THE WITCH-DOCTOR.
Nothing surprised Sanders except the ignorance of the average
stay-at-home Briton on all matters pertaining to the savage peoples of
Africa. Queer things happened in the "black patch"--so the coast
officials called Sanders' territory--miraculous, mysterious things, but
Sanders was never surprised. He had dealings with folks who believed in
ghosts and personal devils, and he sympathised with them, realising that
it is very difficult to ascribe all the evils of life to human agencies.
Sanders was an unquiet man, or so his constituents thought him, and a
little mad; this also was the native view. Worst of all, there was no
method in his madness.
Other commissioners might be depended upon to arrive after the rains,
sending word ahead of their coming. This was a good way--the Isisi, the
Ochori, and the N'Gombi people, everlastingly at issue, were agreed upon
this--because, with timely warning of the Commissioner's approach, it
was possible to thrust out of sight the ugly evidence of fault, to clean
up and make tidy the muddle of folly.
It was bad to step sheepishly forth from your hut into the clear light
of the rising sun, with all the dbris of an overnight feast mutely
testifying to your discredit, and face the cold, unwavering eyes of a
little brown-faced man in immaculate white. The switch he carried in his
hand would be smacking his leg suggestively, and there were always four
Houssa soldiers in blue and scarlet in the background, immobile, but
alert, quick to obey.
Once Sanders came to a N'Gombi village at dawn, when by every known
convention he should have been resting in his comfortable bungalow some
three hundred miles down river.
Sanders came strolling through the village street just as the sun topped
the trees and long shadows ran along the ground before the flood of
lemon-coloured light.
The village was silent and deserted, which was a bad sign, and spoke of
overnight orgies. Sanders walked on until he came to the big square near
the palaver house, and there the black ruin of a dead fire smoked
sullenly.
Sanders saw something that made him go raking amongst the embers.
"Pah!" said Sanders, with a wry face.
He sent back to the steamer for the full force of his Houssa guard, then
he walked into the chief's hut and kicked him till he woke.
He came out blinking and shivering, though the morning was warm.
"Telemi, son of O'ari," said Sanders, "tell me why I should not hang
you--man-eater and beast."
"Lord," said the chief, "we chopped this man because he was an enemy,
stealing into the village at night, and carrying away our goats and our
dogs. Besides which, we did not know that you were near by."
"I can believe that," said Sanders.
A _lo-koli_ beat the villages to wakefulness, and before a silent
assembly the headman of the N'Gombi village was scientifically flogged.
Then Sanders called the elders together and said a few words of cheer
and comfort.
"Only hyenas and crocodiles eat their kind," he said, "also certain
fishes." (There was a general shudder, for amongst the N'Gombi to be
likened to a fish is a deadly insult.) "Cannibals I do not like, and
they are hated by the King's Government. Therefore when it comes to my
ears--and I have many spies--that you chop man, whether he be enemy or
friend, I will come quickly and I will flog sorely; and if it should
again happen I will bring with me a rope, and I will find me a tree, and
there will be broken huts in this land."
Again they shuddered at the threat of the broken hut, for it is the
custom of the N'Gombi to break down the walls of a dead man's house to
give his spirit free egress.
Sanders carried away with him the chief of the village, with leg-irons
at his ankles, and in course of time the prisoner arrived at a little
labour colony on the coast, where he worked for five years in company
with other indiscreet headmen who were suffering servitude for divers
offences.
They called Sanders in the Upper River districts by a long and sonorous
name, which may be euphemistically translated as "The man who has a
faithless wife," the little joke of Bosambo, chief of the Ochori, and
mightily subtle because Sanders was wedded to his people.
North and south, east and west, he prowled. He travelled by night and by
day. Sometimes his steamer would go threshing away up river, and be
watched out of sight by the evil-doing little fishing-villages.
"Go you," said Sarala, who was a little headman of the Akasava, "go you
three hours' journey in your canoe and watch the river for Sandi's
return. And at first sign of his steamer--which you may see if you climb
the hill at the river's bend--come back and warn me, for I desire to
follow certain customs of my father in which Sandi has no pleasure."
