THE DROWSY ONE.
There were occasions when Sanders came up against the outer world, when
he learnt, with something like bewilderment, that beyond the farthermost
forests, beyond the lazy, swelling, blue sea, there were men and women
who lived in houses and carefully tabooed such subjects as violent death
and such horrid happenings as were daily features of his life.
He had to treat with folk who, in the main, were illogical and who
believed in spirits. When you deal in the abstract with government of
races so influenced, a knowledge of constitutional law and economics is
fairly valueless.
There is one type of man that can rule native provinces wisely, and that
type is best represented by Sanders.
There are other types, as, for instance:
Once upon a time a young man came from England with a reputation. He was
sent by the Colonial Office to hold a district under Sanders as Deputy
Commissioner. He was a Bachelor of Law, had read Science, and had
acquired in a methodical fashion a working acquaintance with Swaheli,
bacteriology, and medicines. He was a very grave young man, and the
first night of his arrival he kept Sanders (furtively yawning) out of
his bed whilst he demonstrated a system whereby the aboriginal could be
converted--not converted spiritually, but from unproductive vagrancy to
a condition of good citizenship.
Sanders said nothing beyond using the conventional expressions of polite
interest, and despatched the young man and his tremendous baggage to an
up-country station, with his official blessing.
Torrington--this was the grave young man's name--established himself at
Entoli, and started forth to instil into the heathen mind the elementary
principles of applied mechanics. In other words he taught them, through
the medium of Swaheli--which they imperfectly understood--and a tin
kettle, the lesson of steam. They understood the kettle part, but could
not quite comprehend what meat he was cooking, and when he explained for
the fortieth time that he was only cooking water, they glanced
significantly one at the other and agreed that he was not quite right in
his head.
They did not tell him this much to his face, for cannibals have very
good manners--though their table code leaves much to be desired.
Mr. Torrington tried them with chemical experiments, showing them how
sulphuric acid applied to sugar produced Su^{2}, Su^{4}, or words to
that effect. He gained a reputation as a magician as a result, and in
more huts than one he was regarded and worshipped as a Great and Clever
Devil--which in a sense he was. But the first time he came up against
the spirit of the people, his science, his law, and his cut-and-dried
theories went _phutt_! And that is where Sanders came in--Sanders who
had forgotten all the chemistry he ever knew, and who, as a student of
Constitutional Law, was the rankest of failures.
It came about in this way.
There was a young man in Isisi who prophesied that on such a day, at
such an hour, the river would rise and drown the people. When Mr.
Torrington heard of this prophecy he was amused, and at first took no
notice of it. But it occurred to him that here might be a splendid
opportunity for revealing to the barbarian a little of that science with
which he was so plentifully endowed.
So he drew a large sectional plan, showing--
(_a_) the bed of the river;
(_b_) the height of the banks;
(_c_) the maximum rise of the river;
(_d_) the height of the surrounding country; and demonstrated as
plainly as possible the utter absurdity of the prophecy.
Yet the people were unconvinced, and were preparing to abandon the
village when Sanders arrived on the scene. He sent for the prophet, who
was a young man of neurotic tendencies, and had a wooden prison cage
built on the bank of the river, into which the youth was introduced.
"You will stay here," said Sanders, "and when the river rises you must
prophesy that it will fall again, else assuredly you will be drowned."
Whereupon the people settled down again in their homes and waited for
the river to drown the prophet and prove his words. But the river at
this season of the year was steadily falling, and the prophet, like many
another, was without honour in his own country.
Sanders went away; and, although somewhat discouraged, Mr. Torrington
resumed his experiments. First of all, he took up sleeping sickness, and
put in three months' futile work, impressing nobody save a gentleman of
whom more must be written in a further chapter. Then he dropped that
study suddenly and went to another.
He had ideas concerning vaccination, but the first baby he vaccinated
died of croup, and Torrington came flying down the river telling Sanders
a rambling story of a populace infuriated and demanding his blood. Then
Torrington went home.
