Sanders of the river
by Edgar Wallace · English · Gutenberg #35545 · 347,332 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Sanders of the river
Author: Edgar Wallace
Release date: March 11, 2011 [eBook #35545]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SANDERS OF THE RIVER ***
Produced by David T. Jones, Ross Cooling, Al Haines and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at
http://www.pgdpcanada.net
SANDERS OF THE RIVER
BY
EDGAR WALLACE
Author of "Four Just Men," "The Council of Justice," "The Duke in the
Suburbs," etc.
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON AND MELBOURNE
POPULAR NOVELS
BY
EDGAR WALLACE
Published by
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited.
_In Various Editions._
SANDERS OF THE RIVER
BONES
BOSAMBO OF THE RIVER
BONES IN LONDON
THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE
THE COUNCIL OF JUSTICE
THE DUKE IN THE SUBURBS
THE PEOPLE OF THE RIVER
DOWN UNDER DONOVAN
PRIVATE SELBY
THE ADMIRABLE CARFEW
THE MAN WHO BOUGHT LONDON
THE JUST MEN OF CORDOVA
THE SECRET HOUSE
KATE, PLUS TEN
LIEUTENANT BONES
THE ADVENTURES OF HEINE
JACK O' JUDGMENT
THE DAFFODIL MYSTERY
THE NINE BEARS
THE BOOK OF ALL POWER
MR. JUSTICE MAXELL
THE BOOKS OF BART
THE DARK EYES OF LONDON
CHICK
SANDI, THE KING-MAKER
THE THREE OAK MYSTERY
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG
BLUE HAND
GREY TIMOTHY
A DEBT DISCHARGED
THOSE FOLK OF BULBORO
THE MAN WHO WAS NOBODY
THE GREEN RUST
_Made and Printed in Great Britain by_
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, London.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE EDUCATION OF THE KING 5
II.--KEEPERS OF THE STONE 29
III.--BOSAMBO OF MONROVIA 47
IV.--THE DROWSY ONE 61
V.--THE SPECIAL COMMISSIONER 78
VI.--THE DANCING STONES 98
VII.--THE FOREST OF HAPPY DREAMS 117
VIII.--THE AKASAVAS 131
IX.--THE WOOD OF DEVILS 151
X.--THE LOVES OF M'LINO 169
XI.--THE WITCH-DOCTOR 189
XII.--THE LONELY ONE 208
XIII.--THE SEER 224
THE LAST.--DOGS OF WAR 243
SANDERS OF THE RIVER.
CHAPTER I.
THE EDUCATION OF THE KING.
Mr. Commissioner Sanders had graduated to West Central Africa by such
easy stages that he did not realise when his acquaintance with the back
lands began. Long before he was called upon by the British Government to
keep a watchful eye upon some quarter of a million cannibal folk, who
ten years before had regarded white men as we regard the unicorn; he had
met the Basuto, the Zulu, the Fingo, the Pondo, Matabele, Mashona,
Barotse, Hottentot, and Bechuana. Then curiosity and interest took him
westward and northward, and he met the Angola folk, then northward to
the Congo, westward to the Masai, and finally, by way of the Pigmy
people, he came to his own land.
Now, there is a subtle difference between all these races, a difference
that only such men as Sanders know.
It is not necessarily a variety of colour, though some are brown and
some yellow, and some--a very few--jet black. The difference is in
character. By Sanders' code you trusted all natives up to the same
point, as you trust children, with a few notable exceptions. The Zulu
were men, the Basuto were men, yet childlike in their grave faith. The
black men who wore the fez were subtle, but trustworthy; but the browny
men of the Gold Coast, who talked English, wore European clothing, and
called one another "Mr.," were Sanders' pet abomination.
Living so long with children of a larger growth, it follows that he
absorbed many of their childlike qualities. Once, on furlough in London,
a confidence trick was played on him, and only his natural honesty
pulled him out of a ridiculous scrape. For, when the gold-brick man
produced his dull metal ingot, all Sanders' moral nerves stood endways,
and he ran the confiding "bunco steerer" to the nearest station,
charging him, to the astonishment of a sorely-puzzled policeman, with
"I.G.B.," which means illicit gold buying. Sanders did not doubt that
the ingot was gold, but he was equally certain that the gold was not
honestly come by. His surprise when he found that the "gold" was
gold-leaf imposed upon the lead of commerce was pathetic.
You may say of Sanders that he was a statesman, which means that he had
no exaggerated opinion of the value of individual human life. When he
saw a dead leaf on the plant of civilisation, he plucked it off, or a
weed growing with his "flowers" he pulled it up, not stopping to
consider the weed's equal right to life. When a man, whether he was
_capita_ or slave, by his bad example endangered the peace of his
country, Sanders fell upon him. In their unregenerate days, the Isisi
called him "Ogani Isisi," which means "The Little Butcher Bird," and
certainly in that time Sanders was prompt to hang. He governed a people
three hundred miles beyond the fringe of civilisation. Hesitation to
act, delay in awarding punishment, either of these two things would have
been mistaken for weakness amongst a people who had neither power to
reason, nor will to excuse, nor any large charity.
In the land which curves along the borders of Togo the people understand
punishment to mean pain and death, and nothing else counts. There was a
foolish Commissioner who was a great humanitarian, and he went up to
Akasava--which is the name of this land--and tried moral suasion.
It was a raiding palaver. Some of the people of Akasava had crossed the
river to Ochori and stolen women and goats, and I believe there was a
man or two killed, but that is unimportant. The goats and the women were
alive, and cried aloud for vengeance. They cried so loud that down at
headquarters they were heard and Mr. Commissioner Niceman--that was not
his name, but it will serve--went up to see what all the noise was
about. He found the Ochori people very angry, but more frightened.
"If," said their spokesman, "they will return our goats, they may keep
the women, because the goats are very valuable."
So Mr. Commissioner Niceman had a long, long palaver that lasted days
and days, with the chief of the Akasava people and his councillors, and
in the end moral suasion triumphed, and the people promised on a certain
day, at a certain hour, when the moon was in such a quarter and the tide
at such a height, the women should be returned and the goats also.
So Mr. Niceman returned to headquarters, swelling with admiration for
himself and wrote a long report about his genius and his administrative
abilities, and his knowledge of the native, which was afterwards
published in Blue Book (Africa) 7943-96.
It so happened that Mr. Niceman immediately afterwards went home to
England on furlough, so that he did not hear the laments and woeful
wailings of the Ochori folk when they did not get their women or their
goats.
Sanders, working round the Isisi River, with ten Houssas and an attack
of malaria, got a helio message:
"Go Akasava and settle that infernal woman
palaver.--Administration."
So Sanders girded up his loins, took 25 grains of quinine, and leaving
his good work--he was searching for M'Beli, the witch-doctor, who had
poisoned a friend--trekked across country for the Akasava.
In the course of time he came to the city and was met by the chief.
"What about these women?" he asked.
"We will have a palaver," said the chief. "I will summon my headmen and
my councillors."
"Summon nothing," said Sanders shortly. "Send back the women and the
goats you stole from the Ochori."
"Master," said the chief, "at full moon, which is our custom, when the
tide is so, and all signs of gods and devils are propitious, I will do
as you bid."
"Chief," said Sanders, tapping the ebony chest of the other with the thin
end of his walking-stick, "moon and river, gods or devils, those women
and the goats go back to the Ochori folk by sunset, or I tie you to a
tree and flog you till you bleed."
"Master," said the chief, "the women shall be returned."
"And the goats," said Sanders.
"As to the goats," said the chief airily, "they are dead, having been
killed for a feast."
"You will bring them back to life," said Sanders.
"Master, do you think I am a magician?" asked the chief of the Akasava.
"I think you are a liar," said Sanders impartially, and there the
palaver finished.
That night goats and women returned to the Ochori, and Sanders prepared
to depart.
He took aside the chief, not desiring to put shame upon him or to weaken
his authority.
"Chief," he said, "it is a long journey to Akasava, and I am a man
fulfilling many tasks. I desire that you do not cause me any further
journey to this territory."
"Master," said the chief truthfully, "I never wish to see you again."
Sanders smiled aside, collected his ten Houssas, and went back to the
Isisi River to continue his search for M'Beli.
It was not a nice search for many causes, and there was every reason to
believe, too, that the king of Isisi himself was the murderer's
protector. Confirmation of this view came one morning when Sanders,
encamped by the Big River, was taking a breakfast of tinned milk and
toast. There arrived hurriedly Sato-Koto, the brother of the king, in
great distress of mind, for he was a fugitive from the king's wrath. He
babbled forth all manner of news, in much of which Sanders took no
interest whatever. But what he said of the witch-doctor who lived in the
king's shadow was very interesting indeed, and Sanders sent a messenger
to headquarters, and, as it transpired, headquarters despatched in the
course of time Mr. Niceman--who by this time had returned from
furlough--to morally "suade" the king of the Isisi.
From such evidence as we have been able to collect it is evident that
the king was not in a melting mood. It is an indisputable fact that poor
Niceman's head, stuck on a pole before the king's hut, proclaimed the
king's high spirits.
H.M.S. _St. George_, H.M.S. _Thrush_, H.M.S. _Philomel_, H.M.S. _Phoebe_
sailed from Simonstown, and H.M.S. _Dwarf_ came down from Sierra Leone
_hec dum_, and in less than a month after the king killed his guest he
wished he hadn't.
Headquarters sent Sanders to clear up the political side of the mess.
He was shown round what was left of the king's city by the
flag-lieutenant of the _St. George_.
"I am afraid," said that gentleman, apologetically, "I am afraid that
you will have to dig out a new king; we've rather killed the old one."
Sanders nodded.
"I shall not go into mourning," he said.
There was no difficulty in finding candidates for the vacant post.
Sato-Koto, the dead king's brother, expressed his willingness to assume
the cares of office with commendable promptitude.
"What do you say?" asked the admiral, commanding the expedition.
"I say no, sir," said Sanders, without hesitation. "The king has a son,
a boy of nine; the kingship must be his. As for Sato-Koto, he shall be
regent at pleasure."
And so it was arranged, Sato-Koto sulkily assenting.
They found the new king hidden in the woods with the women folk, and he
tried to bolt, but Sanders caught him and led him back to the city by
the ear.
"My boy," he said kindly, "how do people call you?"
"Peter, master," whimpered the wriggling lad; "in the fashion of the
white people."
"Very well," said Sanders, "you shall be King Peter, and rule this
country wisely and justly according to custom and the law. And you shall
do hurt to none, and put shame on none nor shall you kill or raid or do
any of the things that make life worth living, and if you break loose,
may the Lord help you!"
Thus was King Peter appointed monarch of the Isisi people, and Sanders
went back to head-quarters with the little army of bluejackets and
Houssas, for M'Beli, the witch-doctor, had been slain at the taking of
the city, and Sanders' work was finished.
The story of the taking of Isisi village, and the crowning of the young
king, was told in the London newspapers, and lost nothing in the
telling. It was so described by the special correspondents, who
accompanied the expedition, that many dear old ladies of Bayswater wept,
and many dear young ladies of Mayfair said: "How sweet!" and the outcome
of the many emotions which the description evoked was the sending out
from England of Miss Clinton Calbraith, who was an M.A., and
unaccountably pretty.
She came out to "mother" the orphan king, to be a mentor and a friend.
She paid her own passage, but the books which she brought and the school
paraphernalia that filled two large packing cases were subscribed for
by the tender readers of _Tiny Toddlers_, a magazine for infants.
Sanders met her on the landing-stage, being curious to see what a white
woman looked like.
He put a hut at her disposal and sent the wife of his coast clerk to
look after her.
"And now, Miss Calbraith," he said, at dinner that night, "what do you
expect to do with Peter?"
She tilted her pretty chin in the air reflectively.
"We shall start with the most elementary of lessons--the merest
kindergarten, and gradually work up. I shall teach him calisthenics, a
little botany--Mr. Sanders, you're laughing."
"No, I wasn't," he hastened to assure her; "I always make a face like
that--er--in the evening. But tell me this--do you speak the
language--Swaheli, Bomongo, Fingi?"
"That will be a difficulty," she said thoughtfully.
"Will you take my advice?" he asked.
"Why, yes."
"Well, learn the language." She nodded. "Go home and learn it." She
frowned. "It will take you about twenty-five years."
"Mr. Sanders," she said, not without dignity, "you are pulling--you are
making fun of me."
"Heaven forbid!" said Sanders piously, "that I should do anything so
wicked."
The end of the story, so far as Miss Clinton Calbraith was concerned,
was that she went to Isisi, stayed three days, and came back
incoherent.
"He is not a child!" she said wildly; "he is--a--a little devil!"
"So I should say," said Sanders philosophically.
"A king? It is disgraceful! He lives in a mud hut and wears no clothes.
If I'd known!"
"A child of nature," said Sanders blandly. "You didn't expect a sort of
Louis Quinze, did you?"
"I don't know what I expected," she said desperately; "but it was
impossible to stay--quite impossible."
"Obviously," murmured Sanders.
"Of course, I knew he would be black," she went on; "and I knew
that--oh, it was too horrid!"
"The fact of it is, my dear young lady," said Sanders, "Peter wasn't as
picturesque as you imagined him; he wasn't the gentle child with
pleading eyes; and he lives messy--is that it?"
This was not the only attempt ever made to educate Peter. Months
afterwards, when Miss Calbraith had gone home and was busily writing her
famous book, "Alone in Africa: by an English Gentlewoman," Sanders heard
of another educative raid. Two members of an Ethiopian mission came into
Isisi by the back way. The Ethiopian mission is made up of Christian
black men, who, very properly, basing their creed upon Holy Writ, preach
the gospel of Equality. A black man is as good as a white man any day of
the week, and infinitely better on Sundays if he happens to be a member
of the Reformed Ethiopian Church.
They came to Isisi and achieved instant popularity, for the kind of talk
they provided was very much to the liking of Sato-Koto and the king's
councillors.
Sanders sent for the missioners. The first summons they refused to obey,
but they came on the second occasion, because the message Sanders sent
was at once peremptory and ominous.
They came to headquarters, two cultured American negroes of good address
and refined conversation. They spoke English faultlessly, and were in
every sense perfect gentlemen.
"We cannot understand the character of your command," said one, "which
savours somewhat of interference with the liberty of the subject."
"You'll understand me better," said Sanders, who knew his men, "when I
tell you that I cannot allow you to preach sedition to my people."
"Sedition, Mr. Sanders!" said the negro in shocked tones. "That is a
grave charge."
Sanders took a paper from a pigeon-hole in his desk; the interview took
place in his office.
"On such a date," he said, "you said this, and this, and that."
In other words he accused them of overstepping the creed of Equality and
encroaching upon the borderland of political agitation.
"Lies!" said the elder of the two, without hesitation.
"Truth or lies," he said, "you go no more to Isisi."
"Would you have the heathen remain in darkness?" asked the man, in
reproach. "Is the light we kindle too bright, master?"
"No," said Sanders, "but a bit too warm."
So he committed the outrage of removing the Ethiopians from the scene of
their earnest labours, in consequence of which questions were asked in
Parliament.
Then the chief of the Akasava people--an old friend--took a hand in the
education of King Peter. Akasava adjoins that king's territory, and the
chief came to give hints in military affairs.
He came with drums a-beating, with presents of fish and bananas and
salt.
"You are a great king!" he said to the sleepy-eyed boy who sat on a
stool of state, regarding him with open-mouthed interest. "When you walk
the world shakes at your tread; the mighty river that goes flowing down
to the big water parts asunder at your word, the trees of the forest
shiver, and the beasts go slinking to cover when your mightiness goes
abroad."
"Oh, ko, ko!" giggled the king, pleasantly tickled.
"The white men fear you," continued the chief of the Akasava; "they
tremble and hide at your roar."
Sato-Koto, standing at the king's elbow, was a practical man.
"What seek ye, chief?" he asked, cutting short the compliments.
So the chief told him of a land peopled by cowards, rich with the
treasures of the earth, goats, and women.
"Why do you not take them yourself?" demanded the regent.
"Because I am a slave," said the chief; "the slave of Sandi, who would
beat me. But you, lord, are of the great; being king's headman, Sandi
would not beat you because of your greatness."
There followed a palaver, which lasted two days.
"I shall have to do something with Peter," wrote Sanders despairingly to
the Administrator; "the little beggar has gone on the war-path against
those unfortunate Ochori. I should be glad if you would send me a
hundred men, a Maxim, and a bundle of rattan canes; I'm afraid I must
attend to Peter's education myself."
* * * * *
"Lord, did I not speak the truth?" said the Akasava chief in triumph.
"Sandi has done nothing! Behold, we have wasted the city of the Ochori,
and taken their treasure, and the white man is dumb because of your
greatness! Let us wait till the moon comes again, and I will show you
another city."
"You are a great man," bleated the king, "and some day you shall build
your hut in the shadow of my palace."
"On that day," said the chief, with splendid resignation, "I shall die
of joy."
When the moon had waxed and waned and come again, a pencilled silver
hoop of light in the eastern sky, the Isisi warriors gathered with spear
and broad-bladed sword, with _ingola_ on their bodies, and clay in their
hair.
They danced a great dance by the light of a huge fire, and all the women
stood round, clapping their hands rhythmically.
In the midst of this there arrived a messenger in a canoe, who
prostrated himself before the king, saying:
"Master, one day's march from here is Sandi; he has with him five score
of soldiers and the brass gun which says: 'Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!'"
A silence reigned in court circles, which was broken by the voice of the
Akasava chief.
"I think I will go home," he said. "I have a feeling of sickness; also,
it is the season when my goats have their young."
"Do not be afraid," said Sato-Koto brutally. "The king's shadow is over
you, and he is so mighty that the earth shakes at his tread, and the
waters of the big river part at his footfall; also, the white men fear
him."
"Nevertheless," said the chief, with some agitation, "I must go, for my
youngest son is sickening with fever, and calls all the time for me."
"Stay!" said the regent, and there was no mistaking his tone.
Sanders did not come the next day, nor the next. He was moving
leisurely, traversing a country where many misunderstandings existed
that wanted clearing up. When he arrived, having sent a messenger ahead
to carry the news of his arrival, he found the city peaceably engaged.
The women were crushing corn, the men smoking, the little children
playing and sprawling about the streets.
He halted at the outskirts of the city, on a hillock that commanded the
main street, and sent for the regent.
"Why must I send for you?" he asked. "Why does the king remain in his
city when I come? This is shame."
"Master," said Sato-Koto, "it is not fitting that a great king should so
humble himself."
Sanders was neither amused nor angry. He was dealing with a rebellious
people, and his own fine feelings were as nothing to the peace of the
land.
"It would seem that the king has had bad advisers," he reflected aloud,
and Sato-Koto shuffled uneasily.
"Go, now, and tell the king to come--for I am his friend."
The regent departed, but returned again alone.
"Lord, he will not come," he said sullenly.
"Then I will go to him," said Sanders.
King Peter, sitting before his hut, greeted Mr. Commissioner with
downcast eyes.
Sanders' soldiers, spread in a semi-circle before the hut, kept the
rabble at bay.
"King," said Sanders--he carried in his hand a rattan cane of familiar
shape, and as he spoke he whiffled it in the air, making a little
humming noise--"stand up!"
"Wherefore?" said Sato-Koto.
"That you shall see," said Sanders.
The king rose reluctantly, and Sanders grabbed him by the scruff of his
neck.
Swish!
The cane caught him most undesirably, and he sprang into the air with a
yell.
Swish, swish, swish!
Yelling and dancing, throwing out wild hands to ward off the punishment,
King Peter blubbered for mercy.
"Master!" Sato-Koto, his face distorted with rage, reached for his
spear.
"Shoot that man if he interferes," said Sanders, without releasing the
king.
The regent saw the levelled rifles and stepped back hastily.
"Now," said Sanders, throwing down the cane, "now we will play a little
game."
"Wow-wow--oh, ko!" sobbed his majesty.
"I go back to the forest," said Sanders. "By and by a messenger shall
come to you, saying that the Commissioner is on his way. Do you
understand?"
"Yi-hi!" sobbed the king.
"Then will you go out with your councillors and your old men and await
my coming according to custom. Is that clear?"
"Ye-es, master," whimpered the boy.
"Very good," said Sanders, and withdrew his troops.
In half an hour came a grave messenger to the king, and the court went
out to the little hill to welcome the white man.
This was the beginning of King Peter's education, for thus was he taught
obedience.
Sanders went into residence in the town of Isisi, and held court.
"Sato-Koto," he said on the second day, "do you know the village of
Ikan?"
"Yes, master; it is two days' journey into the bush."
Sanders nodded.
"You will take your wives, your children, your servants, and your
possessions to the village of Ikan, there to stay until I give you leave
to return. The palaver is finished."
Next came the chief of the Akasava, very ill at ease.
"Lord, if any man says I did you wrong, he lies," said the chief.
"Then I am a liar!" said Sanders. "For I say that you are an evil man,
full of cunning."
"If it should be," said the chief, "that you order me to go to my
village as you have ordered Sato-Koto, I will go, since he who is my
father is not pleased with me."
"That I order," said Sanders; "also, twenty strokes with a stick, for
the good of your soul. Furthermore, I would have you remember that down
by Tembeli on the great river there is a village where men labour in
chains because they have been unfaithful to the Government and have
practised abominations."
