KEEPERS OF THE STONE.
There is a people who live at Ochori in the big African forest on the
Ikeli River, who are called in the native tongue "The Keepers of the
Stone."
There is a legend that years and years ago, _cala-cala_, there was a
strange, flat stone, "inscribed with the marks of the devils" (so the
grave native story-teller puts it), which was greatly worshipped and
prized, partly for its magic powers, and partly because of the two
ghosts who guarded it.
It was a fetish of peculiar value to the mild people who lived in the
big forest, but the Akasava, who are neither mild nor reverential, and
being, moreover, in need of gods, swooped down upon the Ochori one red
morning and came away with this wonderful stone and other movables.
Presumably, the "ghosts of brass" went also. It was a great business,
securing the stone, for it was set in a grey slab in the solid rock, and
many spear-heads were broken before it could be wrenched from its place.
But in the end it was taken away, and for several years it was the boast
of the Akasava that they derived much benefit from this sacred
possession. Then of a sudden the stone disappeared, and with it all the
good fortune of its owners. For the vanishing of the stone coincided
with the arrival of British rule, and it was a bad thing for the
Akasava.
There came in these far-off days ('95?) a ridiculous person in white
with an escort of six soldiers. He brought a message of peace and good
fellowship, and talked of a new king and a new law. The Akasava listened
in dazed wonderment, but when they recovered they cut off his head, also
the heads of the escort. It seemed to be the only thing to do under the
circumstances.
Then one morning the Akasava people woke to find the city full of
strange white folk, who had come swiftly up the river in steamboats.
There were too many to quarrel with, so the people sat quiet, a little
frightened and very curious, whilst two black soldiers strapped the
hands and feet of the Akasava chief prior to hanging him by the neck
till he was dead.
Nor did the bad luck of the people end here; there came a lean year,
when the manioc[1] root was bad and full of death-water, when goats
died, and crops were spoilt by an unexpected hurricane. There was always
a remedy at hand for a setback of this kind. If you have not the thing
you require, go and take it. So, following precedents innumerable, the
Akasava visited the Ochori, taking away much grain, and leaving behind
dead men and men who prayed for death. In the course of time the white
men came with their steamboats, their little brass guns, and the
identical block and tackle, which they fastened to the identical tree
and utilised in the inevitable manner.
"It appears," said the new chief--who was afterwards hanged for the
killing of the king of the Isisi--"that the white man's law is made to
allow weak men to triumph at the expense of the strong. This seems
foolish, but it will be well to humour them."
His first act was to cut down the hanging-tree--it was too conspicuous
and too significant. Then he set himself to discover the cause of all
the trouble which had come upon the Akasava. The cause required little
appreciation. The great stone had been stolen, as he well knew, and the
remedy resolved itself into a question of discovering the thief. The
wretched Ochori were suspect.
"If we go to them," said the chief of the Akasava thoughtfully, "killing
them very little, but rather burning them, so that they told where this
godstone was hidden, perhaps the Great Ones would forgive us."
"In my young days," said an aged councillor, "when evil men would not
tell where stolen things were buried, we put hot embers in their hands
and bound them tightly."
"That is a good way," approved another old man, wagging his head
applaudingly; "also to tie men in the path of the soldier-ants has been
known to make them talkative."
"Yet we may not go up against the Ochori for many reasons," said the
chief; "the principal of which is that if the stone be with them we
shall not overcome them owing to the two ghosts--though I do not
remember that the ghosts were very potent in the days when the stone was
with us," he added, not without hope.
The little raid which followed and the search for the stone are told
briefly in official records. The search was fruitless, and the Akasava
folk must needs content themselves with such picking as came to hand.
Of how Mr. Niceman, the deputy commissioner, and then Sanders himself,
came up, I have already told. That was long ago, as the natives say,
_cala-cala_, and many things happened subsequently that put from the
minds of the people all thought of the stone.
In course of time the chief of the Akasava died the death for various
misdoings, and peace came to the land that fringes Togo.