"The country is now quiet," wrote Sanders to the Administrator, with
sardonic humour. "There are numerous palavers pending, but none of any
particular moment. The Isisi people are unusually quiet, and Bosambo,
the Monrovian, of whom I have written your Excellency, makes a model
chief for the Ochori. No thefts have been traced to him for three
months. I should be grateful if full information could be supplied to me
concerning an expedition which at the moment is traversing this country
under the style of the Isisi Exploitation Syndicate."
Curiously enough, Torrington had forgotten the fact that a member of
this expedition had been one of the most interested students of his
sleeping sickness clinics.
The Isisi Exploitation Syndicate, Limited, was born between the entre
and the sweet at the house of a gentleman whose Christian name was
Isidore, and who lived in Maida Vale. At dinner one night with a dear
friend--who called himself McPherson every day of the year except on Yum
Kippur, when he frankly admitted that he had been born Isaacs--the
question of good company titles came up, and Mr. McPherson said he had
had the "Isisi Exploitation" in his mind for many years. With the aid of
an atlas the Isisi country was discovered. It was one of those atlases
on which are inscribed the staple products of the lands, and across the
Isisi was writ fair "Rubber," "Kola-nut," "Mahogany," and "Tobacco."
I would ask the reader to particularly remember "Tobacco."
"There's a chief I've had some correspondence with," said Mr. McPherson,
chewing his cigar meditatively; "we could get a sort of concession from
him. It would have to be done on the quiet, because the country is a
British Protectorate. Now, if we could get a man who'd put up the stuff,
and send him out to fix the concession, we'd have a company floated
before you could say knife."
Judicious inquiry discovered the man in Claude Hyall Cuthbert, a
plutocratic young gentleman, who, on the strength of once having nearly
shot a lion in Uganda, was accepted by a large circle of acquaintances
as an authority on Africa.
Cuthbert, who dabbled in stocks and shares, was an acquisition to any
syndicate, and on the understanding that part of his duty would be the
obtaining of the concession, he gladly financed the syndicate to the
extent of seven thousand pounds, four thousand of which Messrs. Isidore
and McPherson very kindly returned to him to cover the cost of his
expedition.
The other three thousand were earmarked for office expenses.
As Mr. McPherson truly said:
"Whatever happens, we're on velvet, my boy," which was perfectly true.
Before Cuthbert sailed, McPherson offered him a little advice.
"Whatever you do," he said, "steer clear of that dam' Commissioner
Sanders. He's one of those pryin', interferin'----"
"I know the breed," said Cuthbert wisely. "This is not my first visit to
Africa. Did I ever tell you about the lion I shot in Uganda?"
A week later he sailed.
* * * * *
In course of time came a strange white man through Sanders' domain. This
white man, who was Cuthbert, was following the green path to death--but
this he did not know. He threw his face to the forest, as the natives
say, and laughed, and the people of the village of O'Tembi, standing
before their wattle huts, watched him in silent wonder.
It was a wide path between huge trees, and the green of the undergrowth
was flecked with sunlight, and, indeed, the green path was beautiful to
the eye, being not unlike a parkland avenue.
N'Beki, chief of this village of the O'Tembi, a very good old man, went
out to the path when the white man began his journey.
"White man," he said solemnly, "this is the road to hell, where all
manner of devils live. Night brings remorse, and dawn brings
self-hatred, which is worse than death."
Cuthbert, whose Swaheli was faulty, and whose Bomongo talk was nil,
grinned impatiently as his coastboy translated unpicturesquely.
"Dam nigger done say, this be bad place, no good; he say bimeby you libe
for die."
"Tell him to go to blazes!" said Cuthbert noisily; "and, look here,
Flagstaff, ask him where the rubber is, see? Tell him we know all about
the forest, and ask him about the elephants, where their playground is?"