So the chief of the Akasava people went out to punishment.
There were other matters requiring adjustment, but they were of a minor
character, and when these were all settled to the satisfaction of
Sanders, but by no means to the satisfaction of the subjects, the
Commissioner turned his attention to the further education of the king.
"Peter," he said, "to-morrow when the sun comes up I go back to my own
village, leaving you without councillors."
"Master, how may I do without councillors, since I am a young boy?"
asked the king, crestfallen and chastened.
"By saying to yourself when a man calls for justice: 'If I were this man
how should I desire the king's justice?'"
The boy looked unhappy.
"I am very young," he repeated; "and to-day there come many from
outlying villages seeking redress against their enemies."
"Very good," said Sanders. "To-day I will sit at the king's right hand
and learn of his wisdom."
The boy stood on one leg in his embarrassment, and eyed Sanders askance.
There is a hillock behind the town. A worn path leads up to it, and
a-top is a thatched hut without sides. From this hillock you see the
broad river with its sandy shoals, where the crocodiles sleep with open
mouth; you see the rising ground toward Akasava, hills that rise one on
top of the other, covered with a tangle of vivid green. In this house
sits the king in judgment, beckoning the litigants forward. Sato-Koto
was wont to stand by the king, bartering justice.
To-day Sato-Koto was preparing to depart and Sanders sat by the king's
side.
There were indeed many litigants.
There was a man who had bought a wife, giving no less than a thousand
rods and two bags of salt for her. He had lived for three months with
her, when she departed from his house.
"Because," said the man philosophically, "she had a lover. Therefore,
Mighty Sun of Wisdom, I desire the return of my rods and my salt."
"What say you?" said Sanders.
The king wriggled uncomfortably.
"What says the father?" he said hesitatingly, and Sanders nodded.
"That is a wise question," he approved, and called the father, a
voluble and an eager old man.
"Now, king," he said hurriedly, "I sold this woman, my daughter; how
might I know her mind? Surely I fulfil my contract when the woman goes
to the man. How shall a father control when a husband fails?"
Sanders looked at the king again, and the boy drew a long breath.
"It would seem, M'bleni, that the woman, your daughter, lived many years
in your hut, and if you do not know her mind you are either a great fool
or she is a cunning one. Therefore, I judge that you sold this woman
knowing her faults. Yet the husband might accept some risk also. You
shall take back your daughter and return 500 rods and a bag of salt, and
if it should be that your daughter marries again, you shall pay one-half
of her dowry to this man."
Very, very slowly he gave judgment, hesitatingly, anxiously, glancing
now and again to the white man for his approval.
"That was good," said Sanders, and called forward another pleader.
"Lord king," said the new plaintiff, "a man has put an evil curse on me
and my family, so that they sicken."
Here was a little poser for the little judge, and he puzzled the matter
out in silence, Sanders offering no help.
"How does he curse you?" at last asked the king.
"With the curse of death," said the complainant in a hushed voice.
"Then you shall curse him also," said the king, "and it shall be a
question of whose curse is the stronger."
Sanders grinned behind his hand, and the king, seeing the smile, smiled
also.
From here onward Peter's progress was a rapid one, and there came to
headquarters from time to time stories of a young king who was a Solomon
in judgment.
So wise he was (who knew of the formula he applied to each case?), so
beneficent, so peaceable, that the chief of the Akasava, from whom was
periodically due, took advantage of the gentle administration, and sent
neither corn nor fish nor grain. He did this after a journey to far-away
Ikan, where he met the king's uncle, Sato-Koto, and agreed upon common
action. Since the crops were good, the king passed the first fault, but
the second tribute became due, and neither Akasava nor Ikan sent, and
the people of Isisi, angry at the insolence, murmured, and the king sat
down in the loneliness of his hut to think upon a course which was just
and effective.
* * * * *
"I really am sorry to bother you," wrote Sanders to the Administrator
again, "but I shall have to borrow your Houssas for the Isisi country.
There has been a tribute palaver, and Peter went down to Ikan and wiped
up his uncle; he filled in his spare time by giving the Akasava the
worst licking they have ever had. I thoroughly approve of all that Peter
has done, because I feel that he is actuated only by the keenest sense
of justice and a desire to do the right thing at the right time--and it
was time Sato-Koto was killed--though I shall have to reprimand Peter
for the sake of appearances. The Akasava chief is in the bush, hiding."
Peter came back to his capital after his brief but strenuous campaign,
leaving behind him two territories that were all the better for his
visit, though somewhat sore.
The young king brought together his old men, his witch-doctors, and
other notabilities.
"By all the laws of white men," he said, "I have done wrong to Sandi,
because he has told me I must not fight, and, behold, I have destroyed
my uncle, who was a dog, and I have driven the chief of the Akasava into
the forest. But Sandi told me also that I must do what was just, and
that I have done according to my lights, for I have destroyed a man who
put my people to shame. Now, it seems to me that there is only one thing
to do, and that is to go to Sandi, telling the truth and asking him to
judge."
"Lord king," said the oldest of his councillors, "what if Sandi puts you
to the chain-gang?"
"That is with to-morrow," quoth the king, and gave orders for
preparations to be made for departure.
Half-way to headquarters the two met; King Peter going down and Sanders
coming up. And here befell the great incident.
No word was spoken of Peter's fault before sunset; but when blue smoke
arose from the fires of Houssa and warrior, and the little camp in the
forest clearing was all a-chatter, Sanders took the king's arm and led
him along the forest path.
Peter told his tale and Sanders listened.
"And what of the chief of the Akasava?" he asked.
"Master," said the king, "he fled to the forest cursing me, and with him
went many bad men."
Sanders nodded again gravely.
They talked of many things till the sun threw long shadows, and then
they turned to retrace their footsteps. They were within half a mile of
the camp and the faint noise of men laughing, and the faint scent of
fires burning came to them, when the chief of the Akasava stepped out
from behind a tree and stood directly in their path. With him were some
eight fighting men fully armed.
"Lord king," said the chief of the Akasava, "I have been waiting for
you."
The king made neither movement nor reply, but Sanders reached for his
revolver.
His hand closed on the butt, when something struck him and he went down
like a log.
"Now we will kill the king of the Isisi, and the white man also." The
voice was the chief's, but Sanders was not taking any particular
interest in the conversation, because there was a hive of wild bees
buzzing in his head, and a maze of pain; he felt sick.
"If you kill me it is little matter," said the king's voice, "because
there are many men who can take my place; but if you slay Sandi, you
slay the father of the people, and none can replace him."
"He whipped you, little king," said the chief of the Akasava mockingly.
"I would throw him into the river," said a strange voice after a long
interval; "thus shall no trace be found of him, and no man will lay his
death to our door."
"What of the king?" said another. Then came a crackling of twigs and the
voices of men.
"They are searching," whispered a voice. "King, if you speak I will kill
you now."
"Kill!" said the young king's even voice, and shouted, "Oh, M'sabo!
Beteli! Sandi is here!"
That was all Sandi heard.
* * * * *
Two days later he sat up in bed and demanded information. There was a
young doctor with him when he woke, who had providentially arrived from
headquarters.
"The king?" he hesitated. "Well, they finished the king, but he saved
your life. I suppose you know that?"
Sanders said "Yes" without emotion.
"A plucky little beggar," suggested the doctor.
"Very," said Sanders. Then: "Did they catch the chief of the Akasava?"
"Yes; he was so keen on finishing you that he delayed his bolting. The
king threw himself on you and covered your body."
"That will do."
Sanders' voice was harsh and his manner brusque at the best of times,
but now his rudeness was brutal.
"Just go out of the hut, doctor--I want to sleep."
He heard the doctor move, heard the rattle of the "chick" at the hut
door, then he turned his face to the wall and wept.
CHAPTER II.
KEEPERS OF THE STONE.
There is a people who live at Ochori in the big African forest on the
Ikeli River, who are called in the native tongue "The Keepers of the
Stone."
There is a legend that years and years ago, _cala-cala_, there was a
strange, flat stone, "inscribed with the marks of the devils" (so the
grave native story-teller puts it), which was greatly worshipped and
prized, partly for its magic powers, and partly because of the two
ghosts who guarded it.
It was a fetish of peculiar value to the mild people who lived in the
big forest, but the Akasava, who are neither mild nor reverential, and
being, moreover, in need of gods, swooped down upon the Ochori one red
morning and came away with this wonderful stone and other movables.
Presumably, the "ghosts of brass" went also. It was a great business,
securing the stone, for it was set in a grey slab in the solid rock, and
many spear-heads were broken before it could be wrenched from its place.
But in the end it was taken away, and for several years it was the boast
of the Akasava that they derived much benefit from this sacred
possession. Then of a sudden the stone disappeared, and with it all the
good fortune of its owners. For the vanishing of the stone coincided
with the arrival of British rule, and it was a bad thing for the
Akasava.
There came in these far-off days ('95?) a ridiculous person in white
with an escort of six soldiers. He brought a message of peace and good
fellowship, and talked of a new king and a new law. The Akasava listened
in dazed wonderment, but when they recovered they cut off his head, also
the heads of the escort. It seemed to be the only thing to do under the
circumstances.
Then one morning the Akasava people woke to find the city full of
strange white folk, who had come swiftly up the river in steamboats.
There were too many to quarrel with, so the people sat quiet, a little
frightened and very curious, whilst two black soldiers strapped the
hands and feet of the Akasava chief prior to hanging him by the neck
till he was dead.
Nor did the bad luck of the people end here; there came a lean year,
when the manioc[1] root was bad and full of death-water, when goats
died, and crops were spoilt by an unexpected hurricane. There was always
a remedy at hand for a setback of this kind. If you have not the thing
you require, go and take it. So, following precedents innumerable, the
Akasava visited the Ochori, taking away much grain, and leaving behind
dead men and men who prayed for death. In the course of time the white
men came with their steamboats, their little brass guns, and the
identical block and tackle, which they fastened to the identical tree
and utilised in the inevitable manner.
"It appears," said the new chief--who was afterwards hanged for the
killing of the king of the Isisi--"that the white man's law is made to
allow weak men to triumph at the expense of the strong. This seems
foolish, but it will be well to humour them."
His first act was to cut down the hanging-tree--it was too conspicuous
and too significant. Then he set himself to discover the cause of all
the trouble which had come upon the Akasava. The cause required little
appreciation. The great stone had been stolen, as he well knew, and the
remedy resolved itself into a question of discovering the thief. The
wretched Ochori were suspect.
"If we go to them," said the chief of the Akasava thoughtfully, "killing
them very little, but rather burning them, so that they told where this
godstone was hidden, perhaps the Great Ones would forgive us."
"In my young days," said an aged councillor, "when evil men would not
tell where stolen things were buried, we put hot embers in their hands
and bound them tightly."
"That is a good way," approved another old man, wagging his head
applaudingly; "also to tie men in the path of the soldier-ants has been
known to make them talkative."
"Yet we may not go up against the Ochori for many reasons," said the
chief; "the principal of which is that if the stone be with them we
shall not overcome them owing to the two ghosts--though I do not
remember that the ghosts were very potent in the days when the stone was
with us," he added, not without hope.
The little raid which followed and the search for the stone are told
briefly in official records. The search was fruitless, and the Akasava
folk must needs content themselves with such picking as came to hand.
Of how Mr. Niceman, the deputy commissioner, and then Sanders himself,
came up, I have already told. That was long ago, as the natives say,
_cala-cala_, and many things happened subsequently that put from the
minds of the people all thought of the stone.
In course of time the chief of the Akasava died the death for various
misdoings, and peace came to the land that fringes Togo.
* * * * *
Sanders has been surprised twice in his life. Once was at Ikeli, which
in the native tongue means "little river." It is not a little river at
all, but, on the contrary, a broad, strong, sullen stream that swirls
and eddies and foams as it swings the corner of its tortuous course
seaward. Sanders sat on a deck-chair placed under the awning of his tiny
steamer, and watched the river go rushing past. He was a contented man,
for the land was quiet and the crops were good. Nor was there any crime.
There was sleeping sickness at Bofabi, and beri-beri at Akasava, and in
the Isisi country somebody had discovered a new god, and, by all
accounts that came down river, they worshipped him night and day.
He was not bothering about new gods, because gods of any kind were a
beneficent asset. Milini, the new king of the Isisi, had sent him word:
"Master," said his mouthpiece, the messenger, "this new god lives in a
box which is borne upon the shoulders of priests. It is so long and so
wide, and there are four sockets in which the poles fit, and the god
inside is a very strong one, and full of pride."
"Ko, ko!" said Sanders, with polite interest, "tell the lord king, your
master, that so long as this god obeys the law, he may live in the Isisi
country, paying no tax. But if he tells the young men to go fighting, I
shall come with a much stronger god, who will eat your god up. The
palaver is finished."
Sanders, with his feet stretched out on the rail of the boat, thought of
the new god idly. When was it that the last had come? There was one in
the N'Gombi country years ago, a sad god who lived in a hut which no man
dare approach; there was another god who came with thunder demanding
sacrifice--human sacrifice. This was an exceptionally bad god, and had
cost the British Government six hundred thousand pounds, because there
was fighting in the bush and a country unsettled. But, in the main, the
gods were good, doing harm to none, for it is customary for new gods to
make their appearance after the crops are gathered, and before the rainy
season sets in.
So Sanders thought, sitting in the shade of a striped awning on the
foredeck of the little _Zaire_.
The next day, before the sun came up, he turned the nose of the steamer
up-stream, being curious as to the welfare of the shy Ochori folk, who
lived too near the Akasava for comfort, and, moreover, needed nursing.
Very slow was the tiny steamer's progress, for the current was strong
against her. After two days' travel Sanders got into Lukati, where young
Carter had a station.
The deputy commissioner came down to the beach in his pyjamas, with a
big pith helmet on the back of his head, and greeted his chief
boisterously.
"Well?" said Sanders; and Carter told him all the news. There was a land
palaver at Ebibi; Otabo, of Bofabi, had died of the sickness; there were
two leopards worrying the outlying villages, and----
"Heard about the Isisi god?" he asked suddenly; and Sanders said that he
had.
"It's an old friend of yours," said Carter. "My people tell me that this
old god-box contains the stone of the Ochori."
"Oh!" said Sanders, with sudden interest.
He breakfasted with his subordinate, inspected his little garrison of
thirty, visited his farm, admired his sweet potatoes, and patronised his
tomatoes.
Then he went back to the boat and wrote a short dispatch in the tiniest
of handwriting on the flimsiest of paper slips. "In case!" said Sanders.
"Bring me 14," he said to his servant, and Abiboo came back to him soon
with a pigeon in his hand.
"Now, little bird," said Sanders, carefully rolling his letter round the
red leg of the tiny courier and fastening it with a rubber band, "you've
got two hundred miles to fly before sunrise to-morrow--and 'ware hawks!"
Then he gathered the pigeon in his hand, walked with it to the stern of
the boat, and threw it into the air.
His crew of twelve men were sitting about their cooking-pot--that pot
which everlastingly boils.
"Yoka!" he called, and his half-naked engineer came bounding down the
slope.
"Steam," said Sanders; "get your wood aboard; I am for Isisi."
* * * * *
There was no doubt at all that this new god was an extremely powerful
one. Three hours from the city the _Zaire_ came up to a long canoe with
four men standing at their paddles singing dolefully. Sanders remembered
that he had passed a village where women, their bodies decked with green
leaves, wailed by the river's edge.
He slowed down till he came abreast of the canoe, and saw a dead man
lying stark in the bottom.
"Where go you with this body?" he asked.
"To Isisi, lord," was the answer.
"The middle river and the little islands are places for the dead," said
Sanders brusquely. "It is folly to take the dead to the living."
"Lord," said the man who spoke, "at Isisi lives a god who breathes life;
this man"--he pointed downwards--"is my brother, and he died very
suddenly because of a leopard. So quickly he died that he could not tell
us where he had hidden his rods and his salt. Therefore we take him to
Isisi, that the new god may give him just enough life to make his
relations comfortable."
"The middle river," said Sanders quietly, and pointed to such a lone
island, all green with tangled vegetation, as might make a burying
ground. "What is your name?"
"Master, my name is N'Kema," said the man sullenly.
"Go, then, N'Kema," he said, and kept the steamer slow ahead whilst he
watched the canoe turn its blunt nose to the island and disembark its
cargo.
Then he rang the engines full ahead, steered clear of a sandbank, and
regained the fairway.
He was genuinely concerned.
The stone was something exceptional in fetishes, needing delicate
handling. That the stone existed, he knew. There were legends
innumerable about it; and an explorer had, in the early days, seen it
through his glasses. Also the "ghosts clad in brass" he had heard
about--these fantastic and warlike shades who made peaceable men go out
to battle--all except the Ochori, who were never warlike, and whom no
number of ghosts could incite to deeds of violence.
You will have remarked that Sanders took native people seriously, and
that, I remark in passing, is the secret of good government. To him,
ghosts were factors, and fetishes potent possibilities. A man who knew
less would have been amused, but Sanders was not amused, because he had
a great responsibility. He arrived at the city of Isisi in the
afternoon, and observed, even at a distance, that something unusual was
occurring. The crowd of women and children that the arrival of the
Commissioner usually attracted did not gather as he swung in from
mid-stream and followed the water-path that leads to shoal.
Only the king and a handful of old men awaited him, and the king was
nervous and in trouble.
"Lord," he blurted, "I am no king in this city because of the new god;
the people are assembled on the far side of the hill, and there they sit
night and day watching the god in the box."
Sanders bit his lip thoughtfully, and said nothing.
"Last night," said the king, "'The Keepers of the Stone' appeared
walking through the village."
He shivered, and the sweat stood in big beads on his forehead, for a
ghost is a terrible thing.
"All this talk of keepers of stones is folly," said Sanders calmly;
"they have been seen by your women and your unblooded boys."
"Lord, I saw them myself," said the king simply; and Sanders was
staggered, for the king was a sane man.
"The devil you have!" said Sanders in English; then, "What manner of
ghost were these?"
"Lord," said the king, "they were white of face, like your greatness.
They wore brass upon their heads and brass upon their breasts. Their
legs were bare, but upon the lower legs was brass again."
"Any kind of ghost is hard enough to believe," said Sanders irritably,
"but a brass ghost I will not have at any price." He spoke English
again, as was his practice when he talked to himself, and the king
stood silent, not understanding him.
"What else?" said Sanders.
"They had swords," continued the chief, "such as the elephant-hunters of
the N'Gombi people carry. Broad and short, and on their arms were
shields."
Sanders was nonplussed.
"And they cry 'war,'" said the chief. "This is the greatest shame of
all, for my young men dance the death dance and streak their bodies with
paint and talk boastfully."
"Go to your hut," said Sanders; "presently I will come and join you."
He thought and thought, smoking one black cigar after another, then he
sent for Abiboo, his servant.
"Abiboo," he said, "by my way of thinking, I have been a good master to
you."
"That is so, lord," said Abiboo.
"Now I will trust you to go amongst my crew discovering their gods. If I
ask them myself, they will lie to me out of politeness, inventing this
god and that, thinking they please me."
Abiboo chose the meal hour, when the sun had gone out and the world was
grey and the trees motionless. He came back with the information as
Sanders was drinking his second cup of coffee in the loneliness of the
tiny deck-house.
"Master," he reported, "three men worship no god whatever, three more
have especial family fetishes, and two are Christians more or less, and
the four Houssas are with me in faith."
"And you?"
Abiboo, the Kano boy, smiled at Sanders' assumption of innocence.
"Lord," he said, "I follow the Prophet, believing only in the one God,
beneficent and merciful."
"That is good," said Sanders. "Now let the men load wood, and Yoka shall
have steam against moonrise, and all shall be ready for slipping."
At ten o'clock by his watch he fell-in his four Houssas, serving out to
each a short carbine and a bandoleer. Then the party went ashore.
The king in his patience sat in his hut, and Sanders found him.
"You will stay here, Milini," he commanded, "and no blame shall come to
you for anything that may happen this night."
"What will happen, master?"
"Who knows!" said Sanders, philosophically.
The streets were in pitch darkness, but Abiboo, carrying a lantern, led
the way. Only occasionally did the party pass a tenanted hut. Generally
they saw by the dull glow of the log that smouldered in every habitation
that it was empty. Once a sick woman called to them in passing. It was
near her time, she said, and there was none to help her in the supreme
moment of her agony.
"God help you, sister!" said Sanders, ever in awe of the mysteries of
birth. "I will send women to you. What is your name?"
"They will not come," said the plaintive voice. "To-night the men go out
to war, and the women wait for the great dance."
"To-night?"
"To-night, master--so the ghosts of brass decree."
Sanders made a clicking noise with his mouth.
"That we shall see," he said, and went on.
The party reached the outskirts of the city. Before them, outlined
against a bronze sky, was the dark bulk of a little hill, and this they
skirted.
The bronze became red, and rose, and dull bronze again, as the fires
that gave it colour leapt or fell. Turning the shoulder of the hill,
Sanders had a full view of the scene.
Between the edge of the forest and slope of the hill was a broad strip
of level land. On the left was the river, on the right was swamp and
forest again.