* * * * *
Sanders has been surprised twice in his life. Once was at Ikeli, which
in the native tongue means "little river." It is not a little river at
all, but, on the contrary, a broad, strong, sullen stream that swirls
and eddies and foams as it swings the corner of its tortuous course
seaward. Sanders sat on a deck-chair placed under the awning of his tiny
steamer, and watched the river go rushing past. He was a contented man,
for the land was quiet and the crops were good. Nor was there any crime.
There was sleeping sickness at Bofabi, and beri-beri at Akasava, and in
the Isisi country somebody had discovered a new god, and, by all
accounts that came down river, they worshipped him night and day.
He was not bothering about new gods, because gods of any kind were a
beneficent asset. Milini, the new king of the Isisi, had sent him word:
"Master," said his mouthpiece, the messenger, "this new god lives in a
box which is borne upon the shoulders of priests. It is so long and so
wide, and there are four sockets in which the poles fit, and the god
inside is a very strong one, and full of pride."
"Ko, ko!" said Sanders, with polite interest, "tell the lord king, your
master, that so long as this god obeys the law, he may live in the Isisi
country, paying no tax. But if he tells the young men to go fighting, I
shall come with a much stronger god, who will eat your god up. The
palaver is finished."
Sanders, with his feet stretched out on the rail of the boat, thought of
the new god idly. When was it that the last had come? There was one in
the N'Gombi country years ago, a sad god who lived in a hut which no man
dare approach; there was another god who came with thunder demanding
sacrifice--human sacrifice. This was an exceptionally bad god, and had
cost the British Government six hundred thousand pounds, because there
was fighting in the bush and a country unsettled. But, in the main, the
gods were good, doing harm to none, for it is customary for new gods to
make their appearance after the crops are gathered, and before the rainy
season sets in.
So Sanders thought, sitting in the shade of a striped awning on the
foredeck of the little _Zaire_.
The next day, before the sun came up, he turned the nose of the steamer
up-stream, being curious as to the welfare of the shy Ochori folk, who
lived too near the Akasava for comfort, and, moreover, needed nursing.
Very slow was the tiny steamer's progress, for the current was strong
against her. After two days' travel Sanders got into Lukati, where young
Carter had a station.
The deputy commissioner came down to the beach in his pyjamas, with a
big pith helmet on the back of his head, and greeted his chief
boisterously.
"Well?" said Sanders; and Carter told him all the news. There was a land
palaver at Ebibi; Otabo, of Bofabi, had died of the sickness; there were
two leopards worrying the outlying villages, and----
"Heard about the Isisi god?" he asked suddenly; and Sanders said that he
had.
"It's an old friend of yours," said Carter. "My people tell me that this
old god-box contains the stone of the Ochori."
"Oh!" said Sanders, with sudden interest.
He breakfasted with his subordinate, inspected his little garrison of
thirty, visited his farm, admired his sweet potatoes, and patronised his
tomatoes.
Then he went back to the boat and wrote a short dispatch in the tiniest
of handwriting on the flimsiest of paper slips. "In case!" said Sanders.
"Bring me 14," he said to his servant, and Abiboo came back to him soon
with a pigeon in his hand.
"Now, little bird," said Sanders, carefully rolling his letter round the
red leg of the tiny courier and fastening it with a rubber band, "you've
got two hundred miles to fly before sunrise to-morrow--and 'ware hawks!"
Then he gathered the pigeon in his hand, walked with it to the stern of
the boat, and threw it into the air.
His crew of twelve men were sitting about their cooking-pot--that pot
which everlastingly boils.
"Yoka!" he called, and his half-naked engineer came bounding down the
slope.
"Steam," said Sanders; "get your wood aboard; I am for Isisi."
* * * * *
There was no doubt at all that this new god was an extremely powerful
one. Three hours from the city the _Zaire_ came up to a long canoe with
four men standing at their paddles singing dolefully. Sanders remembered
that he had passed a village where women, their bodies decked with green
leaves, wailed by the river's edge.
