* * * * *Sanders, at that moment, was hunting for the Long Man, whose name was O'Fasa. O'Fasa was twelve months gone in sleeping-sickness, and had turned from being a gentle husband and a kindly father into a brute beast. He had speared his wife, cut down the Houssa guard left by Sanders to keep the peace of his village, and had made for the forest.Now, a madman is a king, holding his subjects in the thrall of fear, and since there was no room in the territory for two kings and Sanders, the Commissioner came full tilt up the river, landed half a company of black infantry, and followed on the ravaging trace of the madman.At the end of eight days he came upon O'Fasa, the Long Man. He was sitting with his back against a gum-tree, his well-polished spears close at hand, and he was singing the death song of the Isisi, a long low, wailing, sorrowful song, which may be so translated into doggerel English:Life is a thing so smallThat you cannot see it at all;Death is a thing so wiseThat you see it in every guise.Death is the son of life,Pain is his favourite wife.Sanders went slowly across the clearing, his automatic pistol in his hand.O'Fasa looked at him and laughed."O'Fasa," said Sanders gently, "I have come to see you, because my King heard you were sick.""O ko!" laughed the other. "I am a great man when kings send their messengers to me."Sanders, his eye upon the spears, advanced warily."Come with me, O'Fasa," he said.The man rose to his feet. He made no attempt to reach his spears. Of a sudden he ducked, and turned, running swiftly towards the black heart of the forest. Sanders raised his pistol, and hesitated a second—just too long. He could not kill the man, though by letting him live he might endanger the lives of his fellows and the peace of the land.The Commissioner was in an awkward predicament. Ten miles beyond was the narrow gap which led into the territory of N'raki. To lead an armed expedition through that gap would bring about complications which it was his duty and desire to avoid. The only hope was that O'Fasa would double back, for the trail they followed left little doubt as to where he had gone. Unerringly, with the instinct of the hunted beast, he had made for the gap.They came to the gorge, palm-fringed, and damp with the running waters, at sunset, and camped. They found the spoor of the hunted man, lost it, and picked it up again. At daybreak Sanders, with two men, pushed through the narrow pass and came into the forbidden territory. There was no sign of the fugitive.Sanders'slokalibeat out four urgent messages. They were addressed to a Mr. Grayson Smith, who might possibly be in that neighbourhood, but if he received them, he sent no reply.Now, madmen and children have a rooted dislike for strange places, and Sanders, backing on this, fixed his ambush in the narrow end of the gorge. Sooner or later O'Fasa would return. At any rate, he decided to give him four days. Thus matters stood when the sometime minister, Ussuf, with a woman and five Arabi, made for the gap, with the swift and tireless guards of the king at their heels.Three times the Arab had halted to fight off his pursuers, and in one of these engagements he had sustained his only casualty, and had left a dead Arab follower on the ground of his stand.The gap was in sight, when a regiment of the north, summoned bylokali, swept down on his left and effectively blocked his retreat. Ussuf took up his position on a little rocky hill. His right was protected by swamp land, and his left and rear were open."Lapai," he said, when he had surveyed the position, "it seems to me that the death you desire is very close at hand. Now, I am very sorry for you, but God knows my sorrow can do little to save you."The woman looked at him steadily."Lord," she said, "I am very glad if you and I go down to hell together, for in some new, strange world you might love me, and I should be satisfied."Ussuf laughed, showing his straight rows of white teeth in genuine amusement."That we shall see," he said.The attack came almost at once, but the rifles of the six shot back the assault. At the end of two hours the little party stood intact. A second attack followed; one man of the Arab guard went down with an arrow through his throat, but Ussuf's shooting was effective, and again the northern regiment drew off.Before the hill, and in the direction of Akarti city, was the king's legion. It was from this point that Ussuf expected the last destroying assault."Lapai," he said, turning round, "I——"The woman had gone! In the fury of the defence he had not noticed her slip away from him. Suddenly she appeared half-way down the hill and turned to him."Come back!" he called.She framed her mouth with two hands that her words might carry better. In the still evening air every word came distinctly."Lord," she said, "this is best, for if they have me, they will let you go, and death will come some day to you, and I shall be waiting."She turned and ran quickly down the hill towards the stiff lines of warriors below.Then suddenly appeared out of the ground, as It seemed, a tall, lank figure right in her path. She stopped a moment, and the man sprang at her and lifted her without an effort. Ussuf raised his rifle and covered them, but he dare not shoot.There was another interested spectator. King N'raki, a vengeful man, and agile despite his years, had followed as eagerly as the youngest of his warriors, and now stood in the midst of his counsellors, watching the scene upon the hill."What man is that?" he asked. "For I see he is not of our people."Before the messengers he would have dispatched could be instructed, the tall man, running lightly with his burden, came towards him, and laid a dead woman almost at the king's feet."Man," he said insolently, "I bring you this woman, whom I have killed, because a devil put it into my heart to do so.""Who are you?" asked N'raki. "For I see you are a stranger.""I am a king," said O'Fasa, the Long Man; "greater than all kings, for I have behind me the armies of white men."The humour of this twisted truth struck him of a sudden, for he burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter."You have the armies of the white men behind you?" repeated N'raki slowly, and looked nervously from side to side."Behold!" said O'Fasa, stretching out his hand.The king's eyes followed the direction of the hand. Far away across the bare plain he saw black specks of men advancing at regular intervals. The sinking sun set the bayonets of Sander's little force aglitter. The Commissioner had heard the firing, and had guessed much."It is 'They,'" said King N'raki, and blinked furiously at the Long Man, O'Fasa.He turned swiftly to his guard."Kill that man!" he said.