In the very centre of the plain a huge fire burnt. Before it, supported
by its poles, on two high trestles, a square box.
But the people!
A huge circle, squatting on its haunches, motionless, silent; men,
women, children, tiny babies, at their mothers' hips they stretched; a
solid wheel of humanity, with the box and the fire as a hub.
There was a lane through which a man might reach the box--a lane along
which passed a procession of naked men, going and returning. These were
they who replenished the fire, and Sanders saw them dragging fuel for
that purpose. Keeping to the edge of the crowd, he worked his way to the
opening. Then he looked round at his men.
"It is written," he said, in the curious Arabic of the Kano people,
"that we shall carry away this false god. As to which of us shall live
or die through this adventure, that is with Allah, who knows all
things."
Then he stepped boldly along the lane. He had changed his white ducks
for a dark blue uniform suit, and he was not observed by the majority
until he came with his Houssas to the box. The heat from the fire was
terrific, overpowering. Close at hand he saw that the fierceness of the
blaze had warped the rough-hewn boards of the box, and through the
opening he saw in the light a slab of stone.
"Take up the box quickly," he commanded, and the Houssas lifted the
poles to their shoulders. Until then the great assembly had sat in
silent wonder, but as the soldiers lifted their burden, a yell of rage
burst from five thousand throats, and men leapt to their feet.
Sanders stood before the fire, one hand raised, and silence fell,
curiosity dominating resentment.
"People of the Isisi," said Sanders, "let no man move until the
god-stone has passed, for death comes quickly to those who cross the
path of gods."
He had an automatic pistol in each hand, and the particular deity he was
thinking of at the moment was not the one in the box.
The people hesitated, surging and swaying, as a mob will sway in its
uncertainty.
With quick steps the bearers carried their burden through the lane; they
had almost passed unmolested when an old woman shuffled forward and
clutched at Sanders' arm.
"Lord, lord!" she quavered, "what will you do with our god?"
"Take him to the proper place," said Sanders, "being by Government
appointed his keeper."
"Give me a sign," she croaked, and the people in her vicinity repeated,
"A sign, master!"
"This is a sign," said Sanders, remembering the woman in labour. "By the
god's favour there shall be born to Ifabi, wife of Adako, a male child."
He heard the babble of talk; he heard his message repeated over the
heads of the crowd; he saw a party of women go scurrying back to the
village; then he gave the order to march. There were murmurings, and
once he heard a deep-voiced man begin the war-chant, but nobody joined
him. Somebody--probably the same man--clashed his spear against his
wicker shield, but his warlike example was not followed. Sanders gained
the village street. Around him was such a press of people that he
followed the swaying box with difficulty. The river was in sight; the
moon, rising a dull, golden ball over the trees, laced the water with
silver, and then there came a scream of rage.
"He lies! He lies! Ifabi, the wife of Adako, has a female child."
Sanders turned swiftly like a dog at bay; his lips upcurled in a snarl,
his white, regular teeth showing.
"Now," said Sanders, speaking very quickly, "let any man raise his
spear, and he dies."
Again they stood irresolute, and Sanders, over his shoulder, gave an
order.
For a moment only the people hesitated; then, as the soldiers gripped
the poles of the god-box, with one fierce yell they sprang forward.
A voice screamed something; and, as if by magic, the tumult ceased, and
the crowd darted backward and outward, falling over one another in their
frantic desire to escape.
Sanders, his pistol still loaded, stood in open-mouthed astonishment at
the stampede.
Save for his men he was alone; and then he saw.
Along the centre of the street two men were walking. They were clad
alike in short crimson kilts that left their knees bare; great brass
helmets topped their heads, and brass cuirasses covered their breasts.
Sanders watched them as they came nearer, then: "If this is not fever,
it is madness," he muttered, for what he saw were two Roman centurions,
their heavy swords girt about their waists.
He stood still, and they passed him, so close that he saw on the boss of
one shield the rough-moulded letters:--
"AUGUSTUS CAE."
"Fever" said Sanders emphatically, and followed the box to the ship.
* * * * *
When the steamer reached Lukati, Sanders was still in a condition of
doubt, for his temperature was normal, and neither fever nor sun could
be held accountable for the vision. Added to which, his men had seen the
same thing.
He found the reinforcements his pigeon had brought, but they were
unnecessary now.
"It beats me," he confessed to Carter, telling the story; "but we'll get
out the stone; it might furnish an explanation. Centurions--bah!"
The stone, exposed in the light of day, was of greyish granite, such as
Sanders did not remember having seen before.
"Here are the 'devil marks,'" he said, as he turned it over.
"Possibly--whew!"
No wonder he whistled, for closely set were a number of printed
characters; and Carter, blowing the dust, saw--
"MARIUS ET AUGUSTUS
CENT . . . . . . . . . NERO
IMPERAT . . . . . IN DEUS
. . . . . DULCE."
That night, with great labour, Sanders, furbishing his rusty Latin, and
filling in gaps, made a translation:
"Marius and Augustus,
Centurions of Nero, Csar and
Emperor,
Sleep sweetly with the gods."
"We are they who came beyond the wild lands which Hanno, the
Carthaginian, found . . .
"Marcus Septimus went up into Egypt, and with him Decimus
Superbus, but by the will of Csar, and the favour of the gods,
we sailed to the black seas beyond. . . . . Here we lived, our
ships suffering wreck, being worshipped by the barbarians,
teaching them warlike practices.
. . . "You who come after . . . bear greetings to Rome to Cato
Hippocritus, who dwells by the gate . . ."
Sanders shook his head when he had finished reading, and said it was
"rum."
[Footnote 1: There is a tremendous amount of free hydrocyanic acid
(prussic acid) in manioc.]
CHAPTER III.
BOSAMBO OF MONROVIA.
For many years have the Ochori people formed a sort of grim comic relief
to the tragedy of African colonisation. Now it may well be that we shall
laugh at the Ochori no more. Nor, in the small hours of the night, when
conversation flags in the little circle about the fires in fishing
camps, shall the sleepy-eyed be roused to merriment by stories of Ochori
meekness. All this has come about by favour of the Liberian Government,
though at present the Liberian Government is not aware of the fact.
With all due respect to the Republic of Liberia, I say that the
Monrovians are naturally liars and thieves.
Once upon a time, that dignity might be added to the State, a warship
was acquired--if I remember aright it was presented by a disinterested
shipowner. The Government appointed three admirals, fourteen captains,
and as many officers as the ship would hold, and they all wore gorgeous
but ill-fitting uniforms. The Government would have appointed a crew
also, but for the fact that the ship was not big enough to hold any
larger number of people than its officers totalled.
This tiny man-of-war of the black republic went to sea once, the
admirals and captains taking it in turn to stoke and steer--a very
pleasing and novel sensation, this latter.
Coming back into the harbour, one of the admirals said--
"It is my turn to steer now," and took the wheel.
The ship struck a rock at the entrance of the harbour and went down. The
officers escaped easily enough, for your Monrovian swims like a fish,
but their uniforms were spoilt by the sea water. To the suggestion that
salvage operations should be attempted to refloat the warship, the
Government very wisely said no, they thought not.
"We know where she is," said the President--he was sitting on the edge
of his desk at Government House, eating sardines with his fingers--"and
if we ever want her, it will be comforting to know she is so close to
us."
Nothing more would have been done in the matter but for the fact that
the British Admiralty decided that the wreck was a danger to shipping,
and issued orders forthwith for the place where it lay to be buoyed.
The Liberian Government demurred on account of expense, but on pressure
being applied (I suspect the captain of H.M.S. _Dwarf_, who was a man
with a bitter tongue) they agreed, and the bell-buoy was anchored to the
submerged steamer.
It made a nice rowdy, clanging noise, did that bell, and the people of
Monrovia felt they were getting their money's worth.
But all Monrovia is not made up of the freed American slaves who were
settled there in 1821. There are people who are described in a lordly
fashion by the true Monrovians as "indigenous natives," and the chief
of these are the Kroomen, who pay no taxes, defy the Government, and at
intervals tweak the official nose of the Republic.
The second day after the bell was in place, Monrovia awoke to find a
complete silence reigning in the bay, and that in spite of a heavy
swell. The bell was still, and two ex-admirals, who were selling fish on
the foreshore, borrowed a boat and rowed out to investigate. The
explanation was simple--the bell had been stolen.
"Now!" said the President of the Liberian Republic in despair, "may
Beelzebub, who is the father and author of all sin, descend upon these
thieving Kroomen!"
Another bell was attached. The same night it was stolen. Yet another
bell was put to the buoy, and a boat-load of admirals kept watch.
Throughout the night they sat, rising and falling with the swell, and
the monotonous "clang-jangle-clong" was music in their ears. All night
it sounded, but in the early morning, at the dark hour before the sun
comes up, it seemed that the bell, still tolling, grew fainter and
fainter.
"Brothers," said an admiral, "we are drifting away from the bell."
But the explanation was that the bell had drifted away from them, for,
tired of half measures, the Kroomen had come and taken the buoy, bell
and all, and to this day there is no mark to show where a sometime
man-of-war rots in the harbour of Monrovia.
The ingenious soul who planned and carried out this theft was one
Bosambo, who had three wives, one of whom, being by birth Congolaise,
and untrustworthy, informed the police, and with some ceremony Bosambo
was arrested and tried at the Supreme Court, where he was found guilty
of "theft and high treason" and sentenced to ten years' penal servitude.
They took Bosambo back to prison, and Bosambo interviewed the black
gaoler.
"My friend," he said, "I have a big ju-ju in the forest, and if you do
not release me at once you and your wife shall die in great torment."
"Of your ju-ju I know nothing," said the gaoler philosophically, "but I
receive two dollars a week for guarding prisoners, and if I let you
escape I shall lose my job."
"I know a place where there is much silver hidden," said Bosambo with
promptitude. "You and I will go to this place, and we shall be rich."
"If you knew where there was silver, why did you steal bells, which are
of brass and of no particular value?" asked his unimaginative guard.
"I see that you have a heart of stone," said Bosambo, and went away to
the forest settlement to chop down trees for the good of the State.
Four months after this, Sanders, Chief Commissioner for the Isisi,
Ikeli, and Akasava countries, received, _inter alia_, a communication of
a stereotyped description--
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.
Wanted,--on a warrant issued by H.E. the President of Liberia,
Bosambo Krooboy, who escaped from the penal settlement near
Monrovia, after killing a guard. He is believed to be making for
your country.
A description followed.
Sanders put the document away with other such notices--they were not
infrequent in their occurrence--and gave his mind to the eternal problem
of the Ochori.
Now, as ever, the Ochori people were in sad trouble. There is no other
tribe in the whole of Africa that is as defenceless as the poor Ochori.
The Fingoes, slaves as they are by name and tradition, were ferocious as
the Masai, compared with the Ochori.
Sanders was a little impatient, and a deputation of three, who had
journeyed down to headquarters to lay the grievances of the people
before him, found him unsympathetic.
He interviewed them on his verandah.
"Master, no man leaves us in peace," said one. "Isisi folk, N'Gombi
people from far-away countries, they come to us demanding this and that,
and we give, being afraid."
"Afraid of what?" asked Sanders wearily.
"We fear death and pain, also burning and the taking of our women," said
the other.
"Who is chief of you?" asked Sanders, wilfully ignorant.
"I am chief lord," said an elderly man, clad in a leopard skin.
"Go back to your people, chief, if indeed chief you are, and not some
old woman without shame; go back and bear with you a fetish--a most
powerful fetish--which shall be, as me, watching your interest and
protecting you. This fetish you shall plant on the edge of your village
that faces the sun at noon. You shall mark the place where it shall be
planted, and at midnight, with proper ceremony, and the sacrifice of a
young goat, you shall set my fetish in its place. And after that
whosoever ill-treats you or robs you shall do so at some risk."
Sanders said this very solemnly, and the men of the deputation were duly
impressed. More impressed were they when, before starting on their
homeward journey, Sanders placed in their hands a stout pole, to the end
of which was attached a flat board inscribed with certain marks.
They carried their trophy six days' journey through the forest, then
four days' journey by canoe along the Little River, until they came to
Ochori. There, by the light of the moon, with the sacrifice of two goats
(to make sure), the pole was planted so that the board inscribed with
mystic characters would face the sun at noon.
News travels fast in the back lands, and it came to the villages
throughout the Isisi and the Akasava country that the Ochori were
particularly protected by white magic. Protected they had always been,
and many men had died at the white man's hand because the temptation to
kill the Ochori folk had proved irresistible.
"I do not believe that Sandi has done this thing," said the chief of the
Akasava. "Let us go across the river and see with our own eyes, and if
they have lied we shall beat them with sticks, though let no man kill,
because of Sandi and his cruelty."
So across the water they went, and marched until they came within sight
of the Ochori city, and the Ochori people, hearing that the Akasava
people were coming, ran away into the woods and hid, in accordance with
their custom.
The Akasava advanced until they came to the pole stuck in the ground and
the board with the devil marks.
Before this they stood in silence and in awe, and having made obeisance
to it and sacrificed a chicken (which was the lawful property of the
Ochori) they turned back.
After this came a party from Isisi, and they must needs come through the
Akasava country.
They brought presents with them and lodged with the Akasava for one
night.
"What story is this of the Ochori?" asked the Isisi chief in command; so
the chief of the Akasava told him.
"You may save yourself the journey, for we have seen it."
"That," said the Isisi chief, "I will believe when I have seen."
"That is bad talk," said the Akasava people, who were gathered at the
palaver; "these dogs of Isisi call us liars."
Nevertheless there was no bloodshed, and in the morning the Isisi went
on their way.
The Ochori saw them coming, and hid in the woods, but the precaution was
unnecessary, for the Isisi departed as they came.
Other folk made a pilgrimage to the Ochori, N'Gombi, Bokeli, and the
Little People of the Forest, who were so shy that they came by night,
and the Ochori people began to realise a sense of their importance.
Then Bosambo, a Krooman and an adventurer at large, appeared on the
scene, having crossed eight hundred miles of wild land in the earnest
hope that time would dull the memory of the Liberian Government and
incidentally bring him to a land of milk and honey.
Now Bosambo had in his life been many things. He had been steward on an
Elder Dempster boat, he had been scholar at a mission school--he was the
proud possessor of a bound copy of _The Lives of the Saints_, a reward
of industry--and among his accomplishments was a knowledge of English.
The hospitable Ochori received him kindly, fed him with sweet manioc
and sugar-cane, and told him about Sandi's magic. After he had eaten,
Bosambo walked down to the post and read the inscription--
TRESPASSERS BEWARE.
He was not impressed, and strolled back again thinking deeply.
"This magic," he said to the chief, "is good magic. I know, because I
have white man's blood in my veins."
In support of this statement he proceeded to libel a perfectly innocent
British official at Sierra Leone.
The Ochori were profoundly moved. They poured forth the story of their
persecutions, a story which began in remote ages, when Tiganobeni, the
great king, came down from the north and wasted the country as far south
as the Isisi.
Bosambo listened--it took two nights and the greater part of a day to
tell the story, because the official story-teller of the Ochori had only
one method of telling--and when it was finished Bosambo said to
himself--
"This is the people I have long sought. I will stay here."
Aloud he asked:
"How often does Sandi come to you?"
"Once every year, master," said the chief, "on the twelfth moon, and a
little after."
"When came he last?"
"When this present moon is at full, three moons since; he comes after
the big rains."
"Then," said Bosambo, again to himself, "for nine months I am safe."
They built him a hut and planted for him a banana grove and gave him
seed. Then he demanded for wife the daughter of the chief, and although
he offered nothing in payment the girl came to him. That a stranger
lived in the chief village of the Ochori was remarked by the other
tribes, for news of this kind spreads, but since he was married, and
into the chief's family at that, it was accepted that the man must be of
the Ochori folk, and such was the story that came to headquarters. Then
the chief of the Ochori died. He died suddenly in some pain; but such
deaths are common, and his son ruled in his place. Then the son died
after the briefest reign, and Bosambo called the people together, the
elders, the wise men, and the headmen of the country.
"It appears," he said, "that the many gods of the Ochori are displeased
with you, and it has been revealed to me in a dream that I shall be
chief of the Ochori. Therefore, O chiefs and wise men and headmen, bow
before me, as is the custom, and I will make you a great people."
It is characteristic of the Ochori that no man said "nay" to him, even
though in the assembly were three men who by custom might claim the
chieftainship.
Sanders heard of the new chief and was puzzled.
"Etabo?" he repeated--this was how Bosambo called himself--"I do not
remember the man--yet if he can put backbone into the people I do not
care who he is."
Backbone or cunning, or both, Bosambo was certainly installed.
"He has many strange practices," reported a native agent to Sanders.
"Every day he assembles the men of the village and causes them to walk
past a _pelebi_ (table) on which are many eggs. And it is his command
that each man as he passes shall take an egg so swiftly that no eye may
see him take it. And if the man bungle or break the egg, or be slow,
this new chief puts shame upon him, whipping him."
"It is a game," said Sanders; but for the life of him he could not see
what game it was. Report after report reached him of the new chief's
madness. Sometimes he would take the unfortunate Ochori out by night,
teaching them such things as they had never known before. Thus he
instructed them in what manner they might seize upon a goat so that the
goat could not cry. Also how to crawl on their bellies inch by inch so
that they made no sound or sign. All these things the Ochori did,
groaning aloud at the injustice and the labour of it.
"I'm dashed if I can understand it!" said Sanders, knitting his brows,
when the last report came in. "With anybody but the Ochori this would
mean war. But the Ochori!"
Notwithstanding his contempt for their fighting qualities, he kept his
Police Houssas ready.
But there was no war. Instead, there came complaint from the Akasava
that "many leopards were in the woods."
Leopards will keep, thought Sanders, and, anyway, the Akasava were good
enough hunters to settle that palaver without outside help. The next
report was alarming. In two weeks these leopards had carried off three
score of goats, twenty bags of salt, and much ivory.
Leopards eat goats; there might conceivably be fastidious leopards that
cannot eat goats without salt; but a leopard does not take ivory tusks
even to pick his teeth with. So Sanders made haste to journey up the
river, because little things were considerable in a country where people
strain at gnats and swallow whole caravans.
"Lord, it is true," said the chief of the Akasava, with some emotion,
"these goats disappear night by night, though we watch them; also the
salt and ivory, because that we did not watch."
"But no leopard could take these things," said Sanders irritably. "These
are thieves."
The chief's gesture was comprehensive.
"Who could thieve?" he said. "The N'Gombi people live very far away;
also the Isisi. The Ochori are fools, and, moreover, afraid."
Then Sanders remembered the egg games, and the midnight manoeuvres of
the Ochori.
"I will call on this new chief," he said; and crossed the river that
day.
Sending a messenger to herald his coming, he waited two miles out of the
city, and the councillors and wise men came out to him with offerings of
fish and fruit.
"Where is your chief?" he asked.
"Lord, he is ill," they said gravely. "This day there came to him a
feeling of sickness, and he fell down moaning. We have carried him to
his hut."
Sanders nodded.
"I will see him," he said grimly.
They led him to the door of the chief's hut, and Sanders went in. It was
very dark, and in the darkest corner lay a prostrate man. Sanders bent
over him, touched his pulse lightly, felt gingerly for the swelling on
the neck behind the ears for a sign of sleeping sickness. No symptom
could he find; but on the bare shoulder, as his fingers passed over the
man's flesh, he felt a scar of singular regularity; then he found
another, and traced their direction. The convict brand of the Monrovian
Government was familiar to him.
"I thought so," said Sanders, and gave the moaning man a vigorous kick.
"Come out into the light, Bosambo of Monrovia," he said; and Bosambo
rose obediently and followed the Commissioner into the light.
They stood looking at one another for several minutes; then Sanders,
speaking in the dialect of the Pepper Coast, said--
"I have a mind to hang you, Bosambo."
"That is as your Excellency wishes," said Bosambo.
Sanders said nothing, tapping his boot with his walking-stick and gazing
thoughtfully downward.
"Having made thieves, could you make men of these people?" he said,
after a while.
"I think they could fight now, for they are puffed with pride because
they have robbed the Akasava," said Bosambo.
Sanders bit the end of his stick like a man in doubt.
"There shall be neither theft nor murder," he said. "No more chiefs or
chiefs' sons shall die suddenly," he added significantly.
"Master, it shall be as you desire."
"As for the goats you have stolen, them you may keep, and the teeth
(ivory) and the salt also. For if you hand them back to Akasava you will
fill their stomachs with rage, and that would mean war."
Bosambo nodded slowly.
"Then you shall remain, for I see you are a clever man, and the Ochori
need such as you. But if----"
"Master, by the fat of my heart I will do as you wish," said Bosambo;
"for I have always desired to be a chief under the British."
Sanders was half-way back to headquarters before he missed his
field-glasses, and wondered where he could have dropped them. At that
identical moment Bosambo was exhibiting the binoculars to his admiring
people.
"From this day forth," said Bosambo, "there shall be no lifting of goats
nor stealing of any kind. This much I told the great Sandi, and as a
sign of his love, behold, he gave me these things of magic that eat up
space."
"Lord," said a councillor in awe, "did you know the Great One?"
"I have cause to know him," said Bosambo modestly, "for I am his son."
