rose early in the morning, and went to the
palaver which began the day.  He was not
perturbed to discover the seat usually reserved on
the right of the king occupied by a lesser chief,
and his own stool placed four seats down on the left.

"I have spoken with my wise counsellors,"
said the king, "also with witch-doctors, and these
wise men have seen that the crops are bad, and
that there is no fortune in this land, and because
of this we will make a great sacrifice."

Ussuf bowed his head.

"Now, I think," said King N'raki slowly,
"because I love my people very dearly, and I will
not take any young maidens, as is the custom, for
the fire, and for the killing, that it would be good
for all people if I took the woman Lapai."

All eyes were fixed on Ussuf.  His face was
calm and motionless.

"Also," the king went on, "I hear terrible
things, which fill my stomach with sorrow."

"Lord, I hear many things also," said Ussuf
calmly; "but I am neither sorry nor glad, for
such stories belong to the women at their cooking-pots
and to men who are mad because of sickness."

N'raki made a little face.

"Women or madmen," he said shortly, "they
say that you are under the spell of this woman,
and that you are plotting against this land, and have
also sent secret messengers to 'They,' and that
you will bring great armies against my warriors,
eating up my country as Sandi ate up the Akasava
and the lands of the Great King."

Ussuf said nothing.  He would not deny this
for many reasons.

"When the moon comes up," said the king,
and he addressed the assembly generally, "you
shall tie Lapai to a stake before my royal house,
and all the young maidens shall dance and sing
songs, for good fortune will come to us, as it came
in the days of my father, when a bad woman died."

Ussuf made no secret of his movements that day.
First he went to his hut at the far end of the village,
and spoke to the six Arabs who had come with him
into the kingdom.

To the headman he said:

"Ahmed, this is a time when death is very near
us all, be ready at moonrise to die, if needs be.
But since life is precious to us all, be at the little
plantation at the edge of the city at sunset, as
soon as darkness falls and the people come in to
sacrifice."

He left them and walked through the broad,
palm-fringed street of the Akarti city till he came
to the lonely hut, where the outcast woman dwelt.
It was such a hut as the people of Akarti built
for those who are about to die, so that no dwelling-place
might be polluted with the mustiness of death.

The girl was starting on her daily penance—a
tall, fine woman.  She watched the approach
of the king's minister without expressing in her
face any of the torments which raged in her bosom.

"Lapai," said Ussuf, "this night the king makes
a sacrifice."

He made no further explanation, nor did the
girl require one.

"If he had made this sacrifice earlier, he would
have been kind," she said quietly, "for I am a
very sorrowful woman."

"That I know, Lapai," said the Arab gently.

"That you do not know," she corrected.  "I
had sorrow because I loved a man and destroyed
him, because I love my people and they hate me,
and now because I love you, Ussuf, with a love
which is greater than any."

He looked at her; there was a strange pity in
his eyes, and his thin, brown hands went out till
they reached to her shoulders.

"All things are with the gods," he said.  "Now,
I cannot love you, Lapai, although I am full of
pity for you, for you are not of my race, and there
are other reasons.  But because you are a woman,
and because of certain teachings which I received
in my youth, I will take you out of this city, and,
if needs be, die for you."

He watched her as she walked slowly down
towards where the people of the Akarti waited for
her, drawn by morbid curiosity, since the king's
intention was no secret.  Then he shrugged his
shoulders helplessly.

At nine o'clock, when the virgin guards and the
old king went to find her for the killing, she had
gone.

So also had Ussuf and his six Arabi.  The king's
*lokali* beat furiously, summoning all the country
to deliver into his hands the woman and the man.

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Sanders, at that moment, was hunting for the
Long Man, whose name was O'Fasa.  O'Fasa was
twelve months gone in sleeping-sickness, and had
turned from being a gentle husband and a kindly
father into a brute beast.  He had speared his wife,
cut down the Houssa guard left by Sanders to
keep the peace of his village, and had made for
the forest.

Now, a madman is a king, holding his subjects
in the thrall of fear, and since there was no room
in the territory for two kings and Sanders, the
Commissioner came full tilt up the river, landed
half a company of black infantry, and followed on
the ravaging trace of the madman.

At the end of eight days he came upon O'Fasa,
the Long Man.  He was sitting with his back
against a gum-tree, his well-polished spears close
at hand, and he was singing the death song of the
Isisi, a long low, wailing, sorrowful song, which
may be so translated into doggerel English:

   |  Life is a thing so small
   |  That you cannot see it at all;
   |  Death is a thing so wise
   |  That you see it in every guise.
   |  Death is the son of life,
   |  Pain is his favourite wife.

Sanders went slowly across the clearing, his
automatic pistol in his hand.

O'Fasa looked at him and laughed.

"O'Fasa," said Sanders gently, "I have come
to see you, because my King heard you were sick."

"O ko!" laughed the other.  "I am a great
man when kings send their messengers to me."

Sanders, his eye upon the spears, advanced warily.

"Come with me, O'Fasa," he said.

The man rose to his feet.  He made no attempt
to reach his spears.  Of a sudden he ducked, and
turned, running swiftly towards the black heart
of the forest.  Sanders raised his pistol, and
hesitated a second—just too long.  He could not kill
the man, though by letting him live he might
endanger the lives of his fellows and the peace of
the land.

The Commissioner was in an awkward predicament.
Ten miles beyond was the narrow gap
which led into the territory of N'raki.  To lead
an armed expedition through that gap would
bring about complications which it was his duty
and desire to avoid.  The only hope was that
O'Fasa would double back, for the trail they
followed left little doubt as to where he had gone.
Unerringly, with the instinct of the hunted beast,
he had made for the gap.

They came to the gorge, palm-fringed, and damp
with the running waters, at sunset, and camped.
They found the spoor of the hunted man, lost it,
and picked it up again.  At daybreak Sanders,
with two men, pushed through the narrow pass
and came into the forbidden territory.  There was
no sign of the fugitive.

Sanders's *lokali* beat out four urgent messages.
They were addressed to a Mr. Grayson Smith,
who might possibly be in that neighbourhood,
but if he received them, he sent no reply.

Now, madmen and children have a rooted
dislike for strange places, and Sanders, backing on
this, fixed his ambush in the narrow end of the
gorge.  Sooner or later O'Fasa would return.
At any rate, he decided to give him four days.
Thus matters stood when the sometime minister,
Ussuf, with a woman and five Arabi, made for
the gap, with the swift and tireless guards of the
king at their heels.

Three times the Arab had halted to fight off his
pursuers, and in one of these engagements he had
sustained his only casualty, and had left a dead
Arab follower on the ground of his stand.

The gap was in sight, when a regiment of the
north, summoned by *lokali*, swept down on his
left and effectively blocked his retreat.  Ussuf
took up his position on a little rocky hill.  His
right was protected by swamp land, and his left and
rear were open.

"Lapai," he said, when he had surveyed the
position, "it seems to me that the death you desire
is very close at hand.  Now, I am very sorry for
you, but God knows my sorrow can do little to
save you."

The woman looked at him steadily.

"Lord," she said, "I am very glad if you and I
go down to hell together, for in some new, strange
world you might love me, and I should be satisfied."

Ussuf laughed, showing his straight rows of
white teeth in genuine amusement.

"That we shall see," he said.

The attack came almost at once, but the rifles
of the six shot back the assault.  At the end of
two hours the little party stood intact.  A second
attack followed; one man of the Arab guard went
down with an arrow through his throat, but Ussuf's
shooting was effective, and again the northern
regiment drew off.

Before the hill, and in the direction of Akarti
city, was the king's legion.  It was from this point
that Ussuf expected the last destroying assault.

"Lapai," he said, turning round, "I——"

The woman had gone!  In the fury of the
defence he had not noticed her slip away from him.
Suddenly she appeared half-way down the hill
and turned to him.

"Come back!" he called.

She framed her mouth with two hands that
her words might carry better.  In the still evening
air every word came distinctly.

"Lord," she said, "this is best, for if they have
me, they will let you go, and death will come some
day to you, and I shall be waiting."

She turned and ran quickly down the hill towards
the stiff lines of warriors below.

Then suddenly appeared out of the ground, as
It seemed, a tall, lank figure right in her path.
She stopped a moment, and the man sprang at
her and lifted her without an effort.  Ussuf raised
his rifle and covered them, but he dare not shoot.

There was another interested spectator.  King
N'raki, a vengeful man, and agile despite his years,
had followed as eagerly as the youngest of his
warriors, and now stood in the midst of his
counsellors, watching the scene upon the hill.

"What man is that?" he asked.  "For I see
he is not of our people."

Before the messengers he would have dispatched
could be instructed, the tall man, running lightly
with his burden, came towards him, and laid a
dead woman almost at the king's feet.

"Man," he said insolently, "I bring you this
woman, whom I have killed, because a devil put
it into my heart to do so."

"Who are you?" asked N'raki.  "For I see
you are a stranger."

"I am a king," said O'Fasa, the Long Man;
"greater than all kings, for I have behind me the
armies of white men."

The humour of this twisted truth struck him
of a sudden, for he burst into a fit of
uncontrollable laughter.

"You have the armies of the white men behind
you?" repeated N'raki slowly, and looked
nervously from side to side.

"Behold!" said O'Fasa, stretching out his hand.

The king's eyes followed the direction of the
hand.  Far away across the bare plain he saw
black specks of men advancing at regular intervals.
The sinking sun set the bayonets of Sander's little
force aglitter.  The Commissioner had heard the
firing, and had guessed much.

"It is 'They,'" said King N'raki, and blinked
furiously at the Long Man, O'Fasa.

He turned swiftly to his guard.

"Kill that man!" he said.

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Sanders brought his half-company of Houssas
to the hill and was met half-way by Ussuf.

"I heard your rifles," he said.  "Have you seen
anything of a long chap, of wild and aggressive
mien!"  He spoke in English, and Ussuf replied
in the same language.

"A tall man?" he asked, and Sanders wondered
a little that a man so unemotional as was
Grayson Smith, of the Colonial Intelligence, should
speak so shakily.

"I think he is here," said the Englishman in
Arab attire, and he led the way down the hill.