He slowed down till he came abreast of the canoe, and saw a dead man
lying stark in the bottom.
"Where go you with this body?" he asked.
"To Isisi, lord," was the answer.
"The middle river and the little islands are places for the dead," said
Sanders brusquely. "It is folly to take the dead to the living."
"Lord," said the man who spoke, "at Isisi lives a god who breathes life;
this man"--he pointed downwards--"is my brother, and he died very
suddenly because of a leopard. So quickly he died that he could not tell
us where he had hidden his rods and his salt. Therefore we take him to
Isisi, that the new god may give him just enough life to make his
relations comfortable."
"The middle river," said Sanders quietly, and pointed to such a lone
island, all green with tangled vegetation, as might make a burying
ground. "What is your name?"
"Master, my name is N'Kema," said the man sullenly.
"Go, then, N'Kema," he said, and kept the steamer slow ahead whilst he
watched the canoe turn its blunt nose to the island and disembark its
cargo.
Then he rang the engines full ahead, steered clear of a sandbank, and
regained the fairway.
He was genuinely concerned.
The stone was something exceptional in fetishes, needing delicate
handling. That the stone existed, he knew. There were legends
innumerable about it; and an explorer had, in the early days, seen it
through his glasses. Also the "ghosts clad in brass" he had heard
about--these fantastic and warlike shades who made peaceable men go out
to battle--all except the Ochori, who were never warlike, and whom no
number of ghosts could incite to deeds of violence.
You will have remarked that Sanders took native people seriously, and
that, I remark in passing, is the secret of good government. To him,
ghosts were factors, and fetishes potent possibilities. A man who knew
less would have been amused, but Sanders was not amused, because he had
a great responsibility. He arrived at the city of Isisi in the
afternoon, and observed, even at a distance, that something unusual was
occurring. The crowd of women and children that the arrival of the
Commissioner usually attracted did not gather as he swung in from
mid-stream and followed the water-path that leads to shoal.
Only the king and a handful of old men awaited him, and the king was
nervous and in trouble.
"Lord," he blurted, "I am no king in this city because of the new god;
the people are assembled on the far side of the hill, and there they sit
night and day watching the god in the box."
Sanders bit his lip thoughtfully, and said nothing.
"Last night," said the king, "'The Keepers of the Stone' appeared
walking through the village."
He shivered, and the sweat stood in big beads on his forehead, for a
ghost is a terrible thing.
"All this talk of keepers of stones is folly," said Sanders calmly;
"they have been seen by your women and your unblooded boys."
"Lord, I saw them myself," said the king simply; and Sanders was
staggered, for the king was a sane man.
"The devil you have!" said Sanders in English; then, "What manner of
ghost were these?"
"Lord," said the king, "they were white of face, like your greatness.
They wore brass upon their heads and brass upon their breasts. Their
legs were bare, but upon the lower legs was brass again."
"Any kind of ghost is hard enough to believe," said Sanders irritably,
"but a brass ghost I will not have at any price." He spoke English
again, as was his practice when he talked to himself, and the king
stood silent, not understanding him.
"What else?" said Sanders.
"They had swords," continued the chief, "such as the elephant-hunters of
the N'Gombi people carry. Broad and short, and on their arms were
shields."
Sanders was nonplussed.
"And they cry 'war,'" said the chief. "This is the greatest shame of
all, for my young men dance the death dance and streak their bodies with
paint and talk boastfully."
"Go to your hut," said Sanders; "presently I will come and join you."
He thought and thought, smoking one black cigar after another, then he
sent for Abiboo, his servant.
"Abiboo," he said, "by my way of thinking, I have been a good master to
you."
"That is so, lord," said Abiboo.
"Now I will trust you to go amongst my crew discovering their gods. If I
ask them myself, they will lie to me out of politeness, inventing this
god and that, thinking they please me."