He spoke to two of his young men and they departed. That night by the
light of a fire, to the accompaniment of dancing and drum-beating, the
son of the headman brought his firstborn, ten hours old, squealing
noisily, as if with knowledge of the doom ahead, and laid it at his
father's feet.
"People," said the little chief, "it is a wise saying of all, and has
been a wise saying since time began, that the firstborn has a special
virtue; so that if we sacrifice him to sundry gods and devils, good luck
will follow us in all our doings."
He said a word to the son, who took a broad-bladed spear and began
turning the earth until he had dug a little grave. Into this, alive, the
child was laid, his little feet kicking feebly against the loose mould.
"Oh, gods and devils," invoked the old man, "we shed no blood, that this
child may come to you unblemished."
The son stirred a heap of loose earth with his foot, so that it fell
over the baby's legs; then into the light of the fire stepped Sanders,
and the chief's son fell back.
Sanders was smoking a thin cigar, and he smoked for fully a minute
without saying a word, and a minute was a very long time. Then he
stepped to the grave, stooped, and lifted the baby up awkwardly, for he
was more used to handling men than babes, gave it a little shake to
clear it of earth, and handed it to a woman.
"Take the child to its mother," he said, "and tell her to send it to me
alive in the morning, otherwise she had best find a new husband."
Then he turned to the old chief and his son.
"Old man," he said, "how many years have you to live?"
"Master," said the old man, "that is for you to say."
Sanders scratched his chin reflectively, and the old man watched him
with fear in his eyes.
"You will go to Bosambo, chief of the Ochori, telling him I have sent
you, and you shall till his garden, and carry his water until you die,"
said Sanders.
"I am so old that that will be soon," said the old man.
"If you were younger it would be sooner," said Sanders. "As for your
son, we will wait until the morning."
The Houssas in the background marched the younger man to the camp
Sanders had formed down river--the boat that had passed had been
intended to deceive a chief under suspicion--and in the morning, when
the news came that the child was dead--whether from shock, or injury, or
exposure, Sanders did not trouble to inquire--the son of the chief was
hanged.
I tell these stories of Sanders of the River, that you may grasp the
type of man he was and learn something of the work he had to do. If he
was quick to punish, he acted in accordance with the spirit of the
people he governed, for they had no memory; and yesterday, with its
faults, its errors and its teachings, was a very long time ago, and a
man resents an unjust punishment for a crime he has forgotten.
It is possible to make a bad mistake, but Sanders never made one, though
he was near to doing so once.
Sanders was explaining his point of view in regard to natives to
Professor Sir George Carsley, when that eminent scientist arrived
unexpectedly at headquarters, having been sent out by the British
Government to study tropical disease at first hand.
Sir George was a man of some age, with a face of exceptional pallor and
a beard that was snowy white.
"There was a newspaper man who said I treated my people like dogs," said
Sanders slowly, for he was speaking in English, a language that was
seldom called for. "I believe I do. That is to say, I treat them as if
they were real good dogs, not to be petted one minute and kicked the
next; not to be encouraged to lie on the drawing-room mat one day, and
the next cuffed away from the dining-room hearthrug."
Sir George made no answer. He was a silent man, who had had some
experience on the coast, and had lived for years in the solitude of a
Central African province, studying the habits of the malarial mosquito.
Sanders was never a great conversationalist, and the three days the
professor spent at headquarters were deadly dull ones for the
Commissioner.
On one subject alone did the professor grow talkative.
"I want to study the witch-doctor," he said. "I think there is no
appointment in the world that would give me a greater sense of power
than my appointment by a native people to that post."
Sanders thought the scientist was joking, but the other returned to the
subject again and again, gravely, earnestly, and persistently, and for
his entertainment Sanders recited all the stories he had ever heard of
witch-doctors and their tribe.
"But you don't expect to learn anything from these people?" said
Sanders, half in joke.
"On the contrary," said the professor, seriously; "I anticipate making
valuable scientific discoveries through my intercourse with them."
"Then you're a silly old ass," said Sanders; but he said it to himself.