N'raki's armies had moved off swiftly.  The
fear of "They" had been greater in its effect than
all its legions.

The Englishmen made their way to where two
figures lay in a calm sleep of death.

"Who is the woman?" asked Sanders.

"A native woman, who loved me," said Grayson
Smith simply, and he bent down and closed the
eyes of the girl who had loved him so well.





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.. _`THE AMBASSADORS`:

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   CHAPTER XII


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   THE AMBASSADORS

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There is a saying amongst the Akasava:

"The Isisi sees with his eyes, the N'gombi
with his ears, but the Ochori sees nothing
but his meat."

This is translated badly, but in its original form
it is immensely subtle.  In the old days before
Bosambo became chief, king, headman, or what
you will, of his people, the Ochori were quite
prepared to accept the insulting description of their
sleepiness without resentment.

But this was *cala-cala*, and now the Ochori are
a proud people, and it is not good to throw
insulting proverbs in their direction, lest they throw
them back with something good and heavy at the
end of it.

The native mind works slowly, and it was not
until every tribe within three hundred miles had
received some significant indication of the change
which had come about in the spirit and character
of this timorous people, that they realised the
Ochori were no longer a race which might serve
as butts for the shafts of wisdom.

There was a petty chief of the Isisi who governed
a great district, for, although "Isisi" means
"small" the name must not be taken literally.
He had power under his king to call palavers on
all great national questions, such as the failure
of crops, the shifting of fishing-grounds, and the
infidelities of highly-placed women.

One day he called his people together—his
counsellors, his headmen, and all sons of chiefs—and
he laid before them a remarkable proposition.

"In the days of my father," said Embed, "the
Ochori were a weak and cowardly people; now
they have become strong and powerful.  Last
week they came down upon our brothers of the
Akasava and stole their goats and laid shame
upon them, and behold! the Akasava, who are
great warriors, did nothing more than send to
Sandi the story of their sorrow.  Now it seems
to me that this is because Bosambo, the chief,
has a devil of great potency, and I have sent to
my king to ask him to entreat the lord Bosambo
to tell us why these things should be."

The gathered counsellors nodded their heads
wisely.  There was no doubt at all that Bosambo
had the advantage of communication with a devil;
or if this were not so, he was blessed to a minor
degree with a nodding acquaintance with one of
those ghosts in which the forest of the Ochori
abounded.

"And thus says my lord, the king of the Akasava,
and of all the territories and the rivers and the
unknown lands beyond the forest as far as the eye
can see," the chief went on.  "He sends me his
message by his counsellor, saying: 'It is true
Bosambo has a devil, and for the sake of my people
I will send to him, asking him to put his strength
in our hands, that we may be wise and bold.'"

Now this was a conclusion which had been arrived
at simultaneously by the six nations, and, although
the thoughts of their rulers were not communicated
in such a public fashion, the faith in Bosambo's
inspiration was universal, and the idea that Bosambo
should be thus approached was a violent and
shameless plagiarism on the part of the chief Emberi.

One morning in the late spring the ambassadors
of the powers came paddling up to Ochori city
in twelve canoes with their headmen, their warriors,
their beaters of drums and their carriers.  Bosambo,
who had no faith whatever in humanity, was
warned of their approach and threw the city into a
condition of defence.  He himself received the
deputation on the foreshore, and the spokesman
was Emberi.

"Lord Bosambo," said the chief, "we come in
peace, and from the chief and the kings and all
the peoples of these lands."

"That may be so," said Bosambo, "and my heart
is full of joy to see you.  But I beg of you that
you land your spearmen and your warriors and
your beaters of drums on the other side of the
river, for I am a timorous man, and I fear that I
cannot in this city show you the love and honour
which Sandi has asked me to give even to common
people."

"But, lord," protested the chief, who, to do
him credit, had no warlike or injurious ideas
concerning his host, "on the other side of the water
there is only sand and water and evil spirits."

"That may be so," said Bosambo; "but on
this side of the river there are me and my people,
and we desire to live happily for many years.  I
tell you, that it is better that you should all die
because of the sand and the water and the evil
spirits, than that I should be slain by those who
do not love me."

"My master," said Emberi pompously, "is a
great king and a great lover of you."

"Your master," said Bosambo, "is a great liar."

"He loves you," protested Emberi.

"He is still a great liar," said Bosambo; "for
the last time I met him he not only said that he
would come with his legions and eat me up, but
he also called me evil names, such as 'fish-eater'
and 'chicken,' and 'fat dog.'"

Bosambo spoke without fear of consequences
because he had a hundred of his picked men behind
him, and all the advantage of the sloping beach.
He would have turned the delegates back to their
homes, but that the persistent and alarmed Emberi
succeeded in interesting him in his announcements,
and, more important, there were landed from one
of the canoes, rich presents, including goats and
rice and a looking-glass, which latter was, explained
Emberi, the very core of his master's soul.

In the end Bosambo left his hundred men to
hold the beach, and Emberi persuaded his reluctant
followers to make their home on the sandy shore
across the river.

Then, and only then, did Bosambo unbend, and
had prepared one of his famous feasts, to which
all the chiefs of the land contributed in the shape
of meat and drink—all the chiefs, that is, except
Bosambo, who made a point of giving nothing
away to anybody in any circumstances.

The palaver that followed was very interesting,
indeed, to the chief of the Ochori.  One by one,
from nine in the morning to four in the following
morning, the delegates spoke.

Much of their speeches dealt with the superlative
qualities which distinguished Bosambo's rule—his
magnificent courage, his noble generosity—Bosambo
glanced quickly round to see the faces
of the counsellors who had reluctantly provided
the feast—and to the future which awaited all
nations which imitated all his virtues.

"Lord, I speak the truth," said Emberi, "and
thus it runs that all people from the sea where
the river ends, to the leopard's mouth from whence
it has its source, know that you are familiar with
devils that give you courage and cunning and tell
you magic, so that you can make men from rats."

Bosambo nodded his head gravely.

"All this is true," he said.  "I have several
devils, although I do not always use them.  For,
as you know, I am a follower of a particular faith,
and was for one life-time a Christian, believing
in all manners of mysteries of which you know
nothing—Marki, Luki, and Johnny Baptist, who
are not for you."

He looked round at the awed men and shook his head.

"Nor do you know of the wonders they worked,
such as curing burns, and striking dead, and cutting
ears.  Now I know these things," he continued
impressively, "therefore Sandi loves me, for he
also is a God-man, and often comes to me to speak
with him concerning these white men."

"Lord, what are devils?" asked an impatient delegate.

"Of the devils," repeated Bosambo, "I have many."

He half closed his eyes and was silent for the space
of two minutes.  He gave the impression that he
was counting his staff—and, indeed, this was the
idea precisely that he wished to convey.

"O ko!" said Emberi in a hushed voice.  "If
it is true, as you say it is, then our master desires
that you shall send us one devil or two that we
might be taught the peculiar manner of these
wonderful ghosts."

Bosambo coughed, and glanced round at the
sober faces of his advisers.

"I have many devils who serve me," he began.
"There is one I know who is very small and has
two noses—one before him and one behind—so
that he may smell his enemy who stalks him.  Also
there is one who is so tall that the highest trees are
grass to his feet.  And another one who is green
and walks upside down."

For an hour Bosambo orated at length on dæmonology,
even though he might never have known the
word.  He drew on the misty depths of his
imagination.  He availed himself of every recollection
dealing with science.  He spoke of ghosts who
were familiar friends, and came to his bidding
much in the same way that the civilised dog comes
to his master's whistle.

The delegates retired to their huts for the night
in a condition of panic when Bosambo informed
them that he had duly appointed a particular
brand of devil to serve their individual needs, and
protect them against the ills which the flesh is
heir to.

Now Ochori city and the Ochori nation had indeed
awakened from the spell of lethargy under the
beneficent and drastic government of Bosambo,
and it is known in the history of nations, however
primitive or however advanced they may be, that
no matter how excellent may be the changes effected
there will be a small but compact party who regard
the reformer as one who encumbers the earth.
Bosambo had of his own people a small but powerful
section who regarded all changes with horror, and
who saw in the new spirit which the chief had
infused into the Ochori, the beginning of the
end.  This is a view which is not peculiar to the
Ochori.

There were old chiefs and headmen who remembered
the fat and idle days which preceded the
upraising of Bosambo, who remembered how easy
it was to secure slave service, and, remembering,
spoke of Bosambo with unkindness.  The chief
might have settled the matter of devils out of
hand in his own way, and would, I doubt not,
have sent away the delegation happily enough with
such messages of the Koran as he could remember
written on the paper Sanders had supplied him for
official messages.

But it was not Bosambo's way, nor was it the
way with the men with whom he had to deal to
expedite important palavers.  Normally, such a
conference as was now assembled, would last at
least three days and three nights.  It seemed
that it would last much longer, for Bosambo had
troubles of his own.

At dawn on the morning following the arrival
of the delegation, a dust-stained messenger, naked
as he was born, came at a jog-trot and panting
heavily from the bush road which leads to the
Elivi, and without ceremony stood at the door of
the royal hut.

"Lord Bosambo," said the messenger, "Ikifari,
the chief of Elivi, brings his soldiers and headmen
to the number of a thousand, for a palaver."

"What is in his heart?" said Bosambo.

"Master," said the man, "this is in his heart:
there shall be no roads in the Ochori, for the men
of Elivi are crying out against the work.  They
desire to live in peace and comfort."

Bosambo had instituted a law of his own—with
the full approval of Sanders—and it was that each
district should provide a straight and well-made
forest road from one city to another, and a great
road which should lead from one district to its
neighbour.

Unfortunately, every little tribe did not approach
the idea with the enthusiasm which Bosambo himself
felt, nor regard it with the approval which was
offered to this most excellent plan by the King's
Government.

For road-making is a bad business.  It brings
men out early in the morning, and keeps them
working with the sweat running off their bare
backs in the hot hours of the day.  Also there
were fines and levies which Bosambo the chief
took an unholy joy in extracting whenever default
was made.