* * * * *Sanders brought his half-company of Houssas to the hill and was met half-way by Ussuf."I heard your rifles," he said. "Have you seen anything of a long chap, of wild and aggressive mien!" He spoke in English, and Ussuf replied in the same language."A tall man?" he asked, and Sanders wondered a little that a man so unemotional as was Grayson Smith, of the Colonial Intelligence, should speak so shakily."I think he is here," said the Englishman in Arab attire, and he led the way down the hill.N'raki's armies had moved off swiftly. The fear of "They" had been greater in its effect than all its legions.The Englishmen made their way to where two figures lay in a calm sleep of death."Who is the woman?" asked Sanders."A native woman, who loved me," said Grayson Smith simply, and he bent down and closed the eyes of the girl who had loved him so well.CHAPTER XIITHE AMBASSADORSThere is a saying amongst the Akasava:"The Isisi sees with his eyes, the N'gombi with his ears, but the Ochori sees nothing but his meat."This is translated badly, but in its original form it is immensely subtle. In the old days before Bosambo became chief, king, headman, or what you will, of his people, the Ochori were quite prepared to accept the insulting description of their sleepiness without resentment.But this wascala-cala, and now the Ochori are a proud people, and it is not good to throw insulting proverbs in their direction, lest they throw them back with something good and heavy at the end of it.The native mind works slowly, and it was not until every tribe within three hundred miles had received some significant indication of the change which had come about in the spirit and character of this timorous people, that they realised the Ochori were no longer a race which might serve as butts for the shafts of wisdom.There was a petty chief of the Isisi who governed a great district, for, although "Isisi" means "small" the name must not be taken literally. He had power under his king to call palavers on all great national questions, such as the failure of crops, the shifting of fishing-grounds, and the infidelities of highly-placed women.One day he called his people together—his counsellors, his headmen, and all sons of chiefs—and he laid before them a remarkable proposition."In the days of my father," said Embed, "the Ochori were a weak and cowardly people; now they have become strong and powerful. Last week they came down upon our brothers of the Akasava and stole their goats and laid shame upon them, and behold! the Akasava, who are great warriors, did nothing more than send to Sandi the story of their sorrow. Now it seems to me that this is because Bosambo, the chief, has a devil of great potency, and I have sent to my king to ask him to entreat the lord Bosambo to tell us why these things should be."The gathered counsellors nodded their heads wisely. There was no doubt at all that Bosambo had the advantage of communication with a devil; or if this were not so, he was blessed to a minor degree with a nodding acquaintance with one of those ghosts in which the forest of the Ochori abounded."And thus says my lord, the king of the Akasava, and of all the territories and the rivers and the unknown lands beyond the forest as far as the eye can see," the chief went on. "He sends me his message by his counsellor, saying: 'It is true Bosambo has a devil, and for the sake of my people I will send to him, asking him to put his strength in our hands, that we may be wise and bold.'"Now this was a conclusion which had been arrived at simultaneously by the six nations, and, although the thoughts of their rulers were not communicated in such a public fashion, the faith in Bosambo's inspiration was universal, and the idea that Bosambo should be thus approached was a violent and shameless plagiarism on the part of the chief Emberi.One morning in the late spring the ambassadors of the powers came paddling up to Ochori city in twelve canoes with their headmen, their warriors, their beaters of drums and their carriers. Bosambo, who had no faith whatever in humanity, was warned of their approach and threw the city into a condition of defence. He himself received the deputation on the foreshore, and the spokesman was Emberi."Lord Bosambo," said the chief, "we come in peace, and from the chief and the kings and all the peoples of these lands.""That may be so," said Bosambo, "and my heart is full of joy to see you. But I beg of you that you land your spearmen and your warriors and your beaters of drums on the other side of the river, for I am a timorous man, and I fear that I cannot in this city show you the love and honour which Sandi has asked me to give even to common people.""But, lord," protested the chief, who, to do him credit, had no warlike or injurious ideas concerning his host, "on the other side of the water there is only sand and water and evil spirits.""That may be so," said Bosambo; "but on this side of the river there are me and my people, and we desire to live happily for many years. I tell you, that it is better that you should all die because of the sand and the water and the evil spirits, than that I should be slain by those who do not love me.""My master," said Emberi