The pale professor left him at the end of the fourth day, and beyond an
official notification that he had established himself on the border, no
further news came of the scientist for six months, until one evening
came the news that the pale-faced old man had been drowned by the
upsetting of a canoe. He had gone out on a solitary excursion, taking
with him some scientific apparatus, and nothing more was heard of him
until his birch-bark canoe was discovered, bottom up, floating on the
river.
No trace of Sir George was found, and in the course of time Sanders
collected the dead man's belongings and forwarded them to England.
There were two remarkable facts about this tragedy, the first being that
Sanders found no evidence either in papers or diaries, of the results of
any scientific research work performed by the professor other than a
small note-book. The second was, that in his little book the scientist
had carefully recorded the stories Sanders had told him of witch
doctors.
(Sanders recognised at least one story which he had himself invented on
the spur of the moment for the professor's entertainment.)
Six more or less peaceful months passed, and then began the series of
events which make up the story of the Devil Man.
It began on the Little River.
There was a woman of the Isisi people who hated her husband, though he
was very good to her, building her a hut and placing an older wife to
wait upon her. He gave her many presents, including a great neck-ring of
brass, weighing pounds, that made her the most envied woman on the Isisi
River. But her hatred for her husband was unquenched; and one morning
she came out from her hut, looking dazed and frightened, and began in a
quavering voice to sing the Song of the Dead, mechanically pouring
little handfuls of dust on her head, and the villagers went in, to find
the man stark and staring, with a twisted grin on his dead face and the
pains of hell in his eyes.
In the course of two days they burned the husband in the Middle River;
and as the canoe bearing the body swept out of sight round a bend of the
river, the woman stepped into the water and laved the dust from her
grimy body and stripped the green leaves of mourning from her waist.
Then she walked back to the village with a light step, for the man she
hated best was dead and there was an end to it.
Four days later came Sanders, a grim little man, with a thin, brown face
and hair inclined to redness.
"M'Fasa," he said, standing at the door of her hut and looking down at
her, as with a dogged simulation of indifference she pounded her grain,
"they tell me your man has died."
"Lord, that is true," she said. "He died of a sudden sickness."
"Too sudden for my liking," said Sanders, and disappeared into the dark
interior of the hut. By and by Sanders came back into the light and
looked down on her. In his hand was a tiny glass phial, such as
Europeans know very well, but which was a remarkable find in a heathen
village.
"I have a fetish," he said, "and my fetish has told me that you poisoned
your husband, M'Fasa."
"Your fetish lies," she said, not looking up.
"I will not argue that matter," said Sanders wisely, for he had no
proofs beyond his suspicions; and straightway he summoned to him the
chief man of the village.
There was a little wait, the woman pounding her corn slowly, with
downcast eyes, pausing now and then to wipe the sweat from her forehead
with the back of her hand, and Sanders, his helmet on the back of his
head, a half-smoked cheroot in his mouth, hands thrust deep into his
duck-pockets and an annoyed frown on his face, looking at her.
By and by came the chief tardily, having been delayed by the search for
a soldier's scarlet coat, such as he wore on great occasions.
"Master, you sent for me," he said.
Sanders shifted his gaze.
"On second thoughts," he said, "I do not need you."
The chief went away with a whole thanksgiving service in his heart, for
there had been certain secret doings on the river for which he expected
reprimand.
"M'Fasa, you will go to my boat," said Sanders, and the woman, putting
down her mortar, rose and went obediently to the steamer. Sanders
followed slowly, having a great many matters to consider. If he
denounced this woman to the elders of the village, she would be stoned
to death; if he carried her to headquarters and tried her, there was no
evidence on which a conviction might be secured. There was no place to
which he could deport her, yet to leave her would be to open the way for
further mischief.
She awaited him on the deck of the _Zaire_, a straight, shapely girl of
eighteen, fearless, defiant.
"M'Fasa," said Sanders, "why did you kill your husband?"
"Lord, I did not kill him; he died of the sickness," she said, as
doggedly as before.
Sanders paced the narrow deck, his head on his breast, for this was a
profound problem. Then he looked up.
"You may go," he said; and the woman, a little puzzled, walked along the
plank that connected the boat with the shore, and disappeared into the
bush.