Cuthbert was broad-shouldered and heavily built, and under his broad
sun-helmet his face was very hot and moist.
"Tell the white man," said the chief quietly, "there is no rubber within
seven days' journey, and that we do not know ivory; elephants there were
_cala cala_--but not now."
"He's a liar!" was Cuthbert's only comment. "Get these beggars moving,
Flagstaff. Hi, _alapa', avanti, trek_!"
"These beggars," a straggling line of them, resumed their loads
uncomplainingly. They were good carriers, as carriers go, and only two
had died since the march began.
Cuthbert stood and watched them pass, using his stick dispassionately
upon the laggards. Then he turned to go.
"Ask him," he said finally, "why he calls this the road to
what-d'ye-call-it?"
The old man shook his head.
"Because of the devils," he said simply.
"Tell him he's a silly ass!" bellowed Cuthbert and followed his
carriers.
This natural path the caravan took extended in almost a straight line
through the forest. It was a strange path because of its very
smoothness, and the only drawback lay in the fact that it seemed to be
the breeding-place of flies--little black flies, as big as the house-fly
of familiar shape, if anything a little bigger.
They terrified the natives for many reasons, but principally because
they stung. They did not terrify Cuthbert, because he was dressed in
tapai cloth; none the less, there were times when these black flies
found joints in his armour and roused him to anger. This path extended
ten miles and made pleasant travelling. Then the explorer struck off
into the forest, following another path, well beaten, but more
difficult.
By devious routes Mr. Cuthbert came into the heart of Sanders'
territories, and he was successful in this, that he avoided Sanders. He
had with him a caravan of sixty men and an interpreter, and in due
course he reached his objective, which was the village of a great chief
ruling a remarkable province--Bosambo, of the Ochori, no less; sometime
Krooman, steward of the Elder Dempster line, chief on sufferance, but
none the less an interesting person. Bosambo, you may be sure, came out
to greet his visitor.
"Say to him," said Cuthbert to his interpreter, "that I am proud to meet
the great chief."
"Lord chief," said the interpreter in the vernacular, "this white man is
a fool, and has much money."
"So I see," said Bosambo.
"Tell him," said Cuthbert, with all the dignity of an ambassador, "that
I have come to bring him wonderful presents."
"The white man says," said the interpreter, "that if he is sure you are
a good man he will give you presents. Now," said the interpreter
carefully, "as I am the only man who can speak for you, let us make
arrangements. You shall give me one-third of all he offers. Then will I
persuade him to continue giving, since he is the father of mad people."
"And you," said Bosambo briefly, "are the father of liars."
He made a sign to his guard, and they seized upon the unfortunate
interpreter and led him forth. Cuthbert, in a sweat of fear, pulled a
revolver.
"Master," said Bosambo loftily, "you no make um fuss. Dis dam' nigger,
he no good; he make you speak bad t'ings. I speak um English proper. You
sit down, we talk um."
So Cuthbert sat down in the village of Ochori, and for three days there
was a great giving of presents, and signing of concessions. Bosambo
conceded the Ochori country--that was a small thing. He granted forest
rights of the Isisi, he sold the Akasava, he bartered away the Lulungo
territories and the "native products thereof"--I quote from the written
document now preserved at the Colonial Office and bearing the scrawled
signature of Bosambo--and he added, as a lordly afterthought, the Ikeli
district.
"What about river rights?" asked the delighted Cuthbert.
"What will you give um?" demanded Bosambo cautiously.
"Forty English pounds?" suggested Cuthbert.
"I take um," said Bosambo.
It was a remarkably simple business; a more knowledgeable man than
Cuthbert would have been scared by the easiness of his success, but
Cuthbert was too satisfied with himself to be scared at anything.
It is said that his leave-taking with Bosambo was of an affecting
character, that Bosambo wept and embraced his benefactor's feet.
Be that as it may, his "concessions" in his pocket, Cuthbert began his
coastward journey, still avoiding Sanders.