pompously, "is a great king and a great lover of you.""Your master," said Bosambo, "is a great liar.""He loves you," protested Emberi."He is still a great liar," said Bosambo; "for the last time I met him he not only said that he would come with his legions and eat me up, but he also called me evil names, such as 'fish-eater' and 'chicken,' and 'fat dog.'"Bosambo spoke without fear of consequences because he had a hundred of his picked men behind him, and all the advantage of the sloping beach. He would have turned the delegates back to their homes, but that the persistent and alarmed Emberi succeeded in interesting him in his announcements, and, more important, there were landed from one of the canoes, rich presents, including goats and rice and a looking-glass, which latter was, explained Emberi, the very core of his master's soul.In the end Bosambo left his hundred men to hold the beach, and Emberi persuaded his reluctant followers to make their home on the sandy shore across the river.Then, and only then, did Bosambo unbend, and had prepared one of his famous feasts, to which all the chiefs of the land contributed in the shape of meat and drink—all the chiefs, that is, except Bosambo, who made a point of giving nothing away to anybody in any circumstances.The palaver that followed was very interesting, indeed, to the chief of the Ochori. One by one, from nine in the morning to four in the following morning, the delegates spoke.Much of their speeches dealt with the superlative qualities which distinguished Bosambo's rule—his magnificent courage, his noble generosity—Bosambo glanced quickly round to see the faces of the counsellors who had reluctantly provided the feast—and to the future which awaited all nations which imitated all his virtues."Lord, I speak the truth," said Emberi, "and thus it runs that all people from the sea where the river ends, to the leopard's mouth from whence it has its source, know that you are familiar with devils that give you courage and cunning and tell you magic, so that you can make men from rats."Bosambo nodded his head gravely."All this is true," he said. "I have several devils, although I do not always use them. For, as you know, I am a follower of a particular faith, and was for one life-time a Christian, believing in all manners of mysteries of which you know nothing—Marki, Luki, and Johnny Baptist, who are not for you."He looked round at the awed men and shook his head."Nor do you know of the wonders they worked, such as curing burns, and striking dead, and cutting ears. Now I know these things," he continued impressively, "therefore Sandi loves me, for he also is a God-man, and often comes to me to speak with him concerning these white men.""Lord, what are devils?" asked an impatient delegate."Of the devils," repeated Bosambo, "I have many."He half closed his eyes and was silent for the space of two minutes. He gave the impression that he was counting his staff—and, indeed, this was the idea precisely that he wished to convey."O ko!" said Emberi in a hushed voice. "If it is true, as you say it is, then our master desires that you shall send us one devil or two that we might be taught the peculiar manner of these wonderful ghosts."Bosambo coughed, and glanced round at the sober faces of his advisers."I have many devils who serve me," he began. "There is one I know who is very small and has two noses—one before him and one behind—so that he may smell his enemy who stalks him. Also there is one who is so tall that the highest trees are grass to his feet. And another one who is green and walks upside down."For an hour Bosambo orated at length on dæmonology, even though he might never have known the word. He drew on the misty depths of his imagination. He availed himself of every recollection dealing with science. He spoke of ghosts who were familiar friends, and came to his bidding much in the same way that the civilised dog comes to his master's whistle.The delegates retired to their huts for the night in a condition of panic when Bosambo informed them that he had duly appointed a particular brand of devil to serve their individual needs, and protect them against the ills which the flesh is heir to.Now Ochori city and the Ochori nation had indeed awakened from the spell of lethargy under the beneficent and drastic government of Bosambo, and it is known in the history of nations, however primitive or however advanced they may be, that no matter how excellent may be the changes effected there will be a small but compact party who regard the reformer as one who encumbers the earth. Bosambo had of his own people a small but powerful section who regarded all changes with horror, and who saw in the new spirit which the chief had infused into the Ochori, the beginning of the end. This is a view which is not peculiar to the Ochori.There were old chiefs and headmen who remembered the fat and idle days which preceded the upraising of Bosambo, who remembered how easy it was to secure slave service, and, remembering, spoke of Bosambo with unkindness. The chief might have settled the matter of devils out of hand in his own way, and would, I doubt not, have sent away the delegation happily enough with such messages of the Koran as he could remember written on the paper Sanders had supplied him for official messages.But it was not Bosambo's way, nor was it the way with the men with whom he had to deal to expedite important palavers. Normally, such a conference as was now assembled, would last at least three days and three nights. It seemed that it would last much longer, for Bosambo had troubles of his own.At dawn on the morning following the arrival of the delegation, a dust-stained messenger, naked as he was born, came at a jog-trot and panting heavily from the bush road which leads to the Elivi, and without ceremony stood at the door of the royal hut."Lord Bosambo," said the messenger, "Ikifari, the chief of Elivi, brings his soldiers and headmen to the number of