Three weeks later his spies brought word that men were dying
unaccountably on the Upper River. None knew why they died, for a man
would sit down strong and full of cheer to his evening meal, and lo! in
the morning, when his people went to wake him, he would be beyond
waking, being most unpleasantly dead.
This happened in many villages on the Little River.
"It's getting monotonous," said Sanders to the captain of the Houssas.
"There is some wholesale poisoning going on, and I am going up to find
the gentleman who dispenses the dope."
It so happened that the first case claiming investigation was at Isisi
City. It was a woman who had died, and this time Sanders suspected the
husband, a notorious evil-doer.
"Okali," he said, coming to the point, "why did you poison your wife?"
"Lord," said the man, "she died of the sickness. In the evening she was
well, but at the dark hour before sun came she turned in her sleep
saying 'Ah! oh!' and straightway she died."
Sanders drew a long breath.
"Get a rope," he said to one of his men, and when the rope arrived
Abiboo scrambled up to the lower branch of a copal-gum and
scientifically lashed a block and tackle.
"Okali," said Sanders, "I am going to hang you for the murder of your
wife, for I am a busy man and have no time to make inquiries; and if you
are not guilty of her murder, yet there are many other abominable deeds
you have been guilty of, therefore I am justified in hanging you."
The man was grey with terror when they slipped the noose over his neck
and strapped his hands behind him.
"Lord, she was a bad wife to me and had many lovers," he stammered. "I
did not mean to kill her, but the Devil Man said that such medicine
would make her forget her lovers----"
"Devil Man! What Devil Man?" asked Sanders quickly.
"Lord, there is a devil greatly respected in these parts, who wanders in
the forest all the time and gives many curious medicines."
"Where is he to be found?"
"Lord, none know. He comes and goes, like a grey ghost, and he has a
fetish more powerful than a thousand ordinary devils. Master, I gave the
woman, my wife, that which he gave to me, and she died. How might I know
that she would die?"
"_Cheg'li_," said Sanders shortly to the men at the rope-end, and
_cheg'li_ in the dialect of the River means "pull."
* * * * *
"Stop!"
Sanders was in a changeable mood, and a little irritable by reason of
the fact that he knew himself to be fickle.
"How came this drug to you? In powder, in liquid, or----"
The man's lips were dry. He could do no more than shake his head
helplessly.
"Release him," said Sanders; and Abiboo loosened the noose and
unstrapped the man's hands.
"If you have lied to me," said Sanders, "you die at sunset. First let me
hear more of this Devil Man, for I am anxious to make his acquaintance."
He gave the man ten minutes to recover from the effects of his fear,
then sent for him.
"Lord," said he, "I know nothing of the Devil Man save that he is the
greatest witch-doctor in the world, and on nights when the moon is up
and certain stars are in their places he comes like a ghost, and we are
all afraid. Then those of us who need him go forth into the forest, and
he gives to us according to our desires."
"How carried he the drug?"
"Lord, it was in a crystal rod, such as white men carry their medicines
in. I will bring it to you."
He went back to his hut and returned a few minutes later with a phial,
the fellow to that which was already in Sanders' possession. The
Commissioner took it and smelt at the opening. There was the faintest
odour of almonds, and Sanders whistled, for he recognised the
after-scent of cyanide of potassium, which is not such a drug as
untutored witch-doctors know, much less employ.
* * * * *
"I can only suggest," wrote Sanders to headquarters, "that by some
mischance the medicine chest of the late Sir George Carsley has come
into the possession of a native 'doctor.' You will remember that the
chest was with the professor when he was drowned. It has possibly been
washed up and discovered.... In the meantime, I am making diligent
inquiries as to the identity of the Devil Man, who seems to have leapt
into fame so suddenly."
There were sleepless nights ahead for Sanders, nights of swift marchings
and doublings, of quick runs up the river, of unexpected arrivals in
villages, of lonely vigils in the forest and by strange pools. But he
had no word of the Devil Man, though he learnt many things of interest.