He came to Etebi and found a deputy-commissioner, who received him with
open arms. Here Cuthbert stayed a week.
Mr. Torrington at the time was tremendously busy with a scheme for
stamping out sleeping sickness. Until then, Cuthbert was under the
impression that it was a pleasant disease, the principal symptom of
which was a painless coma. Fascinated, he extended his stay to a
fortnight, seeing many dreadful sights, for Torrington had established a
sort of amateur clinic, and a hundred cases a day came to him for
treatment.
"And it comes from the bite of a tsetse fly?" said Cuthbert. "Show me a
tsetse."
Torrington obliged him, and when the other saw the little black insect
he went white to the lips.
"My God!" he whispered, "I've been bitten by that!"
"It doesn't follow----" began Torrington; but Cuthbert was blundering
and stumbling in wild fear to his carriers' camp.
"Get your loads!" he yelled. "Out of this cursed country we get as quick
as we can!"
Torrington, with philosophical calm, endeavoured to reassure him, but he
was not to be appeased.
He left Etebi that night and camped in the forest. Three days later he
reached a mission station, where he complained of headaches and pains in
the neck (he had not attended Torrington's clinics in vain). The
missionary, judging from the man's haggard appearance and general
incoherence that he had an attack of malaria, advised him to rest for a
few days; but Cuthbert was all a-fret to reach the coast. Twenty miles
from the mission, Cuthbert sent his carriers back, and said he would
cover the last hundred miles of the journey alone.
To this extraordinary proposition the natives agree--from that day
Cuthbert disappeared from the sight of man.
* * * * *
Sanders was taking a short cut through the forest to avoid the
interminable twists and bends of the river, when he came suddenly upon a
village of death--four sad little huts, built hastily amidst a tangle of
underwood. He called, but nobody answered him. He was too wary to enter
any of the crazy habitations.
He knew these little villages in the forest. It was the native custom to
take the aged and the dying--especially those who died sleepily--to
far-away places, beyond the reach of man, and leave them there with a
week's food and a fire, to die in decent solitude.
He called again, but only the forest answered him. The chattering, noisy
forest, all a-crackle with the movements of hidden things. Yet there was
a fire burning which told of life.
Sanders resumed his journey, first causing a quantity of food to be laid
in a conspicuous place for the man who made the fire.
He was on his way to take evidence concerning the disappearance of
Cuthbert. It was the fourth journey of its kind he had attempted. There
had been palavers innumerable.
Bosambo, chief of the Ochori, had sorrowfully disgorged the presents he
had received, and admitted his fault.
"Lord!" he confessed, "when I was with the white man on the coast I
learnt the trick of writing--it is a cursed gift--else all this trouble
would not have come about. For, desiring to show my people how great a
man I was, I wrote a letter in the English fashion, and sent it by
messenger to the coast and thence to friends in Sierra Leone, telling
them of my fortune. Thus the people in London came to know of the
treasure of this land."
Sanders, in a few illuminative sentences, conveyed his impression of
Bosambo's genius.
"You slave and son of a slave," he said, "whom I took from a prison to
rule the Ochori, why did you deceive this white man, selling him lands
that were not yours?"
"Lord!" said Bosambo simply, "there was nothing else I could sell."
But there was no clue here as to Cuthbert's whereabouts, nor at the
mission station, nor amongst the carriers detained on suspicion. One man
might have thrown light upon the situation, but Torrington was at home
fulfilling the post of assistant examiner in mechanics at South
Kensington (more in his element there) and filling in his spare time
with lecturing on "The Migration of the Bantu Races."
So that the end of Sanders' fourth quest was no more successful than the
third, or the second, or the first, and he retraced his steps to
headquarters, feeling somewhat depressed.
He took the path he had previously traversed, and came upon the Death
Camp late in the afternoon. The fire still burnt, but the food he had
placed had disappeared. He hailed the hut in the native tongue, but no
one answered him. He waited for a little while, and then gave orders for
more food to be placed on the ground.