a thousand, for a palaver.""What is in his heart?" said Bosambo."Master," said the man, "this is in his heart: there shall be no roads in the Ochori, for the men of Elivi are crying out against the work. They desire to live in peace and comfort."Bosambo had instituted a law of his own—with the full approval of Sanders—and it was that each district should provide a straight and well-made forest road from one city to another, and a great road which should lead from one district to its neighbour.Unfortunately, every little tribe did not approach the idea with the enthusiasm which Bosambo himself felt, nor regard it with the approval which was offered to this most excellent plan by the King's Government.For road-making is a bad business. It brings men out early in the morning, and keeps them working with the sweat running off their bare backs in the hot hours of the day. Also there were fines and levies which Bosambo the chief took an unholy joy in extracting whenever default was made.Of all the reluctant tribes, the Elivi were the most frankly so. Whilst all the others were covered with a network of rough roads—slovenly made, but roads none the less—Elivi stood a virgin patch of land two hundred miles square in the very heart of make-shift civilisation.Bosambo might deal drastically with the enemy who stood outside his gate. It was a more delicate matter when he had to deal with a district tacitly rebellious, and this question of roads threatened to develop, unhappily.He had sent spies into the land of the Elivi and this was the first man back."Now it seems to me," said Bosambo, half to himself, "that I have need of all my devils, for Ikifari is a bitter man, and his sons and his counsellors are of a mind with him."He sent his headman to his guests with a message that for the whole day he would be deep in counsel with himself over this matter of ghosts; and when late in the evening the van of the Elivi force was sighted on the east of the village, Bosambo, seated in state in his magnificent palaver-house, adorned with such Christmas plates as came his way, awaited their arrival.Limberi, the headman, went out to meet the disgruntled force."Chief," he said, "it is our lord's wish that you leave your spears outside the city.""Limberi," said Ikifari, a hard man of forty, all wiry muscle and leanness, "we are people of your race and your brothers. Why should we leave our spears—we who are of the Ochori?""You do not come otherwise," said Limberi decisively. "For across the river are many enemies of our lord, and he loves you so much, that for his own protection, he desired your armed men—your spearmen and your swordsmen—to sit outside. Thus he will be confident and happy."There was no more to be done than to obey.Ikifari with his counsellors followed the headman to the palaver, and his insolence was notable."I speak for all Elivi," he said, without any ceremonious preliminaries. "We are an oppressed people, lord Bosambo, and our young men cry out with great voices against your cruelty.""They shall cry louder," said Bosambo, and Ikifari, the chief, scowled."Lord," he said sullenly, "if it is true that Sandi loves you, he also loves us, and no man is so great in this land that he may stir a people to rebellion."Bosambo knew this was true—knew it without the muttered approval of Ikifari's headmen. He ran his eye over the little party. They were all there—the malcontents. Tinif'si, the stout headman, M'kera and Calasari, the lesser chiefs; and there was in their minds a certain defiance which particularly exasperated Bosambo. He might punish one or two who set themselves up against his authority, but here was an organised rebellion. Punishment would mean fighting, and fighting would weaken his position with Sanders.It was the moment to temporise.Fortunately the devil deputation was not present. It was considered to be against all etiquette for men of another nation to be present at the domestic councils of their neighbours. Otherwise some doubt might have been born in the bosom of Emberi as to the efficacy of Bosambo's devils at this particular moment."And this I would say to you, lord," said Ikifari, and Bosambo knew that the crux of the situation would be revealed. "We Elivi are your dogs. You do not send for us to come to your great feasts, nor do you honour us in any way. But when there is fighting you call up our spears and our young men, and you send us abroad to be eaten up by your terrible enemies. Also," he went on, "when you choose your chiefs and counsellors to go pleasant journeys to such places where they are honoured and feasted, you send only men of the Ochori city."It may be said here that from whatever source Bosambo derived his inspiration, he had certainly acquired royal habits which were foreign to his primitive people. Thus he would dispatch envoys and ambassadors on ceremonious visits bearing gifts and presents which they themselves provided and returning with richer presents which Bosambo acquired. It was, if the truth be told, a novel and pleasant method of extracting blackmail—pleasant because it gave Bosambo little trouble, and afforded his subordinates titillation of importance, and no one had arisen to complain save these unfortunate cities of Akasava—Isisi and N'gombi—which entertained his representatives."It is true I have never sent you," said Bosambo, "and my heart is sore at the thought that you should think evil of me because I have saved you all this trouble. For my heart is like water within me. Yet a moon since I sent Kill, my headman, bearing gifts to the king of the bush people, and they chopped him so that he died, and now I fear to send other messengers."There was an unmistakable sneer on Ikifari's face."Lord," he said, with asperity, "Kili was a foolish man and you hated him, for he had spoken evilly against you, stirring up your people. Therefore you sent him to the bushmen and he did not come back." He added significantly: "Now I tell you that if you send