THE SEER.
There are many things that happen in the very heart of Africa that no
man can explain; that is why those who know Africa best hesitate to
write stories about it.
Because a story about Africa must be a mystery story, and your reader of
fiction requires that his mystery shall be, in the end, X-rayed so that
the bones of it are visible.
You can no more explain many happenings which are the merest
commonplaces in latitude 2 N., longitude (say) 46 W., than you can
explain the miracle of faith, or the wonder of telepathy, as this story
goes to show.
In the dead of a night Mr. Commissioner Sanders woke.
His little steamer was tied up by a wooding--a wooding he had prepared
for himself years before by lopping down trees and leaving them to rot.
He was one day's steam either up or down the river from the nearest
village, but he was only six hours' march from the Amatombo folk, who
live in the very heart of the forest, and employ arrows poisoned by
tetanus.
Sanders sat up in bed and listened.
A night bird chirped monotonously; he heard the "clug-clug" of water
under the steamer's bows and the soft rustling of leaves as a gentle
breeze swayed the young boughs of the trees that overhung the boat. Very
intently he listened, then reached down for his mosquito boots and his
socks.
He drew them on, found his flannel coat hanging behind the door of his
tiny cabin, and opened the door softly. Then he waited, standing, his
head bent.
In the darkness he grinned unpleasantly, and, thumbing back the leather
strap that secured the flap of the holster which hung by his bunk he
slipped out the Colt-automatic, and noiselessly pulled back the steel
envelope.
He was a careful man, not easily flurried, and his every movement was
methodical. He was cautious enough to push up the little safety-catch
which prevents premature explosion, tidy enough to polish the black
barrel on the soft sleeve of his coat, and he waited a long time before
he stepped out into the hot darkness of the night.
By and by he heard again the sound which had aroused him. It was the
faint twitter of a weaver bird.
Now weaver birds go to sleep at nights like sensible people, and they
live near villages, liking the society of human beings. Certainly they
do not advertise their presence so brazenly as did this bird, who
twittered and twittered at intervals.
Sanders watched patiently.
Then suddenly, from close at hand, from the very deck on which he stood,
came an answering call.
Sanders had his little cabin on the bridge of the steamer; he walked
farther away from it. In the corner of the bridge he crouched down, his
thumb on the safety-catch.
He felt, rather than saw, a man come from the forest; he knew that there
was one on board the steamer who met him.
Then creeping round the deck-house came two men. He could just discern
the bulk of them as they moved forward till they found the door of the
cabin and crept in. He heard a little noise, and grinned again, though
he knew that their spear-heads were making sad havoc of his bedclothes.
Then there was a little pause, and he saw one come out by himself and
look around.
He turned to speak softly to the man inside.
Sanders rose noiselessly.
The man in the doorway said "Kah!" in a gurgling voice and went down
limply, because Sanders had kicked him scientifically in the stomach,
which is a native's weak spot. The second man ran out, but fell with a
crash over the Commissioner's extended leg, and, falling, received the
full weight of a heavy pistol barrel in the neighbourhood of his right
ear.
"Yoka!" called Sanders sharply, and there was a patter of feet aft, for
your native is a light sleeper, "tie these men up. Get steam, for we
will go away from here; it is not a nice place."
Sanders, as I have tried to explain, was a man who knew the native; he
thought like a native, and there were moments when he acted not unlike a
barbarian.
Clear of the danger, he tied up to a little island in mid-stream just as
the dawn spread greyly, and hustled his two prisoners ashore.
"My men," said he, "you came to kill me in the dark hours."
"Lord, that is true," said one, "I came to kill, and this other man, who
is my brother, told me when to come--yet it might have been another whom
he called, for I am but one of many."
Sanders accepted the fact that a chain of cheerful assassins awaited his
advent without any visible demonstration of annoyance.
"Now you will tell me," he said, "who gave the word for the killing, and
why I must die."
The man he addressed, a tall, straight youth of the Amatombo people,
wiped the sweat from his forehead with his manacled hands.
"Lord, though you chop me," he said, "I will not tell you, for I have a
great ju-ju, and there are certain fetishes which would be displeased."
Sanders tried the other man with no greater success. This other was a
labourer he had taken on at a village four days' journey down stream.
"Lord, if I die for my silence I will say nothing," he said.
"Very good," said Sanders, and nodded his head to Abiboo. "I shall stake
you out," he added, "flat on the ground, your legs and arms
outstretched, and I will light a little fire on your chests, and by and
by you will tell me all I want to know."
Staked out they were, with fluffy little balls of dried creeper on each
breast, and Sanders took a lighted stick from the fire his servants had
built.