Of all the reluctant tribes, the Elivi were the most
frankly so.  Whilst all the others were covered
with a network of rough roads—slovenly made,
but roads none the less—Elivi stood a virgin patch
of land two hundred miles square in the very heart
of make-shift civilisation.

Bosambo might deal drastically with the enemy
who stood outside his gate.  It was a more delicate
matter when he had to deal with a district tacitly
rebellious, and this question of roads threatened
to develop, unhappily.

He had sent spies into the land of the Elivi and
this was the first man back.

"Now it seems to me," said Bosambo, half to
himself, "that I have need of all my devils, for
Ikifari is a bitter man, and his sons and his counsellors
are of a mind with him."

He sent his headman to his guests with a message
that for the whole day he would be deep in counsel
with himself over this matter of ghosts; and when
late in the evening the van of the Elivi force was
sighted on the east of the village, Bosambo, seated
in state in his magnificent palaver-house, adorned
with such Christmas plates as came his way, awaited
their arrival.

Limberi, the headman, went out to meet the
disgruntled force.

"Chief," he said, "it is our lord's wish that you
leave your spears outside the city."

"Limberi," said Ikifari, a hard man of forty,
all wiry muscle and leanness, "we are people of
your race and your brothers.  Why should we
leave our spears—we who are of the Ochori?"

"You do not come otherwise," said Limberi
decisively.  "For across the river are many enemies
of our lord, and he loves you so much, that
for his own protection, he desired your armed
men—your spearmen and your swordsmen—to
sit outside.  Thus he will be confident and
happy."

There was no more to be done than to obey.

Ikifari with his counsellors followed the headman
to the palaver, and his insolence was notable.

"I speak for all Elivi," he said, without any
ceremonious preliminaries.  "We are an oppressed
people, lord Bosambo, and our young men cry
out with great voices against your cruelty."

"They shall cry louder," said Bosambo, and
Ikifari, the chief, scowled.

"Lord," he said sullenly, "if it is true that
Sandi loves you, he also loves us, and no man is
so great in this land that he may stir a people to
rebellion."

Bosambo knew this was true—knew it without
the muttered approval of Ikifari's headmen.  He
ran his eye over the little party.  They were all
there—the malcontents.  Tinif'si, the stout
headman, M'kera and Calasari, the lesser chiefs; and
there was in their minds a certain defiance which
particularly exasperated Bosambo.  He might
punish one or two who set themselves up against
his authority, but here was an organised rebellion.
Punishment would mean fighting, and fighting
would weaken his position with Sanders.

It was the moment to temporise.

Fortunately the devil deputation was not present.
It was considered to be against all etiquette for
men of another nation to be present at the domestic
councils of their neighbours.  Otherwise some doubt
might have been born in the bosom of Emberi
as to the efficacy of Bosambo's devils at this
particular moment.

"And this I would say to you, lord," said Ikifari,
and Bosambo knew that the crux of the situation
would be revealed.  "We Elivi are your dogs.
You do not send for us to come to your great
feasts, nor do you honour us in any way.  But
when there is fighting you call up our spears and
our young men, and you send us abroad to be
eaten up by your terrible enemies.  Also," he
went on, "when you choose your chiefs and
counsellors to go pleasant journeys to such places
where they are honoured and feasted, you send
only men of the Ochori city."

It may be said here that from whatever source
Bosambo derived his inspiration, he had certainly
acquired royal habits which were foreign to his
primitive people.  Thus he would dispatch envoys
and ambassadors on ceremonious visits bearing
gifts and presents which they themselves provided
and returning with richer presents which Bosambo
acquired.  It was, if the truth be told, a novel and
pleasant method of extracting blackmail—pleasant
because it gave Bosambo little trouble, and afforded
his subordinates titillation of importance, and no
one had arisen to complain save these unfortunate
cities of Akasava—Isisi and N'gombi—which
entertained his representatives.

"It is true I have never sent you," said Bosambo,
"and my heart is sore at the thought that you should
think evil of me because I have saved you all this
trouble.  For my heart is like water within me.
Yet a moon since I sent Kill, my headman, bearing
gifts to the king of the bush people, and they
chopped him so that he died, and now I fear to
send other messengers."

There was an unmistakable sneer on Ikifari's face.

"Lord," he said, with asperity, "Kili was a
foolish man and you hated him, for he had spoken
evilly against you, stirring up your people.
Therefore you sent him to the bushmen and he did not
come back."  He added significantly: "Now I
tell you that if you send me to the bushmen I
do not go."

Bosambo thought a moment.

"Now I see," he said, almost jovially, "that
Ikifari, whom I love better than my own
brother"—this was true—"is angry with me because I
have not sent him on a journey.  Now I shall
show how much I love you, for I will send you
all—each of you—as guests of my house, bearing
my word to such great nations as the Akasava,
the Isisi, the N'gombi; also to the people beyond
the river, who are great and give large presents."

He saw the faces brighten, and seized the
psychological moment.

"The palaver is finished," said Bosambo
magnificently.

He ordered a feast to be made outside the city
for his unwelcome guests, and summoned the
devil delegates to his presence.

"My friends," he said, "I have given this matter
of devils great thought, and since I desire to stand
well with you and with your master, I have spent
this night in company with six great devils, who
are my best friends and who help me in all matters.
Now I tell you this—which is known only to myself
and to you, whom I trust—that to-day I send to
your master six great spirits which inspire me."

There was a hush.  The sense of responsibility,
which comes to the nervous who are suddenly
entrusted with the delivery of a ferocious bull,
fell upon the men of the delegation.

"Lord, this is a great honour," said Emberi,
"and our masters will send many more presents
than your lordship has ever seen.  But how may
we take these devils with us, for we are fearful
and are not used to their ways?"

Bosambo bowed his head graciously.

"That also filled my thoughts," he said, "and
thus I have ordered it.  I shall take six of my
people—six counsellors and chiefs, who are to
me as the sun and the flowers—and by magic I
will place inside the heart of each chief and
headman one great devil.  You shall take these men
with you, and you shall listen to all they say save
this."  He paused.  "These devils love me, and
they will greatly desire to return to my city and
to my land, where they have been so long.  Now
I tell you that you must treat them kindly.  Yet
you must hold them, putting a guard about them,
and keeping them in a secret place, so that Sandi
may not find them and hear of them.  And they
will bring you fortune and prosperity and the
courage of lions."

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Sanders was coming up river to settle a woman
palaver, when he came slap into a flotilla of such
pretension and warlike appearance that he did
not hesitate for one moment.

At a word, the canvas jackets were slipped
from the Hotchkiss guns, and they were swung
over the side.  But there was no need for such
preparations, as he discovered when Emberi's
canoe came alongside.

"Tell me, Emberi," said Sanders, "what is
this wonderful thing I see—that the Akasavas
and the Isisi, and the N'gombi and the people
of the lower forest sail together in love and
harmony?"

"Lord," said Emberi proudly, "this is Bosambo's
doing."

Sanders was all suspicion.

"Now I know that Bosambo is a clever man,"
he said, "yet I did not know that he was so great
a character that he could bring together all men
in peace, but rather the contrary."

"He has done this because of devils," said
Emberi importantly.  "Behold, there are certain
things about which I must not speak to you, and
this is one of them.  So, Sandi, ask me no more,
for I have sworn an oath."

Leaning over the steamer Sanders surveyed
the flotilla.  His keen eyes ranged the boat from
stem to stern.  He noted with interest the presence
of one Ikifari, who was known to him.  And Ikifari
in a scarlet coat was a happy and satisfied man.

"O Ikifari," bantered Sanders, "what of my roads?"

The chief looked up.  "Lord, they shall be made,"
he said, "though my young men die in the making.
I go now to make a grand palaver for my friend
and father Bosambo, for he trusts me above all
men and has sent me to the Isisi."

Sanders knew something of Bosambo's idiosyncrasies,
and nodded.

"When you come back," he said, "I will speak
on the matter of these roads.  Tell me now, my
friend, how long do you stay with the Isisi?"

"Lord," said Ikifari, "I stay for the time of
a moon.  Afterwards I go back to the Ochori,
bearing rich presents which my lord Bosambo
has made me swear I will keep for myself."

"The space of a moon," repeated Sanders.

He turned to ring the engines "Ahead" and
did not see Emberi's hand go up to cover a smile.





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.. _`GUNS IN THE AKASAVA`:

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   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   GUNS IN THE AKASAVA

.. vspace:: 2

"Thank God!" said the Houssa captain
fervently, "there is no war in this country."

"Touch wood!" said Sanders, and
the two men simultaneously reached out and laid
solemn hands upon the handle of the coffee-pot,
which was vulcanite.

If they had touched wood who knows what might
have happened in the first place to Ofesi the chief
of Mc-Canti?

Who knows what might have happened to the
two smugglers of gold from the French territory?

The wife of Bikilini might have gone off with
her lover, and Bikilini resigned and patient taken
another to wife, and the death men of the Ofesi
might never have gone forth upon their unamiable
missions, or going forth have been drowned, or
grown faint-hearted.

Anyway it is an indisputable fact that neither
Sanders nor Captain Hamilton touched wood on
the occasion.

And as to Bannister Fish——?

That singular man was a trader in questionable
commodities, for he had not the nice sentiments
which usually go with the composition of a white
man.

Some say that he ran slaves from Angola to
places where a black man or a black woman is
worth a certain price; that he did this openly
with the connivance of the Government of Portugal
and made a tolerable fortune.  He certainly bought
more poached ivory than any man in Africa, and
his crowning infamy up to date was the arming
of a South Soudanese Mahdi—arms for employment
against his fellow-countrymen.

There are certain manufacturers of small arms
in the Midlands who will execute orders to any
capacity, produce weapons modern or antiquated
at a cost varying with the delicacy or mechanism
of the weapon.  They have no conscience, but
have a hard struggle to pay dividends because
there are other firms in Liége who run the same
line of business, but produce at from 10 per
cent. to 25 per cent. lower cost.

Mr. Bannister Fish, a thin, wiry man of thirty-four,
as yellow as a guinea and with the temper
of a fiend, was not popular on the coast, especially
with officials.  Fortunately Africa has many coasts,
and since Africa in mass was Mr. Fish's
hunting-ground, rather than any particular section, the
coast men—as we know the coast—saw little of him.