me to the bushmen I do not go."Bosambo thought a moment."Now I see," he said, almost jovially, "that Ikifari, whom I love better than my own brother"—this was true—"is angry with me because I have not sent him on a journey. Now I shall show how much I love you, for I will send you all—each of you—as guests of my house, bearing my word to such great nations as the Akasava, the Isisi, the N'gombi; also to the people beyond the river, who are great and give large presents."He saw the faces brighten, and seized the psychological moment."The palaver is finished," said Bosambo magnificently.He ordered a feast to be made outside the city for his unwelcome guests, and summoned the devil delegates to his presence."My friends," he said, "I have given this matter of devils great thought, and since I desire to stand well with you and with your master, I have spent this night in company with six great devils, who are my best friends and who help me in all matters. Now I tell you this—which is known only to myself and to you, whom I trust—that to-day I send to your master six great spirits which inspire me."There was a hush. The sense of responsibility, which comes to the nervous who are suddenly entrusted with the delivery of a ferocious bull, fell upon the men of the delegation."Lord, this is a great honour," said Emberi, "and our masters will send many more presents than your lordship has ever seen. But how may we take these devils with us, for we are fearful and are not used to their ways?"Bosambo bowed his head graciously."That also filled my thoughts," he said, "and thus I have ordered it. I shall take six of my people—six counsellors and chiefs, who are to me as the sun and the flowers—and by magic I will place inside the heart of each chief and headman one great devil. You shall take these men with you, and you shall listen to all they say save this." He paused. "These devils love me, and they will greatly desire to return to my city and to my land, where they have been so long. Now I tell you that you must treat them kindly. Yet you must hold them, putting a guard about them, and keeping them in a secret place, so that Sandi may not find them and hear of them. And they will bring you fortune and prosperity and the courage of lions."* * * * *Sanders was coming up river to settle a woman palaver, when he came slap into a flotilla of such pretension and warlike appearance that he did not hesitate for one moment.At a word, the canvas jackets were slipped from the Hotchkiss guns, and they were swung over the side. But there was no need for such preparations, as he discovered when Emberi's canoe came alongside."Tell me, Emberi," said Sanders, "what is this wonderful thing I see—that the Akasavas and the Isisi, and the N'gombi and the people of the lower forest sail together in love and harmony?""Lord," said Emberi proudly, "this is Bosambo's doing."Sanders was all suspicion."Now I know that Bosambo is a clever man," he said, "yet I did not know that he was so great a character that he could bring together all men in peace, but rather the contrary.""He has done this because of devils," said Emberi importantly. "Behold, there are certain things about which I must not speak to you, and this is one of them. So, Sandi, ask me no more, for I have sworn an oath."Leaning over the steamer Sanders surveyed the flotilla. His keen eyes ranged the boat from stem to stern. He noted with interest the presence of one Ikifari, who was known to him. And Ikifari in a scarlet coat was a happy and satisfied man."O Ikifari," bantered Sanders, "what of my roads?"The chief looked up. "Lord, they shall be made," he said, "though my young men die in the making. I go now to make a grand palaver for my friend and father Bosambo, for he trusts me above all men and has sent me to the Isisi."Sanders knew something of Bosambo's idiosyncrasies, and nodded."When you come back," he said, "I will speak on the matter of these roads. Tell me now, my friend, how long do you stay with the Isisi?""Lord," said Ikifari, "I stay for the time of a moon. Afterwards I go back to the Ochori, bearing rich presents which my lord Bosambo has made me swear I will keep for myself.""The space of a moon," repeated Sanders.He turned to ring the engines "Ahead" and did not see Emberi's hand go up to cover a smile.CHAPTER XIIIGUNS IN THE AKASAVA"Thank God!" said the Houssa captain fervently, "there is no war in this country.""Touch wood!" said Sanders, and the two men simultaneously reached out and laid solemn hands upon the handle of the coffee-pot, which was vulcanite.If they had touched wood who knows what might have happened in the first place to Ofesi the chief of Mc-Canti?Who knows what might have happened to the two smugglers of gold from the French territory?The wife of Bikilini might have gone off with her lover, and Bikilini resigned and patient taken another to wife, and the death men of the Ofesi might never have gone forth upon their unamiable missions, or going forth have been drowned, or grown faint-hearted.Anyway it is an indisputable fact that neither Sanders nor Captain Hamilton touched wood on the occasion.And as to Bannister Fish——?That singular man was a trader in questionable commodities, for he had not the nice sentiments which usually go with the composition of a white man.Some say that he ran slaves from Angola to places where a black man or a black woman is worth a certain price; that he did this openly with the connivance of the Government of Portugal and made a tolerable fortune. He certainly bought more poached ivory than any man in Africa, and his crowning infamy up to date was the arming of a South Soudanese Mahdi—arms for employment against his fellow-countrymen.There are certain manufacturers of small arms in the Midlands who will execute orders to any capacity, produce weapons modern or antiquated at a cost varying with the delicacy or mechanism of the weapon. They have no conscience, but have a hard struggle to pay