THE SETTLEMENT
When Warden found that the expedition consisted of a hundred sailors
and over three hundred Hausas, he was anxious that an advance should
be made on Oku at once. The town lay in a bush clearing on high land
overlooking the Benuë, not many miles distant from the mission station.
He argued that he and Beni Kalli could guide the troops by the bush
paths, and that an attack carried out at dawn would demoralize an enemy
already shaken by an unforeseen repulse at Kadana.
Every one admitted that he was right from the military point of view;
but Hudson, the political officer accompanying the column, shirked the
responsibility of taking a step that implied the existence of a tribal
war. He argued that while they were fully justified in driving off the
assailants of the mission and in demanding the punishment of those
engaged in it, together with the fullest compensation for loss of life
and property, yet they had no proof that the King of Oku sanctioned the
raid.
"When he refuses our terms," he said, "we shall destroy his town and
depose him if he escapes with his life. Under the circumstances, I
cannot sanction a forward movement until negotiations have failed."
Bellairs, of course, had to take his orders from the administration,
and Warden had no power to over-ride the man whom the Government had
deputed to visit Oku. He knew that Loanda, second only in importance to
M'Wanga, was among the slain. He had seen M'Wanga himself exercising
his savage warriors day after day and taking care that they were taught
how to handle the modern weapons to which they were unaccustomed. He
was aware of the exact date named for the rising, and was prevented
only by several weeks' delirium of fever from stealing off down
stream in good time to warn the authorities. But he was not in his
own territory, for the Benuë runs through Northern Nigeria while he
was attached to the Southern Protectorate, and, above all, he was a
soldier, to whom obedience was the first duty. So he refrained from
weakening Hudson's position by demonstrating how mistaken was the
decision arrived at. He even hoped that, in some mysterious way,
matters might be adjusted without further slaughter.
The proper course to adopt was to strike hard and promptly. Failing
that, he trusted to the strange workings of the native mind to bring
about a peaceful settlement. Though strong in spirit he was broken in
body. He had done in five months that which a few men had taken years
to accomplish, while the majority of those who essayed the task had
failed, and paid the penalty of failure by dying.
When the officers of the expedition gathered in the mission that night
and listened to his story, their minds went back to the days of Mungo
Park, and Clapperton, and Lander, and Barth, and the rest of the famous
band of explorers who had traversed the wilds of the West African
hinterland during the close of the eighteenth and the early years of
the nineteenth centuries.
Nothing to equal Warden's journey had been done of recent years. It
stood alone, a record of almost unexampled fortitude and endurance.
He would never have reached the upper waters of the Niger were it not
for the blue cotton wrap taken from the Prophet of El Hamra when that
unamiable person was left bound and gagged at Lektawa. So deeply had
the Blue Man's repute penetrated into the desert that among Mohammedan
tribes the mere sight of his robe was more powerful than an armed
escort. In a hasty search through the Prophet's apartment, Warden
found his own revolver, two Remington repeating rifles with a supply
of cartridges, and a stock of gold dust in quills, the most portable
form of desert currency. The blue rag supplied moral, the arms and gold
material aid, but the tremendous journey still remained an undertaking
fraught with every possible danger. Not until the small party reached
Timbuktu could they regard themselves as possessing even a moderate
chance of ultimate success. In that city Beni Kalli left his daughter
with relatives. No consideration would part him from the Seyyid. Here
was a master worth serving, one who never thought only of himself, but
who was ready at any moment to risk life or limb in aid of those who
were faithful to his interests. Moreover, he showed rare sport, and
Beni Kalli was a born adventurer.
So the pair came down the Niger, and, when Warden learned that matters
were quiet at Oku, he formed the daring plan of preserving his
incognito even from the British officials at towns in the more settled
regions. He fancied that by maintaining his pose as an Arab fire-brand
he might venture to enter Oku itself. He had spoken nothing but Arabic
during so many months that he was now far more glib in the language
than many genuine Arabs who could not boast his experience of diverse
tribes and varying dialects. He deemed it best to let none know of his
scheme. The slightest hint that he had crossed the Sahara would quickly
find its way to Oku, and it was his safeguard throughout that the Mahdi
of the Atlas had sent him to carry the fiery torch of Islam to the
remotest strongholds of the faith. Oku was frankly pagan, its people
cannibals when occasion served, but between them and far-off Morocco
lay the strong link of hatred of the white man's rule.