The men on the ground watched his every movement. They saw him blow the
red stick to a flame and advance toward them, then one said--
"Lord, I will speak."
"So I thought," said Sanders; "and speak truth, or I will make you
uncomfortable."
If you ask me whether Sanders would have employed his lighted stick, I
answer truthfully that I think it possible; perhaps Sanders knew his men
better than I know Sanders.
The two men, released from their unhappy position, talked frankly, and
Sanders was a busy man taking notes in English of the conversation which
was mainly in Bomongo.
When his interrogation was completed, Sanders gathered up his notes and
had the men taken on board the steamer. Two hours later the _Zaire_ was
moving at its fullest speed in the direction of a village of the
Akasava, which is called in the native tongue Tukalala.
There was a missionary to Tukalala, a devoted young American Methodist,
who had elected to live in the fever belt amongst heathen men that he
might bring their hearts to the knowledge of God.
Sanders had no special regard for missionaries; indeed, he had views on
the brotherhood which did him no particular credit, but he had an
affection for the young man who laboured so cheerfully with such
unpromising material, and now he paced the little bridge of his steamer
impatiently, for it was very necessary that he should reach Tukalala
before certain things happened.
He came round a bend of the little river just as the sun was going down
behind the trees on the western bank, and the white beach before the
mission station showed clearly.
He motioned with two fingers to the man at the wheel, and the little
steamer swung almost broadside to the swift stream and headed for the
bank, and the black water of the river humped up against his port bow as
though it were a sluice gate.
Into the beach he steamed; "pucka-pucka-pucka-puck," sang the stern
wheel noisily.
Where the missionary's house had stood was a chaos of blackened debris,
and out of it rose lazy little wisps of smoke.
He found the missionary dressed in white duck, greatly soiled, lying
face downwards, and he found some difficulty in raising him, because he
was pinned to the ground with a broad-bladed elephant spear which had
been broken off flush with his shoulders.
Sanders turned him on his back, closed the patient's eyes, staring, it
seemed, hungrily at the darkening sky as though at the last questioning
God's wisdom.
The Commissioner took a gaudy bandana handkerchief from his pocket, and
laid it on the dead man's face.
"Abiboo," he said softly to his sergeant, "dig me a great hole by that
copal gum, for this man was a great chief amongst his people, and had
communion with gods."
"He was a Christ man," said Abiboo sagely, who was a devout follower of
the Prophet, "and in the Sura of Mary it is written:
"'The sects have fallen to variance about Jesus, but woe,
because of the assembly of a great day to those who believe
not!'"
Abiboo bore the title of Haj because he had been to Mecca and knew the
Koran better than most Christians know the Bible.
Sanders said nothing. He took a cigar from his pocket and lit it,
casting his eyes around.
No building stood. Where the mission station with its trim garden had
been, was desolation. He saw scraps of cloth in the fading light. These
were other victims, he knew.
In the mellow light of the moon he buried the missionary, saying the
Lord's Prayer over him, and reciting as much of the Burial Service as he
could remember.
Then he went back to the _Zaire_ and set a guard. In the morning Sanders
turned the nose of the _Zaire_ down stream, and at sunset came to the
big river--he had been sailing a tributary--and where the two rivers
meet is the city of the Akasava.
They brought the paramount chief of all the people to him, and there was
a palaver on the little bridge with a lantern placed on the deck and one
limp candle therein to give light to the assembly.
"Chief," said Sanders, "there is a dead white man in your territory, and
I will have the hearts of the men who killed him, or by The Death I will
have your head."
He said this evenly, without passion, yet he swore by _Ewa_, which means
death and is a most tremendous oath. The chief, squatting on the deck,
fidgeting with his hands, shivered.
"Lord," he said, in a cracked voice, "this is a business of which I know
nothing; this thing has happened in my territory, but so far from my
hand that I can neither punish nor reward."
Sanders was silent save for an unsympathetic sniff.
"Also, master," said the chief, "if the truth be told, this palaver is
not of the Akasava alone, for all along the big river men are
rebellious, obeying a new ju-ju more mighty than any other."
"I know little of ju-jus," said Sanders shortly, "only I know that a
white man has died and his spirit walks abroad and will not rest until I
have slain men. Whether it be you or another I do not care--the palaver
is finished."
The chief rose awkwardly, brought up his hand in salute, and went
shuffling down the sloping plank to land.
As for Sanders, he sat thinking, smoking one cigar after another. He sat
long into the night. Once he called his servant to replace the candle in
the lantern and bring him a cushion for his head. He sat there until the
buzzing little village hushed to sleep, until there was no sound but the
whispering of bat wings as they came and went from the middle
island--for bats love islands, especially the big vampire bats.
