Sanders came in great haste one wet April night when the clouds hung so
low over the river that you might have touched them with a fishing-rod.
It was a night of billowing mists, of drenching cloud bursts, of loud
cracking thunders and the flicker-flacker of lightning so incessant that
only the darkness counted as interval.
Yet, against the swollen stream, drenched to the skin, his wet face set
to the stinging rain and the white rod of his searchlight piercing such
gloom as there was, Sanders came as fast as stern wheel could revolve
for the Akasava land.
He came up to the village of Mi-lanti in the wild grey of a stormy dawn,
and such of the huts as the flooding waters of the heavens had spared
stood isolated sentinels amidst smoking ruins.
He landed tired and immensely angry, and found many dead men and one or
two who thought they were dead. They told him a doleful story of rapine
and murder, of an innocent village set upon by the Ochori and taken in
its defencelessness. "That is a lie," said Sanders promptly, "for you
have stockades, built to the west of the village and your dead are all
painted as men paint themselves who prepare long for war. Also the
Ochori--such as I have seen--are not so painted, which tells me that
they came in haste against a warring people."
The wounded man turned his tired face to Sanders.
"It is my faith," he said, in the conventional terminology of his tribe,
"that you have eyes like a big cat."
Sanders attended to his injuries and left him and his pitiful fellows in
a dry hut. Then he went to look for Bosambo, and found him sitting
patiently ten miles up the river. He sat before a steep hill of rock
and undergrowth. At the top of the hill was the chief of the village of
Mi-lanti, and with him were such of his fighting men as were not at the
moment in a happier world.
"Lord, this is true," said Bosambo, "that this dog attacked my river
villages and put my men to death and my women to service. So I came
down against him, for it is written in the Sura of the Djinn that no man
shall live to laugh at his own evil."
"There will be a palaver," said Sanders briefly, and bade the
crestfallen chief, Ofesi, to come down and stack his spears. Since it
is not in the nature of the native man to speak the truth when his skin
is in peril, it goes without saying that both sides lied fearfully, and
Sanders, sifting the truth, knew which side lied the least.
"Ofesi," he said, at the end of much weariness of listening, "what do
you say that I shall not hang you?"
Ofesi, a short, thick man with a faint beard, looked up and down, left
and right for inspiration. "Lord," he said after a while, "this you
know, that all my life I have been a good man--and it is said that I
have a high destiny, and shall not die by cruelty."
"'Man is eternal whilst he lives,'" quoted Sanders, "'yet man dies
sooner or later.'"
Ofesi stared round at Bosambo, and Bosambo was guilty of an
indiscretion--possibly the greatest indiscretion of his life. In the
presence of his master, and filled with the exultation and virtuous
righteousness which come to the palpably innocent in the face of trial,
he said in English, shaking his head the while reprovingly:
"Oh, you dam' naughty devil!"
Sanders had condemned the man to death in his heart; had mentally chosen
the tree on which the marauding chief should swing when Bosambo spoke.
Sanders had an immense idea as to the sanctity of life in one sense. He
had killed many by rope with seeming indifference, and, indeed, he never
allowed the question of a man's life or death to influence him one way
or the other when an end was in view.
He would watch with unwavering eyes the breath choke out of a swaying
body, yet there must be a certain ritual of decency, of fitness, of
decorum in such matters, or his delicate sense of justice was outraged.
Bosambo's words, grotesque, uncalled for, wholly absurd, saved the life
of Ofesi the chief.
For a moment Sanders's lips twitched irresponsibly, then he turned with
a snarl upon the discomfited chief of the Ochori.
"Back to your land, you monkey man!" he snapped; "this man has offended
against the land--yet he shall live, for he is a fool. I know a greater
one!"
He sent Ofesi back to his village to build up what his folly had
overthrown.
"Remember, Ofesi," he said, "I give you back your life, though you
deserve death: and I do this because it comes to me suddenly that you
are a child as Bosambo is a child. Now, I will come back to you with
the early spring, and if you have deserved well of me you shall be
rewarded with your liberty; and if you have done ill to me, you shall go
to the Village of Irons or to a worse place."
Back at headquarters Sanders told a sympathetic captain of Houssas the
story.
"It was horribly weak of course," he said; "but, somehow, when that ass
Bosambo let rip his infernal English I couldn't hang a sparrow."
"Might have brought this Ofesi person down to the village," said the
captain thoughtfully. "He's got an extraordinary reputation."
Sanders sat on the edge of the table, his hands thrust into his breeches
pockets.
"I thought of that, too, and it affected me. You see, there was just a
fear in my mind that I was being influenced on the wrong side by this
fellow's talk of destiny--that I was being, in fact, a little
malicious."
The Houssa skipper snapped his cigarette case and looked thoughtful.
"I'll get another company down from headquarters," he said.
"You might ask for a machine-gun section also," said Sanders. "I've got
it in my bones that there's going to be trouble."
A week later the upper river saw many strange faces. Isolated fishermen
came from nowhere in particular to pursue their mild calling in strange
waters.
They built their huts in unfrequented patches of forest, and you might
pass up and down a stretch of the beach without knowing that hut was
modestly concealed in the thick bush at the back.
Also they went about their business at night with fishing spear and
light canoe tacking across river and up river, moving without sound in
the shadows of the bank, approaching villages and cities with remarkable
circumspection.
They were strange fishermen indeed, for they fished with pigeons. In
every canoe the birds drowsed in a wicker-work cage, little red labels
about their legs on which even an untutored spy might make a rude but
significant mark with the aid of an indelible pencil.