Evelyn listened in silence while her lover discoursed. Her eyes shone
and her lips were parted. More than once, when some deft hint conveyed
to her that his thoughts dwelt ever with her, a tender little smile
told him that she understood.
Colville, who insisted on joining them when the surgeon had dressed
his injuries--for a ricochetting bullet had torn a jagged wound in
his shoulder as well as broken his collar-bone--had heard from Lagos
something of the gourd. He asked Warden what had become of it.
"It is among my belongings at Lagos," he said. "At least, I hope so.
The skipper of the _Water Witch_ was a decent sort of fellow----"
"It is here," said Evelyn quietly.
"Here!"
Half a dozen voices cried in concert, but she was looking at Warden.
"You gave it to me at Cowes?" she went on.
"Yes, I did, but----"
"But I refused it. Well, when they told me at Lagos that you were
surely lost in the desert, I asked for it. I--I--almost believed it
would bring us together again."
"Let's have a look at it," chimed in Fairholme.
She was strangely reluctant at first, and her unwillingness to produce
that sinister carving was not to be wondered at, for she had seen
sufficient of the men of Oku during the past few hours to disturb her
dreams for many a year. But Warden joined in the chorus of persuasion,
and she brought the canvas bag from her room.
"Please open it," she said to her lover. "I dare not. Though I confess
to an uncanny confidence in its power, I am still afraid of it."
He drew forth the calabash with a sudden movement, hoping to startle
some of the onlookers by the extraordinary vitality of Domenico
Garcia's masterpiece, but Evelyn alone was affected, and she uttered a
cry of dismay.
"It is ruined!" she exclaimed. "The moist heat has destroyed the
lacquer! Even the eyes have gone. Oh, Arthur, please do throw it away
this time. The thing is dead!"
In her excitement she had used exactly the right phrase. The man of
Oku was dead, in fact decomposed. His face had melted away, his mosaic
eyes had fallen out, the mocking smile worthy of a triumphant demon had
faded from his thick lips. In truth, the mask on the gourd was a mere
travesty of its former self.
Warden was quite as bewildered as the girl.
"Well," he cried, "that is really the most amazing coincidence I have
ever known. It knocks any of my adventures into a cocked hat. Just
think of it--this thing lived, I tell you. It was a superb creature
of genius. It must have been found two hundred years ago when some
Portuguese or Spaniards looted Benin. It was brought to England only to
be lost in a sailing ship that foundered on the east side of the Isle
of Wight. After passing a couple of centuries under the sea, it bobbed
up serenely one day last August, disturbed from its resting-place when
the Emperor's yacht struck the sunken wreck. I firmly believe it was
made within a few miles of this very place, yet it survived through the
ages until the hour when the Oku power is broken for ever, and now
it is destroyed. Did you ever hear anything like it? Surely this is a
thing not dreamed of in our philosophy."
None but Evelyn among those present could share his opinion. It was
impossible for any one who had not seen the calabash on the deck of the
_Nancy_ to picture the malign fascination of that graven face.
But Warden was convinced of his theory. To please his lady, he bade
Beni Kalli take the gourd and throw it on the smoldering embers of
the mission huts. And so ended the pilgrimage of the grim contrivance
fashioned by Domenico Garcia to carry his story to the world that had
forgotten him. It perished in the ashes of the old Kadana, on the site
where a new enterprise would soon mark the practical inception of
Hume's day-dream.
Nor was the hour far distant when all in that room remembered Warden's
emphatic words. Next day came messengers from the King of Oku. His
majesty deplored the excesses caused by the evil counsels of certain
professors of ju-ju. These men, difficult to control, were aided and
abetted by a notorious Portuguese half-caste, one Miguel Figuero to
wit, who had helped the Oku rebels by importing arms from foreign
territory and generally disturbing the peace of the kingdom.
"I have now dealt with Figuero and the others," said M'Wanga through
his envoys. "They will trouble the land no further."
He meant that he had nailed them to trees as a guarantee of good
faith, when, in the small hours of the morning, he grew fully
assured that his guns were useless, his river flotilla captured,
and his army broken up. Unfortunately for the success of his sudden
conversion to British notions of law and order, that which was only
a minor disturbance in a native state assumed the gravest political
significance when a number of troops of a foreign power crossed the
border at various points with the avowed object of restoring peace to a
province in which the armed might of Britain was set at nought.