It was Mr. Fish's boast that there was not
twenty miles of coast line from Dakka to
Capetown, and from Lourenço Marques to Suez, that
had not contributed something of beauty to his
lordly mansion on the top of Highgate Hill.

You will observe that he omits reference to
the coast which encloses Cape Colony, and there
is a reason.  Cape Colony is immensely civilised,
has stipendiary magistrates and a horrible
breakwater where yellow-jacketed convicts labour for
their sins, and Mr. Fish's sins were many.  He
tackled Sanders's territory in the same spirit as
a racehorse breeder will start raising Pekingese
poodles—not for the money he could make out of
it, but as an amusing sideline.

He worked ruin on the edge of the Akasava
country, operating from the adjoining foreign
territories, and found an unholy joy in worrying
Sanders, whom he had met once and most cordially
disliked.

His dislike was intensified on the next occasion
of their meeting, for Sanders, making a forced
march across the Akasava, seized the caravan of
Mr. Bannister Fish, burnt his stores out of hand,
and submitted the plutocrat of Highgate Hill to
the indignity of marching handcuffed to headquarters.
Mr. Fish was tried by a divisional court
and fined £500, or, as an alternative, awarded
twelve months imprisonment with hard labour.

The fine was paid, and Mr. Fish went home saying
horrible things about Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
which I will not sully these fair pages by repeating.

Highgate Hill is a prosaic neighbourhood served
by prosaic motor-buses, and not the place where
one would imagine wholesale murder might be
planned, yet from his domain in Highgate Mr. Fish
issued certain instructions by telephone and
cablegram, and at his word men went secretly into
Sanders's territory looking for the likely man.

They found Ofesi, and Highgate spoke to the
Akasava to some purpose.

In the month of February in a certain year
Mr. Fish drove resplendently in his electric landau
from Highgate to Waterloo.  He arrived on the
Akasava border seven weeks later no less angry
with Sanders than he had ever been, and of a
cheerful countenance because, being a millionaire,
he could indulge in his hobbies, and his hobby
was the annoyance of a far-away Commissioner
who, at that precise moment was touching vulcanite
and thinking it wood.

Ofesi, the son of Malaka, the son of G'nani,
was predestined.

Thus it was predicted by the famous witch-doctor
Komonobologo, of the Akasava.

For it would appear that on the night that Ofesi
came squealing into the world, there were certain
solar manifestations such as an eclipse of the moon
and prodigious shooting of stars, which Komonobologo
translated favourably to the clucking, sobbing
and shrill whimpering morsel of whitey-brown
humanity.

Thus Ofesi was to rule all peoples as far as the
sun shone (some three hundred miles in all directions
according to local calculations), and he should
not suffer ignominious death at the hand of any man.

Ofesi (literally "the Born-Lucky") should be
mighty in counsel and in war; should shake the
earth with the tread of his legions; might risk
and gain, never risk and lose; was the favoured
of ju-jus and ghosts; and would have many sons.

The hollow-eyed woman stretched on the floor
of the hut spoke faintly of her happiness, the baby
with greedy mouth satisfying the beast in him said
nothing, being too much occupied with his natural
and instinctive desires.

Such prophecies are common, and some come to
nothing.  Some, for no apparent reason, stick
fest to the recipients.

Ofesi—his destiny—was of the sticking kind.

When Sanders took up his duties on the river,
Ofesi was a lank and awkward youth of whom
his fellows stood in awe.

Sanders was in awe of nobody.  He listened
quietly to the recital of portents, omens, and the
like, and when it was finished, he delivered a little
homily on the fallibility of human things and the
extraordinarily high death-rate which existed
amongst those misguided people who walked
outside the rigid circle of the land.

Ofesi had neighbours more hearty than Sanders,
and by these he was accepted as something on
account of the total wonder which the years would
produce.

So Ofesi grew and flourished, doing much mischief
in his way, which was neither innocent nor boyish,
and the friendly hand which is upraised to small
boys all the world over never fell sharply upon
his well-covered nerves, because Ofesi was
predestined and immune.

In course of time he was appointed by the then
king of the Akasava to the chieftainship of the
village of Mi-lanti, and the city of the Akasava
breathed a sigh of relief to see his canoe go round
the bend of the river out of sight.

No report of the chief's minor misdoings came
to Sanders because this legend of destiny carried
to all the nations save and except one.

It is said that Ofesi received more homage and
held a more regal court in his tiny principality
than did the king his master; that N'gombi, Isisi,
and the tribes about sent him presents doubly
precious, and that he had a household of sixty
wives, all contributed by his devotees.  It was
also said that he made the intoxicating distributions
of Mr. Fish possible, but Sanders had no
proof of this.

He raided his friends impartially, did all manner
of unpleasant things, terrorised the river from the
Lesser Isisi to the edge of the Ochori, and the
fishermen watching his war canoes creeping stealthily
through the night would say: "Let no man see
the lord Ofesi; lest in the days to come he remember
and blind us."

Whether from sheer cunning or from the intuitive
faculty which is a part of genius, Ofesi grew to
stout manhood without once violating the border
line of the Ochori.

Until upon a day——

Sanders came in great haste one wet April night
when the clouds hung so low over the river that
you might have touched them with a fishing-rod.

It was a night of billowing mists, of drenching
cloud bursts, of loud cracking thunders and the
flicker-flacker of lightning so incessant that only
the darkness counted as interval.

Yet, against the swollen stream, drenched to
the skin, his wet face set to the stinging rain and
the white rod of his searchlight piercing such gloom
as there was, Sanders came as fast as stern wheel
could revolve for the Akasava land.

He came up to the village of Mi-lanti in the wild
grey of a stormy dawn, and such of the huts as
the flooding waters of the heavens had spared
stood isolated sentinels amidst smoking ruins.

He landed tired and immensely angry, and
found many dead men and one or two who thought
they were dead.  They told him a doleful story
of rapine and murder, of an innocent village set
upon by the Ochori and taken in its defencelessness.
"That is a lie," said Sanders promptly, "for
you have stockades, built to the west of the village
and your dead are all painted as men paint
themselves who prepare long for war.  Also the
Ochori—such as I have seen—are not so painted, which
tells me that they came in haste against a warring
people."

The wounded man turned his tired face to Sanders.

"It is my faith," he said, in the conventional
terminology of his tribe, "that you have eyes
like a big cat."

Sanders attended to his injuries and left him
and his pitiful fellows in a dry hut.  Then he went
to look for Bosambo, and found him sitting patiently
ten miles up the river.  He sat before a steep
hill of rock and undergrowth.  At the top of the
hill was the chief of the village of Mi-lanti, and
with him were such of his fighting men as were
not at the moment in a happier world.

"Lord, this is true," said Bosambo, "that
this dog attacked my river villages and put my
men to death and my women to service.  So I
came down against him, for it is written in the
Sura of the Djinn that no man shall live to laugh
at his own evil."

"There will be a palaver," said Sanders briefly,
and bade the crestfallen chief, Ofesi, to come down
and stack his spears.  Since it is not in the nature
of the native man to speak the truth when his
skin is in peril, it goes without saying that both
sides lied fearfully, and Sanders, sifting the truth,
knew which side lied the least.

"Ofesi," he said, at the end of much weariness
of listening, "what do you say that I shall not hang
you?"

Ofesi, a short, thick man with a faint beard,
looked up and down, left and right for inspiration.
"Lord," he said after a while, "this you know,
that all my life I have been a good man—and it
is said that I have a high destiny, and shall not
die by cruelty."

"'Man is eternal whilst he lives,'" quoted
Sanders, "'yet man dies sooner or later.'"

Ofesi stared round at Bosambo, and Bosambo
was guilty of an indiscretion—possibly the greatest
indiscretion of his life.  In the presence of his
master, and filled with the exultation and virtuous
righteousness which come to the palpably innocent
in the face of trial, he said in English, shaking his
head the while reprovingly:

"Oh, you dam' naughty devil!"

Sanders had condemned the man to death in
his heart; had mentally chosen the tree on which
the marauding chief should swing when Bosambo
spoke.

Sanders had an immense idea as to the sanctity
of life in one sense.  He had killed many by rope
with seeming indifference, and, indeed, he never
allowed the question of a man's life or death to
influence him one way or the other when an end
was in view.

He would watch with unwavering eyes the breath
choke out of a swaying body, yet there must be
a certain ritual of decency, of fitness, of decorum
in such matters, or his delicate sense of justice
was outraged.

Bosambo's words, grotesque, uncalled for, wholly
absurd, saved the life of Ofesi the chief.

For a moment Sanders's lips twitched
irresponsibly, then he turned with a snarl upon the
discomfited chief of the Ochori.

"Back to your land, you monkey man!" he
snapped; "this man has offended against the
land—yet he shall live, for he is a fool.  I know a
greater one!"

He sent Ofesi back to his village to build up
what his folly had overthrown.

"Remember, Ofesi," he said, "I give you back
your life, though you deserve death: and I do
this because it comes to me suddenly that you are
a child as Bosambo is a child.  Now, I will come
back to you with the early spring, and if you have
deserved well of me you shall be rewarded with your
liberty; and if you have done ill to me, you shall
go to the Village of Irons or to a worse place."

Back at headquarters Sanders told a sympathetic
captain of Houssas the story.

"It was horribly weak of course," he said;
"but, somehow, when that ass Bosambo let rip
his infernal English I couldn't hang a sparrow."

"Might have brought this Ofesi person down
to the village," said the captain thoughtfully.
"He's got an extraordinary reputation."

Sanders sat on the edge of the table, his hands
thrust into his breeches pockets.

"I thought of that, too, and it affected me.
You see, there was just a fear in my mind that
I was being influenced on the wrong side by this
fellow's talk of destiny—that I was being, in fact,
a little malicious."

The Houssa skipper snapped his cigarette case
and looked thoughtful.

"I'll get another company down from headquarters,"
he said.

"You might ask for a machine-gun section
also," said Sanders.  "I've got it in my bones
that there's going to be trouble."