"Poor devil!" said Sanders, and gave the order to march. He himself had
taken half a dozen steps, when he stopped. At his feet something
glittered in the fading light. He stooped and picked it up. It was an
exploded cartridge. He examined it carefully, smelt it--it had been
recently fired. Then he found another. They were Lee-Metford, and bore
the mark "'07," which meant that they were less than a year old.
He was still standing with the little brass cylinders in his hand, when
Abiboo came to him.
"Master," said the Houssa, "who ties monkeys to trees with ropes?"
"Is that a riddle?" asked Sanders testily, for his mind was busy on this
matter of cartridges.
Abiboo for answer beckoned him.
Fifty yards from the hut was a tree, at the foot of which, whimpering
and chattering and in a condition of abject terror, were two small black
monkeys tethered by ropes.
They spat and grinned ferociously as Sanders approached them. He looked
from the cartridges to the monkeys and back to the cartridges again,
then he began searching the grass. He found two more empty shells and a
rusting lancet, such as may be found in the pocket-case of any explorer.
Then he walked back to the hut before which the fire burnt, and called
softly--
"Mr. Cuthbert!"
There was no answer, and Sanders called again--
"Mr. Cuthbert!"
From the interior of the hut came a groan.
"Leave me alone. I have come here to die!" said a muffled voice.
"Come out and be civil," said Sanders coolly; "you can die afterwards."
After a few moments' delay there issued from the door of the hut the
wreck of a man, with long hair and a month-old beard, who stood sulkily
before the Commissioner.
"Might I ask," said Sanders, "what your little game is?"
The other shook his head wearily. He was a pitiable sight. His clothes
were in tatters; he was unwashed and grimy.
"Sleeping sickness," he said wearily. "Felt it coming on--seen what
horrible thing it was--didn't want to be a burden. Oh, my God! What a
fool I've been to come to this filthy country!"
"That's very likely," said Sanders. "But who told you that you had
sleeping sickness?"
"Know it--know it," said the listless man.
"Sit down," said Sanders. The other obeyed, and Sanders applied the
superficial tests.
"If you've got sleeping sickness," said Sanders, after the examination,
"I'm suffering from religious mania--man, you're crazy!"
Yet there was something in Cuthbert's expression that was puzzling. He
was dull, heavy, and stupid. His movements were slow and lethargic.
Sanders watched him as he pulled a black wooden pipe from his ragged
pocket, and with painful slowness charged it from a skin pouch.
"It's got me, I tell you," muttered Cuthbert, and lit the pipe with a
blazing twig from the fire. "I knew it (puff) as soon as that fellow
Torrington (puff) described the symptoms (puff);--felt dull and
sleepy--got a couple of monkeys and injected my blood (puff)--_they_
went drowsy, too--sure sign----"
"Where did you get that tobacco from?" demanded Sanders quickly.
Cuthbert took time to consider his answer.
"Fellow gave it me--chief fellow, Bosambo. Native tobacco, but not
bad--he gave me a devil of a lot."
"So I should say," said Sanders, and reaching over took the pouch and
put it in his pocket.
* * * * *
When Sanders had seen Mr. Cuthbert safe on board a homeward-bound
steamer, he took his twenty Houssas to the Ochori country to arrest
Bosambo, and expected Bosambo would fly; but the imperturbable chief
awaited his coming, and offered him the customary honours.
"I admit I gave the white man the hemp," he said. "I myself smoke it,
suffering no ill. How was I to know that it would make him sleep?"
"Why did you give it to him?" demanded Sanders.
Bosambo looked the Commissioner full in the face.
"Last moon you came, lord, asking why I gave him the Isisi country and
the rights of the little river, because these were not mine to give. Now
you come to me saying why did I give the white man native tobacco--Lord,
that was the only thing I gave him that was mine."