The strongest party of these unlooked-for allies marched on Oku. Its
commandant, Count von Rippenbach, seemed to be intensely surprised
when he found the city in the grip of a British column, and its king a
prisoner awaiting trial by court-martial. He was not only surprised,
but intensely chagrined, and was so unwilling to return to his own
territory that there were "alarums and excursions" in various centers
of diplomacy before he swallowed his wrath, invited the British
officers to a farewell dinner, and marched back to the Cameroons.
M'Wanga was found guilty of murder and high treason, and was duly
hanged in front of his own residence. Pana, the third of the negro
visitors to Cowes, was banished to St. Vincent, and the clearance among
the witch-doctors which Lord Fairholme so ably initiated was carried a
good deal further.
Among the effects of the arch-plotter Figuero were found documents of
such highly inflammable nature that they were promptly interned in
the deepest dungeons of the Record Office. But some of his belongings
had a more direct interest than state papers for the two people with
whose fortunes he was so curiously bound up. Warden came across another
copy of the very page of the newspaper he bought at Cowes wherein
was described the accident to the imperial yacht. In the same packet
were an extract from Evelyn's stolen letter, in Rosamund Laing's
handwriting, several complete letters written to him by the girl
herself after leaving Lochmerig, and his own long letter delivered to
her in Las Palmas by Peter Evans.
It amused him afterwards to enclose these _pièces de conviction_ and
the scrap of tattooed skin with the full report he was asked to send
to the Colonial Office, and there is reason to believe that an Under
Secretary for Foreign Affairs borrowed the said report for perusal, and
took it with him to wile away the tedious hours of a week-end at the
seaside ordered by his doctor.
Warden and Evelyn were married at Old Calabar, with Colville as best
man and the Earl of Fairholme _in loco parentis_. The bride's dress
was merely a confection of white muslin, but she wore a ruby brooch,
roughly contrived by a native jeweler, that would have evoked the envy
of many a royal dame. The finest wedding present to the happy pair was
the bequest of Rosamund Laing's estate. Poor woman! she had fenced
in her gift with no restrictions. Indeed, in her will she hinted at
remorse, for she expressed the hope that Arthur Warden would be happy
with the woman of his choice.
No one--least of all those acquainted with West Africa--will be
surprised to learn that Warden resigned his commission when the affairs
of Oku were settled. His first care was to visit Lisbon, and insure
that the name of Domenico Garcia should never again be forgotten in the
memorial services for the dead, while every year, in August, a special
mass is sung in the Cathedral of the Patriarch for the "repose of the
soul" of the ill-fated artist. Two years later, Evelyn and he were on
board the _Nancy_, running into Falmouth before a lively breeze, when
Peter Evans pointed to a steam yacht.
"There's the old _San Sowsy_," he said.
Evelyn instantly turned her binoculars that way.
"You are mistaken, Peter," she cried. "The Baumgartners sold her before
they went to South America. She is like the _Sans Souci_, but that
vessel's name is _Rover_."
"Beggin' your pardon, mum, but us pilots never troubles about a craft's
name. W'y, I've known 'em to be re-christened w'en they was on'y fit
for the extry insurance of a castaway. That's the _San Sowsy_ right
enough. Chris, there's a picter postcard of 'er in my locker. Fetch it,
an' we'll run close alongside."
"By Jove, you went to a yacht's agent to get that card for me when I
forgot to note the _Sans Souci's_ exact lines, although I was asked by
the Under Secretary to observe them carefully," said Warden.
[Illustration: Why did you fail to recognize the girl? _Page 116_]
"That's it, sir. It's an old sayin' an' a true one--Keep a thing ten
years an' it'll come in useful at larst."
"Fancy you forgetting anything, Arthur!" cried his wife. "You are the
one man in the world whom I should never have suspected of missing an
item like that--it might have been so important."
"Some places have a phenomenal effect on the memory, my dear. I went to
Plymouth with the special object of jotting down all the _Sans Souci's_
features, but I took a stroll on the Hoe, and my mind at once became
utterly obtuse to every consideration save one."
"Oh, don't be silly! How could I guess you would bring Peter's postcard
in evidence against me?"
But she blushed most delightfully, so the recollection of that evening
at Plymouth must have been very pleasant, and present happiness is apt
to shed its golden light on the days that are past.
THE END
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Pronounced "Neela Mool-la," and meaning literally, "Blue Priest."
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
--Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.