dividends because there are other firms in Liége who run the same line of business, but produce at from 10 per cent. to 25 per cent. lower cost.Mr. Bannister Fish, a thin, wiry man of thirty-four, as yellow as a guinea and with the temper of a fiend, was not popular on the coast, especially with officials. Fortunately Africa has many coasts, and since Africa in mass was Mr. Fish's hunting-ground, rather than any particular section, the coast men—as we know the coast—saw little of him.It was Mr. Fish's boast that there was not twenty miles of coast line from Dakka to Capetown, and from Lourenço Marques to Suez, that had not contributed something of beauty to his lordly mansion on the top of Highgate Hill.You will observe that he omits reference to the coast which encloses Cape Colony, and there is a reason. Cape Colony is immensely civilised, has stipendiary magistrates and a horrible breakwater where yellow-jacketed convicts labour for their sins, and Mr. Fish's sins were many. He tackled Sanders's territory in the same spirit as a racehorse breeder will start raising Pekingese poodles—not for the money he could make out of it, but as an amusing sideline.He worked ruin on the edge of the Akasava country, operating from the adjoining foreign territories, and found an unholy joy in worrying Sanders, whom he had met once and most cordially disliked.His dislike was intensified on the next occasion of their meeting, for Sanders, making a forced march across the Akasava, seized the caravan of Mr. Bannister Fish, burnt his stores out of hand, and submitted the plutocrat of Highgate Hill to the indignity of marching handcuffed to headquarters. Mr. Fish was tried by a divisional court and fined £500, or, as an alternative, awarded twelve months imprisonment with hard labour.The fine was paid, and Mr. Fish went home saying horrible things about Mr. Commissioner Sanders, which I will not sully these fair pages by repeating.Highgate Hill is a prosaic neighbourhood served by prosaic motor-buses, and not the place where one would imagine wholesale murder might be planned, yet from his domain in Highgate Mr. Fish issued certain instructions by telephone and cablegram, and at his word men went secretly into Sanders's territory looking for the likely man.They found Ofesi, and Highgate spoke to the Akasava to some purpose.In the month of February in a certain year Mr. Fish drove resplendently in his electric landau from Highgate to Waterloo. He arrived on the Akasava border seven weeks later no less angry with Sanders than he had ever been, and of a cheerful countenance because, being a millionaire, he could indulge in his hobbies, and his hobby was the annoyance of a far-away Commissioner who, at that precise moment was touching vulcanite and thinking it wood.Ofesi, the son of Malaka, the son of G'nani, was predestined.Thus it was predicted by the famous witch-doctor Komonobologo, of the Akasava.For it would appear that on the night that Ofesi came squealing into the world, there were certain solar manifestations such as an eclipse of the moon and prodigious shooting of stars, which Komonobologo translated favourably to the clucking, sobbing and shrill whimpering morsel of whitey-brown humanity.Thus Ofesi was to rule all peoples as far as the sun shone (some three hundred miles in all directions according to local calculations), and he should not suffer ignominious death at the hand of any man.Ofesi (literally "the Born-Lucky") should be mighty in counsel and in war; should shake the earth with the tread of his legions; might risk and gain, never risk and lose; was the favoured of ju-jus and ghosts; and would have many sons.The hollow-eyed woman stretched on the floor of the hut spoke faintly of her happiness, the baby with greedy mouth satisfying the beast in him said nothing, being too much occupied with his natural and instinctive desires.Such prophecies are common, and some come to nothing. Some, for no apparent reason, stick fest to the recipients.Ofesi—his destiny—was of the sticking kind.When Sanders took up his duties on the river, Ofesi was a lank and awkward youth of whom his fellows stood in awe.Sanders was in awe of nobody. He listened quietly to the recital of portents, omens, and the like, and when it was finished, he delivered a little homily on the fallibility of human things and the extraordinarily high death-rate which existed amongst those misguided people who walked outside the rigid circle of the land.Ofesi had neighbours more hearty than Sanders, and by these he was accepted as something on account of the total wonder which the years would produce.So Ofesi grew and flourished, doing much mischief in his way, which was neither innocent nor boyish, and the friendly hand which is upraised to small boys all the world over never fell sharply upon his well-covered nerves, because Ofesi was predestined and immune.In course of time he was appointed by the then king of the Akasava to the chieftainship of the village of Mi-lanti, and the city of the Akasava breathed a sigh of relief to see his canoe go round the bend of the river out of sight.No report of the chief's minor misdoings came to Sanders because this legend of destiny carried to all the nations save and except one.It is said that Ofesi received more homage and held a more regal court in his tiny principality than did the king his master; that N'gombi, Isisi, and the tribes about sent him presents doubly precious, and that he had a household of sixty wives, all contributed by his devotees. It was also said that he made the intoxicating distributions of Mr. Fish possible, but Sanders had no proof of this.He raided his friends impartially, did all manner of unpleasant things, terrorised the river from the Lesser Isisi to the edge of the Ochori, and the fishermen watching his war canoes creeping stealthily through the night would say: "Let no man see the lord Ofesi; lest in the days to come he remember and blind us."Whether from sheer