At two o'clock in the morning he looked at his watch, picked up the
lantern, and walked aft.
He picked a way over sleeping men until he came to that part of the deck
where a Houssa squatted with loaded carbine watching the two prisoners.
He stirred them gently with his foot, and they sat up blinking at his
light.
"You must tell me some more," he said. "How came this bad ju-ju to your
land?"
The man he addressed looked up at him.
"Lord, how comes rain or wind?" he said. "It was a sudden thought
amongst the people. There were certain rites and certain dances, and we
chopped a man; then we all painted our faces with camwood, and the
maidens said 'Kill!'"
Sanders could be very patient.
"I am as your father and your mother," he said. "I carry you in my arms;
when the waters came up and destroyed your gardens I came with manioc
and salt and saved you; when the sickness came I brought white men who
scraped your arms and put magic in your blood; I have made peace, and
your wives are safe from M'Gombi and Isisi folk, yet you are for killing
me."
The other nodded.
"That is true talk, master--but such is the way of ju-jus. They are very
High Things, and do not remember."
Sanders was worried; this matter was out of his reach. "What said the
ju-ju?"
"Lord, it said very clearly, speaking through the mouth of an old man,
M'fabaka of Begeli----"
"M'fabaka of Begeli?" repeated Sanders softly, and noted the name for a
speedy hanging.
"This old man saw a vision, and in this vision, which he saw with great
pain and foaming at the mouth and hot eyeballs, he saw white men slain
by black men and their houses burnt."
"When was this?"
"When the moon was full"--six days ago, thought Sanders--"and he saw a
great king with many legions marching through the land making all white
men fear him."
He went on to give, as only a native memory can recall, the minutest
detail of the king's march; how he slew white men and women and put
their house to flames; how his legions went dancing before him.
"And all this happened at the full of the moon," he finished; "therefore
we, too, went out to slay, and, knowing that your Highness would be
coming as is your custom to give judgment at this season of the year, it
was thought wise to kill you, also the Christ-man."
He told all this in a matter-of-fact tone, and Sanders knew that he
spoke the truth.
Another man would have been more affected by that portion of the
narrative which touched him most nearly, but it was the king ("a great
man, very large about the middle"), and his devastating legions who
occupied the Commissioner's thoughts.
There was truth behind this, he did not doubt that. There was a rising
somewhere that he had not heard of; very quickly he passed in mental
review the kings of the adjoining territories and of his own lands.
Bosambo of Monrovia, that usurper of the Ochori chieftainship, sent him
from time to time news of the outlying peoples. There was no war, north
or south or east.
"I will see this old man M'fabaka of Begeli," he said.
Begeli is a village that lies on an in-running arm of the river, so
narrow that it seems like a little river, so still that it is apparently
a lake. Forests of huge trees slope down on either bank, and the trees
are laced one to the other with great snake-like tendrils, and skirted
at foot with rank undergrowth. The _Zaire_ came cautiously down this
stretch of calm water, two Maxim guns significantly displayed at the
bridge.
A tiny little steamer this _Zaire_. She had the big blue of England
drooping from the flagstaff high above the stern wheel--an ominous sign,
for when Sanders flew the Commissioner's flag it meant trouble for
somebody.
He stood on the deck coatless, signalling with his raised fingers to the
man at the wheel.
"Phew!" An arrow was shivering in the wooden deck-house. He pulled it
out and examined its hammered steel point carefully, then he threw it
overboard.
"Bang!"
A puff of smoke from the veiling foliage--a bullet splintered the back
of his deck-chair.
He reached down and took up a rifle, noticed the drift of the smoke and
took careful aim.
"Bang!"
There was no sign to show where the bullet struck, and the only sound
that came back was the echo and the shrill swish of it as it lashed its
way through the green bushes.
There was no more shooting.
"Puck-apuck-puck-apuck-puck," went the stern wheel slowly, and the bows
of the _Zaire_ clove the calm waters and left a fan of foam behind.
Before the village was in view six war canoes, paddling abreast, came
out to meet the Commissioner. He rang the engines to "Stop," and as the
noise of them died away he could hear in the still air the beating of
drums; through his glasses he saw fantastically-painted bodies, also a
head stuck upon a spear.
There had been a trader named Ogilvie in this part of the world, a mild,
uncleanly man who sold cloth and bought wild rubber.
"Five hundred yards," said Sanders, and Sergeant Abiboo, fiddling with
the grip of the port Maxim, gave the cartridge belt a little pull, swung
the muzzle forward, and looked earnestly along the sights. At the same
time the Houssa corporal, who stood by the tripod of the starboard gun,
sat down on the little saddle seat of it with his thumb on the control.