Most potent of his magical possessions was a box, "so small," said one
who had seen it, and indicated a six-inch square. In this box dwelt a
small and malicious god who pinched and scratched (yet without leaving a
mark), who could stick needles into the human body and never draw blood.
"I give it up," said Sanders in despair, and went back to his base to
think matters out.
He was sitting at dinner one night, when far away on the river the drum
beat. It was not the regular _lo-koli_ roll, but a series of staccato
tappings, and, stepping softly to the door, the Commissioner listened.
He had borrowed the Houssa signalling staff from headquarters, and
stationed them at intervals along the river. On a still night the
tapping of a drum carries far, but the rattle of iron-wood sticks on a
hollowed tree-trunk carries farthest of all.
"Clok-clok, clockitty-clock."
It sounded like the far-away croaking of a bull-frog; but Sanders
picked out the letters:
"Devil Man sacrifices to-morrow night in the Forest of Dreams."
As he jotted down the message on the white sleeve of his jacket, Abiboo
came running up the path.
"I have heard," said Sanders briefly. "There is steam in the _pucapuc_?"
"We are ready, master," said the man.
Sanders waited only to take a hanging revolver from the wall and throw
his overcoat over his arm, for his travelling kit was already deposited
on the _Zaire_, and had been for three days.
In the darkness the sharp nose of his little boat swung out to the
stream, and ten minutes after the message came the boat was threshing a
way against the swift river.
All night long the steamer went on, tacking from bank to bank to avoid
the shoals.
Dawn found her at a wooding, where her men, working at fever speed,
piled logs on her deck until she had the appearance of a timber-boat.
Then off again, stopping only to secure news of the coming sacrifice
from the spies who were scattered up and down the river.
Sanders reached the edge of the Dream Forest at midnight and tied up. He
had ten Houssa policemen with him, and at the head of these he stepped
ashore into the blackness of the forest. One of the soldiers went ahead
to find the path and keep it, and in single file the little force began
its two-hour march. Once they came upon two leopards fighting; once they
stumbled over a buffalo sleeping in their path. Twice they disturbed
strange beasts that slunk into the shadows as they passed, and came
snuffling after them, till Sanders flashed a white beam from his
electric lamp in their direction. Eventually they came stealthily to the
place of sacrifice.
There were at least six hundred people squatting in a semi-circle before
a rough altar built of logs. Two huge fires blazed and crackled on
either side of the altar; but Sanders' eyes were for the Devil Man, who
leant over the body of a young girl, apparently asleep, stretched upon
the logs.
Once the Devil Man had worn the garb of civilisation; now he was clothed
in rags. He stood in his grimy shirt-sleeves, his white beard wild and
uncombed, his pale face tense, and a curious light in his eyes. In his
hand was a bright scalpel, and he was speaking--and, curiously enough,
in English.
"This, gentlemen," said he, leaning easily against the rude altar, and
speaking with the assurance of one who had delivered many such lectures,
"is a bad case of trynosomiasis. You will observe the discoloration of
skin, the opalescent pupils, and now that I have placed the patient
under anaesthetics you will remark the misplacement of the cervical
glands, which is an invariable symptom."
He paused and looked benignly around.
"I may say that I have lived for a great time amongst native people. I
occupied the honourable position of witch-doctor in Central Africa----"
He stopped and passed his hand across his brow, striving to recall
something; then he picked up the thread of his discourse.
All the time he spoke the half-naked assembly sat silent and
awe-stricken, comprehending nothing save that the witch-doctor with the
white face, who had come from nowhere and had done many wonderful
things--his magic box proved to be a galvanic battery--was about to
perform strange rites.
"Gentlemen," the old man went on, tapping the breast of his victim with
the handle of his scalpel, "I shall make an incision----"
Sanders came from his place of concealment, and walked steadily towards
the extemporised operating-table.
"Professor," he said gently, and the madman looked at him with a puzzled
frown.
"You are interrupting the clinic," he said testily; "I am
demonstrating----"
"I know, sir."
Sanders took his arm, and Sir George Carsley, a great scientist,
consulting surgeon to St. Mark's Hospital, London, and the author of
many books on tropical diseases, went with him like a child.
* * * * *