Abiboo chose the meal hour, when the sun had gone out and the world was
grey and the trees motionless. He came back with the information as
Sanders was drinking his second cup of coffee in the loneliness of the
tiny deck-house.
"Master," he reported, "three men worship no god whatever, three more
have especial family fetishes, and two are Christians more or less, and
the four Houssas are with me in faith."
"And you?"
Abiboo, the Kano boy, smiled at Sanders' assumption of innocence.
"Lord," he said, "I follow the Prophet, believing only in the one God,
beneficent and merciful."
"That is good," said Sanders. "Now let the men load wood, and Yoka shall
have steam against moonrise, and all shall be ready for slipping."
At ten o'clock by his watch he fell-in his four Houssas, serving out to
each a short carbine and a bandoleer. Then the party went ashore.
The king in his patience sat in his hut, and Sanders found him.
"You will stay here, Milini," he commanded, "and no blame shall come to
you for anything that may happen this night."
"What will happen, master?"
"Who knows!" said Sanders, philosophically.
The streets were in pitch darkness, but Abiboo, carrying a lantern, led
the way. Only occasionally did the party pass a tenanted hut. Generally
they saw by the dull glow of the log that smouldered in every habitation
that it was empty. Once a sick woman called to them in passing. It was
near her time, she said, and there was none to help her in the supreme
moment of her agony.
"God help you, sister!" said Sanders, ever in awe of the mysteries of
birth. "I will send women to you. What is your name?"
"They will not come," said the plaintive voice. "To-night the men go out
to war, and the women wait for the great dance."
"To-night?"
"To-night, master--so the ghosts of brass decree."
Sanders made a clicking noise with his mouth.
"That we shall see," he said, and went on.
The party reached the outskirts of the city. Before them, outlined
against a bronze sky, was the dark bulk of a little hill, and this they
skirted.
The bronze became red, and rose, and dull bronze again, as the fires
that gave it colour leapt or fell. Turning the shoulder of the hill,
Sanders had a full view of the scene.
Between the edge of the forest and slope of the hill was a broad strip
of level land. On the left was the river, on the right was swamp and
forest again.
In the very centre of the plain a huge fire burnt. Before it, supported
by its poles, on two high trestles, a square box.
But the people!
A huge circle, squatting on its haunches, motionless, silent; men,
women, children, tiny babies, at their mothers' hips they stretched; a
solid wheel of humanity, with the box and the fire as a hub.
There was a lane through which a man might reach the box--a lane along
which passed a procession of naked men, going and returning. These were
they who replenished the fire, and Sanders saw them dragging fuel for
that purpose. Keeping to the edge of the crowd, he worked his way to the
opening. Then he looked round at his men.
"It is written," he said, in the curious Arabic of the Kano people,
"that we shall carry away this false god. As to which of us shall live
or die through this adventure, that is with Allah, who knows all
things."
Then he stepped boldly along the lane. He had changed his white ducks
for a dark blue uniform suit, and he was not observed by the majority
until he came with his Houssas to the box. The heat from the fire was
terrific, overpowering. Close at hand he saw that the fierceness of the
blaze had warped the rough-hewn boards of the box, and through the
opening he saw in the light a slab of stone.
"Take up the box quickly," he commanded, and the Houssas lifted the
poles to their shoulders. Until then the great assembly had sat in
silent wonder, but as the soldiers lifted their burden, a yell of rage
burst from five thousand throats, and men leapt to their feet.
Sanders stood before the fire, one hand raised, and silence fell,
curiosity dominating resentment.
"People of the Isisi," said Sanders, "let no man move until the
god-stone has passed, for death comes quickly to those who cross the
path of gods."
He had an automatic pistol in each hand, and the particular deity he was
thinking of at the moment was not the one in the box.
The people hesitated, surging and swaying, as a mob will sway in its
uncertainty.
With quick steps the bearers carried their burden through the lane; they
had almost passed unmolested when an old woman shuffled forward and
clutched at Sanders' arm.