A week later the upper river saw many strange
faces.  Isolated fishermen came from nowhere in
particular to pursue their mild calling in strange
waters.

They built their huts in unfrequented patches
of forest, and you might pass up and down a
stretch of the beach without knowing that hut was
modestly concealed in the thick bush at the back.

Also they went about their business at night
with fishing spear and light canoe tacking across
river and up river, moving without sound in the
shadows of the bank, approaching villages and
cities with remarkable circumspection.

They were strange fishermen indeed, for they
fished with pigeons.  In every canoe the birds
drowsed in a wicker-work cage, little red labels
about their legs on which even an untutored spy
might make a rude but significant mark with the
aid of an indelible pencil.

Sanders took no risks.

He summoned Ahmed Ali, the chief of his secret men.

"Go to the Akasava country, and there you
will find Ofesi, a chief of the village Mi-lanti.
Watch him, for he is an evil man.  On the day
that he moves against me and my people you
shall judge whether I can come in time with my
soldiers.  If there is time send for me: but if he
moves swiftly you shall shoot him dead and you
shall not be blamed.  Go with God."

"Master," said Ahmed, "Ofesi is already in hell."

If all reports worked out, and they certainly
tallied, Ofesi, the predestined chief, gave no offence.
He rebuilt his city, choosing higher ground and
following a long and unexpected hunting trip,
which took him to the edge of the Akasava country,
and he projected a visit of love and harmony to
Bosambo.

He even sent swift couriers to Sanders to ask
permission for the ceremonial, though such
permission was wholly unnecessary.  Sanders granted
the request, delaying the deputation until he had
sent his own messengers to Bosambo.

So on a bright June morning Ofesi set forth
on his mission, his two and twenty canoes painted
red, and even the paddles newly burnt to fantastic
and complimentary designs; and he came to the
Ochori and was met by Bosambo, a profound sceptic
but outwardly pleasant.

"I see you," said Ofesi, "I see you, lord
Bosambo, also your brave and beautiful people;
yet I come in peace and it grieves me that you
should meet me with so many spears."

For in truth the beach bristled a steel welcome
and three fighting regiments of the Ochori, gallantly
arrayed, were ranked in hollow square, the fourth
side of which was the river.

"Lord Ofesi," said Bosambo suavely, "this
is the white man's way of doing honour and, as
you know, I have much white blood in my veins,
being related to the English Prime Minister."

He surveyed the two-and-twenty canoes with
their twenty paddlers to each, and duly noted
that each paddler carried his fighting spears as a
matter of course.

That Ofesi had any sinister design upon the
stronghold of the Ochori may be dismissed as
unlikely.  He was cast in no heroic mould, and
abhorred unnecessary risk, for destiny requires
some assistance.

He had brought his spears for display rather
than for employment.  Willy-nilly he must stack
them now—an unpleasant operation, reminiscent
of another stacking under the cold eye of Sanders.

So it may be said that the *rapprochement* between
the Ochori and the Akasava chief began
inauspiciously.  Bosambo led the way to his
guest-house—new-thatched as is the custom.

There was a great feast in Ofesi's honour, and
a dance of girls—every village contributing its
chief dancer for the event.  Next day there was a
palaver with sacrifices of fowl and beast, and blood
friendships were sworn fluently.  Bosambo and
Ofesi embraced before all the people assembled,
and ate salt from the same dish.

"Now I will tell you all my business, my brother,"
said Ofesi that night.  "To-morrow I go back to
my people with your good word, and I shall speak of
you by day and night because of your noble heart."

"I also will have no rest," said Bosambo, "till
I have journeyed all over this land, speaking about
my wonderful brother Ofesi."

With a word Ofesi dismissed his counsellors,
and Bosambo, accepting the invitation, sent away
his headmen.

"Now I will tell you," said Ofesi.

And what he said, what flood of ego-oratory,
what promises, what covert threats, provided
Bosambo with reminiscences for long afterwards.

"Yet," he concluded, "though all things have
moved to make me what I am, yet there is much
I have to learn, and from none can I learn so well
as from you, my brother."

"That is very true," said Bosambo, and meant it.

"Now," Ofesi went on to his peroration, "the
king of the Akasava is dying and all men are
agreed that I shall be king in his place, therefore
I would learn to the utmost grain all the secrets
of kingship.  Therefore, since I cannot sit with
you, I ask you, lord Bosambo, to give a home to
Tolinobo, my headman, that he may sit for a
year in the shadow of your wisdom and tell me
the many beautiful things you say."

Bosambo looked thoughtfully at Tolinobo, the
headman, a shifty fisherman promoted to that
position, and somewhat deficient in sanity, as
Bosambo judged.

"He shall sit with me," said Bosambo at length,
"and be as my own son, sleeping in a hut by mine,
and I will treat him as if he were my brother."

There was a fleeting gleam of satisfaction in
Ofesi's eye as he rose to embrace his blood-friend;
but then he did not know how Bosambo treated
his brother.

The Akasava chief and his two and twenty canoes
paddled homeward at daybreak, and Bosambo saw
them off.

When they were gone, he turned to his headman.

"Tell me, Solonkinini," he said, "what have
we done with this Tolinobo who stays with us?"

"Lord, we build him a new hut this morning
in your lordship's shadow."

Bosambo nodded.

"First," he said, "you shall take him to the
secret place near the Crocodile Pool and stake him
out.  Presently I will come, and we will ask him
some questions."

"Lord, he will not answer," said the headman.
"I myself have spoken with him."

"He shall answer me," said Bosambo, significantly,
"and you shall build a fire and make very
hot your spears, for I think this Tolinobo has
something he will be glad to tell."

Bosambo's prediction was justified by fact.

Ofesi was not half-way home, happy in his
success, when a blubbering Tolinobo, stretched
ignominiously on the ground, spoke with a lamentable
lack of reserve on all manner of private matters,
being urged thereto by a red hot spear-head which
Bosambo held much too near his face for comfort.

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.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



At about this time came Jim Greel, an American
adventurer, and Francis E. Coulson, a citizen of
the world.  They came into Sanders's territory
unwillingly, for they were bound, via the French
river which skirted the north of the N'gombi land,
for German West Africa.  There was in normal
times a bit of a stream which connected the great
river with the Frenchi river.  It was, according
to a facetious government surveyor, navigable
for balloons and paper boats except once in a
decade when a mild spring in the one thousand-miles
distant mountains coincided with heavy
rains in the Isisi watershed.  Given the
coincidence the tiny dribble of rush-choked water
achieved the dignity of riverhood.  It was bad
luck that Jim and Coulson hit an exceptional season.

Keeping to the left bank, and moving only
by night—they had reason for this—the adventurers
followed the course of the stream which ordinarily
was not on the map, and they were pardonably
and almost literally at sea.

Two long nights they worked their crazy
little steamer through an unknown territory
without realising that it was unknown.  They avoided
such villages as they passed, shutting off steam
and dowsing all lights till they drifted beyond
sight and hearing.

At last they reached a stage in their enterprise
where the maintenance of secrecy was a matter
of some personal danger, and they looked around
in the black night for assistance.

"Looks like a village over there, Jim," said
Coulson, and the steersman nodded.

"There's shoal water here," he said grimly,
"and the forehold is up to water-level."

"Leakin'?"

"Not exactly leakin'," said Jim carefully; "but
there's no bottom to the forepart of this tub."

Coulson swore softly at the African night.  The
velvet darkness had fallen on them suddenly, and
it was a case of tie-up or go on—Jim decided to
go on.

They had struck a submerged log and ripped
away the bottom of the tiny compartment that
was magniloquently called "No. 1 hold"; the
bulkhead of Nos. 1 and 2 was of the thinnest steel
and was bulging perceptibly.

Coulson did not know this, but Jim did.

Now he turned the prow of the ancient steamer
to the dark shore, and the revolving paddle-wheels
made an expiring effort.

Somewhere on the river bank a voice called to
them in the Akasava tongue; they saw the fires
of the village, and black shadows passing before
them; they heard women laughing.

Jim turned his head and gave an order to one
of his naked crew, and the man leapt overboard
with a thin rope hawser.

Then the ripped keel of the little boat took the
sand and she grounded.

Jim lit his pipe from a lantern that hung in
the deck cabin behind him, wiped his streaming
forehead with the back of his hand, and spoke
rapidly in the Akasava tongue to the little crowd
who had gathered on the beach.  He spoke
mechanically, warning all and sundry for the
safety of their immortal souls not to slip his
hawser! warning them that if he lost so much
as a deck rivet he would flay alive the thief, and
ended by commending his admiring audience to
M'shimba M'shamba, Bim-bi, O'kili, and such
local devils as he could call to his tongue.
"That's let me out," he said, and waded ashore
through the shallow water as one too much
overcome by the big tragedies of life to care very
much one way or another whether he was wet or dry.

He strode up the shelving beach and was led
by a straggling group of villagers to the headman's
hut to make inquiries, and came back to the boat
with unpleasant news.

Coulson had brought her nose to the sand, and
by a brushwood fire that the men of the village
had lit upon the beach, the damage was plainly
to be seen.

The tiny hull had torn like brown paper, and part
of the cause—a stiff branch of gun-wood—still
protruded from the hole.

"We're in Sanders's territory, if it's all the same
to you," said Jim gloomily.  "The damnation
old Frenchi river is in spruit and we've come
about eighty miles on the wrong track."

Coulson, kneeling by the side of the boat, a
short, black briar clutched between his even white
teeth, looked up with a grin.

"'Sande catchee makee hell,'" quoted he.  "Do
you remember the Chink shaver who used to run
the Angola women up to the old king for Bannister
Fish?"

Jim said nothing.  He took a roll of twist from
his pocket, bit off a section, and chewed
philosophically.

"There's no slavery outfit in this packet," he
said.  "I guess even old man Fish wouldn't fool
'round in this land—may the devil grind him for
bone-meal!"

There was no love lost between the amiable
adventurers and Mr. Bannister Fish.  That gentleman
himself, sitting in close conference with Ofesi
not fifty miles from whence the *Grasshopper* lay,
would have been extremely glad to know that
her owners were where they were.