Sanders took no risks.
He summoned Ahmed Ali, the chief of his secret men.
"Go to the Akasava country, and there you will find Ofesi, a chief of
the village Mi-lanti. Watch him, for he is an evil man. On the day that
he moves against me and my people you shall judge whether I can come in
time with my soldiers. If there is time send for me: but if he moves
swiftly you shall shoot him dead and you shall not be blamed. Go with
God."
"Master," said Ahmed, "Ofesi is already in hell."
If all reports worked out, and they certainly tallied, Ofesi, the
predestined chief, gave no offence. He rebuilt his city, choosing higher
ground and following a long and unexpected hunting trip, which took him
to the edge of the Akasava country, and he projected a visit of love and
harmony to Bosambo.
He even sent swift couriers to Sanders to ask permission for the
ceremonial, though such permission was wholly unnecessary. Sanders
granted the request, delaying the deputation until he had sent his own
messengers to Bosambo.
So on a bright June morning Ofesi set forth on his mission, his two and
twenty canoes painted red, and even the paddles newly burnt to fantastic
and complimentary designs; and he came to the Ochori and was met by
Bosambo, a profound sceptic but outwardly pleasant.
"I see you," said Ofesi, "I see you, lord Bosambo, also your brave and
beautiful people; yet I come in peace and it grieves me that you should
meet me with so many spears."
For in truth the beach bristled a steel welcome and three fighting
regiments of the Ochori, gallantly arrayed, were ranked in hollow
square, the fourth side of which was the river.
"Lord Ofesi," said Bosambo suavely, "this is the white man's way of
doing honour and, as you know, I have much white blood in my veins,
being related to the English Prime Minister."
He surveyed the two-and-twenty canoes with their twenty paddlers to
each, and duly noted that each paddler carried his fighting spears as a
matter of course.
That Ofesi had any sinister design upon the stronghold of the Ochori may
be dismissed as unlikely. He was cast in no heroic mould, and abhorred
unnecessary risk, for destiny requires some assistance.
He had brought his spears for display rather than for employment.
Willy-nilly he must stack them now--an unpleasant operation, reminiscent
of another stacking under the cold eye of Sanders.
So it may be said that the _rapprochement_ between the Ochori and the
Akasava chief began inauspiciously. Bosambo led the way to his
guest-house--new-thatched as is the custom.
There was a great feast in Ofesi's honour, and a dance of girls--every
village contributing its chief dancer for the event. Next day there was
a palaver with sacrifices of fowl and beast, and blood friendships were
sworn fluently. Bosambo and Ofesi embraced before all the people
assembled, and ate salt from the same dish.
"Now I will tell you all my business, my brother," said Ofesi that
night. "To-morrow I go back to my people with your good word, and I
shall speak of you by day and night because of your noble heart."
"I also will have no rest," said Bosambo, "till I have journeyed all
over this land, speaking about my wonderful brother Ofesi."
With a word Ofesi dismissed his counsellors, and Bosambo, accepting the
invitation, sent away his headmen.
"Now I will tell you," said Ofesi.
And what he said, what flood of ego-oratory, what promises, what covert
threats, provided Bosambo with reminiscences for long afterwards.
"Yet," he concluded, "though all things have moved to make me what I am,
yet there is much I have to learn, and from none can I learn so well as
from you, my brother."
"That is very true," said Bosambo, and meant it.
"Now," Ofesi went on to his peroration, "the king of the Akasava is
dying and all men are agreed that I shall be king in his place,
therefore I would learn to the utmost grain all the secrets of kingship.
Therefore, since I cannot sit with you, I ask you, lord Bosambo, to give
a home to Tolinobo, my headman, that he may sit for a year in the shadow
of your wisdom and tell me the many beautiful things you say."
Bosambo looked thoughtfully at Tolinobo, the headman, a shifty fisherman
promoted to that position, and somewhat deficient in sanity, as Bosambo
judged.
"He shall sit with me," said Bosambo at length, "and be as my own son,
sleeping in a hut by mine, and I will treat him as if he were my
brother."
There was a fleeting gleam of satisfaction in Ofesi's eye as he rose to
embrace his blood-friend; but then he did not know how Bosambo treated
his brother.
The Akasava chief and his two and twenty canoes paddled homeward at
daybreak, and Bosambo saw them off.
When they were gone, he turned to his headman.
"Tell me, Solonkinini," he said, "what have we done with this Tolinobo
who stays with us?"
"Lord, we build him a new hut this morning in your lordship's shadow."
Bosambo nodded.
"First," he said, "you shall take him to the secret place near the
Crocodile Pool and stake him out. Presently I will come, and we will
ask him some questions."
"Lord, he will not answer," said the headman. "I myself have spoken with
him."
"He shall answer me," said Bosambo, significantly, "and you shall build
a fire and make very hot your spears, for I think this Tolinobo has
something he will be glad to tell."
Bosambo's prediction was justified by fact.
Ofesi was not half-way home, happy in his success, when a blubbering
Tolinobo, stretched ignominiously on the ground, spoke with a lamentable
lack of reserve on all manner of private matters, being urged thereto by
a red hot spear-head which Bosambo held much too near his face for
comfort.