There came a spurt of smoke from the middle canoe; the bullet fell
short.
"Ogilvie, my man," soliloquised Sanders, "if you are alive--which I am
sure you are not--you will explain to me the presence of these
Schneiders."
Nearer came the canoes, the paddle plunging rhythmically, a low, fierce
drone of song accompanying the movement.
"Four hundred yards," said Sanders, and the men at the Maxims readjusted
the sights.
"The two middle canoes," said Sanders. "Fire!"
A second pause.
"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" laughed the guns sardonically.
Sanders watched the havoc through his glasses.
"The other canoes," he said briefly.
"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
This gunner was a careful man, and fired spasmodically, desiring to see
the effects of his shots.
Sanders saw men fall, saw one canoe sway and overturn, and the black
heads of men in the water; he rang the steamer ahead full speed.
Somebody fired a shot from one of the uninjured canoes. The wind of the
bullet fanned his face, he heard the smack of it as it struck the
woodwork behind.
There came another shot, and the boy at the wheel turned his head with a
little grin to Sanders.
"Lord," he mumbled in Arabic, "this was ordained from the beginning."
Sanders slipped his arm about his shoulder and lowered him gently to the
deck.
"All things are with God," he said softly.
"Blessed be His name," whispered the dying boy.
Sanders caught the wheel as it spun and beckoned another steersman
forward.
The nose of the steamer had turned to the offending canoe. This was an
unhappy circumstance for the men therein, for both guns now covered it,
and they rattled together, and through the blue haze you saw the canoe
emptied.
That was the end of the fight. A warrior in the fifth boat held his
spear horizontally above his head in token of surrender, and ten minutes
later the chief of the rebels was on board.
"Master," he said calmly, as they led him to Sanders' presence, "this is
a bad palaver. How will you deal with me?"
Sanders looked at him steadily.
"I will be merciful with you," he said, "for as soon as we come to the
village I shall hang you."
"So I thought," said the chief without moving a muscle; "and I have
heard it said that you hang men very quickly so that they feel little
pain."
"That is my practice," said Sanders of the River, and the chief nodded
his head approvingly.
"I would rather it were so," he said.
It was to a sorrowful village that he came, for there were many women to
wail their dead.
Sanders landed with his Houssas and held a high palaver under the trees.
"Bring me the old man M'fabaka who sees visions," he said, and they
brought him a man so old that he had nothing but bones to shape him.
They carried him to the place of justice and set him down before the
Commissioner.
"You are an evil man," said Sanders, "and because your tongue has lied
many men have died; to-day I hang your chief upon a tree, and with him
certain others. If you stand before your people and say, 'Such a story,
and such a story was a lie and no other thing,' you may live your days;
but, if you persist in your lying, by my God, and your god, you shall
die!"
It was a long time before the old man spoke, for he was very old and
very frightened, and the fear of death, which is the ghost of some old
men, was on him.
"I spoke the truth," he quavered at last. "I spoke of what I saw and of
what I knew--only that." Sanders waited.
"I saw the great king slay and burn; yesterday I saw him march his
regiments to war, and there was a great shouting, and I saw smoke."
He shook his head helplessly.
"I saw these things. How can I say I saw nothing?"
"What manner of king?" asked Sanders.
Again there was a long interval of silence whilst the old man collected
himself.
"A great king," he said shakily, "as big as a bull about the middle, and
he wore great, white feathers and the skin of a leopard."
"You are mad," said Sanders, and ended the palaver.
* * * * *
Six days later Sanders went back to headquarters, leaving behind him a
chastened people.
Ill-news travels faster than steam can push a boat, and the little
_Zaire_, keeping to mid-stream with the blue flag flying, was an object
of interest to many small villages, the people of which crowded down to
their beaches and stood with folded arms, or with clenched knuckles at
their lips to signify their perturbation, and shouted in monotonous
chorus after the boat.
"Oh, Sandi--father! How many evil ones have you slain to-day? Oh, killer
of devils--oh, hanger of trees!--we are full of virtues and do not
fear."
"Ei-fo, Kalaba? Ei ko Sandi! Eiva fo elegi," etc.
Sanders went with the stream swiftly, for he wished to establish
communication with his chief. Somewhere in the country there was a
revolt--that he knew.
There was truth in all the old man had said before he died--for die he
did of sheer panic and age.
Who was this king in revolt? Not the king of the Isisi, or of the
M'Gombi, nor of the people in the forelands beyond the Ochori.
The _Zaire_ went swinging in to the Government beach, and there was a
captain of Houssas to meet him.
"Land wire working?" said Sanders as he stepped ashore.
The Houssa captain nodded.
"What's the palaver?" he asked.