"Fish is out in these territories for good," said
Jim; "but it'll do us no good—our not bein'
Fish, I mean, if Sandi comes nosing round lookin'
for traders' licences—somehow I don't want
anybody to inspect our cargo."

Coulson nodded as he wielded a heavy hammer
on the damaged plate.

"I guess he'll know all right," Jim went on.
"You can't keep these old *lokalis* quiet—listen
to the joyous news bein', so to speak, flashed forth
to the expectant world."

Coulson suspended his operations.  Clear and
shrill came the rattle of the *lokali* tapping its
message:

.. vspace:: 2

"Tom-te tom, tom-te tom, tommitty tommitty
tommitty-tom."

.. vspace:: 2

"There she goes," said the loquacious Jim,
complacently.  "Two white men of suspicious
appearance have arrived in town—Court papers
please copy."

Coulson grinned again.  He was working his
hammer deftly, and already the offending branch
had disappeared.

"A ha'porth of cement in the morning," he
said, "and she's the Royal yacht."

Jim sniffed.

"It'll take many ha'porths of cement to make
her anything but a big intake pipe," he said.  He
put his hand on the edge of the boat and leapt
aboard.  Abaft the deck-house were two tiny
cupboards of cabins, the length of a man's body
and twice his width.  Into one of these he dived,
and returned shortly afterwards with a small,
worn portmanteau, patched and soiled.  He jumped
down over the bows to the beach, first handing the
piece of baggage down to the engineer of the little
boat.  It was so heavy that the man nearly
dropped it.

"What's the idea?"  Coulson mopped the sweat
from his forehead with a pocket-handkerchief,
and turned his astonished gaze to the other.

"'Tis the loot," said Jim significantly.  "We
make a cache of this to-night lest a worse thing
happen.

"Oh, God, this man!" prayed Coulson, appealing
heavenward.  "With the eyes of the whole
dam' barbarian rabble directed on him, he stalks
through the wilderness with his grip full of gold
and his heart full of innocent guile!"

Jim refilled his pipe leisurely from a big, leather
pouch that hung at his waist before he replied.
"Coulson," he said between puffs, "in the language
of that ridiculous vaudeville artiste we saw before
we quit London, you may have brains in your
head, but you've got rabbit's blood in your feet.
There's no occasion for getting scared, only I
surmise that one of your fellow-countrymen will
be prowling around here long before the bows of
out stately craft take the water like a thing of
life, and since he is the Lord High Everything
in this part of the world, and can turn out a man's
pocket without so much as a 'damn ye,' I am for
removing all trace of the Frenchi Creed River
diggings."

Coulson had paused in his work, and sat squatting
on his heels, his eyes fixed steadily on his partner's.
He was a good-looking young man of twenty-seven,
a few years the junior of the other, whose tanned
face was long and thin, but by no means unpleasant.

"What does it matter?" asked Coulson after
a while.  "He can only ask where we got the dust,
and we needn't tell him; and if we do we've got
enough here to keep us in comfort all our days."

Jim smiled.

"Suppose he holds this gold?" he asked quietly.
"Suppose he just sends his spies along to discover
where the river digging is—and suppose he finds
it is in French territory and that there is a
prohibitive export duty from the French country.
Oh! there's a hundred suppositions, and they're all
unpleasant."

Coulson rose stiffly.

"I think we'll take the risk of the boat foundering,
Jim," he said.  "Put the grip back."

Jim hesitated, then with a nod he swung the
portmanteau aboard and followed.  A few minutes
later he was doubled up in the perfectly inadequate
space of No. 1 hold, swabbing out the ooze of the
river, and singing in a high falsetto the love song
of a mythical Bedouin.

It was past midnight when the two men, tired,
aching, and cheerful, sought their beds.

"If Sanders turns up," shouted Jim as he arranged
his mosquito curtain (the shouting was necessary,
since he was addressing his companion through a
matchboard partition between the two cabins),
"you've got to lie, Coulson."

"I hate lying," grumbled Coulson loudly; "but
I suppose we shall have to?"

"Betcher!" yawned the other, and said his
prayers with lightning rapidity.

Daylight brought dismay to the two voyagers.

The hole in the hull was not alone responsible
for the flooded hold.  There was a great gash in
her keel—the plate had been ripped away by some
snag or snags unknown.  Coulson looked at Jim,
and Jim returned the despairing gaze.

"A canoe for mine," said Jim after a while.
"Me for the German river and so home.  That is
the way I intended moving, and that is the way
I go."

Coulson shook his head.

"Flight!" he said briefly.  "You can explain
being in Sanders's territory, but you can't explain
the bolt—stick it out!"

All that morning the two men laboured in the
hot sun to repair the damage.  Fortunately the
cement was enough to stop up the bottom leak,
and there was enough over to make a paste with
twigs and sun-dried sand to stop the other.  But
there was no blinking the fact that the protection
afforded was of the frailest.  The veriest twig
embedded in a sandbank would be sufficient to
pierce the flimsy "plating."  This much the two
men saw when the repairs were completed at the
end of the day.  The hole in the bow could only
be effectively dealt with by the removal of one
plate and the substitution of another, "and that,"
said Jim, "can hardly happen."

The German river was eighty miles upstream
and a flooded stream that ran five knots an hour
at that.  Allow a normal speed of nine knots to
the tiny *Grasshopper*, and you have a twenty hours'
run at best.

"The river's full of floatin' timber," said Jim
wrathfully, eyeing the swift sweep of the black
waters, "an' we stand no better chance of gettin'
anywhere except to the bottom; it's a new plate
or nothing."

Thus matters stood with a battered *Grasshopper*
high and dry on the shelving beach of the Akasava
village, and two intrepid but unhappy gold smugglers
discussing ways and means, when complications
occurred which did much to make the life of
Mr. Commissioner Sanders unbearable.

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There was a woman of the Akasava who bore
the name of Ufambi, which means a "bad woman."  She
had a lover—indeed, she had many, but the
principal was a hunter named Logi.  He was a
tall, taciturn man, and his teeth were sharpened
to two points.  He was broad-shouldered, his
hair was plastered with clay, and he wore a cloak
that was made from the tails of monkeys.  For
this reason he was named Logi N'kemi, that is to
say, Logi the Monkey.

He had a hut far in the woods, three days' journey,
and in this wood were several devils; therefore
he had few visitors.

Ufambi loved this man exceedingly, and as
fervently hated her husband, who was a creature of
Ofesi.  Also, he was not superior to the use of
the stick.

One day Ufambi annoyed him and he beat her.
She flew at him like a wild cat and bit him, but
he shook her off and beat her the more, till she ran
from the hut to the cool and solitary woods, for
she was not afraid of devils.

Here her lover found her, sitting patiently by
the side of the forest path, her well-moulded arms
hugging her knees, her chin sunk, a watchful,
brooding and an injured woman.

They sat together and talked, and the woman
told him all there was to be told, and Logi the
Monkey listened in silence.

"Furthermore," she went on, "he has buried
beneath the floor of the hut certain treasures
given to him by white men, which you may take."

She said this pleadingly, for he had shown no
enthusiasm in the support of her plan.

"Yet how can I kill your husband," said Logi,
carefully, "and if I do kill him and Sandi comes
here, how may I escape his cruel vengeance?  I
think it would be better if you gave him death
in his chop, for then none would think evilly of me."

She was not distressed at his patent selfishness.
It was understandable that a man should seek
safety for himself, but she had no intention of
carrying out her lover's plan.

She returned to her husband, and found him
so far amiable that she escaped a further beating.
Moreover, he was communicative.

"Woman," he said, "to-morrow I go a long
journey because of certain things I have seen,
and you go with me.  In a secret place, as you
know, I have hidden my new canoe, and when
it is dark you shall take as much fish and my two
little dogs and sit in the canoe waiting for me."

"I will do this thing, lord," she said meekly.

He looked at her for a long time.

"Also," he said after a while, "you shall tell
no man that I am leaving, for I do not desire that
Sandi shall know, though," he added, "if all things
be true that Ofesi says, he will know nothing."

"I will do this as you tell me, lord," said the
woman.

He rose from the floor of the hut where he had
been squatting and went out of the hut.

"Come!" he said graciously, and she followed
him to the beach and joined the crowd of villagers
who watched two white men labouring under
difficulties.

By and by she saw her husband detach himself
from the group and make his cautious way to
where the white men were.

Now Bikilari—such was the husband's name—was
a N'gombi man, and the N'gombi folk are
one of two things, and more often than not, both.
They are either workers in iron or thieves, and
Jim, looking up at the man, felt a little spasm of
satisfaction at the sight of the lateral face marks
which betrayed his nationality.

"Ho, man!" said Jim in the vernacular, "what
are you that you stand in my sun?"

"I am a poor man, lord," said Bikilari, "and
I am the slave of all white men: now I can do
things which ignorant men cannot, for I can take
iron and bend it by heat, also I can bend it without
heat, as my fathers and my tribe have done since
the world began."

Coulson watched the man keenly, for he was
no lover of the N'gombi.

"Try him out, Jim," he said, so they gave Bikilari
a hammer and some strips of steel, and all the
day he worked strengthening the rotten bow of
the *Grasshopper*.

In the evening, tired and hungry, he went
back to his hut for food; but his wife had watched
him too faithfully for his comfort, and the
cooking-pot was cold and empty.  Bikilari beat her with
his stick, and for two hours she sobbed and blew
upon the embers of the fire alternately whilst my
lord's fish stewed and spluttered over her bent
head.

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Jim was a good sleeper but a light one.  He
woke on the very smell of danger.  Here was
something more tangible than scent—a dog-like
scratching at his door.  In the faint moonlight
he saw a figure crouching in the narrow alley-way,
saw, too, by certain conformations, that it was a
woman, and drew an uncharitable conclusion.
Yet, since she desired secrecy, he was willing to
observe her wishes.  He slid back the gauze door
and flickered an electric lamp (most precious
possession, to be used with all reserve and economy).
She shrank back at this evidence of magic and
breathed an entreaty.

"What do you want?" he asked in a low voice.

"Lord," she answered, her voice muffled, "if
you desire your life, do not stay here."