* * * * *
At about this time came Jim Greel, an American adventurer, and Francis
E. Coulson, a citizen of the world. They came into Sanders's territory
unwillingly, for they were bound, via the French river which skirted the
north of the N'gombi land, for German West Africa. There was in normal
times a bit of a stream which connected the great river with the Frenchi
river. It was, according to a facetious government surveyor, navigable
for balloons and paper boats except once in a decade when a mild spring
in the one thousand-miles distant mountains coincided with heavy rains
in the Isisi watershed. Given the coincidence the tiny dribble of
rush-choked water achieved the dignity of riverhood. It was bad luck
that Jim and Coulson hit an exceptional season.
Keeping to the left bank, and moving only by night--they had reason for
this--the adventurers followed the course of the stream which ordinarily
was not on the map, and they were pardonably and almost literally at
sea.
Two long nights they worked their crazy little steamer through an
unknown territory without realising that it was unknown. They avoided
such villages as they passed, shutting off steam and dowsing all lights
till they drifted beyond sight and hearing.
At last they reached a stage in their enterprise where the maintenance
of secrecy was a matter of some personal danger, and they looked around
in the black night for assistance.
"Looks like a village over there, Jim," said Coulson, and the steersman
nodded.
"There's shoal water here," he said grimly, "and the forehold is up to
water-level."
"Leakin'?"
"Not exactly leakin'," said Jim carefully; "but there's no bottom to the
forepart of this tub."
Coulson swore softly at the African night. The velvet darkness had
fallen on them suddenly, and it was a case of tie-up or go on--Jim
decided to go on.
They had struck a submerged log and ripped away the bottom of the tiny
compartment that was magniloquently called "No. 1 hold"; the bulkhead of
Nos. 1 and 2 was of the thinnest steel and was bulging perceptibly.
Coulson did not know this, but Jim did.
Now he turned the prow of the ancient steamer to the dark shore, and the
revolving paddle-wheels made an expiring effort.
Somewhere on the river bank a voice called to them in the Akasava
tongue; they saw the fires of the village, and black shadows passing
before them; they heard women laughing.
Jim turned his head and gave an order to one of his naked crew, and the
man leapt overboard with a thin rope hawser.
Then the ripped keel of the little boat took the sand and she grounded.
Jim lit his pipe from a lantern that hung in the deck cabin behind him,
wiped his streaming forehead with the back of his hand, and spoke
rapidly in the Akasava tongue to the little crowd who had gathered on
the beach. He spoke mechanically, warning all and sundry for the safety
of their immortal souls not to slip his hawser! warning them that if he
lost so much as a deck rivet he would flay alive the thief, and ended by
commending his admiring audience to M'shimba M'shamba, Bim-bi, O'kili,
and such local devils as he could call to his tongue. "That's let me
out," he said, and waded ashore through the shallow water as one too
much overcome by the big tragedies of life to care very much one way or
another whether he was wet or dry.
He strode up the shelving beach and was led by a straggling group of
villagers to the headman's hut to make inquiries, and came back to the
boat with unpleasant news.
Coulson had brought her nose to the sand, and by a brushwood fire that
the men of the village had lit upon the beach, the damage was plainly to
be seen.
The tiny hull had torn like brown paper, and part of the cause--a stiff
branch of gun-wood--still protruded from the hole.
"We're in Sanders's territory, if it's all the same to you," said Jim
gloomily. "The damnation old Frenchi river is in spruit and we've come
about eighty miles on the wrong track."
Coulson, kneeling by the side of the boat, a short, black briar clutched
between his even white teeth, looked up with a grin.
"'Sande catchee makee hell,'" quoted he. "Do you remember the Chink
shaver who used to run the Angola women up to the old king for Bannister
Fish?"
Jim said nothing. He took a roll of twist from his pocket, bit off a
section, and chewed philosophically.
"There's no slavery outfit in this packet," he said. "I guess even old
man Fish wouldn't fool 'round in this land--may the devil grind him for
bone-meal!"
There was no love lost between the amiable adventurers and Mr. Bannister
Fish. That gentleman himself, sitting in close conference with Ofesi
not fifty miles from whence the _Grasshopper_ lay, would have been
extremely glad to know that her owners were where they were.
"Fish is out in these territories for good," said Jim; "but it'll do us
no good--our not bein' Fish, I mean, if Sandi comes nosing round lookin'
for traders' licences--somehow I don't want anybody to inspect our
cargo."
Coulson nodded as he wielded a heavy hammer on the damaged plate.
"I guess he'll know all right," Jim went on. "You can't keep these old
_lokalis_ quiet--listen to the joyous news bein', so to speak, flashed
forth to the expectant world."
Coulson suspended his operations. Clear and shrill came the rattle of
the _lokali_ tapping its message:
"Tom-te tom, tom-te tom, tommitty tommitty tommitty-tom."
"There she goes," said the loquacious Jim, complacently. "Two white men
of suspicious appearance have arrived in town--Court papers please
copy."
Coulson grinned again. He was working his hammer deftly, and already
the offending branch had disappeared.
"A ha'porth of cement in the morning," he said, "and she's the Royal
yacht."
Jim sniffed.
"It'll take many ha'porths of cement to make her anything but a big
intake pipe," he said. He put his hand on the edge of the boat and
leapt aboard. Abaft the deck-house were two tiny cupboards of cabins,
the length of a man's body and twice his width. Into one of these he
dived, and returned shortly afterwards with a small, worn portmanteau,
patched and soiled. He jumped down over the bows to the beach, first
handing the piece of baggage down to the engineer of the little boat.
It was so heavy that the man nearly dropped it.