Fortunately Sanders knew nothing of this interesting disclosure.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DROWSY ONE.
There were occasions when Sanders came up against the outer world, when
he learnt, with something like bewilderment, that beyond the farthermost
forests, beyond the lazy, swelling, blue sea, there were men and women
who lived in houses and carefully tabooed such subjects as violent death
and such horrid happenings as were daily features of his life.
He had to treat with folk who, in the main, were illogical and who
believed in spirits. When you deal in the abstract with government of
races so influenced, a knowledge of constitutional law and economics is
fairly valueless.
There is one type of man that can rule native provinces wisely, and that
type is best represented by Sanders.
There are other types, as, for instance:
Once upon a time a young man came from England with a reputation. He was
sent by the Colonial Office to hold a district under Sanders as Deputy
Commissioner. He was a Bachelor of Law, had read Science, and had
acquired in a methodical fashion a working acquaintance with Swaheli,
bacteriology, and medicines. He was a very grave young man, and the
first night of his arrival he kept Sanders (furtively yawning) out of
his bed whilst he demonstrated a system whereby the aboriginal could be
converted--not converted spiritually, but from unproductive vagrancy to
a condition of good citizenship.
Sanders said nothing beyond using the conventional expressions of polite
interest, and despatched the young man and his tremendous baggage to an
up-country station, with his official blessing.
Torrington--this was the grave young man's name--established himself at
Entoli, and started forth to instil into the heathen mind the elementary
principles of applied mechanics. In other words he taught them, through
the medium of Swaheli--which they imperfectly understood--and a tin
kettle, the lesson of steam. They understood the kettle part, but could
not quite comprehend what meat he was cooking, and when he explained for
the fortieth time that he was only cooking water, they glanced
significantly one at the other and agreed that he was not quite right in
his head.
They did not tell him this much to his face, for cannibals have very
good manners--though their table code leaves much to be desired.
Mr. Torrington tried them with chemical experiments, showing them how
sulphuric acid applied to sugar produced Su^{2}, Su^{4}, or words to
that effect. He gained a reputation as a magician as a result, and in
more huts than one he was regarded and worshipped as a Great and Clever
Devil--which in a sense he was. But the first time he came up against
the spirit of the people, his science, his law, and his cut-and-dried
theories went _phutt_! And that is where Sanders came in--Sanders who
had forgotten all the chemistry he ever knew, and who, as a student of
Constitutional Law, was the rankest of failures.
It came about in this way.
There was a young man in Isisi who prophesied that on such a day, at
such an hour, the river would rise and drown the people. When Mr.
Torrington heard of this prophecy he was amused, and at first took no
notice of it. But it occurred to him that here might be a splendid
opportunity for revealing to the barbarian a little of that science with
which he was so plentifully endowed.
So he drew a large sectional plan, showing--
(_a_) the bed of the river;
(_b_) the height of the banks;
(_c_) the maximum rise of the river;
(_d_) the height of the surrounding country; and demonstrated as
plainly as possible the utter absurdity of the prophecy.
Yet the people were unconvinced, and were preparing to abandon the
village when Sanders arrived on the scene. He sent for the prophet, who
was a young man of neurotic tendencies, and had a wooden prison cage
built on the bank of the river, into which the youth was introduced.
"You will stay here," said Sanders, "and when the river rises you must
prophesy that it will fall again, else assuredly you will be drowned."
Whereupon the people settled down again in their homes and waited for
the river to drown the prophet and prove his words. But the river at
this season of the year was steadily falling, and the prophet, like many
another, was without honour in his own country.
Sanders went away; and, although somewhat discouraged, Mr. Torrington
resumed his experiments. First of all, he took up sleeping sickness, and
put in three months' futile work, impressing nobody save a gentleman of
whom more must be written in a further chapter. Then he dropped that
study suddenly and went to another.
He had ideas concerning vaccination, but the first baby he vaccinated
died of croup, and Torrington came flying down the river telling Sanders
a rambling story of a populace infuriated and demanding his blood. Then
Torrington went home.
"The country is now quiet," wrote Sanders to the Administrator, with
sardonic humour. "There are numerous palavers pending, but none of any
particular moment. The Isisi people are unusually quiet, and Bosambo,
the Monrovian, of whom I have written your Excellency, makes a model
chief for the Ochori. No thefts have been traced to him for three
months. I should be grateful if full information could be supplied to me
concerning an expedition which at the moment is traversing this country
under the style of the Isisi Exploitation Syndicate."
Curiously enough, Torrington had forgotten the fact that a member of
this expedition had been one of the most interested students of his
sleeping sickness clinics.
The Isisi Exploitation Syndicate, Limited, was born between the entre
and the sweet at the house of a gentleman whose Christian name was
Isidore, and who lived in Maida Vale. At dinner one night with a dear
friend--who called himself McPherson every day of the year except on Yum
Kippur, when he frankly admitted that he had been born Isaacs--the
question of good company titles came up, and Mr. McPherson said he had
had the "Isisi Exploitation" in his mind for many years. With the aid of
an atlas the Isisi country was discovered. It was one of those atlases
on which are inscribed the staple products of the lands, and across the
Isisi was writ fair "Rubber," "Kola-nut," "Mahogany," and "Tobacco."
I would ask the reader to particularly remember "Tobacco."
"There's a chief I've had some correspondence with," said Mr. McPherson,
chewing his cigar meditatively; "we could get a sort of concession from
him. It would have to be done on the quiet, because the country is a
British Protectorate. Now, if we could get a man who'd put up the stuff,
and send him out to fix the concession, we'd have a company floated
before you could say knife."
Judicious inquiry discovered the man in Claude Hyall Cuthbert, a
plutocratic young gentleman, who, on the strength of once having nearly
shot a lion in Uganda, was accepted by a large circle of acquaintances
as an authority on Africa.
Cuthbert, who dabbled in stocks and shares, was an acquisition to any
syndicate, and on the understanding that part of his duty would be the
obtaining of the concession, he gladly financed the syndicate to the
extent of seven thousand pounds, four thousand of which Messrs. Isidore
and McPherson very kindly returned to him to cover the cost of his
expedition.
The other three thousand were earmarked for office expenses.
As Mr. McPherson truly said:
"Whatever happens, we're on velvet, my boy," which was perfectly true.
Before Cuthbert sailed, McPherson offered him a little advice.
"Whatever you do," he said, "steer clear of that dam' Commissioner
Sanders. He's one of those pryin', interferin'----"
"I know the breed," said Cuthbert wisely. "This is not my first visit to
Africa. Did I ever tell you about the lion I shot in Uganda?"
A week later he sailed.
* * * * *
In course of time came a strange white man through Sanders' domain. This
white man, who was Cuthbert, was following the green path to death--but
this he did not know. He threw his face to the forest, as the natives
say, and laughed, and the people of the village of O'Tembi, standing
before their wattle huts, watched him in silent wonder.
It was a wide path between huge trees, and the green of the undergrowth
was flecked with sunlight, and, indeed, the green path was beautiful to
the eye, being not unlike a parkland avenue.
N'Beki, chief of this village of the O'Tembi, a very good old man, went
out to the path when the white man began his journey.
"White man," he said solemnly, "this is the road to hell, where all
manner of devils live. Night brings remorse, and dawn brings
self-hatred, which is worse than death."
Cuthbert, whose Swaheli was faulty, and whose Bomongo talk was nil,
grinned impatiently as his coastboy translated unpicturesquely.
"Dam nigger done say, this be bad place, no good; he say bimeby you libe
for die."
"Tell him to go to blazes!" said Cuthbert noisily; "and, look here,
Flagstaff, ask him where the rubber is, see? Tell him we know all about
the forest, and ask him about the elephants, where their playground is?"
Cuthbert was broad-shouldered and heavily built, and under his broad
sun-helmet his face was very hot and moist.
"Tell the white man," said the chief quietly, "there is no rubber within
seven days' journey, and that we do not know ivory; elephants there were
_cala cala_--but not now."
"He's a liar!" was Cuthbert's only comment. "Get these beggars moving,
Flagstaff. Hi, _alapa', avanti, trek_!"
"These beggars," a straggling line of them, resumed their loads
uncomplainingly. They were good carriers, as carriers go, and only two
had died since the march began.
Cuthbert stood and watched them pass, using his stick dispassionately
upon the laggards. Then he turned to go.
"Ask him," he said finally, "why he calls this the road to
what-d'ye-call-it?"
The old man shook his head.
"Because of the devils," he said simply.
"Tell him he's a silly ass!" bellowed Cuthbert and followed his
carriers.
This natural path the caravan took extended in almost a straight line
through the forest. It was a strange path because of its very
smoothness, and the only drawback lay in the fact that it seemed to be
the breeding-place of flies--little black flies, as big as the house-fly
of familiar shape, if anything a little bigger.
They terrified the natives for many reasons, but principally because
they stung. They did not terrify Cuthbert, because he was dressed in
tapai cloth; none the less, there were times when these black flies
found joints in his armour and roused him to anger. This path extended
ten miles and made pleasant travelling. Then the explorer struck off
into the forest, following another path, well beaten, but more
difficult.
By devious routes Mr. Cuthbert came into the heart of Sanders'
territories, and he was successful in this, that he avoided Sanders. He
had with him a caravan of sixty men and an interpreter, and in due
course he reached his objective, which was the village of a great chief
ruling a remarkable province--Bosambo, of the Ochori, no less; sometime
Krooman, steward of the Elder Dempster line, chief on sufferance, but
none the less an interesting person. Bosambo, you may be sure, came out
to greet his visitor.
"Say to him," said Cuthbert to his interpreter, "that I am proud to meet
the great chief."
"Lord chief," said the interpreter in the vernacular, "this white man is
a fool, and has much money."
"So I see," said Bosambo.
"Tell him," said Cuthbert, with all the dignity of an ambassador, "that
I have come to bring him wonderful presents."
"The white man says," said the interpreter, "that if he is sure you are
a good man he will give you presents. Now," said the interpreter
carefully, "as I am the only man who can speak for you, let us make
arrangements. You shall give me one-third of all he offers. Then will I
persuade him to continue giving, since he is the father of mad people."
"And you," said Bosambo briefly, "are the father of liars."
He made a sign to his guard, and they seized upon the unfortunate
interpreter and led him forth. Cuthbert, in a sweat of fear, pulled a
revolver.
"Master," said Bosambo loftily, "you no make um fuss. Dis dam' nigger,
he no good; he make you speak bad t'ings. I speak um English proper. You
sit down, we talk um."
So Cuthbert sat down in the village of Ochori, and for three days there
was a great giving of presents, and signing of concessions. Bosambo
conceded the Ochori country--that was a small thing. He granted forest
rights of the Isisi, he sold the Akasava, he bartered away the Lulungo
territories and the "native products thereof"--I quote from the written
document now preserved at the Colonial Office and bearing the scrawled
signature of Bosambo--and he added, as a lordly afterthought, the Ikeli
district.
"What about river rights?" asked the delighted Cuthbert.
"What will you give um?" demanded Bosambo cautiously.
"Forty English pounds?" suggested Cuthbert.
"I take um," said Bosambo.
It was a remarkably simple business; a more knowledgeable man than
Cuthbert would have been scared by the easiness of his success, but
Cuthbert was too satisfied with himself to be scared at anything.
It is said that his leave-taking with Bosambo was of an affecting
character, that Bosambo wept and embraced his benefactor's feet.
Be that as it may, his "concessions" in his pocket, Cuthbert began his
coastward journey, still avoiding Sanders.
He came to Etebi and found a deputy-commissioner, who received him with
open arms. Here Cuthbert stayed a week.
Mr. Torrington at the time was tremendously busy with a scheme for
stamping out sleeping sickness. Until then, Cuthbert was under the
impression that it was a pleasant disease, the principal symptom of
which was a painless coma. Fascinated, he extended his stay to a
fortnight, seeing many dreadful sights, for Torrington had established a
sort of amateur clinic, and a hundred cases a day came to him for
treatment.
"And it comes from the bite of a tsetse fly?" said Cuthbert. "Show me a
tsetse."
Torrington obliged him, and when the other saw the little black insect
he went white to the lips.
"My God!" he whispered, "I've been bitten by that!"
"It doesn't follow----" began Torrington; but Cuthbert was blundering
and stumbling in wild fear to his carriers' camp.
"Get your loads!" he yelled. "Out of this cursed country we get as quick
as we can!"
Torrington, with philosophical calm, endeavoured to reassure him, but he
was not to be appeased.
He left Etebi that night and camped in the forest. Three days later he
reached a mission station, where he complained of headaches and pains in
the neck (he had not attended Torrington's clinics in vain). The
missionary, judging from the man's haggard appearance and general
incoherence that he had an attack of malaria, advised him to rest for a
few days; but Cuthbert was all a-fret to reach the coast. Twenty miles
from the mission, Cuthbert sent his carriers back, and said he would
cover the last hundred miles of the journey alone.
To this extraordinary proposition the natives agree--from that day
Cuthbert disappeared from the sight of man.
* * * * *
Sanders was taking a short cut through the forest to avoid the
interminable twists and bends of the river, when he came suddenly upon a
village of death--four sad little huts, built hastily amidst a tangle of
underwood. He called, but nobody answered him. He was too wary to enter
any of the crazy habitations.
He knew these little villages in the forest. It was the native custom to
take the aged and the dying--especially those who died sleepily--to
far-away places, beyond the reach of man, and leave them there with a
week's food and a fire, to die in decent solitude.
He called again, but only the forest answered him. The chattering, noisy
forest, all a-crackle with the movements of hidden things. Yet there was
a fire burning which told of life.
Sanders resumed his journey, first causing a quantity of food to be laid
in a conspicuous place for the man who made the fire.
He was on his way to take evidence concerning the disappearance of
Cuthbert. It was the fourth journey of its kind he had attempted. There
had been palavers innumerable.
Bosambo, chief of the Ochori, had sorrowfully disgorged the presents he
had received, and admitted his fault.
"Lord!" he confessed, "when I was with the white man on the coast I
learnt the trick of writing--it is a cursed gift--else all this trouble
would not have come about. For, desiring to show my people how great a
man I was, I wrote a letter in the English fashion, and sent it by
messenger to the coast and thence to friends in Sierra Leone, telling
them of my fortune. Thus the people in London came to know of the
treasure of this land."
Sanders, in a few illuminative sentences, conveyed his impression of
Bosambo's genius.
"You slave and son of a slave," he said, "whom I took from a prison to
rule the Ochori, why did you deceive this white man, selling him lands
that were not yours?"
"Lord!" said Bosambo simply, "there was nothing else I could sell."
But there was no clue here as to Cuthbert's whereabouts, nor at the
mission station, nor amongst the carriers detained on suspicion. One man
might have thrown light upon the situation, but Torrington was at home
fulfilling the post of assistant examiner in mechanics at South
Kensington (more in his element there) and filling in his spare time
with lecturing on "The Migration of the Bantu Races."
So that the end of Sanders' fourth quest was no more successful than the
third, or the second, or the first, and he retraced his steps to
headquarters, feeling somewhat depressed.
He took the path he had previously traversed, and came upon the Death
Camp late in the afternoon. The fire still burnt, but the food he had
placed had disappeared. He hailed the hut in the native tongue, but no
one answered him. He waited for a little while, and then gave orders for
more food to be placed on the ground.
"Poor devil!" said Sanders, and gave the order to march. He himself had
taken half a dozen steps, when he stopped. At his feet something
glittered in the fading light. He stooped and picked it up. It was an
exploded cartridge. He examined it carefully, smelt it--it had been
recently fired. Then he found another. They were Lee-Metford, and bore
the mark "'07," which meant that they were less than a year old.
He was still standing with the little brass cylinders in his hand, when
Abiboo came to him.
"Master," said the Houssa, "who ties monkeys to trees with ropes?"
"Is that a riddle?" asked Sanders testily, for his mind was busy on this
matter of cartridges.
Abiboo for answer beckoned him.
Fifty yards from the hut was a tree, at the foot of which, whimpering
and chattering and in a condition of abject terror, were two small black
monkeys tethered by ropes.
They spat and grinned ferociously as Sanders approached them. He looked
from the cartridges to the monkeys and back to the cartridges again,
then he began searching the grass. He found two more empty shells and a
rusting lancet, such as may be found in the pocket-case of any explorer.
Then he walked back to the hut before which the fire burnt, and called
softly--
"Mr. Cuthbert!"
There was no answer, and Sanders called again--
"Mr. Cuthbert!"
From the interior of the hut came a groan.
"Leave me alone. I have come here to die!" said a muffled voice.
"Come out and be civil," said Sanders coolly; "you can die afterwards."
After a few moments' delay there issued from the door of the hut the
wreck of a man, with long hair and a month-old beard, who stood sulkily
before the Commissioner.
"Might I ask," said Sanders, "what your little game is?"
The other shook his head wearily. He was a pitiable sight. His clothes
were in tatters; he was unwashed and grimy.
"Sleeping sickness," he said wearily. "Felt it coming on--seen what
horrible thing it was--didn't want to be a burden. Oh, my God! What a
fool I've been to come to this filthy country!"
"That's very likely," said Sanders. "But who told you that you had
sleeping sickness?"
"Know it--know it," said the listless man.
"Sit down," said Sanders. The other obeyed, and Sanders applied the
superficial tests.
"If you've got sleeping sickness," said Sanders, after the examination,
"I'm suffering from religious mania--man, you're crazy!"
Yet there was something in Cuthbert's expression that was puzzling. He
was dull, heavy, and stupid. His movements were slow and lethargic.
Sanders watched him as he pulled a black wooden pipe from his ragged
pocket, and with painful slowness charged it from a skin pouch.
"It's got me, I tell you," muttered Cuthbert, and lit the pipe with a
blazing twig from the fire. "I knew it (puff) as soon as that fellow
Torrington (puff) described the symptoms (puff);--felt dull and
sleepy--got a couple of monkeys and injected my blood (puff)--_they_
went drowsy, too--sure sign----"
"Where did you get that tobacco from?" demanded Sanders quickly.
Cuthbert took time to consider his answer.
"Fellow gave it me--chief fellow, Bosambo. Native tobacco, but not
bad--he gave me a devil of a lot."
"So I should say," said Sanders, and reaching over took the pouch and
put it in his pocket.
* * * * *
When Sanders had seen Mr. Cuthbert safe on board a homeward-bound
steamer, he took his twenty Houssas to the Ochori country to arrest
Bosambo, and expected Bosambo would fly; but the imperturbable chief
awaited his coming, and offered him the customary honours.
"I admit I gave the white man the hemp," he said. "I myself smoke it,
suffering no ill. How was I to know that it would make him sleep?"
"Why did you give it to him?" demanded Sanders.
Bosambo looked the Commissioner full in the face.
"Last moon you came, lord, asking why I gave him the Isisi country and
the rights of the little river, because these were not mine to give. Now
you come to me saying why did I give the white man native tobacco--Lord,
that was the only thing I gave him that was mine."
CHAPTER V.
THE SPECIAL COMMISSIONER.
The Hon. George Tackle had the good fortune to be the son of his father;
otherwise I am free to confess he had no claim to distinction. But his
father, being the proprietor of the _Courier and Echo_ (with which are
incorporated I don't know how many dead and gone stars of the Fleet
Street firmament), George had a "pull" which no amount of competitive
merit could hope to contend with, and when the stories of atrocities in
the district of Lukati began to leak out and questions were asked in
Parliament, George opened his expensively-bound Gazetteer, discovered
that the district of Lukati was in British territory, and instantly
demanded that he should be sent out to investigate these crimes, which
were a blot upon our boasted civilisation.
His father agreed, having altogether a false appreciation of his son's
genius, and suggested that George should go to the office and "get all
the facts" regarding the atrocities. George, with a good-natured smile
of amusement at the bare thought of anybody instructing him in a subject
on which he was so thoroughly conversant, promised; but the _Courier and
Echo_ office did not see him, and the librarian of the newspaper, who
had prepared a really valuable dossier of newspaper cuttings, pamphlets,
maps, and health hints for the young man's guidance, was dismayed to
learn that the confident youth had sailed without any further
instruction in the question than a man might secure from the hurried
perusal of the scraps which from day to day appeared in the morning
press.
As a special correspondent, I adduce, with ill-suppressed triumph, the
case of the Hon. George Tackle as an awful warning to all newspaper
proprietors who allow their parental affections to overcome their good
judgment.
All that the Hon. George knew was that at Lukati there had been four
well-authenticated cases of barbarous acts of cruelty against natives,
and that the Commissioner of the district was responsible for the
whippings and the torture. He thought, did the Hon. George, that this
was all that it was necessary to know. But this is where he made his big
mistake.
Up at Lukati all sorts of things happened, as Commissioner Sanders
knows, to his cost. Once he visited the district and left it tranquil,
and for Carter, his deputy, whom he left behind, the natives built a
most beautiful hut, planting gardens about, all off their own bat.
One day, when Carter had just finished writing an enthusiastic report on
the industry of his people, and the whole-hearted way they were taking
up and supporting the new rgime, the chief of the village, whom Carter
had facetiously named O'Leary (his born name was indeed Olari), came to
him.