cunning or from the intuitive faculty which is a part of genius, Ofesi grew to stout manhood without once violating the border line of the Ochori.Until upon a day——Sanders came in great haste one wet April night when the clouds hung so low over the river that you might have touched them with a fishing-rod.It was a night of billowing mists, of drenching cloud bursts, of loud cracking thunders and the flicker-flacker of lightning so incessant that only the darkness counted as interval.Yet, against the swollen stream, drenched to the skin, his wet face set to the stinging rain and the white rod of his searchlight piercing such gloom as there was, Sanders came as fast as stern wheel could revolve for the Akasava land.He came up to the village of Mi-lanti in the wild grey of a stormy dawn, and such of the huts as the flooding waters of the heavens had spared stood isolated sentinels amidst smoking ruins.He landed tired and immensely angry, and found many dead men and one or two who thought they were dead. They told him a doleful story of rapine and murder, of an innocent village set upon by the Ochori and taken in its defencelessness. "That is a lie," said Sanders promptly, "for you have stockades, built to the west of the village and your dead are all painted as men paint themselves who prepare long for war. Also the Ochori—such as I have seen—are not so painted, which tells me that they came in haste against a warring people."The wounded man turned his tired face to Sanders."It is my faith," he said, in the conventional terminology of his tribe, "that you have eyes like a big cat."Sanders attended to his injuries and left him and his pitiful fellows in a dry hut. Then he went to look for Bosambo, and found him sitting patiently ten miles up the river. He sat before a steep hill of rock and undergrowth. At the top of the hill was the chief of the village of Mi-lanti, and with him were such of his fighting men as were not at the moment in a happier world."Lord, this is true," said Bosambo, "that this dog attacked my river villages and put my men to death and my women to service. So I came down against him, for it is written in the Sura of the Djinn that no man shall live to laugh at his own evil.""There will be a palaver," said Sanders briefly, and bade the crestfallen chief, Ofesi, to come down and stack his spears. Since it is not in the nature of the native man to speak the truth when his skin is in peril, it goes without saying that both sides lied fearfully, and Sanders, sifting the truth, knew which side lied the least."Ofesi," he said, at the end of much weariness of listening, "what do you say that I shall not hang you?"Ofesi, a short, thick man with a faint beard, looked up and down, left and right for inspiration. "Lord," he said after a while, "this you know, that all my life I have been a good man—and it is said that I have a high destiny, and shall not die by cruelty.""'Man is eternal whilst he lives,'" quoted Sanders, "'yet man dies sooner or later.'"Ofesi stared round at Bosambo, and Bosambo was guilty of an indiscretion—possibly the greatest indiscretion of his life. In the presence of his master, and filled with the exultation and virtuous righteousness which come to the palpably innocent in the face of trial, he said in English, shaking his head the while reprovingly:"Oh, you dam' naughty devil!"Sanders had condemned the man to death in his heart; had mentally chosen the tree on which the marauding chief should swing when Bosambo spoke.Sanders had an immense idea as to the sanctity of life in one sense. He had killed many by rope with seeming indifference, and, indeed, he never allowed the question of a man's life or death to influence him one way or the other when an end was in view.He would watch with unwavering eyes the breath choke out of a swaying body, yet there must be a certain ritual of decency, of fitness, of decorum in such matters, or his delicate sense of justice was outraged.Bosambo's words, grotesque, uncalled for, wholly absurd, saved the life of Ofesi the chief.For a moment Sanders's lips twitched irresponsibly, then he turned with a snarl upon the discomfited chief of the Ochori."Back to your land, you monkey man!" he snapped; "this man has offended against the land—yet he shall live, for he is a fool. I know a greater one!"He sent Ofesi back to his village to build up what his folly had overthrown."Remember, Ofesi," he said, "I give you back your life, though you deserve death: and I do this because it comes to me suddenly that you are a child as Bosambo is a child. Now, I will come back to you with the early spring, and if you have deserved well of me you shall be rewarded with your liberty; and if you have done ill to me, you shall go to the Village of Irons or to a worse place."Back at headquarters Sanders told a sympathetic captain of Houssas the story."It was horribly weak of course," he said; "but, somehow, when that ass Bosambo let rip his infernal English I couldn't hang a sparrow.""Might have brought this Ofesi person down to the village," said the captain thoughtfully. "He's got an extraordinary reputation."Sanders sat on the edge of the table, his hands thrust into his breeches pockets."I thought of that, too, and it affected me. You see, there was just a fear in my mind that I was being influenced on the wrong side by this fellow's talk of destiny—that I was being, in fact, a little malicious."The Houssa skipper snapped his cigarette case and looked thoughtful."I'll get another company down from headquarters," he said."You might ask for a machine-gun section also," said Sanders. "I've got it in my bones that there's going to be trouble."A week later the upper river saw many strange faces. Isolated fishermen came from nowhere in particular to pursue their mild calling in strange waters.They built their huts in unfrequented patches of forest, and you might pass up and down a stretch of the beach without knowing that hut was modestly concealed