"What's the idea?" Coulson mopped the sweat from his forehead with a
pocket-handkerchief, and turned his astonished gaze to the other.
"'Tis the loot," said Jim significantly. "We make a cache of this
to-night lest a worse thing happen.
"Oh, God, this man!" prayed Coulson, appealing heavenward. "With the
eyes of the whole dam' barbarian rabble directed on him, he stalks
through the wilderness with his grip full of gold and his heart full of
innocent guile!"
Jim refilled his pipe leisurely from a big, leather pouch that hung at
his waist before he replied. "Coulson," he said between puffs, "in the
language of that ridiculous vaudeville artiste we saw before we quit
London, you may have brains in your head, but you've got rabbit's blood
in your feet. There's no occasion for getting scared, only I surmise
that one of your fellow-countrymen will be prowling around here long
before the bows of out stately craft take the water like a thing of
life, and since he is the Lord High Everything in this part of the
world, and can turn out a man's pocket without so much as a 'damn ye,' I
am for removing all trace of the Frenchi Creed River diggings."
Coulson had paused in his work, and sat squatting on his heels, his eyes
fixed steadily on his partner's. He was a good-looking young man of
twenty-seven, a few years the junior of the other, whose tanned face was
long and thin, but by no means unpleasant.
"What does it matter?" asked Coulson after a while. "He can only ask
where we got the dust, and we needn't tell him; and if we do we've got
enough here to keep us in comfort all our days."
Jim smiled.
"Suppose he holds this gold?" he asked quietly. "Suppose he just sends
his spies along to discover where the river digging is--and suppose he
finds it is in French territory and that there is a prohibitive export
duty from the French country. Oh! there's a hundred suppositions, and
they're all unpleasant."
Coulson rose stiffly.
"I think we'll take the risk of the boat foundering, Jim," he said.
"Put the grip back."
Jim hesitated, then with a nod he swung the portmanteau aboard and
followed. A few minutes later he was doubled up in the perfectly
inadequate space of No. 1 hold, swabbing out the ooze of the river, and
singing in a high falsetto the love song of a mythical Bedouin.
It was past midnight when the two men, tired, aching, and cheerful,
sought their beds.
"If Sanders turns up," shouted Jim as he arranged his mosquito curtain
(the shouting was necessary, since he was addressing his companion
through a matchboard partition between the two cabins), "you've got to
lie, Coulson."
"I hate lying," grumbled Coulson loudly; "but I suppose we shall have
to?"
"Betcher!" yawned the other, and said his prayers with lightning
rapidity.
Daylight brought dismay to the two voyagers.
The hole in the hull was not alone responsible for the flooded hold.
There was a great gash in her keel--the plate had been ripped away by
some snag or snags unknown. Coulson looked at Jim, and Jim returned the
despairing gaze.
"A canoe for mine," said Jim after a while. "Me for the German river and
so home. That is the way I intended moving, and that is the way I go."
Coulson shook his head.
"Flight!" he said briefly. "You can explain being in Sanders's
territory, but you can't explain the bolt--stick it out!"
All that morning the two men laboured in the hot sun to repair the
damage. Fortunately the cement was enough to stop up the bottom leak,
and there was enough over to make a paste with twigs and sun-dried sand
to stop the other. But there was no blinking the fact that the
protection afforded was of the frailest. The veriest twig embedded in a
sandbank would be sufficient to pierce the flimsy "plating." This much
the two men saw when the repairs were completed at the end of the day.
The hole in the bow could only be effectively dealt with by the removal
of one plate and the substitution of another, "and that," said Jim, "can
hardly happen."
The German river was eighty miles upstream and a flooded stream that ran
five knots an hour at that. Allow a normal speed of nine knots to the
tiny _Grasshopper_, and you have a twenty hours' run at best.
"The river's full of floatin' timber," said Jim wrathfully, eyeing the
swift sweep of the black waters, "an' we stand no better chance of
gettin' anywhere except to the bottom; it's a new plate or nothing."
Thus matters stood with a battered _Grasshopper_ high and dry on the
shelving beach of the Akasava village, and two intrepid but unhappy gold
smugglers discussing ways and means, when complications occurred which
did much to make the life of Mr. Commissioner Sanders unbearable.
* * * * *
There was a woman of the Akasava who bore the name of Ufambi, which
means a "bad woman." She had a lover--indeed, she had many, but the
principal was a hunter named Logi. He was a tall, taciturn man, and his
teeth were sharpened to two points. He was broad-shouldered, his hair
was plastered with clay, and he wore a cloak that was made from the
tails of monkeys. For this reason he was named Logi N'kemi, that is to
say, Logi the Monkey.
He had a hut far in the woods, three days' journey, and in this wood
were several devils; therefore he had few visitors.
Ufambi loved this man exceedingly, and as fervently hated her husband,
who was a creature of Ofesi. Also, he was not superior to the use of
the stick.
One day Ufambi annoyed him and he beat her. She flew at him like a wild
cat and bit him, but he shook her off and beat her the more, till she
ran from the hut to the cool and solitary woods, for she was not afraid
of devils.
Here her lover found her, sitting patiently by the side of the forest
path, her well-moulded arms hugging her knees, her chin sunk, a
watchful, brooding and an injured woman.
They sat together and talked, and the woman told him all there was to be
told, and Logi the Monkey listened in silence.
"Furthermore," she went on, "he has buried beneath the floor of the hut
certain treasures given to him by white men, which you may take."
She said this pleadingly, for he had shown no enthusiasm in the support
of her plan.