Carter at the moment was walking through the well-swept street of the
village with his hands in his coat pockets and his big white helmet
tipped on the back of his head because the sun was setting at his back.
"Father," said the Chief Olari, "I have brought these people to see
you."
He indicated with a wave of his hand six strange warriors carrying their
shields and spears, who looked at him dispassionately.
Carter nodded.
"They desire," said Olari, "to see the wonderful little black fetish
that my father carries in his pocket that they may tell their people of
its powers."
"Tell your people," said Carter good-humouredly, "that I have not got
the fetish with me--if they will come to my hut I will show them its
wonders."
Whereupon Olari lifted his spear and struck at Carter, and the six
warriors sprang forward together. Carter fought gamely, but he was
unarmed.
When Sanders heard the news of his subordinate's death he did not faint
or fall into a fit of insane cursing. He was sitting on his broad
verandah at headquarters when the dusty messenger came. He rose with
pursed lips and frowning eyes, fingering the letter--this came from
Tollemache, inspector of police at Bokari--and paced the verandah.
"Poor chap, poor chap!" was all that he said.
He sent no message to Olari; he made no preparations for a punitive
raid; he went on signing documents, inspecting Houssas, attending dinner
parties, as though Carter had never lived or died. All these things the
spies of Olari reported, and the chief was thankful.
Lukati being two hundred miles from headquarters, through a savage and
mountainous country, an expedition was no light undertaking, and the
British Government, rich as it is, cannot afford to spend a hundred
thousand pounds to avenge the death of a subordinate official. Of this
fact Sanders was well aware, so he employed his time in collecting and
authenticating the names of Carter's assassins. When he had completed
them he went a journey seventy miles into the bush to the great
witch-doctor Kelebi, whose name was known throughout the coast country
from Dakka to the Eastern borders of Togoland.
"Here are the names of men who have put shame upon me," he said; "but
principally Olari, chief of the Lukati people."
"I will put a spell upon Olari," said the witch-doctor; "a very bad
spell, and upon these men. The charge will be six English pounds."
Sanders paid the money, and "dashed" two bottles of square-face and a
piece of proper cloth. Then he went back to headquarters.
One night through the village of Lukati ran a whisper, and the men
muttered the news with fearful shivers and backward glances.
"Olari, the chief, is cursed!"
Olari heard the tidings from his women, and came out of his hut into the
moonlight, raving horribly.
The next day he sickened, and on the fifth day he was near to dead and
suffering terrible pains, as also were six men who helped in the slaying
of Carter. That they did not die was no fault of the witch-doctor, who
excused his failure on account of the great distance between himself and
his subjects.
As for Sanders, he was satisfied, saying that even the pains were cheap
at the price, and that it would give him great satisfaction to write
"finis" to Olari with his own hand.
A week after this, Abiboo, Sanders' favourite servant, was taken ill.
There was no evidence of fever or disease, only the man began to fade
as it were.
Making inquiries, Sanders discovered that Abiboo had offended the
witch-doctor Kelebi, and that the doctor had sent him the death message.
Sanders took fifty Houssas into the bush and interviewed the
witch-doctor.
"I have reason," he said, "for believing you to be a failure as a slayer
of men."
"Master," said Kelebi in extenuation, "my magic cannot cross mountains,
otherwise Olari and his friends would have died."
"That is as it may be," said Sanders. "I am now concerned with magic
nearer at hand, and I must tell you that the day after Abiboo dies I
will hang you."
"Father," said Kelebi emphatically, "under those circumstances Abiboo
shall live."
Sanders gave him a sovereign, and rode back to headquarters, to find his
servant on the high road to recovery.
I give you this fragment of Sanders' history, because it will enable you
to grasp the peculiar environment in which Sanders spent the greater
part of his life, and because you will appreciate all the better the
irony of the situation created by the coming of the Hon. George Tackle.
Sanders was taking breakfast on the verandah of his house. From where he
sat he commanded across the flaming beauties of his garden a view of a
broad, rolling, oily sea, a golden blaze of light under the hot sun.
There was a steamer lying three miles out (only in five fathoms of
water at that), and Sanders, through his glasses, recognised her as the
Elder Dempster boat that brought the monthly mail. Since there were no
letters on his table, and the boat had been "in" for two hours, he
gathered that there was no mail for him, and was thankful, for he had
outlived the sentimental period of life when letters were pleasant
possibilities.
Having no letters, he expected no callers, and the spectacle of the Hon.
George being carried in a hammock into his garden was astonishing.
The Hon. George carefully alighted, adjusted his white pith helmet,
smoothed the creases from his immaculate ducks, and mounted the steps
that led to the stoep.
"How do?" said the visitor. "My name is Tackle--George Tackle." He
smiled, as though to say more was an insult to his hearer's
intelligence.
Sanders bowed, a little ceremoniously for him. He felt that his visitor
expected this.
"I'm out on a commission," the Hon. George went on. "As you've doubtless
heard, my governor is the proprietor of the _Courier and Echo_, and so
he thought I'd better go out and see the thing for myself. I've no doubt
the whole thing is exaggerated----"
"Hold hard," said Sanders, a light dawning on him. "I gather that you
are a sort of correspondent of a newspaper?"
"Exactly."
"That you have come to inquire into----"
"Treatment of natives, and all that," said the Hon. George easily.
"And what is wrong with the treatment of the native?" asked Sanders
sweetly.
The hon. gentleman made an indefinite gesture.
"You know--things in newspapers--missionaries," he said rapidly, being
somewhat embarrassed by the realisation that the man, if any,
responsible for the outrages was standing before him.
"I never read the newspapers," said Sanders, "and----"
"Of course," interrupted the Hon. George eagerly, "we can make it all
right as far as you are concerned."
"Oh, thank you!" Sanders' gratitude was a little overdone, but he held
out his hand. "Well, I wish you luck--let me know how you get on."
The Hon. George Tackle was frankly nonplussed.
"But excuse me," he said, "where--how----Hang it all, where am I to put
up?"
"Here?"
"Yes -- dash it, my kit is on shore! I thought----"
"You thought I'd put you up?"
"Well, I did think----"
"That I'd fall on your neck and welcome you?"
"Not exactly, but----"
"Well," said Sanders, carefully folding his napkin, "I'm not so glad to
see you as all that."
"I suppose not," said the Hon. George, bridling.
"Because you're a responsibility--I hate extra responsibility. You can
pitch your tent just wherever you like--but I cannot offer you the
hospitality you desire."
"I shall report this matter to the Administrator," said the Hon. George
ominously.
"You may report it to my grandmother's maiden aunt," said Sanders
politely.
Half an hour later he saw the Hon. George rejoin the ship that brought
him to Isisi Bassam, and chuckled. George would go straight to the
Administrator, and would receive a reception beside which a Sahara storm
would be zephyrs of Araby.
At the same time Sanders was a little puzzled, and not a little hurt.
There never had been a question of atrocities in his district, and he
was puzzled to account for the rumours that had brought the
"commissioner" on his tour of investigation--could it be a distorted
account of Olari's punishment?
"Go quickly to the ship, taking a book to the lord who has just gone
from here," was his command to a servant, and proceeded to scribble a
note:--
"I am afraid," he wrote, "I was rather rude to you--not
understanding what the devil you were driving at. An
overwhelming curiosity directs me to invite you to share my
bungalow until such time as you are ready to conduct your
investigation."
The Hon. George read this with a self-satisfied smirk.
"The way to treat these fellows," he said to the Elder Dempster captain,
"is to show 'em you'll stand no nonsense. I thought he'd climb down."
The Elder Dempster captain, who knew Sanders by repute, smiled
discreetly, but said nothing. Once more the special correspondent's
mountain of baggage was embarked in the surf boat, and the Hon. George
waved a farewell to his friends on the steamer.
The Elder Dempster skipper, leaning over the side of his bridge, watched
the surf boat rising and falling in the swell.
"There goes a man who's looking for trouble," he said, "and I wouldn't
take a half-share of the trouble he's going to find for five hundred of
the best. Is that blessed anchor up yet, Mr. Simmons? Half ahead--set
her due west, Mr. What's-your-name."
It was something of a triumph for the Hon. George. There were ten
uniformed policemen awaiting him on the smooth beach to handle his
baggage, and Sanders came down to his garden gate to meet him.
"The fact of it is----" began Sanders awkwardly; but the magnanimous
George raised his hand.
"Let bygones," he said, "be bygones."
Sanders was unaccountably annoyed by this generous display. Still more
so was he when the correspondent refused to reopen the question of
atrocities.
"As your guest," said George solemnly, "I feel that it would be better
for all concerned if I pursued an independent investigation. I shall
endeavour as far as possible, to put myself in your place, to consider
all extenuating circumstances----"
"Oh, have a gin-swizzle!" said Sanders rudely and impatiently; "you make
me tired."
"Look here," he said later, "I will only ask you two questions. Where
are these atrocities supposed to have taken place?"
"In the district of Lukati," said the Hon. George.
"Olari," thought Sanders. "Who was the victim?" he asked.
"There were several," said the correspondent, and produced his
note-book. "You understand that I'd really much rather not discuss the
matter with you, but, since you insist," he read, "Efembi of Wastambo."
"Oh!" said Sanders, and his eyebrows rose
"Kabindo of Machembi."
"Oh, lord!" said Sanders.
The Hon. George read six other cases, and with every one a line was
wiped from Sanders' forehead.
When the recital was finished the Commissioner said slowly--
"I can make a statement to you which will save you a great deal of
unnecessary trouble."
"I would rather you didn't," said George, in his best judicial manner.
"Very good," said Sanders; and went away whistling to order dinner.
Over the meal he put it to the correspondent:
"There are a number of people on this station who are friends of mine. I
won't disguise the fact from you--there is O'Neill, in charge of the
Houssas; the doctor, Kennedy, the chap in charge of the survey party;
and half a dozen more. Would you like to question them?"
"They are friends of yours?"
"Yes, personal friends."
"Then," said the Hon. George, gravely, "perhaps it would be better if I
did not see them."
"As you wish," said Sanders.
With an escort of four Houssas, and fifty carriers recruited from the
neighbouring villages, the Hon. George departed into the interior, and
Sanders saw him off.
"I cannot, of course, guarantee your life," he said, at parting, "and I
must warn you that the Government will not be responsible for any injury
that comes to you."
"I understand," said the Hon. George knowingly, "but I am not to be
deterred. I come from a stock----"
"I dare say," Sanders cut his genealogical reminiscences short; "but the
last traveller who was 'chopped' in the bush was a D'Arcy, and his
people came over with the Conqueror."
The correspondent took the straight path to Lukati, and at the end of
the third day's march came to the village of Mfabo, where lived the
great witch-doctor, Kelebi.
George pitched his camp outside the village, and, accompanied by his
four Houssas, paid a call upon the chief, which was one of the first
mistakes he made, for he should have sent for the chief to call upon
him; and if he called upon anybody, he should have made his visit to the
witch-doctor, who was a greater man than forty chiefs.
In course of time, however, he found himself squatting on the ground
outside the doctor's house, engaged, through the medium of the
interpreter he had brought from Sierra Leone, in an animated
conversation with the celebrated person.
"Tell him," said George to his interpreter, "that I am a great white
chief whose heart bleeds for the native."
"Is he a good man?" asked George.
The witch-doctor, with the recollection of Sanders' threat, said "No!"
"Why?" asked the Hon. George eagerly. "Does he beat the people?"
Not only did he beat the people, explained the witch-doctor with relish,
but there were times when he burnt them alive.
"This is a serious charge," said George, wagging his head warningly;
nevertheless he wrote with rapidity in his diary:--
"Interviewed Kelebi, respected native doctor, who states:
"'I have lived all my life in this district, and have never
known so cruel a man as Sandi (Sanders). I remember once he
caused a man to be drowned, the man's name I forget; on another
occasion he burned a worthy native alive for refusing to guide
him and his Houssas through the forest. I also remember the time
when he put a village to the fire, causing the people great
suffering.
"'The people of the country groan under his oppressions, for
from time to time he comes demanding money and crops, and if he
does not receive all that he asks for he flogs the villagers
until they cry aloud.'"
(I rather suspect that there is truth in the latter statement, for
Sanders finds no little difficulty in collecting the hut-tax, which is
the Government's due.)
George shook his head when he finished writing.
"This," he said, "looks very bad."
He shook hands with the witch-doctor, and that aged villain looked
surprised, and asked a question in the native tongue.
"You no be fit to dash him somet'ing," said the interpreter.
"Dash him?"
"Give 'um present--bottle gin."
"Certainly not," said George. "He may be satisfied with the knowledge
that he is rendering a service to humanity; that he is helping the cause
of a down-trodden people."
The witch-doctor said something in reply, which the interpreter very
wisely refrained from putting into English.
* * * * *
"How go the investigations?" asked the captain of Houssas three weeks
later.
"As far as I can gather," said Sanders, "our friend is collecting a
death-roll by the side of which the records of the Great Plague will
read like an advertisement of a health resort."
"Where is he now?"
"He has got to Lukati--and I am worried"; and Sanders looked it.
The Houssa captain nodded, for all manner of reports had come down from
Lukati country. There had been good crops, and good crops mean idleness,
and idleness means mischief. Also there had been devil dances, and the
mild people of the Bokari district, which lies contiguous to Lukati, had
lost women.
"I've got a free hand to nip rebellion in the bud," Sanders reflected
moodily; "and the chances point to rebellion----What do you say? Shall
we make a report and wait for reinforcements, or shall we chance our
luck?"
"It's your funeral," said the Houssa captain, "and I hate to advise you.
If things go wrong you'll get the kicks; but if it were mine I'd go,
like a shot--naturally."
"A hundred and forty men," mused Sanders.
"And two Maxims," suggested the other.
"We'll go," said Sanders; and half an hour later a bugle blared through
the Houssas' lines, and Sanders was writing a report to his chief in
far-away Lagos.
The Hon. George, it may be said, had no idea that he was anything but
welcome in the village of Lukati.
Olari the chief had greeted him pleasantly, and told him stories of
Sanders' brutality--stories which, as George wrote, "if true, must of
necessity sound the death-knell of British integrity in our native
possessions."
Exactly what that meant, I am not disposed to guess.
George stayed a month as the guest of Lukati. He had intended to stay at
the most three days, but there was always a reason for postponing his
departure.
Once the carriers deserted, once the roads were not safe, once Olari
asked him to remain that he might see his young men dance. George did
not know that his escort of four Houssas were feeling uneasy, because
his interpreter--as big a fool as himself--could not interpret omens.
George knew nothing of the significance of a dance in which no less than
six witch-doctors took part, or the history of the tumble-down hut that
stood in solitude at one end of the village. Had he taken the trouble to
search that hut, he would have found a table, a chair, and a truckle
bed, and on the table a report, soiled with dust and rain, which began:
"I have the honour to inform your Excellency that the natives maintain
their industrious and peaceable attitude."
For in this hut in his lifetime lived Carter, Deputy Commissioner; and
the natives, with their superstitious regard for the dead, had moved
nothing.
It was approaching the end of the month, when the Hon. George thought he
detected in his host a certain scarcely-veiled insolence of tone, and in
the behaviour of the villagers something more threatening.
The dances were a nightly occurrence now, and the measured stamping of
feet, the clash of spear against cane shield, and the never-ending growl
of the song the dancers sang, kept him awake at nights. Messengers came
to Olari daily from long distances, and once he was awakened in the
middle of the night by screams. He jumped out of bed and pushed aside
the fly of his tent to see half a dozen naked women dragged through the
streets--the result of a raid upon the unoffending Bokari. He dressed,
in a sweat of indignation and fear, and went to the chief's hut,
fortunately without his interpreter, for what Olari said would have
paralysed him.
In the morning (after this entirely unsatisfactory interview) he paraded
his four Houssas and such of his carriers as he could find, and prepared
to depart.
"Master," said Olari, when the request was interpreted, "I would rather
you stayed. The land is full of bad people, and I have still much to
tell you of the devilishness of Sandi. Moreover," said the chief,
"to-night there is to be a great dance in your honour," and he pointed
to where three slaves were engaged in erecting a big post in the centre
of the village street.
"After this I will let you go," said Olari, "for you are my father and
my mother."
The Hon. George was hesitating, when, of a sudden, at each end of the
street there appeared, as if by magic, twenty travel-stained Houssas.
They stood at attention for a moment, then opened outwards, and in the
centre of each party gleamed the fat water-jacket of a Maxim gun.
The chief said nothing, only he looked first one way and then the other,
and his brown face went a dirty grey. Sanders strolled leisurely along
toward the group. He was unshaven, his clothes were torn with
bush-thorn, in his hand was a long-barrelled revolver.
"Olari," he said gently; and the chief stepped forward.
"I think, Olari," said Sanders, "you have been chief too long."
"Master, my father was chief before me, and his father," said Olari, his
face twitching.
"What of Tagondo, my friend?" asked Sanders, speaking of Carter by his
native name.
"Master, he died," said Olari; "he died of the sickness _mongo_--the
sickness itself."
"Surely," said Sanders, nodding his head, "surely you also shall die of
the same sickness."
Olari looked round for a way of escape.
He saw the Hon. George looking from one to the other in perplexity, and
he flung himself at the correspondent's feet.
"Master!" he cried, "save me from this man who hates me!"
George understood the gesture; his interpreter told him the rest; and,
as a Houssa servant reached out his hand to the chief, the son of the
house of Widnes, strong in the sense of his righteousness, struck it
back.
"Look here, Sanders," forgetting all his previous misgivings and fears
concerning the chief, "I should say that you have punished this poor
devil enough!"
"Take that man, sergeant," said Sanders sharply; and the Houssa gripped
Olari by the shoulder and flung him backward.
"You shall answer for this!" roared the Hon. George Tackle, in impotent
wrath. "What are you going to do with him? My God! No, no!--not without
a trial!"
He sprang forward, but the Houssas caught him and restrained him.
* * * * *
"For what you have done," said the correspondent--this was a month
after, and he was going aboard the homeward steamer--"you shall suffer!"
"I only wish to point out to you," said Sanders, "that if I had not
arrived in the nick of time, you would have done all the suffering--they
were going to sacrifice you on the night I arrived. Didn't you see the
post?"
"That is a lie!" said the other. "I will make England ring with your
infamy. The condition of your district is a blot on civilisation!"
* * * * *
"There is no doubt," said Mr. Justice Keneally, summing up in the libel
action, Sanders v. _The Courier and Echo_ and another, "that the
defendant Tackle did write a number of very libellous and damaging
statements, and, to my mind, the most appalling aspect of the case is
that, commissioned as he was to investigate the condition of affairs in
the district of Lukati, he did not even trouble to find out where Lukati
was. As you have been told, gentlemen of the jury, there are no less
than four Lukatis in West Africa, the one in Togoland being the
district in which it was intended the defendant should go. How he came
to mistake Lukati of British West Africa for the Lukati of German
Togoland, I do not know, but in order to bolster up his charges against
a perfectly-innocent British official he brought forward a number of
unsupported statements, each of which must be regarded as damaging to
the plaintiff, but more damaging still to the newspaper that in its
colossal ignorance published them."
The jury awarded Sanders nine thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds.
CHAPTER VI.
THE DANCING STONES.
Heroes should be tall and handsome, with flashing eyes; Sanders was not
so tall, was yellow of face, moreover had grey hair. Heroes should also
be of gentle address, full of soft phrases, for such tender women who
come over their horizon; Sanders was a dispassionate man who swore on
the slightest provocation, and had no use for women any way.
When you place a man upon a throne, even though that throne be a wooden
stool worth in the mart fourpence more or less, you assume a
responsibility which greatly outweighs all the satisfaction or personal
gratification you may derive from your achievement. There is a grave in
Toledo, a slab of brass, over a great king-maker who lived long enough
to realise his insignificance. The epitaph upon that brass tomb of his
is eloquent of his sum knowledge of life and human effort.
PULVIS
ET
NIHIL
says the inscription, and Powder and Nothing is the ultimate destiny of
all king-makers.
Sanders was a maker of kings in the early days. He helped break a few,
so it was in obedience to the laws of compensation that he took his part
in reconstructive work.
He broke Esindini, Matabini, T'saki--to name three--and helped, in the
very old days, and in another country, to break Lobengula, the Great
Bull.
King-maker he was beyond question--you could see Republicanism written
legibly in the amused grin with which he made them--but the kings he
made were little ones--that is the custom of the British-African rule,
they break a big king and put many little kings in his place, because it
is much safer.
Somewhere about 12 north, and in longitude 0, is a land which is
peculiar for the fact that it is British, French, German, and
Italian--according to which map of Africa you judge it by.
At the time of which I write it was neither, but it was ruled by
Mensikilimbili for the Great King. He was the most powerful of monarchs,
and, for the matter of that, the most cruel. His dominion stretched
"from moonrise to sunset," said the natives, and he held undisputed
sway.
He had a court, and sat upon an ivory throne, and wore over the leopard
skins of his rank a mantle woven of gold thread and scarlet thread, and
he administered justice. He had three hundred wives and forty thousand
fighting men, and his acquaintance with white men began and ended with
the coming of a French Mission, who presented him with a tall hat, a
barrel organ, and one hundred thousand francs in gold.
This was Limbili, the great King of Yitingi.