"War of a kind," said Sanders; "some king or other is on the rampage."
And he told the story briefly.
The Houssa officer whistled.
"By Lord High Keeper of the Privy Purse!" he swore mildly, "that's
funny!"
"You've a poisonous sense of humour!" Sanders snapped.
"Hold hard," said the Houssa, and caught his arm. "Don't you know that
Lo Benguela is in rebellion? The description fits him."
Sanders stopped.
"Of course," he said, and breathed a sigh of relief.
"But," said the perplexed Houssa officer, "Matabeleland is three
thousand miles away. Rebellion started a week ago. How did these beggars
know?"
For answer Sanders beckoned a naked man of the Akasava people who was of
his boat's crew, being a good chopper of wood.
"I'fasi," he said, "tell me, what do they do in your country to-day?"
The man grinned sheepishly, and stood on one leg in his embarrassment,
for it was an honour to common men that Sanders should address them by
name.
"Lord, they go to hunt elephant," he said.
"How many?" said Sanders.
"Two villages," said the man, "for one village has sickness and cannot
go."
"How do you know this?" said Sanders. "Is not your country four days by
river and three days by land?"
The man looked uncomfortable.
"It is as you say, master--yet I know," he said.
Sanders turned to the Houssa with a smile.
"There is quite a lot to be learnt in this country," he said.
* * * * *
A month later Sanders received a cutting from the _Cape Times_. The part
which interested him ran:
" . . . the rumour generally credited by the Matabele rebels that their
adherents in the north had suffered a repulse lacks confirmation. The
Commissioner of Barotseland denies the native story of a rebellious
tribe, and states that as far as he knows the whole of his people have
remained quiet. Other northern Commissioners state the same. There has
been no sympathetic rising, though the natives are emphatic that in a
'far-away land,' which they cannot define, such a rebellion has
occurred. The idea is, of course, absurd." Sanders smiled again.
CHAPTER THE LAST.
DOGS OF WAR.
Chiefest of the restrictions placed upon the black man by his white
protector is that which prevents him, when his angry passions rise, from
taking his enemy by the throat and carving him with a broad, curved
blade of native make. Naturally, even the best behaved of the tribes
chafe under this prohibition the British have made.
You may be sure that the Akasava memory is very short, and the
punishment which attended their last misdoing is speedily forgotten in
the opportunity and the temptation which must inevitably come as the
years progress. Thus, the Akasava, learning of certain misdoings on the
part of the Ochori, found themselves in the novel possession of a
genuine grievance, and prepared for war, first sending a message to
"Sandi," setting forth at some length the nature of the insult the
Ochori had offered them. Fortunately, Sanders was in the district, and
came on the spot very quickly, holding palaver, and soothing an outraged
nation as best he could. Sanders was a tactful man, and tact does not
necessarily imply soft-handedness. For there was a truculent soul who
sat in the council and interpolated brusque questions.
Growing bolder as the Commissioner answered suavely, he went, as a child
or native will, across the border line which divides a good manner from
a bad. Sanders turned on him.
"What base-born slave dog are you?" he asked; and whilst the man was
carefully considering his answer, Sanders kicked him down the slope of
the hill on which the palaver house stood, and harmony was once more
restored.
Very soon on the heels of this palaver came a bitter complaint from the
Isisi. It concerned fishing nets that had been ruthlessly destroyed by
the Lulungo folk, and this was a more difficult matter for Sanders to
settle. For one thing, all self-respecting people hate the Lulungo, a
dour, wicked, mischievous people, without shame or salt. But the Isisi
were pacified, and a messy war was averted. There were other and minor
alarums--all these were in the days' work--but Sanders worried about the
Lulungo, because of their general badness, and because of all his
people, Isisi, Ikeli, Akasava, and Ochori, who hated the Lulungo folk
with a deep-rooted hatred. In his own heart, Sanders knew that war could
only be postponed, and so advised London, receiving in reply, from an
agitated Under-Secretary in Whitehall, the urgent request that the
postponement should cover and extend beyond the conclusion of "the
present financial year--for heaven's sake!"
They had a proverb up in the Lulungo district--three days' march beyond
the Akasava--and it is to this effect: "When a man hath a secret enemy
and cannot find him, pull down his own hut and search among the dbris."
This is a cumbersome translation. There is another proverb which says,
"Because of the enemy who lives in the shadow of your hut"; also another
which says, "If you cannot find your enemy, kill your dearest friend."
The tendency of all these proverbs is to show that the Lulungo people
took a gloomy view of life, and were naturally suspicious.