"Yet how can I kill your husband," said Logi, carefully, "and if I do
kill him and Sandi comes here, how may I escape his cruel vengeance? I
think it would be better if you gave him death in his chop, for then
none would think evilly of me."
She was not distressed at his patent selfishness. It was understandable
that a man should seek safety for himself, but she had no intention of
carrying out her lover's plan.
She returned to her husband, and found him so far amiable that she
escaped a further beating. Moreover, he was communicative.
"Woman," he said, "to-morrow I go a long journey because of certain
things I have seen, and you go with me. In a secret place, as you know,
I have hidden my new canoe, and when it is dark you shall take as much
fish and my two little dogs and sit in the canoe waiting for me."
"I will do this thing, lord," she said meekly.
He looked at her for a long time.
"Also," he said after a while, "you shall tell no man that I am leaving,
for I do not desire that Sandi shall know, though," he added, "if all
things be true that Ofesi says, he will know nothing."
"I will do this as you tell me, lord," said the woman.
He rose from the floor of the hut where he had been squatting and went
out of the hut.
"Come!" he said graciously, and she followed him to the beach and joined
the crowd of villagers who watched two white men labouring under
difficulties.
By and by she saw her husband detach himself from the group and make his
cautious way to where the white men were.
Now Bikilari--such was the husband's name--was a N'gombi man, and the
N'gombi folk are one of two things, and more often than not, both. They
are either workers in iron or thieves, and Jim, looking up at the man,
felt a little spasm of satisfaction at the sight of the lateral face
marks which betrayed his nationality.
"Ho, man!" said Jim in the vernacular, "what are you that you stand in
my sun?"
"I am a poor man, lord," said Bikilari, "and I am the slave of all white
men: now I can do things which ignorant men cannot, for I can take iron
and bend it by heat, also I can bend it without heat, as my fathers and
my tribe have done since the world began."
Coulson watched the man keenly, for he was no lover of the N'gombi.
"Try him out, Jim," he said, so they gave Bikilari a hammer and some
strips of steel, and all the day he worked strengthening the rotten bow
of the _Grasshopper_.
In the evening, tired and hungry, he went back to his hut for food; but
his wife had watched him too faithfully for his comfort, and the
cooking-pot was cold and empty. Bikilari beat her with his stick, and
for two hours she sobbed and blew upon the embers of the fire
alternately whilst my lord's fish stewed and spluttered over her bent
head.
* * * * *
Jim was a good sleeper but a light one. He woke on the very smell of
danger. Here was something more tangible than scent--a dog-like
scratching at his door. In the faint moonlight he saw a figure
crouching in the narrow alley-way, saw, too, by certain conformations,
that it was a woman, and drew an uncharitable conclusion. Yet, since she
desired secrecy, he was willing to observe her wishes. He slid back the
gauze door and flickered an electric lamp (most precious possession, to
be used with all reserve and economy). She shrank back at this evidence
of magic and breathed an entreaty.
"What do you want?" he asked in a low voice.
"Lord," she answered, her voice muffled, "if you desire your life, do
not stay here."
Jim thrust his face nearer to the woman's.
"Say what you must say very quickly," he said.
"Lord," she began again, "my husband is Bikilari, a worker in iron. He
is the man of Ofesi, and to-night Ofesi sends his killers to do his work
upon all white men and upon all chiefs who thwart him. Also upon you
because you are white and there is treasure in your ship."
"Wait," said Jim, and turned to tap on Coulson's door. There was no
need. Coulson was out of bed at the first sound of whispering and now
stood in the doorway, the moonlight reflected in a cold blue line on the
revolver he held in his hand.
"It may be a fake--but there's no reason why it should be," he said when
the story was told. "We'll chance the hole in the bow."
Jim ran forward and woke the sleeping engineer, and came back with the
first crackle of burning wood in the furnace.
He found the woman waiting.
"What is your name?" he asked.
She stood with her back to the tiny rail, an easy mark for the man who
had followed her and now crouched in the shadow of the hull. He could
reach up and touch her. He slipped out his long N'gombi hunting knife
and felt the point.
"Lord," said the woman, "I am----"
Then she slipped down to the deck.
Coulson fired twice at the fleeing Bikilari, and missed him. Logi, the
lover, leapt at him from the beach but fell before a quick knife-thrust.
Bikilari reached the bushes in safety and plunged into the gloom--and
into the arms of Ahmed Ali, a swift, silent man, who caught the knife
arm in one hand and broke the neck of the murderer with the other--for
Ahmed Ali was a famous wrestler in the Kono country.
The city was aroused, naked feet pattered through the street. Jim and
Coulson, lying flat on the bow of the steamer, held the curious at bay.
Two hours they lay thus whilst the cold boilers generated energy. Then
the paddle wheel threshed desperately astern, and the _Grasshopper_
dragged herself to deep water.
A figure hailed them from the bank in Swaheli.
"Lord," it said, "go you south and meet Sandi--northward is death, for
the Isisi are up and the Akasava villagers are in their canoes--also all
white men in this land are dead, save Sandi."
"Who are you?" megaphoned Jim, and the answer came faintly as the boat
drifted to mid-stream.
"I am Ahmed Ali, the servant of Sandi, whom may God preserve!"
"Come with us!" shouted Jim.
The figure on the bank, clear to be seen in his white jellab, made a
trumpet of his hands.
"I go to kill one Ofesi, according to orders--say this to Sandi."