The little kings of the Southern lands spoke of him with bated breath;
his name was uttered in a low voice, as of a god; he was the symbol of
majesty and of might--the Isisi people, themselves a nation of some
importance, and boastful likewise, referred to themselves disparagingly
when the kingdom of Yitingi was mentioned.
Following the French Mission, Sanders went up as envoy to the Limbilu,
carrying presents of a kind and messages of good will.
He was escorted into the territory by a great army and was lodged in the
city of the king. After two days' waiting he was informed that his
Majesty would see him, and was led to the Presence.
The Presence was an old man, a vicious old man, if Sanders was any judge
of character, who showed unmistakable signs of anger and contempt when
the Commissioner displayed his presents.
"And what are these, white man?" said the king. "Toys for my women, or
presents for my little chiefs?"
"These are for your Greatness," said Sanders quietly, "from a people who
do not gauge friendship by the costliness of presents."
The king gave a little sniff.
"Tell me, white man," he said; "in your travels have you ever seen so
great a king as I?"
"Lord king," said Sanders, frank to a fault. "I have seen greater."
The king frowned, and the crowd about his sacred person muttered
menacingly.
"There you lie," said the king calmly; "for there never was a greater
king than I."
"Let the white man say who is greater," croaked an aged councillor, and
a murmur of approval arose.
"Lord," said Sanders, looking into the eyes of the old man who sat on
the throne, "I have seen Lo Ben."[2]
The king frowned again, and nodded.
"Of him I have heard," he said; "he was a great king and an eater-up of
nations--who else?"
"King," lied Sanders, "also Ketcewayo"; and something like a hush fell
upon the court, for the name of Ketcewayo was one that travelled north.
"But of white kings," persisted the chief; "is there a white king in the
world whose word when it goes forth causes men to tremble?"
Sanders grinned internally, knowing such a king, but answered that in
all his life he had never met such a king.
"And of armies," said the king, "have you ever seen an army such as
mine?"
And so through the category of his possessions he ran; and Sanders,
finding that the lie was to save himself a great deal of trouble, lied
and acclaimed King Limbili as the greatest king in all the world,
commander of the most perfect army, ruler of a sublime kingdom.
It may be said that the kingdom of Yitingi owed its integrity to its
faults, for, satisfied with the perfection of all his possessions, the
great king confined his injustices, his cruelties, and his little wars
within the boundaries of his state. Also he sought relaxation therein.
One day, just after the rains, when the world was cool and the air
filled with the faint scent of African spring, Sanders made a tour
through the little provinces. These are those lands which lie away from
the big rivers. Countries curled up in odd corners, bisected sharply on
the map by this or that international boundary line, or scattered on the
fringe of the wild country vaguely inscribed by the chartographer as
"Under British Influence."
It was always an interesting journey--Sanders made it once a year--for
the way led up strange rivers and through unfamiliar scenes, past
villages where other white men than Sanders were never seen. After a
month's travel the Commissioner came to Icheli, which lies on the border
of the great king's domain, and with immense civility he was received by
the elders and the chiefs.
"Lord, you have come at a good moment," said the chief solemnly,
"to-night Daihili dances."
"And who is Daihili?" asked Sanders.
They told him; later they brought for his inspection a self-conscious
girl, a trifle pert, he thought, for a native.
A slim girl, taller than the average woman, with a figure perfectly
modelled, a face not unpleasant even from the European standpoint,
graceful in carriage, her every movement harmonious. Sanders, chewing
the end of his cigar, took her in at one glance.
"My girl, they tell me that you dance," he said.
"That is so, master," she said; "I am the greatest dancer in all the
world."
"So far I cannot go," said the cautious Commissioner; "but I do not
doubt that your dancing is very wonderful."
"Lord," she said, with a gesture, "when I dance men go mad, losing their
senses. To-night when the moon is high I will show you the dance of the
Three Lovers."
"To-night," said Sanders briefly, "I shall be in bed--and, I trust,
asleep."
The girl frowned a little, was possibly piqued, being a woman of
fifteen, and in no wise different to women elsewhere in the world. This
Sanders did not know, and I doubt whether the knowledge would have
helped him much if he did.
He heard the tom-tom beating, that night as he lay in bed, and the
rhythmical clapping of hands, and fell asleep wondering what would be
the end of a girl who danced so that men went mad.
The child was the chief's daughter, and at parting Sanders had a few
words to say concerning her.
"This daughter of yours is fifteen, and it would be better if she were
married," he said.
"Lord, she has many lovers, but none rich enough to buy her," said the
proud father, "because she is so great a dancer. Chiefs and headmen from
villages far distant come to see her." He looked round and lowered his
voice. "It is said," he whispered, "that the Great One himself has
spoken of her. Perhaps he will send for her, offering this and that. In
such a case," said the chief hopefully, "I will barter and bargain,
keeping him in suspense, and every day the price will rise----"
"If the Great One need her, let her go," said Sanders, "lest instead of
money presents he sends an army. I will have no war, or women palaver,
which is worse than war, in my country--mark that, chief."
"Lord, your word is my desire," said the chief conventionally.
Sanders went back to his own people by easy stages. At Isisi he was
detained for over a week over a question of witch-craft; at Belembi (in
the Isisi country) he stopped three days to settle a case of murder by
fetish. He was delivering judgment, and Abiboo, the Sergeant of Police,
was selecting and testing his stoutest cane for the whipping which was
to follow, when the chief of the Icheli came flying down the river with
three canoes, and Sanders, who, from where he sat, commanded an
uninterrupted view of the river, knew there was trouble--and guessed
what that trouble was.
"Justice!" demanded the chief, his voice trembling with the rage and
fear he had nursed, "justice against the Old One, the stealer of girls,
the destroyer of cities--may death go to him. Iwa!----"
The very day Sanders had left, the messenger of the great king had come,
and with him a hundred warriors, demanding the dancing girl. True to his
pre-arranged scheme, the chief began the inevitable bargaining over
terms. The presents offered were too small. The girl was worth a hundred
thousand rods--nay, a thousand bags of salt.
"You were mad," said Sanders calmly; "no woman is worth a thousand bags
of salt."
"Well, that might be," admitted the outraged father; "yet it would be
folly to begin by naming a price too low. The bargaining went on
through the night and all the next day, and in the end the envoy of the
great king grew impatient.
"Let the woman be sent for," he said, and obedient to the summons came
Daihili, demure enough, yet with covert glances of encouragement to the
unemotional ambassador, and with subtle exhibitions of her charms.
"Woman," said the messenger, "the greatest of kings desires you, will
you come?"
"Lord," said the girl, "I wish for nothing better."
With that, the hundred armed warriors in attendance at the palaver
closed round the girl.
"And so," said Sanders, "you got nothing?"
"Lord, it is as you say," moaned the old chief.
"It is evident," said Sanders, "that an injustice has been done; for no
man may take a woman unless he pay. I think," he added, with a flash of
that mordant humour which occasionally illuminated his judgments, "that
the man pays twice, once to the father, and all his life to his
wife--but that is as may be."
Six weeks later, after consultation, Sanders sent a messenger to the
great king, demanding the price of the woman.
What happened to the messenger I would rather not describe. That he was
killed, is saying the least. Just before he died, when the glaze of
death must have been on his eyes, and his poor wrecked body settling to
the rest of oblivion, he was carried to a place before the king's hut,
and Daihili danced the Dance of the Spirits. This much is now known.
Sanders did nothing; nor did the British Government, but hurried notes
were exchanged between ambassadors and ministers in Paris, and that was
the end of the incident.
Two Icheli spies went up into the great king's country. One came back
saying that the dancing girl was the favourite wife of the old king, and
that her whims swayed the destinies of the nation. Also he reported that
because of this slim girl who danced, many men, councillors, and
captains of war had died the death.
The other spy did not come back.
It may have been his discovery that induced the girl to send an army
against the Icheli, thinking perchance that her people were spying upon
her.
One day the city of Icheli was surrounded by the soldiers of the great
king, and neither man, woman nor child escaped.
The news of the massacre did not come to Sanders for a long time. The
reason was simple there was none to carry the message, for the Icheli
are isolated folk. One day, however, an Isisi hunting party, searching
for elephants, came upon a place where there was a smell of burning and
many skeletons--and thus Sanders knew----
"We cannot," wrote Monsieur Leon Marchassa, Minister for Colonial
Affairs, "accept responsibility for the misdoings of the king of the
Yitingi, and my Government would regard with sympathetic interest any
attempt that was made by His Majesty's Government to pacify this
country."
But the British Government did nothing, because war is an expensive
matter, and Sanders grinned and cursed his employers genially.
Taking his life in his hands, he went up to the border of Yitingi, with
twenty policemen, and sent a messenger--a Yitingi messenger--to the
king. With the audacity which was not the least of his assets, he
demanded that the king should come to him for a palaver.
This adventure nearly proved abortive at the beginning, for just as the
_Zaire_ was steaming to the borders Sanders unexpectedly came upon
traces of a raiding expedition. There were unmistakable signs as to the
author.
"I have a mind to turn back and punish that cursed Bosambo, Chief of the
Ochori," he said to Sergeant Abiboo, "for having sworn by a variety of
gods and devils that he would keep the peace; behold he has been raiding
in foreign territory."
"He will keep, master," said Abiboo, "besides which, he is in the
neighbourhood, for his fires are still warm."
So Sanders went on, and sent his message to the king.
He kept steam in his little boat--he had chosen the only place where the
river touches the Yitingi border--and waited, quite prepared to make an
ignominious, if judicious, bolt.
To his astonishment, his spies brought word that the king was coming. He
owed this condescension to the influence of the little dancing girl, for
she, woman-like, had a memory for rebuffs, and had a score to settle
with Mr. Commissioner Sanders.
The great king arrived, and across the meadow-like lands that fringe the
river on both sides Sanders watched the winding procession with mingled
feelings. The king halted a hundred yards from the river, and his big
scarlet umbrella was the centre of a black line of soldiers spreading
out on either hand for three hundred yards.
Then a party detached itself and came towards the dead tree by the water
side, whereon hung limply in the still air the ensign of England.
"This," said Sanders to himself, "is where I go dead one time."
It is evidence of the seriousness of the situation, as it appealed to
him, that he permitted himself to descend to Coast English.
"The king, the Great One, awaits you, white man, offering you safety in
his shadow," said the king's messenger; and Sanders nodded. He walked
leisurely toward the massed troops, and presently appeared before the
old man squatting on a heap of skins and blinking like an ape in the
sunlight.
"Lord king, live for ever," said Sanders glibly, and as he raised his
hand in salute he saw the girl regarding him from under knit brows.
"What is your wish, white man?" said the old king; "what rich presents
do you bring, that you call me many days' journey?"
"Lord, I bring no presents," said Sanders boldly; "but a message from a
king who is greater than you, whose soldiers outnumber the sands of the
river, and whose lands extend from the east to the west, from the north
to the south."
"There is no such king," snarled the old man. "You lie, white man, and I
will cut your tongue into little strips."
"Let him give his message, master," said the girl.
"This is the message," said Sanders. He stood easily, with his hands in
the pockets of his white uniform jacket, and the king was nearer death
than he knew. "My master says: 'Because the Great King of Yitingi has
eaten up the Icheli folk: because he has crossed the borderland and
brought suffering to my people, my heart is sore. Yet, if the Great King
will pay a fine of one thousand head of cattle and will allow free
access to his country for my soldiers and my commissioners, I will live
in peace with him.'"
The old man laughed, a wicked, cackling laugh.
"Oh, ko!" he chuckled; "a great king!"
Then the girl stepped forward.
"Sandi," she said, "once you put me to shame, for when I would have
danced for you, you slept."
"To you, Daihili," said Sanders steadily, "I say nothing; I make no
palaver with women, for that is not the custom or the law. Still less
do I talk with dancing girls. My business is with Limbili the king."
The king was talking rapidly behind his hand to a man who bent over him,
and Sanders, his hands still in his jacket pockets, snapped down the
safety catches of his automatic Colts.
All the time the girl spoke he was watching from the corners of his eyes
the man who talked with the king. He saw him disappear in the crowd of
soldiers who stood behind the squatting figures, and prepared for the
worst.
"Since I may not dance for you," the girl was saying, "my lord the king
would have you dance for me."
"That is folly," said Sanders: then he saw the line on either side wheel
forward, and out came his pistols.
"Crack! Crack!"
The shot intended for the king missed him, and broke the leg of a
soldier behind.
It had been hopeless from the first; this Sanders realised with some
philosophy, as he lay stretched on the baked earth, trussed like a fowl,
and exceedingly uncomfortable. At the first shot Abiboo, obeying his
instructions, would turn the bows of the steamer down stream; this was
the only poor satisfaction he could derive from the situation.
Throughout that long day, with a pitiless sun beating down upon him, he
lay in the midst of an armed guard, waiting for the death which must
come in some dreadful form or other.
He was undismayed, for this was the logical end of the business. Toward
the evening they gave him water, which was most acceptable. From the
gossip of his guards he gathered that the evening had been chosen for
his exit, but the manner of it he must guess.
From where he lay he could see, by turning his head a little, the king's
tent, and all the afternoon men were busily engaged in heaping flat
stones upon the earth before the pavilion. They were of singular
uniformity, and would appear to be specially hewn and dressed for some
purpose. He asked his guard a question.
"They are the dancing stones, white man," said the soldier, "they come
from the mountain near the city."
When darkness fell a huge fire was lit; it was whilst he was watching
this that he heard of the _Zaire's_ escape, and was thankful.
He must have been dozing, exhausted in body and mind, when he was
dragged to his feet, his bonds were slipped, and he was led before the
king. Then he saw what form his torture was to take.
The flat stones were being taken from the fire with wooden pincers and
laid to form a rough pavement before the tent.
"White man," said the king, as rude hands pulled off the Commissioner's
boots, "the woman Daihili would see you dance."
"Be assured, king," said Sanders, between his teeth, "that some day you
shall dance in hell in more pleasant company, having first danced at the
end of a rope."
"If you live through the dancing," said the king, "you will be sorry."
A ring of soldiers with their spears pointing inward surrounded the
pavement, those on the side of the tent crouching so that their bodies
might not interrupt the Great One's view.
"Dance," said the king; and Sanders was thrown forward. The first stone
he touched was only just warm, and on this he stood still till a
spear-thrust sent him to the next. It was smoking hot, and he leapt up
with a stifled cry. Down he came to another, hotter still, and leapt
again--
"Throw water over him," said the amused king, when they dragged the
fainting man off the stones, his clothes smouldering where he lay in an
inert heap.
"Now dance," said the king again--when out of the darkness about the
group leapt a quivering pencil of yellow light.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-a-a-a!
Abiboo's Maxim-gun was in action at a range of fifty yards, and with him
five hundred Ochori men under that chief of chiefs, Bosambo.
For a moment the Yitingi stood, and then, as with a wild yell which was
three-parts fear, the Ochori charged, the king's soldiers broke and
fled.
They carried Sanders to the steamer quickly, for the Yitingi would
re-form, being famous night fighters. Sanders, sitting on the deck of
the steamer nursing his burnt feet and swearing gently, heard the
scramble of the Ochori as they got into their canoes, heard the grunting
of his Houssas hoisting the Maxim on board, and fainted again.
"Master," said Bosambo in the morning, "many moons ago you made charge
against the Ochori, saying they would not fight. That was true, but in
those far-off days there was no chief Bosambo. Now, because of my
teaching, and because I have put fire into their stomachs, they have
defeated the soldiers of the Great King."
He posed magnificently, for on his shoulders was a mantle of gold thread
woven with blue, which was not his the night before.
"Bosambo," said Sanders, "though I have a score to settle with you for
breaking the law by raiding, I am grateful that the desire for the
properties of others brought you to this neighbourhood. Where did you
get that cloak?" he demanded.
"I stole it," said Bosambo frankly, "from the tent of the Great King;
also I brought with me one of the stones upon which my lord would not
stand. I brought this, thinking that it would be evidence."
Sanders nodded, and bit his cigar with a little grimace. "On which my
lord would not stand," was very prettily put.
"Let me see it," he said; and Bosambo himself carried it to him.
It had borne the heat well enough, but rough handling had chipped a
corner; and Sanders looked at this cracked corner long and earnestly.
"Here," he said, "is an argument that no properly constituted British
Government can overlook--I see Limbili's finish."
* * * * *
The rainy season came round and the springtime, before Sanders again
stood in the presence of the Great King. All around him was desolation
and death. The plain was strewn with the bodies of men, and the big city
was a smoking ruin. To the left, three regiments of Houssas were
encamped; to the right, two battalions of African Rifles sat at "chop,"
and the snappy notes of their bugles came sharply through the still air.
"I am an old man," mumbled the king; but the girl who crouched at his
side said nothing. Only her eyes never left the brick-red face of
Sanders.
"Old you are," he said, "yet not too old to die."
"I am a great king," whined the other, "and it is not proper that a
great king should hang."
"Yet if you live," said Sanders, "many other great kings will say, 'We
may commit these abominations, and because of our greatness we shall
live.'"
"And what of me, lord?" said the girl in a low voice.
"You!" Sanders looked at her. "Ho, hi," he said, as though he had just
remembered her. "You are the dancing girl? Now we shall do nothing with
you, Daihili--because you are nothing."
He saw her shrink as one under a lash.
After the execution, the Colonel of the Houssas and Sanders were talking
together.
"What I can't understand," said the Colonel, "is why we suddenly decided
upon this expedition. It has been necessary for years--but why this
sudden activity?"
Sanders grinned mysteriously.
"A wonderful people, the English," he said airily. "Old Man Limbili
steals British subjects, and I report it. 'Very sad,' says England. He
wipes out a nation. 'Deplorable!' says England. He makes me dance on the
original good-intention stones of Hades. 'Treat it as a joke,' says
England; but when I point out that these stones assay one ounce ten
penny-weights of refined gold, and that we've happed upon the richest
reef in Central Africa, there's an army here in six months!"
I personally think that Sanders may have been a little unjust in his
point of view. After all, wars cost money, and wars of vengeance are
notoriously unprofitable.
[Footnote 2: Lo Bengola, the King of the Matabele.]
CHAPTER VII.
THE FOREST OF HAPPY DREAMS.
Sanders was tied up at a "wooding," being on his way to collect taxes
and administer justice to the folk who dwell on the lower Isisi River.
By the river-side the little steamer was moored. There was a tiny bay
here, and the swift currents of the river were broken to a gentle flow;
none the less, he inspected the shore-ends of the wire hawsers before he
crossed the narrow plank that led to the deck of the _Zaire_. The wood
was stacked on the deck, ready for to-morrow's run. The new water-gauge
had been put in by Yoka, the engineer, as he had ordered; the engines
had been cleaned; and Sanders nodded approvingly. He stepped lightly
over two or three sleeping forms curled up on the deck, and gained the
shore. "Now I think I'll turn in," he muttered, and looked at his watch.
It was nine o'clock. He stood for a moment on the crest of the steep
bank, and stared back across the river. The night was black, but he saw
the outlines of the forest on the other side. He saw the jewelled sky,
and the pale reflection of stars in the water. Then he went to his tent,
and leisurely got into his pyjamas. He jerked two tabloids from a tiny
bottle, swallowed them, drank a glass of water, and thrust his head
through the tent opening. "Ho, Sokani!" he called, speaking in the
vernacular, "let the _lo-koli_ sound!"
He went to bed.
He heard the rustle of men moving, the gurgles of laughter as his subtle
joke was repeated, for the Cambul people have a keen sense of humour,
and then the penetrating rattle of sticks on the native drum--a hollow
tree-trunk. Fiercely it beat--furiously, breathlessly, with now and then
a deeper note as the drummer, using all his art, sent the message of
sleep to the camp.
In one wild crescendo, the _lo-koli_ ceased, and Sanders turned with a
sigh of content and closed his eyes--he sat up suddenly. He must have
dozed; but he was wide awake now.
He listened, then slipped out of bed, pulling on his mosquito boots.
Into the darkness of the night he stepped, and found N'Kema, the
engineer, waiting.
"You heard, master?" said the native.
"I heard," said Sanders, with a puzzled face, "yet we are nowhere near a
village."
He listened.
From the night came a hundred whispering noises, but above all these,
unmistakable, the faint clatter of an answering drum. The white man
frowned in his perplexity. "No village is nearer than the Bongindanga,"
he muttered, "not even a fishing village; the woods are deserted----"
The native held up a warning finger, and bent his head, listening. He
was reading the message that the drum sent. Sanders waited; he knew the
wonderful fact of this native telegraph, how it sent news through the
trackless wilds. He could not understand it, no European could; but he
had respect for its mystery.
"A white man is here," read the native; "he has the sickness."
"A white man!"
In the darkness Sanders' eyebrows rose incredulously.
"He is a foolish one," N'Kema read; "he sits in the Forest of Happy
Thoughts, and will not move."
Sanders clicked his lips impatiently. "No white man would sit in the
Forest of Happy Thoughts," he said, half to himself, "unless he were
mad."
But the distant drum monotonously repeated the outrageous news. Here,
indeed, in the heart of the loveliest glade in all Africa, encamped in
the very centre of the Green Path of Death, was a white man, a sick
white man--in the Forest of Happy Thoughts--a sick white man.