Sanders had a cook of the Lulungo tribe, down at M'piti--which model
city served as Mr. Commissioner's headquarters. He was a wanderer, and
by way of being a cosmopolitan, having travelled as far north as Dacca,
and as far south as Banana--and presumably up the Congo to Matadi. When
he came to M'piti, applying for work, he was asked his name and replied
in the "English" of the Coast:
"Master, dey one call me Sixpence all'time. I make 'um cook fine; you
look 'um for better cook, you no find 'um--savvy."
"And what," said Sanders, in the Lulungo dialect, "what mongrel talk do
you call this?"
"Master, it is English," said the abashed native.
"It is monkey talk," said Sanders, cruelly; "the talk of krooboys and
half-bred sailors who have no language. What are you called by your
people?"
"Lataki, master," said the cook.
"So shall you be called," said Sanders. "Further, you shall speak no
language but your own, and your pay will be ten shillings a month."
Lataki made a good cook, and was a model citizen for exactly three
months, at the end of which time Sanders, returning unexpectedly from a
hunting trip, found Lataki asleep in his master's bed--Lataki being very
drunk, and two empty gin bottles by the bedside testifying mutely to his
discredit. Sanders called his police, and Lataki was thrown into the
lock-up to sober down, which he did in twenty-four hours.
"I would have you understand," said Sanders to the culprit the next day,
"that I cannot allow my servants to get drunk; more especially I cannot
allow my drunken servants to sleep off their potations on my bed."
"Lord, I am ashamed," said Lataki cheerfully; "such things happen to a
man who has seen much of the world."
"You may say the same about the whipping you are about to receive," said
Sanders, and gave an order to the sergeant of police.
Lataki was no stoic and when, tied to a tree, ten strokes were laid upon
his stout back by a bored Houssa, he cried out very loudly against
Sanders, and against that civilisation of which Sanders was the chosen
instrument.
After it was all over, and he had discovered that he was still alive,
albeit sore, he confessed he had received little more than he deserved,
and promised tearfully that the lesson should not be without result.
Sanders, who had nothing more to say in the matter, dismissed him to his
duties.
It was a week after this that the Commissioner was dining in solitude on
palm-oil chop--which is a delicious kind of coast curry--and chicken. He
had begun his meal when he stopped suddenly, went to his office, and
brought in a microscope. Then he took a little of the "chop"--just as
much as might go on the end of a pin--smeared it on a specimen glass,
and focussed the instrument. What he saw interested him. He put away the
microscope and sent for Lataki; and Lataki, in spotless white, came.
"Lataki," said Sanders carelessly, "knowing the ways of white men, tell
me how a master might do his servant honour?"
The cook in the doorway hesitated.
"There are many ways," he said, after a pause. "He might----"
He stopped, not quite sure of his ground.
"Because you are a good servant, though possessed of faults," said
Sanders, "I wish to honour you; therefore I have chosen this way; you,
who have slept in my bed unbidden, shall sit at my table with me at my
command."
The man hesitated, a little bewildered, then he shuffled forward and sat
clumsily in the chair opposite his master.
"I will wait upon you," said Sanders, "according to the custom of your
own people."
He heaped two large spoonfuls of palm-oil chop upon the plate before the
man.
"Eat," he said.
But the man made no movement, sitting with his eyes upon the tablecloth.
"Eat," said Sanders again, but still Lataki sat motionless.
Then Sanders rose, and went to the open doorway of his bungalow and blew
a whistle.
There was a patter of feet, and Sergeant Abiboo came with four Houssas.
"Take this man," said Sanders, "and put him in irons. To-morrow I will
send him down country for judgment."
He walked back to the table, when the men had gone with their prisoner,
carefully removed the poisoned dish, and made a meal of eggs and
bananas, into neither of which is it possible to introduce ground glass
without running the risk of instant detection.
Ground glass--glass powdered so fine that it is like precipitated chalk
to the touch--is a bad poison, because when it comes in contact with
delicate membranes right down inside a man, it lacerates them and he
dies, as the bad men of the coast know, and have known for hundreds of
years. In the course of time Lataki came before a judge who sat in a big
thatched barn of a courthouse, and Lataki brought three cousins, a
brother, and a disinterested friend, to swear that Sanders had put the
glass in his own "chop" with malice aforethought. In spite of the
unanimity of the evidence--the witnesses had no less than four
rehearsals in a little hut the night before the trial--the prisoner was
sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude.
Here the matter would have ended, but for the Lulungo people, who live
far away in the north, and who chose to regard the imprisonment of their
man as a _casus belli_.
They were a suspicious people, a sullen, loveless, cruel people, and
they were geographically favoured, for they lived on the edge of a
territory which is indisputably French, and, moreover, unreachable.