Then the boat drifted beyond earshot.
"Up stream or down?" demanded Jim at the wheel. "Down we meet Sanders
and up we meet the heathen in his wrath."
"Up," said Coulson, and went aft to count noses.
That night died Iliki, the chief of the Isisi, and I'mini, his brother,
stabbed as they sat at meat, also Bosomo of the Little Isisi, and B'ramo
of the N'gomi, chiefs all; also the wives and sons of B'ramo and Bosomo;
Father O'Leary of the Jesuit Mission at Mosankuli, his lay minister, and
the Rev. George Galley, of the Wesleyan Mission at Bogori, and the Rev.
Septimus Keen and his wife, at the Baptist Mission at Michi.
Bosambo did not die, because he knew; also a certain headman of Ofesi
knew--and died.
Ofesi had planned largely and well. War had come to the territories in
the most terrible form, yet Bosambo did not hesitate, though he was
aware of his inferiority, not only in point of numbers, but in the more
important matter of armament.
For the most dreadful thing had happened, and pigeons flying southward
from a dozen points carried the news to Sanders--for the first time in
history the rebellious people of the Akasava were armed with
rifles--rifles smuggled across the border and placed in the hands of
Ofesi's warriors.
The war-drum of the Ochori sounded. At dawn Bosambo led forty war
canoes down the river, seized the first village that offered resistance
and burnt it. He was for Ofesi's stronghold, and was half-way there when
he met the tiny _Grasshopper_ coming up stream.
At first he mistook it for the _Zaire_ and made little effort to
disclose the pacific intentions of his forty canoes, but a whistling
rifle bullet aimed precisely made him realise the danger of taking
things for granted.
He paddled forward alone, ostentatiously peaceable, and Jim received
him.
"Rifles?" Coulson was incredulous. "O chief, you are mad!"
"Lord," said Bosambo earnestly, "let Sandi say if I be mad--for Sandi is
my bro--is my master and friend," he corrected himself.
Jim knew of Bosambo--the chief enjoyed a reputation along the coast, and
trusted him now.
He turned to his companion.
"If all Bosambo says is true there'll be hell in this country," he said
quietly. "We can't cut and run. Can you use a rifle?" he asked.
Bosambo drew himself up.
"Suh," he said in plain English, "I make 'um shoot plenty at Cape Coast
Cassell--I shoot 'um two bulls' eyes out."
Coulson considered.
"We'll cashee that gold," he said. "It would be absurd to take that
with us. O Bosambo, we have a great treasure, and this we will leave in
your city."
"Lord," said Bosambo quietly, "it shall be as my own treasure."
"That's exactly what I don't want it to be," said Coulson.
The fleet waited whilst Bosambo returned to Ochori city with the
smugglers; there, in Bosambo's hut, and in a cunningly-devised hole
beneath the floor, the portmanteau was hidden and the _Grasshopper_ went
joyfully with the stream to whatever adventures awaited her.
* * * * *
The moonlight lay in streaks of sage and emerald green--such a green as
only the moon, beheld through the mists of the river, can show. Sage
green for shadow, bright emerald on the young spring verdure, looking
from light to dark or from dark to light, as the lazy breezes stirred
the undergrowth. In the gleam of the moonlight there was one bright,
glowing speck of red--it was the end of Mr. Commissioner Sanders's
cigar.
He sat in the ink-black shadow cast by the awning on the foredeck of the
_Zaire_. His feet, encased in long, pliant mosquito boots that reached
to his knees, rested on the rail of the boat, and he was a picture of
contentment and cheerful idleness.
An idle man might be restless. You might expect to hear the creak of
the wicker chair as he changed his position ever so slightly, yet it is
a strange fact that no such sound broke the pleasant stillness of the
night.
He sat in silence, motionless. Only the red tip of the cigar glowed to
fiery brightness and dulled to an ashen red as he drew noiselessly at
his cheroot.
A soft felt hat, pulled down over his eyes, would have concealed the
direction of his gaze, even had the awning been removed. His lightly
clasped hands rested over one knee, and but for the steady glow of the
cigar he might have been asleep.
Yet Sanders of the River was monstrously awake. His eyes were watching
the tousled bushes by the water's edge, roving from point to point,
searching every possible egress.
There was somebody concealed in those bushes--as to that Sanders had no
doubt. But why did they wait--for it was a case of "they"--and why, if
they were hostile, had they not attacked him before?
Sanders had had his warnings. Some of the pigeons came before he had
left headquarters; awkwardly scrawled red labels had set the bugles
ringing through the Houssa quarters. But he had missed the worst of the
messages. Bosambo's all-Arabic exclamation had fallen into the talons
of a watchful hawk--poor winged messenger and all.
Sanders rose swiftly and silently. Behind him was the open door of his
cabin, and he stepped in, walked in the darkness to the telephone above
the head of his bunk and pressed a button.
Abiboo dozing with his head against the buzzer answered instantly.
"Let all men be awakened," said Sanders in a whisper. "Six rifles to
cover the bush between the two dead trees."
"On my head," whispered Abiboo, and settled his tarboosh more firmly
upon that section of his anatomy.
Sanders stood by the door of his cabin, a sporting Lee-Enfield in the
crook of his arm, waiting.
Then from far away he heard a faint cry, a melancholy, shrill
whoo-wooing. It was the cry that set the men of the villages
shuddering, for it was such a cry as ghosts make.
Men in the secret service of Sanders, and the Government also, made it,
and Sanders nodded his head.