So the drum went on and on, till Sanders, rousing his own _lo-koli_ man,
sent an answer crashing along the river, and began to dress hurriedly.
In the forest lay a very sick man. He had chosen the site for the camp
himself. It was in a clearing, near a little creek that wound between
high elephant-grass to the river. Mainward chose it, just before the
sickness came, because it was pretty. This was altogether an inadequate
reason; but Mainward was a sentimentalist, and his life was a long
record of choosing pretty camping places, irrespective of danger. "He
was," said a newspaper, commenting on the crowning disaster which sent
him a fugitive from justice to the wild lands of Africa, "over-burdened
with imagination." Mainward was cursed with ill-timed confidence; this
was one of the reasons he chose to linger in that deadly strip of land
of the Ituri, which is clumsily named by the natives "The
Lands-where-all-bad-thoughts-become-good-thoughts" and poetically
adapted by explorers and daring traders as "The Forest of Happy Dreams."
Over-confidence had generally been Mainward's undoing--over-confidence
in the ability of his horses to win races; over-confidence in his own
ability to secure money to hide his defalcations--he was a director in
the Welshire County Bank once--over-confidence in securing the love of a
woman, who, when the crash came, looked at him blankly and said she was
sorry, but she had no idea he felt towards her like that----
Now Mainward lifted his aching head from the pillow and cursed aloud at
the din. He was endowed with the smattering of pigeon-English which a
man may acquire from a three months' sojourn divided between Sierra
Leone and Grand Bassam.
"Why for they make 'em cursed noise, eh?" he fretted. "You plenty
fool-man, Abiboo."
"Si, senor," agreed the Kano boy, calmly.
"Stop it, d'ye hear? stop it!" raved the man on the tumbled bed; "this
noise is driving me mad--tell them to stop the drum."
The _lo-koli_ stopped of its own accord, for the listeners in the sick
man's camp had heard the faint answer from Sanders.
"Come here, Abiboo--I want some milk; open a fresh tin; and tell the
cook I want some soup, too."
The servant left him muttering and tossing from side to side on the
creaking camp bedstead. Mainward had many strange things to think about.
It was strange how they all clamoured for immediate attention; strange
how they elbowed and fought one another in their noisy claims to his
notice. Of course, there was the bankruptcy and the discovery at the
bank--it was very decent of that inspector fellow to clear out--and
Ethel, and the horses, and--and----
The Valley of Happy Dreams! That would make a good story if Mainward
could write; only, unfortunately, he could not write. He could sign
things, sign his name "three months after date pay to the order of----"
He could sign other people's names; he groaned, and winced at the
thought.
But here was a forest where bad thoughts became good, and, God knows,
his mind was ill-furnished. He wanted peace and sleep and happiness--he
greatly desired happiness. Now suppose "Fairy Lane" had won the
Wokingham Stakes? It had not, of course (he winced again at the bad
memory), but suppose it had? Suppose he could have found a friend who
would have lent him 16,000, or even if Ethel----
"Master," said Abiboo's voice, "dem puck-a-puck, him lib for come."
"Eh, what's that?"
Mainward turned almost savagely on the man.
"Puck-a-puck--you hear'um?"
But the sick man could not hear the smack of the _Zaire_'s stern wheel,
as the little boat breasted the downward rush of the river--he was
surprised to see that it was dawn, and grudgingly admitted to himself
that he had slept. He closed his eyes again and had a strange dream. The
principal figure was a small, tanned, clean-shaven man in a white
helmet, who wore a dingy yellow overcoat over his pyjamas.
"How are you feeling?" said the stranger.
"Rotten bad," growled Mainward, "especially about Ethel; don't you think
it was pretty low down of her to lead me on to believe she was awfully
fond of me, and then at the last minute to chuck me?"
"Shocking," said the strange, white man gravely, "but put her out of
your mind just now; she isn't worth troubling about. What do you say to
this?"
He held up a small, greenish pellet between his forefinger and thumb,
and Mainward laughed weakly.
"Oh, rot!" he chuckled faintly. "You're one of those Forest of Happy
Dreams Johnnies; what's that? A love philtre?" He was hysterically
amused at the witticism.
Sanders nodded.
"Love or life, it's all one," he said, but apparently unamused. "Swallow
it!"
Mainward giggled and obeyed.
"And now," said the stranger--this was six hours later--"the best thing
you can do is to let my boys put you on my steamer and take you down
river."
Mainward shook his head. He had awakened irritable and lamentably weak.
"My dear chap, it's awfully kind of you to have come--by the way, I
suppose you _are_ a doctor?"
Sanders shook his head.
"On the contrary, I am the Commissioner of this district," he said
flippantly--"but you were saying----"
"I want to stay here--it's devilish pretty."
"Devilish is the very adjective I should have used--my dear man, this is
the plague spot of the Congo; it's the home of every death-dealing fly
and bug in Africa."
He waved his hand to the hidden vistas of fresh green glades, of
gorgeous creepers shown in the light of the camp fires.
"Look at the grass," he said; "it's homeland grass--that's the seductive
part of it; I nearly camped here myself. Come, my friend, let me take
you to my camp."
Mainward shook his head obstinately.
"I'm obliged, but I'll stay here for a day or so. I want to try the
supernatural effects of this pleasant place," he said with a weary
smile. "I've got so many thoughts that need treatment."
"Look here," said Sanders roughly, "you know jolly well how this forest
got its name; it is called Happy Dreams because it's impregnated with
fever, and with every disease from beri-beri to sleeping sickness. You
don't wake from the dreams you dream here. Man, I know this country, and
you're a newcomer; you've trekked here because you wanted to get away
from life and start all over again."
"I beg your pardon." Mainward's face flushed; and he spoke a little
stiffly.
"Oh, I know all about you--didn't I tell you I was the Commissioner? I
was in England when things were going rocky with you, and I've read the
rest in the papers I get from time to time. But all that is nothing to
me. I'm here to help you start fair. If you had wanted to commit
suicide, why come to Africa to do it? Be sensible and shift your camp;
I'll send my steamer back for your men. Will you come?"
"No," said Mainward sulkily. "I don't want to, I'm not keen; besides,
I'm not fit to travel."
Here was an argument which Sanders could not answer. He was none too
sure upon that point himself, and he hesitated before he spoke again.
"Very well," he said at length, "suppose you stay another day to give
you a chance to pull yourself together. I'll come along to-morrow with a
tip-top invalid chair for you--is it a bet?"
Mainward held out his shaking hand, and the ghost of a smile puckered
the corners of his eyes. "It's a bet," he said.
He watched the Commissioner walk through the camp, speaking to one man
after another in a strange tongue. A singular, masterful man this,
thought Mainward. Would he have mastered Ethel? He watched the stranger
with curious eyes, and noted how his own lazy devils of carriers jumped
at his word.
"Good-night," said Sanders' voice; and Mainward looked up. "You must
take another of these pellets, and to-morrow you'll be as fit as a
donkey-engine. I've got to get back to my camp to-night, or I shall find
half my stores stolen in the morning; but if you'd rather I stopped----"
"No, no," replied the other hastily. He wanted to be alone. He had lots
of matters to settle with himself. There was the question of Ethel, for
instance.
"You won't forget to take the tabloid?"
"No. I say, I'm awfully obliged to you for coming. You've been a good
white citizen."
Sanders smiled. "Don't talk nonsense!" he said good-humouredly. "This is
all brotherly love. White to white, and kin to kin, don't you know?
We're all alone here, and there isn't a man of our colour within five
hundred miles. Good-night, and please take the tabloid----"
Mainward lay listening to the noise of departure. He thought he heard a
little bell tingle. That must be for the engines. Then he heard the
puck-a-puck of the wheel--so that was how the steamer got its name.
Abiboo came with some milk. "You take um medicine, master?" he inquired.
"I take um," murmured Mainward; but the green tabloid was underneath his
pillow.
Then there began to steal over him a curious sensation of content. He
did not analyse it down to its first cause. He had had sufficient
introspective exercise for one day. It came to him as a pleasant shock
to realise that he was happy.
He opened his eyes and looked round.
His bed was laid in the open, and he drew aside the curtains of his net
to get a better view.
A little man was walking briskly toward him along the velvet stretch of
grass that sloped down from the glade, and Mainward whistled.
"Atty," he gasped. "By all that's wonderful."
Atty, indeed, it was: the same wizened Atty as of yore; but no longer
pulling the long face to which Mainward had been accustomed. The little
man was in his white riding-breeches, his diminutive top-boots were
splashed with mud, and on the crimson of his silk jacket there was
evidence of a hard race. He touched his cap jerkily with his whip, and
shifted the burden of the racing saddle he carried to the other arm.
"Why, Atty," said Mainward, with a smile, "what on earth are you doing
here?"
"It's a short way to the jockey's room, sir," said the little man. "I've
just weighed in. I thought the Fairy would do it, sir, and she did."
Mainward nodded wisely. "I knew she would, too," he said.
"Did she give you a smooth ride?"
The jockey grinned again. "She never does that," he said. "But she ran
gamely enough. Coming up out of the Dip, she hung a little, but I showed
her the whip, and she came on as straight as a die. I thought once the
Stalk would beat us--I got shut in, but I pulled her round, and we were
never in difficulties. I could have won by ten lengths," said Atty.
"You could have won by ten lengths," repeated Mainward in wonder. "Well,
you've done me a good turn, Atty. This win will get me out of one of the
biggest holes that ever a reckless man tumbled into--I shall not forget
you, Atty."
"I'm sure you won't, sir," said the little jockey gratefully; "if you'll
excuse me now, sir----"
Mainward nodded and watched him, as he moved quickly through the trees.
There were several people in the glade now, and Mainward looked down
ruefully at his soiled duck suit. "What an ass I was to come like this,"
he muttered in his annoyance. "I might have known that I should have met
all these people."
There was one he did not wish to see; and as soon as he sighted Venn,
with his shy eyes and his big nose, Mainward endeavoured to slip back
out of observation. But Venn saw him, and came tumbling through the
trees, with his big, flabby hand extended and his dull eyes aglow.
"Hullo, hullo!" he grinned, "been looking for you."
Mainward muttered some inconsequent reply. "Rum place to find you, eh?"
Venn removed his shining silk hat and mopped his brow with an awesome
silk handkerchief.
"But look here, old feller--about that money?"
"Don't worry, my dear man," Mainward interposed easily. "I shall pay you
now."
"That ain't what I mean," said the other impetuously; "a few hundred
more or less does not count. But you wanted a big sum----"
"And you told me you'd see me----"
"I know, I know," Venn put in hastily; "but that was before Kaffirs
started jumpin'. Old feller, you can have it!"
He said this with grotesque emphasis, standing with his legs wide apart,
his hat perched on the back of his head, his plump hands dramatically
outstretched: and Mainward laughed outright.
"Sixteen thousand?" he asked.
"Or twenty," said the other impressively. "I want to show you----"
Somebody called him, and with a hurried apology he went blundering up
the green slope, stopping and turning back to indulge in a little dumb
show illustrative of his confidence in Mainward and his willingness to
oblige.
Mainward was laughing, a low, gurgling laugh of pure enjoyment. Venn, of
all people! Venn, with his accursed questions and talk of securities.
Well! Well!
Then his merriment ceases, and he winced again, and his heart beat
faster and faster, and a curious weakness came over him----
How splendidly cool she looked.
She walked in the clearing, a white, slim figure; he heard the swish of
her skirt as she came through the long grass--white, with a green belt
all encrusted with gold embroidery. He took in every detail
hungrily--the dangling gold ornaments that hung from her belt, the lace
collar at her throat, the----
She did not hurry to him, that was not her way.
But in her eyes dawned a gradual tenderness--those dear eyes that
dropped before his shyly.
"Ethel!" he whispered, and dared to take her hand.
"Aren't you wonderfully surprised?" she said.
"Ethel! Here!"
"I--I had to come."
She would not look at him, but he saw the pink in her cheek and heard
the faltering voice with a wild hope. "I behaved so badly, dear--so very
badly."
She hung her head.
"Dear! dear!" he muttered, and groped toward her like a blind man.
She was in his arms, crushed against his breast, the perfume of her
presence in his brain.
"I had to come to you." Her hot cheek was against his. "I love you so."
"Me--love me? Do you mean it?" He was tremulous with happiness, and his
voice broke--"Dearest."
Her face was upturned to his, her lips so near; he felt her heart
beating as furiously as his own. He kissed her--her lips, her eyes, her
dear hair----
"O, God, I'm happy!" she sobbed, "so--so happy----"
* * * * *
Sanders sprang ashore just as the sun was rising, and came thoughtfully
through the undergrowth to the camp. Abiboo, squatting by the curtained
bed, did not rise. Sanders walked to the bed, pulled aside the mosquito
netting, and bent over the man who lay there.
Then he drew the curtains again, lit his pipe slowly, and looked down at
Abiboo.
"When did he die?" he asked.
"In the dark of the morning, master," said the man.
Sanders nodded slowly. "Why did you not send for me?"
For a moment the squatting figure made no reply, then he rose and
stretched himself.
"Master," he said, speaking in Arabic--which is a language which allows
of nice distinctions--"this man was happy; he walked in the Forest of
Happy Thoughts; why should I call him back to a land where there was
neither sunshine nor happiness, but only night and pain and sickness?"
"You're a philosopher," said Sanders irritably.
"I am a follower of the Prophet," said Abiboo, the Kano boy; "and all
things are according to God's wisdom."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AKASAVAS.
You who do not understand how out of good evil may arise must take your
spade to some virgin grassland, untouched by the hand of man from the
beginning of time. Here is soft, sweet grass, and never a sign of
nettle, or rank, evil weed. It is as God made it. Turn the soil with
your spade, intent on improving His handiwork, and next season--weeds,
nettles, lank creeping things, and coarse-leafed vegetation cover the
ground.
Your spade has aroused to life the dormant seeds of evil, germinated the
ugly waste life that all these long years has been sleeping out of
sight--in twenty years, with careful cultivation, you may fight down the
weeds and restore the grassland, but it takes a lot of doing.
Your intentions may have been the best in disturbing the primal sod; you
may have had views of roses flourishing where grass was; the result is
very much the same.
I apply this parable to the story of a missionary and his work. The
missionary was a good man, though of the wrong colour. He had large
ideas on his duty to his fellows; he was inspired by the work of his
cloth in another country; but, as Sanders properly said, India is not
Africa.
Kenneth McDolan came to Mr. Commissioner Sanders with a letter of
introduction from the new Administration.
Sanders was at "chop" one blazing morning when his servant, who was also
his sergeant, Abiboo, brought a card to him. It was a nice card, rounded
at the corners, and gilt-edged, and in the centre, in old English type,
was the inscription--
Rev. KENNETH McDOLAN.
Underneath was scribbled in pencil: "On a brief visit." Sanders sniffed
impatiently, for "reverend" meant "missionary," and "missionary" might
mean anything. He looked at the card again and frowned in his
perplexity. Somehow the old English and the reverendness of the visiting
card did not go well with the rounded corners and the gilt edge.
"Where is he?" he demanded.
"Master," said Abiboo, "he is on the verandah. Shall I kick him off?"
Abiboo said this very naturally and with simple directness, and Sanders
stared at him.
"Son of sin!" he said sternly, "is it thus you speak of God-men, and of
white men at that?"
"This man wears the clothes of a God-man," said Abiboo serenely; "but he
is a black man, therefore of no consequence."
Sanders pulled a pair of mosquito boots over his pyjamas and swore to
himself.
"White missionaries, yes," he said wrathfully, "but black missionaries I
will not endure."
The Reverend Kenneth was sitting in Sanders' basket-chair, one leg flung
negligently over one side of the chair to display a silk sock. His
finger-tips were touching, and he was gazing with good-natured tolerance
at the little green garden which was the Commissioner's special delight.
He was black, very black; but his manners were easy, and his bearing
self-possessed.
He nodded smilingly to Sanders and extended a lazy hand.
"Ah, Mr. Commissioner," he said in faultless English, "I have heard a
great deal about you."
"Get out of that chair," said Sanders, who had no small talk worth
mentioning, "and stand up when I come out to you! What do you want?"
The Reverend Kenneth rose quickly, and accepted the situation with a
rapidity which will be incomprehensible to any who do not know how
thumbnail deep is the cultivation of the cultured savage.
"I am on a brief visit," he said, a note of deference in his tone. "I am
taking the small towns and villages along the coast, holding services,
and I desire permission to speak to your people."
This was not the speech he had prepared. He had come straight from
England, where he had been something of a lion in Bayswater society, and
where, too, his theological attainments had won him regard and no small
amount of fame in even a wider circle.
"You may speak to my people," said Sanders; "but you may not address the
Kano folk nor the Houssas, because they are petrified in the faith of
the Prophet."
Regaining his self-possession, the missionary smiled.
"To bring light into dark places----" he began.
"Cut it out," said Sanders briefly; "the palaver is finished." He turned
on his heel and re-entered the bungalow.
Then a thought struck him.
"Hi!" he shouted, and the retiring missionary turned back.
"Where did you pick up the 'Kenneth McDolan'?" he asked.
The negro smiled again.
"It is the patronymic bestowed upon me at Sierra Leone by a good
Christian white man, who brought me up and educated me as though I were
his own son," he recited.
Sanders showed his teeth.
"I have heard of such cases," he said unpleasantly.
The next day the missionary announced his intention of proceeding up
country. He came in to see Sanders as though nothing had happened.
Perhaps he expected to find the Commissioner a little ashamed of
himself; but if this was so he was disappointed, for Sanders was
blatantly unrepentant.
"You've got a letter from the Administration," he said, "so I can't stop
you."
"There is work for me," said the missionary, "work of succour and
relief. In India some four hundred thousand----"
"This is not India," said Sanders shortly; and with no other word the
native preacher went his way.
Those who know the Akasava people best know them for their
laziness--save in matter of vendetta, or in the settlement of such blood
feuds as come their way, or in the lifting of each other's goats, in all
which matters they display an energy and an agility truly inexplicable.
"He is an Akasava man--he points with his foot," is a proverb of the
Upper River, and the origin of the saying goes back to a misty time when
(as the legend goes) a stranger happened upon a man of the tribe lying
in the forest.
"Friend," said the stranger, "I am lost. Show me the way to the river";
and the Akasava warrior, raising a leg from the ground, pointed with his
toe to the path.
Though this legend lacks something in point of humour, it is regarded as
the acme of mirth-provoking stories from Bama to the Lado country.
It was six months after the Reverend Kenneth McDolan had left for his
station that there came to Sanders at his headquarters a woeful
deputation, arriving in two canoes in the middle of the night, and
awaiting him when he came from his bath to the broad stoep of his house
in the morning--a semi-circle of chastened and gloomy men, who squatted
on the wooden stoep, regarding him with the utmost misery.
"Lord, we are of the Akasava people," said the spokesman, "and we have
come a long journey."
"So I am aware," said Sanders, with acrid dryness, "unless the Akasava
country has shifted its position in the night. What do you seek?"
"Master, we are starving," said the speaker, "for our crops have failed,
and there is no fish in the river; therefore we have come to you, who
are our father."
Now this was a most unusual request; for the Central African native does
not easily starve, and, moreover, there had come no news of crop failure
from the Upper River.
"All this sounds like a lie," said Sanders thoughtfully, "for how may a
crop fail in the Akasava country, yet be more than sufficient in Isisi?
Moreover, fish do not leave their playground without cause, and if they
do they may be followed."
The spokesman shifted uneasily.
"Master, we have had much sickness," he said, "and whilst we cared for
one another the planting season had passed; and, as for the fish, our
young men were too full of sorrow for their dead to go long journeys."
Sanders stared.
"Therefore we have come from our chief asking you to save us, for we are
starving."
The man spoke with some confidence, and this was the most surprising
thing of all. Sanders was nonplussed, frankly confounded. For all the
eccentric course his daily life took, there was a certain regularity
even in its irregularity. But here was a new and unfamiliar situation.
Such things mean trouble, and he was about to probe this matter to its
depth.
"I have nothing to give you," he said, "save this advice--that you
return swiftly to where you came from and carry my word to your chief.
Later I will come and make inquiries."
The men were not satisfied, and an elder, wrinkled with age, and
sooty-grey of head, spoke up.
"It is said, master," he mumbled, through his toothless jaws, "that in
other lands when men starve there come many white men bringing grain and
comfort."
"Eh?"
Sanders' eyes narrowed.
"Wait," he said, and walked quickly through the open door of his
bungalow.
When he came out he carried a pliant whip of rhinoceros-hide, and the
deputation, losing its serenity, fled precipitately.
Sanders watched the two canoes paddling frantically up stream, and the
smile was without any considerable sign of amusement. That same night
the _Zaire_ left for the Akasava country, carrying a letter to the
Reverend Kenneth McDolan, which was brief, but unmistakable in its
tenor.
"Dear Sir,"--it ran--"You will accompany the bearer to
headquarters, together with your belongings. In the event of
your refusing to comply with this request, I have instructed my
sergeant to arrest you. Yours faithfully,
"H. Sanders, _Commissioner_."
"And the reason I am sending you out of this country," said Sanders, "is
because you have put funny ideas into the heads of my people."
"I assure you----" began the negro.