Sanders sent flying messages to all the white people who lived within
striking distance of the Lulungo. There were six in all, made up of two
missions, Jesuit and Baptist. They were most unsatisfactory people, as
the following letters show:
The first from the Protestant:
"Losebi Mission.
"Dear Mr. Commissioner,--My wife and I are very grateful to you
for your warning, but God has called us to this place, and here
we must stay, going about our Master's business, until He, in
His wisdom, ordains that we shall leave the scene of our
labours."
Father Holling wrote:
"Ebendo River.
"Dear Sanders,--I think you are wrong about the Lulungo people,
several of whom I have seen recently. They are mighty civil,
which is the only bad sign I have detected. I shall stay because
I think I can fight off any attack they make. I have four
Martini-Metford rifles, and three thousand rounds of ammunition,
and this house, as you know, is built of stone. I hope you are
wrong, but----"
Sanders took his steamboat, his Maxim gun, and his Houssa police, and
went up the river, as far as the little stern-wheeler would carry him.
At the end of every day's journey he would come to a place where the
forest had been cleared, and where, stacked on the beach, was an orderly
pile of wood. Somewhere in the forest was a village whose contribution
to the State this ever-replenished wood-pile was. Night and day two
sounding men with long rods, sitting at the steamer's bow, "stubbed" the
water monotonously. Shoal, sandbank, channel, shoal. Sometimes, with a
shuddering jar, the boat would slide along the flat surface of a hidden
bank, and go flop into the deep water on the other side; sometimes, in
the night, the boat would jump a bank to find itself in a little "lake"
from which impassable ridges of hidden sand barred all egress. Then the
men would slip over the sides of the vessel and walk the sandy floor of
the river, pushing the steamer into deep water. When sixty miles from
the Baptist Mission, Sanders got news from a friendly native:
"Lord, the Lulungo came at early morning, taking away the missionary,
his wife, and his daughter, to their city."
Sanders, yellow with fever, heavy-eyed from want of sleep, unshaven and
grimy, wiped the perspiration from his head with the back of his hand.
"Take the steamer up the river," he said to Abiboo. "I must sleep."
He was awakened at four o'clock in the afternoon by the smashing of a
water-bottle, which stood on a shelf by his bunk. It smashed for no
apparent reason, and he was sprinkled with bits of glass and gouts of
water.
Then he heard a rifle go "pang!" close at hand, and as he sprang up and
opened the wire-woven door of his cabin, Abiboo came to report.
"There were two men firing from the bank," he said. "One I have shot."
They were nearing the village now, and turning a sharp bend of the river
they came in sight of it, and the little _Zaire's_ siren yelled and
squealed defiantly.
Sanders saw a crowd of men come down to the beach, saw the glitter of
spears, and through his glasses the paint on the bodies of the men. Then
six canoes came racing out to meet the steamer.
A corporal of Houssas sat down nonchalantly on a little saddle-seat
behind the brass Maxim, and gripped its handles.
"Five hundred yards," said Sanders, and the corporal adjusted the sight
without perceptible hurry.
The canoes came on at a hurricane speed, for the current was with them.
The man behind the gun polished a dull place on the brass water-jacket
with the blue sleeves of his coat, and looked up.
Sanders nodded.
The canoes came nearer, one leading the rest in that race where hate
nerved effort, and death was the prize.
Suddenly--
"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" laughed the little gun sardonically, and the
leading canoe swung round broadside to the stream, because the men who
steered it were dead, and half of the oarsmen also.
"Ha-ha-ha-h-a-a!"
There was a wild scramble on the second canoe; it swayed, capsized, and
the river was full of black heads, and the air resounded with shrill
cries.
As for the remainder of the flotilla it swung round and made for safety;
the machine-gun corporal slipped in another belt of cartridges, and made
good practice up to nine hundred yards, from which two canoes,
frantically paddled, were comparatively safe.
Sanders put his tiny telegraph over to full speed ahead and followed.
On the shore the Lulungo made a stand, and missiles of many kinds struck
the little steamer. But the Maxim sprayed the village noisily, and soon
there came a nervous man waving a palm leaf, and Sanders ceased firing,
and shouted through his megaphone that the messenger must swim aboard.
"Lord, we feel great shame," said the man. He stood in a wet place on
the deck, and little rills of water dripped from him. "We did not know
we fought Sandi the lion, Sandi the buffalo, before the stamp of whose
mighty feet----"
Sanders cut him short.
"There is a white man, a white woman, and a young girl in your city," he
said. "Bring them to the ship, and then I will sit in the palaver-house,
and talk this matter over."
The man shuffled uneasily.
"Master," he said, "the white man died of the sickness; the woman is ill
also; as for the girl, I know nothing."
Sanders looked at him, his head on one side like an inquisitive bird.