"Lord, lord!" she quavered, "what will you do with our god?"
"Take him to the proper place," said Sanders, "being by Government
appointed his keeper."
"Give me a sign," she croaked, and the people in her vicinity repeated,
"A sign, master!"
"This is a sign," said Sanders, remembering the woman in labour. "By the
god's favour there shall be born to Ifabi, wife of Adako, a male child."
He heard the babble of talk; he heard his message repeated over the
heads of the crowd; he saw a party of women go scurrying back to the
village; then he gave the order to march. There were murmurings, and
once he heard a deep-voiced man begin the war-chant, but nobody joined
him. Somebody--probably the same man--clashed his spear against his
wicker shield, but his warlike example was not followed. Sanders gained
the village street. Around him was such a press of people that he
followed the swaying box with difficulty. The river was in sight; the
moon, rising a dull, golden ball over the trees, laced the water with
silver, and then there came a scream of rage.
"He lies! He lies! Ifabi, the wife of Adako, has a female child."
Sanders turned swiftly like a dog at bay; his lips upcurled in a snarl,
his white, regular teeth showing.
"Now," said Sanders, speaking very quickly, "let any man raise his
spear, and he dies."
Again they stood irresolute, and Sanders, over his shoulder, gave an
order.
For a moment only the people hesitated; then, as the soldiers gripped
the poles of the god-box, with one fierce yell they sprang forward.
A voice screamed something; and, as if by magic, the tumult ceased, and
the crowd darted backward and outward, falling over one another in their
frantic desire to escape.
Sanders, his pistol still loaded, stood in open-mouthed astonishment at
the stampede.
Save for his men he was alone; and then he saw.
Along the centre of the street two men were walking. They were clad
alike in short crimson kilts that left their knees bare; great brass
helmets topped their heads, and brass cuirasses covered their breasts.
Sanders watched them as they came nearer, then: "If this is not fever,
it is madness," he muttered, for what he saw were two Roman centurions,
their heavy swords girt about their waists.
He stood still, and they passed him, so close that he saw on the boss of
one shield the rough-moulded letters:--
"AUGUSTUS CAE."
"Fever" said Sanders emphatically, and followed the box to the ship.
* * * * *
When the steamer reached Lukati, Sanders was still in a condition of
doubt, for his temperature was normal, and neither fever nor sun could
be held accountable for the vision. Added to which, his men had seen the
same thing.
He found the reinforcements his pigeon had brought, but they were
unnecessary now.
"It beats me," he confessed to Carter, telling the story; "but we'll get
out the stone; it might furnish an explanation. Centurions--bah!"
The stone, exposed in the light of day, was of greyish granite, such as
Sanders did not remember having seen before.
"Here are the 'devil marks,'" he said, as he turned it over.
"Possibly--whew!"
No wonder he whistled, for closely set were a number of printed
characters; and Carter, blowing the dust, saw--
"MARIUS ET AUGUSTUS
CENT . . . . . . . . . NERO
IMPERAT . . . . . IN DEUS
. . . . . DULCE."
That night, with great labour, Sanders, furbishing his rusty Latin, and
filling in gaps, made a translation:
"Marius and Augustus,
Centurions of Nero, Csar and
Emperor,
Sleep sweetly with the gods."
"We are they who came beyond the wild lands which Hanno, the
Carthaginian, found . . .
"Marcus Septimus went up into Egypt, and with him Decimus
Superbus, but by the will of Csar, and the favour of the gods,
we sailed to the black seas beyond. . . . . Here we lived, our
ships suffering wreck, being worshipped by the barbarians,
teaching them warlike practices.
. . . "You who come after . . . bear greetings to Rome to Cato
Hippocritus, who dwells by the gate . . ."
Sanders shook his head when he had finished reading, and said it was
"rum."
[Footnote 1: There is a tremendous amount of free hydrocyanic acid
(prussic acid) in manioc.]