Here came a man in haste to tell him things.
A long pause and "Whoo-woo!" drearily, plaintively, and nearer. The man
was whooing then at a jog-trot, and they on the bank were waiting----
"Fire!" cried Sanders sharply.
Six rifles crashed like a thunderclap, there was a staccato flick-flack
as the bullets struck the leaves, and two screams of anguish.
Out of the bush blundered a dark figure, looked about dazed and
uncertain, saw the _Zaire_ and raised his hand.
Bang!
A bullet smacked viciously past Sanders's head.
"Guns!" said Sanders with a gasp, and as the man on the bank rattled
back the lever of his repeater, Sanders shot him.
"Bang! bang!"
This time from the bush, and the Houssas answered it. Forty men fired
independently at the patch of green from whence the flashes had come.
Forty men and more leapt into the water and waded ashore, Sanders at
their head.
The ambush had failed. Sanders found three dead men of the Isisi and
one slightly injured and quite prepared for surrender.
"Maennlichers!" said Sanders, examining the rifles, and he whistled.
"Lord," said the living of the four, "we did what we were told; for it
is an order that no man shall come to you with tidings; also, on a
certain night that we should shoot you."
"Whose order?" demanded Sanders.
"Our lord Ofesi's," said the man. "Also, it is an order from a certain
white lord who dwells with his people on the border of the land."
They were speaking when the whoo-ing messenger came up at a jog-trot,
too weary to be cautioned by the sound of guns.
He was a tired man, dusty, almost naked, and he carried a spear and a
cleft-stick.
Sanders read the letter which was stuck therein. It was in ornamental
Arabic, and was from Ahmed Ali.
He read it carefully; then he spoke.
"What do you know of this?" he asked.
"Lord," said the tired man, flat on the bare ground and breathing
heavily, "there is war in this land such as we have never seen, for
Ofesi has guns and has slain all chiefs by his cunning; also there is a
white man whom he visits secretly in the forest."
Sanders turned back to the _Zaire_, sick at heart. All these years he
had kept his territories free from an expeditionary force, building
slowly towards the civilisation which was every administrator's ideal.
This meant a punitive force, the introduction of a new regime. The
coming of armed white men against these children of his.
Who supplied the arms? He could not think. He had never dreamt of their
importation. His people were too poor, had too little to give.
"Lord," called the resting messenger, as Sanders turned, "there are two
white men in a puc-a-puc who rest by the Akasava city."
Sanders shook his head.
These men--who knew them by name?--were smugglers of gold, who had come
through a swollen river by accident. (His spies were very efficient, be
it noted.)
Whoever it was, the mischief was done.
"Steam," he said briefly to the waiting Abiboo.
"And this man, lord?" asked the Houssa, pointing to the last of the
would-be assassins.
Sanders walked to the man.
"Tell me," he said, "how many were you who waited to kill me?"
"Five, lord," said the man.
"Five?" said Sanders, "but I found only four bodies."
It was at that instant that the fifth man fired from the bank.
* * * * *
The _Grasshopper_, towing forty war canoes of the Ochori, came round a
bend of the great river and fell into an ambuscade.
The Ochori were a brave people, but unused to the demoralising effect of
firearms, however badly and wildly aimed.
Bosambo from the stern of the little steamer yelled directions to his
panic-stricken fleet without effect. They turned and fled, paddling for
their lives the way they had come. Jim essayed a turning movement in
the literal sense, and struck a submerged log. The ill-fated
_Grasshopper_ went down steadily by the bow, and in a last desperate
effort ran for the shore under a hail of bullets. They leapt to land,
four men--Bosambo's fighting headman was the fourth--and, shooting down
immediate opposition, made for the bush.
But they were in the heart of the enemy's land--within shooting distance
of the Akasava city. Long before they had crossed the league of wood,
the _lokali_ had brought reinforcements to oppose them. They were borne
down by sheer weight of numbers at a place called Iffsimori, and that
night came into the presence of the great King Ofesi, the Predestined.
They came, four wounded and battered men bound tightly with cords of
grass, spared for the great king's sport.
"O brother," greeted Ofesi in the face of all his people, "look at me
and tell me what has become of Tobolono, my dear headman?"
Bosambo, his face streaked with dried blood, stared at him insolently.
"He is in hell," he said, "being _majiki_" (predestined).
"Also you will be in hell," said the king, "because men say that you are
Sandi's brother."
Bosambo was taken aback for a moment.
"It is true," he said, "that I am Sandi's brother; for it seems that
this is not the time for a man to deny him. Yet I am Sandi's brother
only because all men are brothers, according to certain white magic I
learnt as a boy."
Ofesi sat before the door of his hut, and it was noticeable that no man
stood or sat nearer to him than twenty paces distant.
Jim, glancing round the mob, which surrounded the palaver, saw that
every other man carried a rifle, and had hitched across his naked
shoulders a canvas cartridge-belt. He noticed, too, now and then, the
king would turn his head and speak, as it were, to the dark interior of
the hut.
Ofesi directed his gaze to the white prisoners.
"O white men," he said, "you see me now, a great lord, greater than any
white man has ever been, for all the little chiefs of this land are
dead, and all people say 'Wah, king,' to Ofesi."
"I dare say," said Coulson in English.
"To-night," the king went on, "we sacrifice you, for you are the last
white men in this land--Sandi being dead."
"Ofesi, you lie!"
It was Bosambo, his face puckered with rage, his voice shrill.