Jim thrust his face nearer to the woman's.

"Say what you must say very quickly," he said.

"Lord," she began again, "my husband is
Bikilari, a worker in iron.  He is the man of Ofesi,
and to-night Ofesi sends his killers to do his work
upon all white men and upon all chiefs who thwart
him.  Also upon you because you are white and
there is treasure in your ship."

"Wait," said Jim, and turned to tap on Coulson's
door.  There was no need.  Coulson was out of
bed at the first sound of whispering and now
stood in the doorway, the moonlight reflected in
a cold blue line on the revolver he held in his
hand.

"It may be a fake—but there's no reason why
it should be," he said when the story was told.
"We'll chance the hole in the bow."

Jim ran forward and woke the sleeping engineer,
and came back with the first crackle of burning wood
in the furnace.

He found the woman waiting.

"What is your name?" he asked.

She stood with her back to the tiny rail, an easy
mark for the man who had followed her and now
crouched in the shadow of the hull.  He could
reach up and touch her.  He slipped out his long
N'gombi hunting knife and felt the point.

"Lord," said the woman, "I am——"

Then she slipped down to the deck.

Coulson fired twice at the fleeing Bikilari, and
missed him.  Logi, the lover, leapt at him from the
beach but fell before a quick knife-thrust.

Bikilari reached the bushes in safety and plunged
into the gloom—and into the arms of Ahmed Ali,
a swift, silent man, who caught the knife arm in
one hand and broke the neck of the murderer with
the other—for Ahmed Ali was a famous wrestler
in the Kono country.

The city was aroused, naked feet pattered through
the street.  Jim and Coulson, lying flat on the bow
of the steamer, held the curious at bay.

Two hours they lay thus whilst the cold boilers
generated energy.  Then the paddle wheel threshed
desperately astern, and the *Grasshopper* dragged
herself to deep water.

A figure hailed them from the bank in Swaheli.

"Lord," it said, "go you south and meet
Sandi—northward is death, for the Isisi are up and the
Akasava villagers are in their canoes—also all
white men in this land are dead, save Sandi."

"Who are you?" megaphoned Jim, and the
answer came faintly as the boat drifted to
mid-stream.

"I am Ahmed Ali, the servant of Sandi, whom
may God preserve!"

"Come with us!" shouted Jim.

The figure on the bank, clear to be seen in his
white jellab, made a trumpet of his hands.

"I go to kill one Ofesi, according to orders—say
this to Sandi."

Then the boat drifted beyond earshot.

"Up stream or down?" demanded Jim at the
wheel.  "Down we meet Sanders and up we meet
the heathen in his wrath."

"Up," said Coulson, and went aft to count noses.

That night died Iliki, the chief of the Isisi, and
I'mini, his brother, stabbed as they sat at meat,
also Bosomo of the Little Isisi, and B'ramo of the
N'gomi, chiefs all; also the wives and sons of
B'ramo and Bosomo; Father O'Leary of the Jesuit
Mission at Mosankuli, his lay minister, and the
Rev. George Galley, of the Wesleyan Mission at
Bogori, and the Rev. Septimus Keen and his wife,
at the Baptist Mission at Michi.

Bosambo did not die, because he knew; also a
certain headman of Ofesi knew—and died.

Ofesi had planned largely and well.  War had come
to the territories in the most terrible form, yet
Bosambo did not hesitate, though he was aware of
his inferiority, not only in point of numbers, but
in the more important matter of armament.

For the most dreadful thing had happened, and
pigeons flying southward from a dozen points
carried the news to Sanders—for the first time in
history the rebellious people of the Akasava were
armed with rifles—rifles smuggled across the border
and placed in the hands of Ofesi's warriors.

The war-drum of the Ochori sounded.  At dawn
Bosambo led forty war canoes down the river, seized
the first village that offered resistance and burnt it.
He was for Ofesi's stronghold, and was half-way
there when he met the tiny *Grasshopper* coming up
stream.

At first he mistook it for the *Zaire* and made little
effort to disclose the pacific intentions of his forty
canoes, but a whistling rifle bullet aimed precisely
made him realise the danger of taking things for
granted.

He paddled forward alone, ostentatiously peaceable,
and Jim received him.

"Rifles?"  Coulson was incredulous.  "O chief,
you are mad!"

"Lord," said Bosambo earnestly, "let Sandi say
if I be mad—for Sandi is my bro—is my master
and friend," he corrected himself.

Jim knew of Bosambo—the chief enjoyed a
reputation along the coast, and trusted him now.

He turned to his companion.

"If all Bosambo says is true there'll be hell in
this country," he said quietly.  "We can't cut and
run.  Can you use a rifle?" he asked.

Bosambo drew himself up.

"Suh," he said in plain English, "I make 'um
shoot plenty at Cape Coast Cassell—I shoot 'um
two bulls' eyes out."

Coulson considered.

"We'll cashee that gold," he said.  "It would be
absurd to take that with us.  O Bosambo, we have
a great treasure, and this we will leave in your city."

"Lord," said Bosambo quietly, "it shall be as
my own treasure."

"That's exactly what I don't want it to be," said
Coulson.

The fleet waited whilst Bosambo returned to
Ochori city with the smugglers; there, in Bosambo's
hut, and in a cunningly-devised hole beneath the
floor, the portmanteau was hidden and the
*Grasshopper* went joyfully with the stream to whatever
adventures awaited her.

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The moonlight lay in streaks of sage and emerald
green—such a green as only the moon, beheld
through the mists of the river, can show.  Sage
green for shadow, bright emerald on the young
spring verdure, looking from light to dark or from
dark to light, as the lazy breezes stirred the
undergrowth.  In the gleam of the moonlight there was
one bright, glowing speck of red—it was the end of
Mr. Commissioner Sanders's cigar.

He sat in the ink-black shadow cast by the awning
on the foredeck of the *Zaire*.  His feet, encased in
long, pliant mosquito boots that reached to his
knees, rested on the rail of the boat, and he was a
picture of contentment and cheerful idleness.

An idle man might be restless.  You might expect
to hear the creak of the wicker chair as he changed
his position ever so slightly, yet it is a strange fact
that no such sound broke the pleasant stillness of
the night.

He sat in silence, motionless.  Only the red tip
of the cigar glowed to fiery brightness and dulled
to an ashen red as he drew noiselessly at his cheroot.

A soft felt hat, pulled down over his eyes, would
have concealed the direction of his gaze, even had
the awning been removed.  His lightly clasped
hands rested over one knee, and but for the steady
glow of the cigar he might have been asleep.

Yet Sanders of the River was monstrously awake.
His eyes were watching the tousled bushes by the
water's edge, roving from point to point, searching
every possible egress.

There was somebody concealed in those bushes—as
to that Sanders had no doubt.  But why did
they wait—for it was a case of "they"—and why,
if they were hostile, had they not attacked him
before?

Sanders had had his warnings.  Some of the pigeons
came before he had left headquarters; awkwardly
scrawled red labels had set the bugles ringing through
the Houssa quarters.  But he had missed the worst
of the messages.  Bosambo's all-Arabic exclamation
had fallen into the talons of a watchful hawk—poor
winged messenger and all.

Sanders rose swiftly and silently.  Behind him
was the open door of his cabin, and he stepped in,
walked in the darkness to the telephone above the
head of his bunk and pressed a button.

Abiboo dozing with his head against the buzzer
answered instantly.

"Let all men be awakened," said Sanders in a
whisper.  "Six rifles to cover the bush between the
two dead trees."

"On my head," whispered Abiboo, and settled his
tarboosh more firmly upon that section of his
anatomy.

Sanders stood by the door of his cabin, a sporting
Lee-Enfield in the crook of his arm, waiting.

Then from far away he heard a faint cry, a melancholy,
shrill whoo-wooing.  It was the cry that set
the men of the villages shuddering, for it was such a
cry as ghosts make.

Men in the secret service of Sanders, and the
Government also, made it, and Sanders nodded his
head.

Here came a man in haste to tell him things.

A long pause and "Whoo-woo!" drearily, plaintively,
and nearer.  The man was whooing then at
a jog-trot, and they on the bank were waiting——

"Fire!" cried Sanders sharply.

Six rifles crashed like a thunderclap, there was a
staccato flick-flack as the bullets struck the leaves,
and two screams of anguish.

Out of the bush blundered a dark figure, looked
about dazed and uncertain, saw the *Zaire* and raised
his hand.

Bang!

A bullet smacked viciously past Sanders's head.

"Guns!" said Sanders with a gasp, and as the
man on the bank rattled back the lever of his
repeater, Sanders shot him.

"Bang! bang!"

This time from the bush, and the Houssas
answered it.  Forty men fired independently at the
patch of green from whence the flashes had come.

Forty men and more leapt into the water and
waded ashore, Sanders at their head.

The ambush had failed.  Sanders found three dead
men of the Isisi and one slightly injured and quite
prepared for surrender.

"Männlichers!" said Sanders, examining the rifles,
and he whistled.

"Lord," said the living of the four, "we did what
we were told; for it is an order that no man shall
come to you with tidings; also, on a certain night
that we should shoot you."

"Whose order?" demanded Sanders.

"Our lord Ofesi's," said the man.  "Also, it is
an order from a certain white lord who dwells with
his people on the border of the land."

They were speaking when the whoo-ing messenger
came up at a jog-trot, too weary to be cautioned by
the sound of guns.

He was a tired man, dusty, almost naked, and he
carried a spear and a cleft-stick.

Sanders read the letter which was stuck therein.
It was in ornamental Arabic, and was from Ahmed Ali.

He read it carefully; then he spoke.

"What do you know of this?" he asked.

"Lord," said the tired man, flat on the bare
ground and breathing heavily, "there is war in
this land such as we have never seen, for Ofesi has
guns and has slain all chiefs by his cunning; also
there is a white man whom he visits secretly in the
forest."

Sanders turned back to the *Zaire*, sick at heart.
All these years he had kept his territories free from
an expeditionary force, building slowly towards the
civilisation which was every administrator's ideal.
This meant a punitive force, the introduction of a
new régime.  The coming of armed white men
against these children of his.