"I don't want your assurance," said Sanders, "you are not going to work
an Indian Famine Fund in Central Africa."
"The people were starving----"
Sanders smiled.
"I have sent word to them that I am coming to Akasava," he said grimly,
"and that I will take the first starved-looking man I see and beat him
till he is sore."
The next day the missionary went, to the intense relief, be it said, of
the many white missionaries scattered up and down the river; for,
strange as it may appear, a negro preacher who wears a black coat and
silk socks is regarded with a certain amount of suspicion.
True to his promise, Sanders made his visit, but found none to thrash,
for he came to a singularly well-fed community that had spent a whole
week in digging out of the secret hiding-places the foodstuffs which, at
the suggestion of a too zealous seeker after fame, it had concealed.
"Here," said Sanders, wickedly, "endeth the first lesson."
But he was far from happy. It is a remarkable fact that once you
interfere with the smooth current of native life all manner of things
happen. It cannot be truthfully said that the events that followed on
the retirement from active life of the Reverend Kenneth McDolan were
immediately traceable to his ingenious attempt to engineer a famine in
Akasava. But he had sown a seed, the seed of an idea that somebody was
responsible for their well-being--he had set up a beautiful idol of
Pauperism, a new and wonderful fetish. In the short time of his stay he
had instilled into the heathen mind the dim, vague, and elusive idea of
the Brotherhood of Man.
This Sanders discovered, when, returning from his visit of inspection,
he met, drifting with the stream, a canoe in which lay a prone man,
lazily setting his course with half-hearted paddle strokes.
Sanders, on the bridge of his tiny steamer, pulled the little string
that controlled the steam whistle, for the canoe lay in his track.
Despite the warning, the man in the canoe made no effort to get out of
his way, and since both were going with the current, it was only by
putting the wheel over and scraping a sandbank that the steamer missed
sinking the smaller craft.
"Bring that man on board!" fumed Sanders, and when the canoe had been
unceremoniously hauled to the _Zaire's_ side by a boat-hook, and the
occupant rudely pulled on board, Sanders let himself go.
"By your infernal laziness," he said, "I see that you are of the Akasava
people; yet that is no reason why you should take the middle of the
channel to yourself."
"Lord, it is written in the books of your gods," said the man, "that the
river is for us all, black and white, each being equal in the eyes of
the white gods."
Sanders checked his lips impatiently.
"When you and I are dead," he said, "we shall be equal, but since I am
quick and you are quick, I shall give you ten strokes with a whip to
correct the evil teaching that is within you."
He made a convert.
But the mischief was done.
Sanders knew the native mind much better than any man living, and he
spent a certain period every day for the next month cursing the Reverend
Kenneth McDolan. So far, however, no irreparable mischief had been done,
but Sanders was not the kind of man to be caught napping. Into the
farthermost corners of his little kingdom his secret-service men were
dispatched, and Sanders sat down to await developments.
At first the news was good; the spies sent back stories of peace, of
normal happiness; then the reports became less satisfactory. The Akasava
country is unfortunately placed, for it is the very centre territory,
the ideal position for the dissemination of foolish propaganda, as
Sanders had discovered before.
The stories the spies sent or brought were of secret meetings, of envoys
from tribe to tribe, envoys that stole out from villages by dead of
night, of curious rites performed in the depth of the forest and other
disturbing matters.
Then came a climax.
Tigili, the king of the N'Gombi folk, made preparations for a secret
journey. He sacrificed a goat and secured good omens; likewise three
witch-doctors in solemn conclave gave a favourable prophecy.
The chief slipped down the river one night with fourteen paddlers, a
drummer, his chief headsman, and two of his wives, and reached the
Akasava city at sunset the next evening. Here the chief of the Akasava
met him, and led him to his hut.
"Brother," said the Akasava chief, not without a touch of pompousness,
"I have covered my bow with the skin of a monkey."
Tigili nodded gravely.
"My arrows are winged with the little clouds," he said in reply.
In this cryptic fashion they spoke for the greater part of an hour, and
derived much profit therefrom.
In the shadow of the hut without lay a half-naked man, who seemed to
sleep, his head upon his arm, his legs doubled up comfortably.
One of the Akasava guard saw him, and sought to arouse him with the butt
of his spear, but he only stirred sleepily, and, thinking that he must
be a man of Tigili's retinue, they left him.
When the king and the chief had finished their palaver, Tigili rose from
the floor of the hut and went back to his canoe, and the chief of the
Akasava stood on the bank of the river watching the craft as it went
back the way it had come.
The sleeper rose noiselessly and took another path to the river. Just
outside the town he had to cross a path of moonlit clearing, and a man
challenged him.
This man was an Akasava warrior, and was armed, and the sleeper stood
obedient to the summons.
"Who are you?"
"I am a stranger," said the man.
The warrior came nearer and looked in his face.
"You are a spy of Sandi," he said, and then the other closed with him.
The warrior would have shouted, but a hand like steel was on his throat.
The sentinel made a little sound like the noise a small river makes when
it crosses a shallow bed of shingle, then his legs bent limply, and he
went down.
The sleeper bent down over him, wiped his knife on the bare shoulder of
the dead man, and went on his way to the river. Under the bush he found
a canoe, untied the native rope that fastened it, and stepping in, he
sent the tiny dug-out down the stream.
* * * * *
"And what do you make of all this?" asked Sanders. He was standing on
his broad stoep, and before him was the spy, a lithe young man, in the
uniform of a sergeant of Houssa Police.
"Master, it is the secret society, and they go to make a great killing,"
said the sergeant.
The Commissioner paced the verandah with his head upon his breast, his
hands clasped behind his back.
These secret societies he knew well enough, though his territories had
been free of them. He knew their mushroom growth; how they rose from
nothingness with rituals and practices ready-made. He knew their
influence up and down the Liberian coast; he had some knowledge of the
"silent ones" of Nigeria, and had met the "white faces" in the Kassai.
And now the curse had come to his territory. It meant war, the upsetting
of twenty years' work--the work of men who died and died joyfully, in
the faith that they had brought peace to the land--it meant the
undermining of all his authority.
He turned to Abiboo.
"Take the steamer," he said, "and go quickly to the Ochori country,
telling Bosambo, the chief, that I will come to him--the palaver is
finished." He knew he could depend upon Bosambo if the worst came.
In the days of waiting he sent a long message to the Administration,
which lived in ease a hundred miles down the coast. He had a land wire
running along the seashore, and when it worked it was a great blessing.
Fortunately it was in good order now, but there had been times when
wandering droves of elephants had pulled up the poles and twisted a mile
or so of wire into a hopeless tangle.
The reply to his message came quickly.
"Take extreme steps to wipe out society. If necessary arrest
Tigili. I will support you with four hundred men and a gunboat;
prefer you should arrange the matter without fuss.
"Administration."
Sanders took a long walk by the sea to think out the situation and the
solution. If the people were preparing for war, there would be
simultaneous action, a general rising. He shook his head. Four hundred
men and a gunboat more or less would make no difference. There was a
hope that one tribe would rise before the other; he could deal with the
Akasava; he could deal with the Isisi plus the Akasava; he was sure of
the Ochori--that was a comfort--but the others? He shook his head again.
Perhaps the inherent idleness of the Akasava would keep them back. Such
a possibility was against their traditions.
He must have come upon a solution suddenly, for he stopped dead in his
walk, and stood still, thinking profoundly, with his head upon his
breast. Then he turned and walked quickly back to his bungalow.
What date had been chosen for the rising we may never know for certain.
What is known is that the Akasava, the N'Gombi, the Isisi, and the
Boleki folk were preparing in secret for a time of killing, when there
came the great news.
Sandi was dead.
A canoe had overturned on the Isisi River, and the swift current had
swept the Commissioner away, and though men ran up and down the bank no
other sign of him was visible but a great white helmet that floated,
turning slowly, out of sight.
So a man of the Akasava reported, having learnt it from a sergeant of
Houssas, and instantly the _lo-koli_ beat sharply, and the headmen of
the villages came panting to the palaver house to meet the paramount
chief of the Akasava.
"Sandi is dead," said the chief solemnly. "He was our father and our
mother and carried us in his arms; we loved him and did many
disagreeable things for him because of our love. But now that he is
dead, and there is none to say 'Yea' or 'Nay' to us, the time of which I
have spoken to you secretly has come; therefore let us take up our arms
and go out, first against the God-men who pray and bewitch us with the
sprinkling of water, then against the chief of the Ochori, who for many
years have put shame upon us."
"Master," said a little chief from the fishing village which is near to
the Ochori border, "is it wise--our Lord Sandi having said there shall
be no war?"
"Our Lord Sandi is dead," said the paramount chief wisely; "and being
dead, it does not greatly concern us what he said; besides which," he
said, as a thought struck him, "last night I had a dream and saw Sandi;
he was standing amidst great fires, and he said, 'Go forth and bring me
the head of the chief of the Ochori.'"
No further time was wasted.
That night the men of twenty villages danced the dance of killing, and
the great fire of the Akasava burnt redly on the sandy beach to the
embarrassment of a hippo family that lived in the high grasses near by.
In the grey of the morning the Akasava chief mustered six hundred spears
and three score of canoes, and he delivered his oration:
"First, we will destroy the mission men, for they are white, and it is
not right that they should live and Sandi be dead; then we will go
against Bosambo, the chief of the Ochori. When rains came in the time of
kidding, he who is a foreigner and of no human origin brought many evil
persons with him and destroyed our fishing villages, and Sandi said
there should be no killing. Now Sandi is dead, and, I do not doubt, in
hell, and there is none to hold our pride."
Round the bend of the river, ever so slowly, for she was breasting a
strong and treacherous current, came the nose of the _Zaire_. It is
worthy of note that the little blue flag at her stern was not at
half-mast. The exact significance of this was lost on the Akasava.
Gingerly the little craft felt its way to the sandy strip of beach, a
plank was thrust forth, and along it came, very dapper and white, his
little ebony stick with the silver knob swinging between his fingers,
Mr. Commissioner Sanders, very much alive, and there were two bright
Maxim-guns on either side of the gangway that covered the beach.
A nation, paralysed by fear and apprehension, watched the
_debarquement_, the chief of the Akasava being a little in advance of
his painted warriors.
On Sanders' face was a look of innocent surprise. "Chief," said he, "you
do me great honour that you gather your young men to welcome me;
nevertheless, I would rather see them working in their gardens."
He walked along one row of fighting men, plentifully besmeared with
cam-wood, and his was the leisurely step of some great personage
inspecting a guard of honour.
"I perceive," he went on, talking over his shoulder to the chief who,
fascinated by the unexpected vision, followed him, "I perceive that each
man has a killing spear, also a fighting shield of wicker work, and many
have N'Gombi swords."
"Lord, it is true," said the chief, recovering his wits, "for we go
hunting elephant in the Great Forest."
"Also that some have the little bones of men fastened about their
necks--that is not for the elephant."
He said this meditatively, musingly, as he continued his inspection, and
the chief was frankly embarrassed.
"There is a rumour," he stammered, "it is said--there came a spy who
told us--that the Ochori were gathering for war, and we were afraid----"
"Strange," said Sanders, half to himself, but speaking in the
vernacular, "strange indeed is this story, for I have come straight from
the Ochori city, and there I saw nothing but men who ground corn and
hunted peacefully; also their chief is ill, suffering from a fever."
He shook his head in well-simulated bewilderment.
"Lord," said the poor chief of the Akasava, "perhaps men have told us
lies--such things have happened----"
"That is true," said Sanders gravely. "This is a country of lies; some
say that I am dead; and, lo! the news has gone around that there is no
law in the land, and men may kill and war at their good pleasure."
"Though I die at this minute," said the chief virtuously, "though the
river turn to fire and consume my inmost stomach, though every tree
become a tiger to devour me, I have not dreamt of war."
Sanders grinned internally.
"Spare your breath," he said gently. "You who go hunting elephants, for
it is a long journey to the Great Forest, and there are many swamps to
be crossed, many rivers to be swum. My heart is glad that I have come in
time to bid you farewell."
There was a most impressive silence, for this killing of elephants was a
stray excuse of the chief's. The Great Forest is a journey of two
months, one to get there and one to return, and is moreover through the
most cursed country, and the Akasava are not a people that love long
journeys save with the current of the river.
The silence was broken by the chief.
"Lord, we desire to put off our journey in your honour, for if we go,
how shall we gather in palaver?"
Sanders shook his head.
"Let no man stop the hunter," quoth he. "Go in peace, chief, and you
shall secure many teeth."[3] He saw a sudden light come to the chief's
eyes, but continued, "I will send with you a sergeant of Houssas, that
he may carry back to me the story of your prowess"--the light died away
again--"for there will be many liars who will say that you never reached
the Great Forest, and I shall have evidence to confound them."
Still the chief hesitated, and the waiting ranks listened, eagerly
shuffling forward, till they ceased to bear any semblance to an ordered
army, and were as a mob.
"Lord," said the chief, "we will go to-morrow----"
The smile was still on Sanders' lips, but his face was set, and his eyes
held a steely glitter that the chief of the Akasava knew.
"You go to-day, my man," said Sanders, lowering his voice till he spoke
in little more than a whisper, "else your warriors march under a new
chief, and you swing on a tree."
"Lord, we go," said the man huskily, "though we are bad marchers and our
feet are very tender."
Sanders, remembering the weariness of the Akasava, found his face
twitching.
"With sore feet you may rest," he said significantly; "with sore backs
you can neither march nor rest--go!"
At dawn the next morning the N'Gombi people came in twenty-five war
canoes to join their Akasava friends, and found the village tenanted by
women and old men, and Tigili, the king, in the shock of the discovery,
surrendered quietly to the little party of Houssas on the beach.
"What comes to me, lord?" asked Tigili, the king.
Sanders whistled thoughtfully.
"I have some instructions about you somewhere," he said.
[Footnote 3: Tusks.]
CHAPTER IX.
THE WOOD OF DEVILS.
Four days out of M'Sakidanga, if native report be true, there is a
trickling stream that meanders down from N'Gombi country. Native report
says that this is navigable even in the dry season.
The missionaries at Bonginda ridicule this report; and Arburt, the young
chief of the station, with a gentle laugh in his blue eyes, listened one
day to the report of Elebi about a fabulous land at the end of this
river, and was kindly incredulous.
"If it be that ivory is stored in this place," he said in the
vernacular, "or great wealth lies for the lifting, go to Sandi, for this
ivory belongs to the Government. But do you, Elebi, fix your heart more
upon God's treasures in heaven, and your thoughts upon your unworthiness
to merit a place in His kingdom, and let the ivory go."
Elebi was known to Sanders as a native evangelist of the tornado type, a
thunderous, voluble sub-minister of the service; he had, in his ecstatic
moments, made many converts. But there were days of reaction, when Elebi
sulked in his mud hut, and reviewed Christianity calmly.
It was a service, this new religion. You could not work yourself to a
frenzy in it, and then have done with the thing for a week. You must
needs go on, on, never tiring, never departing from the straight path,
exercising irksome self-restraint, leaving undone that which you would
rather do.
"Religion is prison," grumbled Elebi, after his interview, and shrugged
his broad, black shoulders.
In his hut he was in the habit of discarding his European coat for the
loin cloth and the blanket, for Elebi was a savage--an imitative
savage--but still barbarian. Once, preaching on the River of Devils, he
had worked himself up to such a pitch of enthusiastic fervour that he
had smitten a scoffer, breaking his arm, and an outraged Sanders had him
arrested, whipped, and fined a thousand rods. Hereafter Elebi had
figured in certain English missionary circles as a Christian martyr, for
he had lied magnificently, and his punishment had been represented as a
form of savage persecution.
But the ivory lay buried three days' march beyond the Secret River; thus
Elebi brooded over the log that smouldered in his hut day and night.
Three days beyond the river, branching off at a place where there were
two graves, the country was reputably full of devils, and Elebi
shuddered at the thought; but, being a missionary and a lay evangelist,
and, moreover, the proud possessor of a copy of the Epistle to the
Romans (laboriously rendered into the native tongue), he had little to
fear. He had more to fear from a certain White Devil at a far-away
headquarters, who might be expected to range the lands of the Secret
River, when the rains had come and gone.
It was supposed that Elebi had one wife, conforming to the custom of the
white man, but the girl who came into the hut with a steaming bowl of
fish in her hands was not the wife that the missionaries recognised as
such.
"Sikini," he said, "I am going a journey by canoe."
"In the blessed service?" asked Sikini, who had come under the influence
of the man in his more elated periods.
"The crackling of a fire is like a woman's tongue," quoted Elebi; "and
it is easier to keep the lid on a boiling pot than a secret in a woman's
heart."
Elebi had the river proverbs at his finger-tips, and the girl laughed,
for she was his favourite wife, and knew that in course of time the
information would come to her.
"Sikini," said the man suddenly, "you know that I have kept you when the
Blood Taker would have me put you away."
(Arburt had a microscope and spent his evenings searching the blood of
his flock for signs of trynosomiasis.)
"You know that for your sake I lied to him who is my father and my
protector, saying: 'There shall be but one wife in my house, and that
Tombolo, the coast woman.'"
The girl nodded, eyeing him stolidly.
"Therefore I tell you that I am going beyond the Secret River, three
days' march, leaving the canoe at a place where there are two graves."
"What do you seek?" she asked.
"There are many teeth in that country," he said; "dead ivory that the
people brought with them from a distant country, and have hidden,
fearing one who is a Breaker of Stones.[4] I shall come back rich, and
buy many wives who shall wait upon you and serve you, and then I will no
longer be Christian, but will worship the red fetish as my father did,
and his father."
"Go," she said, nodding thoughtfully.
He told her many things that he had not revealed to Arburt--of how the
ivory came, of the people who guarded it, of the means by which he
intended to secure it.
Next morning before the mission _lo-koli_ sounded, he had slipped away
in his canoe; and Arburt, when the news came to him, sighed and called
him a disappointing beggar--for Arburt was human. Sanders, who was also
human, sent swift messengers to arrest Elebi, for it is not a good thing
that treasure-hunting natives should go wandering through a strange
country, such excursions meaning war, and war meaning, to Sanders at any
rate, solemn official correspondence, which his soul loathed.
Who would follow the fortunes of Elebi must paddle in his wake as far as
Okau, where the Barina meets the Lapoi, must take the left river path,
past the silent pool of the White Devil, must follow the winding stream
till the elephants' playing ground be reached. Here the forest has been
destroyed for the sport of the Great Ones; the shore is strewn with tree
trunks, carelessly uprooted and as carelessly tossed aside by the
gambolling mammoth. The ground is innocent of herbage or bush; it is a
flat wallow of mud, with the marks of pads where the elephant has
passed.
Elebi drew his canoe up the bank, carefully lifted his cooking-pot, full
of living fire, and emptied its contents, heaping thereon fresh twigs
and scraps of dead wood. Then he made himself a feast, and went to
sleep.
A wandering panther came snuffling and howling in the night, and Elebi
rose and replenished the fire. In the morning he sought for the creek
that led to the Secret River, and found it hidden by the hippo grass.
Elebi had many friends in the N'Gombi country. They were gathered in the
village of Tambango--to the infinite embarrassment of the chief of that
village--for Elebi's friends laid hands upon whatsoever they desired,
being strangers and well armed, and, moreover, outnumbering the men of
the village three to one. One, O'Sako, did the chief hold in greatest
dread, for he said little, but stalked tragically through the untidy
street of Tambango, a bright, curved execution knife in the crook of his
left arm. O'Sako was tall and handsome. One broad shoulder gleamed in
its nakedness, and his muscular arms were devoid of ornamentation. His
thick hair was plastered with clay till it was like a European woman's,
and his body was smeared with ingola dust.
Once only he condescended to address his host.
"You shall find me three young men against the Lord Elebi's arrival, and
they shall lead us to the land of the Secret River."
"But, master," pleaded the chief, "no man may go to the Secret River,
because of the devils."
"Three men," said O'Sako softly; "three young men swift of foot, with
eyes like the N'Gombi, and mouths silent as the dead."
"---- the devils," repeated the chief weakly, but O'Sako stared straight
ahead and strode on.
When the sun blazed furiously on the rim of the world in a last expiring
effort, and the broad river was a flood of fire, and long shadows ran
through the clearings, Elebi came to the village. He came unattended
from the south, and he brought with him no evidence of his temporary
sojourn in the camps of civilisation. Save for his loin cloth, and his
robe of panther skin thrown about his shoulders, he was naked.
There was a palaver house at the end of the village, a thatched little
wattle hut perched on a tiny hill, and the Lord Elebi gathered there his
captains and the chief of the village. He made a speech.
"_Cala, cala_," he began--and it means "long ago," and is a famous
opening to speeches--"before the white man came, and when the Arabi came
down from the northern countries to steal women and ivory, the people of
the Secret River buried their 'points' in a Place of Devils. Their women
they could not bury, so they lost them. Now all the people of the Secret
River are dead. The Arabi killed some, Bula Matadi killed others, but
the sickness killed most of all. Where their villages were the high
grass has grown, and in their gardens only the weaver bird speaks. Yet I
know of this place, for there came to me a vision and a voice that
said----"
The rest of the speech from the European standpoin
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/35545