"No man can kill Sandi," he cried, "for Sindi alone of all men is beyond
death, and he will come to you bringing terror and worse than death!"
Ofesi made a gesture of contempt.
He waved his hand to the right and as at a signal the crowd moved back.
Bosambo held himself tense, expecting to see the lifeless form of his
master. But it was something less harrowing he saw--a prosaic stack of
wooden boxes six feet high and eight feet square.
"Ammunition," said Jim under his breath. "The devil had made pretty
good preparation."
"Behold!" said Ofesi, "therein is Sanders' death--listen all people!"
He held up his hand for silence.
Bosambo heard it--that faint rattle of the _lokali_. From some far
distant place it was carrying the news. "Sanders dead!" it rolled
mournfully, "distantly--moonlight--puc-a-puc--middle of river--man on
bank--boat at shore--Sandi dead on ground--many wounds." He pieced
together the tidings. Sandi had been shot from the bank and the boat
had landed him dead. The chief of the Ochori heard the news and wept.
"Now you shall smell death," said Ofesi.
He turned abruptly to the door of the hut and exchanged a dozen quick
words with the man inside. He spoke imperiously, sharply.
Alas! Mr. Bannister Fish, guest of honour on the remarkable occasion,
the Ofesi you deal with now is not the meek Ofesi with whom you drove
your one-sided bargain in the deep of the Akasava forest! Camel-train
and boat have brought ammunition and rifles piecemeal to your enemy's
undoing. Ofesi owes his power to you, but the maker of tyrants was ever
a builder if his own prison-house.
Mr. Fish felt his danger keenly, pulled two long-barrelled automatic
pistols from his pocket and mentally chose his route for the border,
cursing his own stupidity that he had not brought his Arab bodyguard
along the final stages of the journey.
"Ofesi," he muttered, "there shall be no killing until I am gone."
"Fisi," replied the other louder, "you shall see all that I wish you to
see," and he made a signal.
They stripped the white men as naked as they were on the day they were
born, pegged them at equal distance on the ground spread-eagle fashion.
Heads to the white man's feet they laid Bosambo and his headman.
When all was finished Ofesi walked over to them.
"When the sun comes up," he said, "you will all be dead--but there is
half the night to go."
"Nigger!" said Bosambo in English, "yo' mother done be washerwomans!"
It was the most insulting expression in his vocabulary, and he reserved
it for the last.
* * * * *
Sanders saw the glow of the great fire long before he reached the
Akasava, his own _lokali_ sounding forth the news of his premature
decease--Sanders with the red weal of a bullet across his cheek, and a
feeling of unfriendliness toward Ofesi in his heart. All the way up the
river through the night his _lokali_ sent forth the joyless tidings.
Villagers heard it and shivered--but sent it on. A half-naked man
crouching in the bushes near Akasava city heard it and sobbed himself
sick, for Ahmed Ali saw in himself a murderer. He who had sworn by the
prophet to end the life of Ofesi had left the matter until it was too
late.
In a cold rage he crept nearer to the crowd which was gathered about the
king's hut--a neck-craning, tip-toeing crowd of vicious men-children.
The moment of torment had come. At Ofesi's feet crouched two
half-witted Akasava youths giggling at one another in pleasurable
excitement, and whetting the razor-keen edges of their skinning knives
on their palms.
"Listen, now," said Ofesi in exultation. "I am he, the predestined, the
ruler of all men from the black waters to the white mountains. Thus you
see me, all people, your master, and master of white men. The skins of
these men shall be drums to call all other nations to the service of the
Akasava--begin Ginin and M'quasa."
The youths rose and eyed the silent victims critically--and Mr.
Bannister Fish stepped out of the hut into the light of the fire, a
pistol in each hand.
"Chief," said he, "this matter ends here. Release those men or you die
very soon."
Ofesi laughed.
"Too late, lord Fisi," he said, and nodded his head.
One shot rang out from the crowd--a man, skilled in the use of arms, had
waited for the gun-runner's appearance. Bannister Fish, of Highgate
Hill, pitched forward dead.
"Now," said Ofesi.
Ahmed Ali came through the crowd like a cyclone, but quicker far was the
two-pound shell of a Hotchkiss gun. Looking upward into the moonlit
vault of the sky, Jim saw a momentary flash of light, heard the "pang!"
of the gun and the whine of the shell as it curved downward; heard a
roar louder than any, and was struck senseless by the sharp edge of an
exploded cartridge-box.
* * * * *
"Ofesi," said Sanders, "I think this is your end."
"Lord, I think so too," said Ofesi.
Sanders let him hang for two hours before he cut him down.
"Mr. Sanders," said Jim, dressed in a suit of the Commissioner's clothes
which fitted none too well, "we ought to explain----"
"I understand," said Sanders with a smile. "Gold smuggling!"
Jim nodded.
"And where is your gold--at the bottom of the river?"
It was in the American's heart to lie, but he shook his head. "The
chief Bosambo is holding it for me," he confessed.
"H'm!" said Sanders. "Do you know to an ounce how much you have?"
Coulson shook his head.
"Where is Bosambo?" asked Sanders of his orderly.
"Lord, he has gone in haste to his city with twenty paddlers," said
Abiboo.
Sanders looked at Jim queerly.
"You had better go in haste, too," he said dryly. "Bosambo has views of
his own on portable property."
"We wept for you," said the indignant Jim, something of a
sentimentalist.
"You'll be weeping for yourself if you don't hurry," said the practical
Sanders.