"Bring me the white man, alive or dead," he said softly; "also the white
woman, well or ill, and the girl."
In an hour they brought the unfortunate missionary, having taken some
time to make him look presentable. The wife of the missionary came in
another canoe, four women holding her, because she was mad.
"Where is the girl?" asked Sanders. He spoke very little above a
whisper.
The messenger made no answer.
"The girl?" said Sanders, and lashed him across the face with his thin
stick.
"Master," muttered the man, with his head on his chest, "the chief has
her."
Sanders took a turn up and down the deck, then he went to his cabin and
came out with two revolvers belted to his hips.
"I will go and see this chief," he said. "Abiboo, do you run the boat's
nose into the soft sand of the bank, covering the street with the Maxim
whilst I go ashore."
He landed without opposition; neither gun banged nor spear flew as he
walked swiftly up the broad street. The girl lay before the chiefs hut
quite dead, very calm, very still. The hand to cut short her young life
had been more merciful than Sanders dared hope. He lifted the child in
his arms, and carried her back to the ship. Once he heard a slight noise
behind him, but three rifles crashed from the ship, and he heard a thud
and a whimper of pain.
He brought the body on board, and laid it reverently on the little
after-deck. Then they told him that the woman had died, and he nodded
his head slowly, saying it was better so.
The _Zaire_ backed out into mid-stream, and Sanders stood watching the
city wistfully. He wanted the chief of the Lulungo badly; he wanted, in
his cold rage, to stake him out in spread-eagle fashion, and kill him
with slow fires. But the chief and his people were in the woods, and
there were the French territories to fly to.
In the evening he buried the missionary and his family on a little
island, then drove downstream, black rage in his soul, and a sense of
his impotence, for you cannot fight a nation with twenty Houssa
policemen.
He came to a little "wooding" at dusk, and tied up for the night. In the
morning he resumed his journey, and at noon he came, without a moment's
warning, into the thick of a war fleet.
There was no mistaking the character of the hundred canoes that came
slowly up-stream four abreast, paddling with machine-like regularity.
That line on the right were Akasava men; you could tell that by the
blunt noses of the dug-outs. On the left were the Ochori; their canoes
were streaked with red cornwood. In the centre, in lighter canoes of
better make, he saw the white-barred faces of the Isisi people.
"In the name of heaven!" said Sanders, with raised eyebrows.
There was consternation enough in the fleet, and its irregular lines
wavered and broke, but the _Zaire_ went steaming into the midst of them.
Then Sanders stopped his engines, and summoned the chiefs on board.
"What shame is this?" said Sanders.
Otako, of the Isisi, king and elder chief, looked uncomfortably to Ebeni
of Akasava, but it was Bosambo, self-appointed ruler of the Ochori, who
spoke.
"Lord," he said, "who shall escape the never-sleeping eye of Sandi? Lo!
we thought you many miles away, but like the owl----"
"Where do you go?" asked Sanders.
"Lord, we will not deceive you," said Bosambo. "These great chiefs are
my brothers, because certain Lulungo have come down upon our villages
and done much harm, stealing and killing. Therefore, because we have
suffered equally, and are one in misfortune, we go up against the
Lulungo people, for we are human, and our hearts are sore."
A grin, a wicked, mirthless grin, parted Sanders' lips.
"And you would burn and slay?" he asked.
"Master, such was the pleasure we had before us."
"Burning the city and slaying the chief, and scattering the people who
hide in the forest?"
"Lord, though they hide in hell we will find them," said Bosambo; "yet,
if you, who are as a father to us all, say 'nay,' we will assemble our
warriors and tell them it is forbidden."
Sanders thought of the three new graves on a little island.
"Go!" he said, pointing up the river.
He stood on the deck of the _Zaire_ and watched the last canoe as it
rounded the bend, and listened to the drone of many voices, growing
fainter and fainter, singing the Song of the Slayer, such as the Isisi
sing before action.
THE END.
=Transcriber's Notes:=
original hyphenation, spelling and grammar have been preserved as in
the original
Page 9, '"Chief, said Sanders' changed to '"Chief," said Sanders'
Page 14, "Cailbraith" changed to "Calbraith"
Page 107, "was simple there" changed to "was simple--there"
Page 110, "peace with him" changed to "peace with him."
Page 140, "his lips impatiently" changed to "his lips impatiently."
Page 145, "before the other?" changed to "before the other;"
Page 163, "for it we cannot" changed to "for if we cannot"
Page 163, "the way we go" changed to "the way we go."
Page 240, "midstream" changed to "mid-stream" [Ed. for consistency]
Page 242, "the Matebele rebels" changed to "the Matabele rebels"