Who supplied the arms?  He could not think.
He had never dreamt of their importation.  His
people were too poor, had too little to give.

"Lord," called the resting messenger, as Sanders
turned, "there are two white men in a puc-a-puc
who rest by the Akasava city."

Sanders shook his head.

These men—who knew them by name?—were
smugglers of gold, who had come through a swollen
river by accident.  (His spies were very efficient,
be it noted.)

Whoever it was, the mischief was done.

"Steam," he said briefly to the waiting Abiboo.

"And this man, lord?" asked the Houssa,
pointing to the last of the would-be assassins.

Sanders walked to the man.

"Tell me," he said, "how many were you who
waited to kill me?"

"Five, lord," said the man.

"Five?" said Sanders, "but I found only four bodies."

It was at that instant that the fifth man fired from
the bank.

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The *Grasshopper*, towing forty war canoes of the
Ochori, came round a bend of the great river and
fell into an ambuscade.

The Ochori were a brave people, but unused to the
demoralising effect of firearms, however badly and
wildly aimed.

Bosambo from the stern of the little steamer yelled
directions to his panic-stricken fleet without effect.
They turned and fled, paddling for their lives the
way they had come.  Jim essayed a turning movement
in the literal sense, and struck a submerged
log.  The ill-fated *Grasshopper* went down steadily
by the bow, and in a last desperate effort ran for the
shore under a hail of bullets.  They leapt to land,
four men—Bosambo's fighting headman was the
fourth—and, shooting down immediate opposition,
made for the bush.

But they were in the heart of the enemy's
land—within shooting distance of the Akasava city.
Long before they had crossed the league of wood, the
*lokali* had brought reinforcements to oppose them.
They were borne down by sheer weight of numbers
at a place called Iffsimori, and that night came
into the presence of the great King Ofesi, the
Predestined.

They came, four wounded and battered men
bound tightly with cords of grass, spared for the
great king's sport.

"O brother," greeted Ofesi in the face of all his
people, "look at me and tell me what has become
of Tobolono, my dear headman?"

Bosambo, his face streaked with dried blood,
stared at him insolently.

"He is in hell," he said, "being *majiki*"
(predestined).

"Also you will be in hell," said the king, "because
men say that you are Sandi's brother."

Bosambo was taken aback for a moment.

"It is true," he said, "that I am Sandi's brother;
for it seems that this is not the time for a man to
deny him.  Yet I am Sandi's brother only because
all men are brothers, according to certain white
magic I learnt as a boy."

Ofesi sat before the door of his hut, and it was
noticeable that no man stood or sat nearer to him
than twenty paces distant.

Jim, glancing round the mob, which surrounded
the palaver, saw that every other man carried a
rifle, and had hitched across his naked shoulders a
canvas cartridge-belt.  He noticed, too, now and
then, the king would turn his head and speak, as it
were, to the dark interior of the hut.

Ofesi directed his gaze to the white prisoners.

"O white men," he said, "you see me now, a
great lord, greater than any white man has ever
been, for all the little chiefs of this land are dead,
and all people say 'Wah, king,' to Ofesi."

"I dare say," said Coulson in English.

"To-night," the king went on, "we sacrifice you,
for you are the last white men in this land—Sandi
being dead."

"Ofesi, you lie!"

It was Bosambo, his face puckered with rage, his
voice shrill.

"No man can kill Sandi," he cried, "for Sindi
alone of all men is beyond death, and he will come
to you bringing terror and worse than death!"

Ofesi made a gesture of contempt.

He waved his hand to the right and as at a signal
the crowd moved back.

Bosambo held himself tense, expecting to see the
lifeless form of his master.  But it was something
less harrowing he saw—a prosaic stack of wooden
boxes six feet high and eight feet square.

"Ammunition," said Jim under his breath.  "The
devil had made pretty good preparation."

"Behold!" said Ofesi, "therein is Sanders'
death—listen all people!"

He held up his hand for silence.

Bosambo heard it—that faint rattle of the *lokali*.
From some far distant place it was carrying the
news.  "Sanders dead!" it rolled mournfully,
"distantly—moonlight—puc-a-puc—middle of
river—man on bank—boat at shore—Sandi dead on
ground—many wounds."  He pieced together the
tidings.  Sandi had been shot from the bank and the
boat had landed him dead.  The chief of the Ochori
heard the news and wept.

"Now you shall smell death," said Ofesi.

He turned abruptly to the door of the hut and
exchanged a dozen quick words with the man inside.
He spoke imperiously, sharply.

Alas!  Mr. Bannister Fish, guest of honour on
the remarkable occasion, the Ofesi you deal with
now is not the meek Ofesi with whom you drove
your one-sided bargain in the deep of the Akasava
forest!  Camel-train and boat have brought ammunition
and rifles piecemeal to your enemy's undoing.
Ofesi owes his power to you, but the maker of
tyrants was ever a builder if his own prison-house.

Mr. Fish felt his danger keenly, pulled two
long-barrelled automatic pistols from his pocket and
mentally chose his route for the border, cursing his
own stupidity that he had not brought his Arab
bodyguard along the final stages of the journey.

"Ofesi," he muttered, "there shall be no killing
until I am gone."

"Fisi," replied the other louder, "you shall see
all that I wish you to see," and he made a signal.

They stripped the white men as naked as they
were on the day they were born, pegged them at equal
distance on the ground spread-eagle fashion.  Heads
to the white man's feet they laid Bosambo and his
headman.

When all was finished Ofesi walked over to them.

"When the sun comes up," he said, "you will
all be dead—but there is half the night to go."

"Nigger!" said Bosambo in English, "yo'
mother done be washerwomans!"

It was the most insulting expression in his
vocabulary, and he reserved it for the last.

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Sanders saw the glow of the great fire long before he
reached the Akasava, his own *lokali* sounding forth
the news of his premature decease—Sanders with
the red weal of a bullet across his cheek, and a
feeling of unfriendliness toward Ofesi in his heart.
All the way up the river through the night his *lokali*
sent forth the joyless tidings.  Villagers heard it
and shivered—but sent it on.  A half-naked man
crouching in the bushes near Akasava city heard
it and sobbed himself sick, for Ahmed Ali saw in
himself a murderer.  He who had sworn by the
prophet to end the life of Ofesi had left the matter
until it was too late.

In a cold rage he crept nearer to the crowd which
was gathered about the king's hut—a neck-craning,
tip-toeing crowd of vicious men-children.  The
moment of torment had come.  At Ofesi's feet
crouched two half-witted Akasava youths giggling
at one another in pleasurable excitement, and
whetting the razor-keen edges of their skinning
knives on their palms.

"Listen, now," said Ofesi in exultation.  "I am
he, the predestined, the ruler of all men from the
black waters to the white mountains.  Thus you see
me, all people, your master, and master of white
men.  The skins of these men shall be drums to
call all other nations to the service of the
Akasava—begin Ginin and M'quasa."

The youths rose and eyed the silent victims
critically—and Mr. Bannister Fish stepped out of
the hut into the light of the fire, a pistol in each
hand.

"Chief," said he, "this matter ends here.  Release
those men or you die very soon."

Ofesi laughed.

"Too late, lord Fisi," he said, and nodded his head.

One shot rang out from the crowd—a man, skilled
in the use of arms, had waited for the gun-runner's
appearance.  Bannister Fish, of Highgate Hill,
pitched forward dead.

"Now," said Ofesi.

Ahmed Ali came through the crowd like a cyclone,
but quicker far was the two-pound shell of a
Hotchkiss gun.  Looking upward into the moonlit
vault of the sky, Jim saw a momentary flash of
light, heard the "pang!" of the gun and the whine
of the shell as it curved downward; heard a roar
louder than any, and was struck senseless by the
sharp edge of an exploded cartridge-box.

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"Ofesi," said Sanders, "I think this is your end."

"Lord, I think so too," said Ofesi.

Sanders let him hang for two hours before he cut
him down.

"Mr. Sanders," said Jim, dressed in a suit of the
Commissioner's clothes which fitted none too well,
"we ought to explain——"

"I understand," said Sanders with a smile.
"Gold smuggling!"

Jim nodded.

"And where is your gold—at the bottom of the river?"

It was in the American's heart to lie, but he shook
his head.  "The chief Bosambo is holding it for
me," he confessed.

"H'm!" said Sanders.  "Do you know to an
ounce how much you have?"

Coulson shook his head.

"Where is Bosambo?" asked Sanders of his orderly.

"Lord, he has gone in haste to his city with
twenty paddlers," said Abiboo.

Sanders looked at Jim queerly.

"You had better go in haste, too," he said dryly.
"Bosambo has views of his own on portable
property."

"We wept for you," said the indignant Jim,
something of a sentimentalist.

"You'll be weeping for yourself if you don't
hurry," said the practical Sanders.

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   THE END.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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.. class:: center large

   POPULAR NOVELS

.. class:: center medium

   BY

.. class:: center large

   EDGAR WALLACE

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   PUBLISHED BY
   WARD, LOCK & Co., LIMITED.
   *In Various Editions.*

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

SANDERS OF THE RIVER
BONES
BOSAMBO OF THE RIVER
BONES IN LONDON
THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE
THE COUNCIL OF JUSTICE
THE DUKE IN THE SUBURBS
THE PEOPLE OF THE RIVER
DOWN UNDER DONOVAN
PRIVATE SELBY
THE ADMIRABLE CARFEW
THE MAN WHO BOUGHT LONDON
THE JUST MEN OF CORDOVA
THE SECRET HOUSE
KATE, PLUS TEN
LIEUTENANT BONES
THE ADVENTURES OF HEINE
JACK O' JUDGMENT
THE DAFFODIL MYSTERY
THE NINE BEARS
THE BOOK OF ALL POWER
MR. JUSTICE MAXELL
THE BOOKS OF BART
THE DARK EYES OF LONDON
CHICK
SANDI, THE KING-MAKER
THE THREE OAK MYSTERY
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG
BLUE HAND
GREY TIMOTHY
A DEBT DISCHARGED
THOSE FOLK OF BULBORO
THE MAN WHO WAS NOBODY
THE GREEN RUST

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.. pgfooter::