in the thick bush at the back.Also they went about their business at night with fishing spear and light canoe tacking across river and up river, moving without sound in the shadows of the bank, approaching villages and cities with remarkable circumspection.They were strange fishermen indeed, for they fished with pigeons. In every canoe the birds drowsed in a wicker-work cage, little red labels about their legs on which even an untutored spy might make a rude but significant mark with the aid of an indelible pencil.Sanders took no risks.He summoned Ahmed Ali, the chief of his secret men."Go to the Akasava country, and there you will find Ofesi, a chief of the village Mi-lanti. Watch him, for he is an evil man. On the day that he moves against me and my people you shall judge whether I can come in time with my soldiers. If there is time send for me: but if he moves swiftly you shall shoot him dead and you shall not be blamed. Go with God.""Master," said Ahmed, "Ofesi is already in hell."If all reports worked out, and they certainly tallied, Ofesi, the predestined chief, gave no offence. He rebuilt his city, choosing higher ground and following a long and unexpected hunting trip, which took him to the edge of the Akasava country, and he projected a visit of love and harmony to Bosambo.He even sent swift couriers to Sanders to ask permission for the ceremonial, though such permission was wholly unnecessary. Sanders granted the request, delaying the deputation until he had sent his own messengers to Bosambo.So on a bright June morning Ofesi set forth on his mission, his two and twenty canoes painted red, and even the paddles newly burnt to fantastic and complimentary designs; and he came to the Ochori and was met by Bosambo, a profound sceptic but outwardly pleasant."I see you," said Ofesi, "I see you, lord Bosambo, also your brave and beautiful people; yet I come in peace and it grieves me that you should meet me with so many spears."For in truth the beach bristled a steel welcome and three fighting regiments of the Ochori, gallantly arrayed, were ranked in hollow square, the fourth side of which was the river."Lord Ofesi," said Bosambo suavely, "this is the white man's way of doing honour and, as you know, I have much white blood in my veins, being related to the English Prime Minister."He surveyed the two-and-twenty canoes with their twenty paddlers to each, and duly noted that each paddler carried his fighting spears as a matter of course.That Ofesi had any sinister design upon the stronghold of the Ochori may be dismissed as unlikely. He was cast in no heroic mould, and abhorred unnecessary risk, for destiny requires some assistance.He had brought his spears for display rather than for employment. Willy-nilly he must stack them now—an unpleasant operation, reminiscent of another stacking under the cold eye of Sanders.So it may be said that therapprochementbetween the Ochori and the Akasava chief began inauspiciously. Bosambo led the way to his guest-house—new-thatched as is the custom.There was a great feast in Ofesi's honour, and a dance of girls—every village contributing its chief dancer for the event. Next day there was a palaver with sacrifices of fowl and beast, and blood friendships were sworn fluently. Bosambo and Ofesi embraced before all the people assembled, and ate salt from the same dish."Now I will tell you all my business, my brother," said Ofesi that night. "To-morrow I go back to my people with your good word, and I shall speak of you by day and night because of your noble heart.""I also will have no rest," said Bosambo, "till I have journeyed all over this land, speaking about my wonderful brother Ofesi."With a word Ofesi dismissed his counsellors, and Bosambo, accepting the invitation, sent away his headmen."Now I will tell you," said Ofesi.And what he said, what flood of ego-oratory, what promises, what covert threats, provided Bosambo with reminiscences for long afterwards."Yet," he concluded, "though all things have moved to make me what I am, yet there is much I have to learn, and from none can I learn so well as from you, my brother.""That is very true," said Bosambo, and meant it."Now," Ofesi went on to his peroration, "the king of the Akasava is dying and all men are agreed that I shall be king in his place, therefore I would learn to the utmost grain all the secrets of kingship. Therefore, since I cannot sit with you, I ask you, lord Bosambo, to give a home to Tolinobo, my headman, that he may sit for a year in the shadow of your wisdom and tell me the many beautiful things you say."Bosambo looked thoughtfully at Tolinobo, the headman, a shifty fisherman promoted to that position, and somewhat deficient in sanity, as Bosambo judged."He shall sit with me," said Bosambo at length, "and be as my own son, sleeping in a hut by mine, and I will treat him as if he were my brother."There was a fleeting gleam of satisfaction in Ofesi's eye as he rose to embrace his blood-friend; but then he did not know how Bosambo treated his brother.The Akasava chief and his two and twenty canoes paddled homeward at daybreak, and Bosambo saw them off.When they were gone, he turned to his headman."Tell me, Solonkinini," he said, "what have we done with this Tolinobo who stays with us?""Lord, we build him a new hut this morning in your lordship's shadow."Bosambo nodded."First," he said, "you shall take him to the secret place near the Crocodile Pool and stake him out. Presently I will come, and we will ask him some questions.""Lord, he will not answer," said the headman. "I myself have spoken with him.""He shall answer me," said Bosambo, significantly, "and you shall build a fire and make very hot your spears, for I think this Tolinobo has something he will be glad to tell."Bosambo's prediction was justified by fact.Ofesi was not half-way home, happy in his success, when a blubbering Tolinobo, stretched ignominiously on the ground, spoke with a lamentable lack of reserve on all manner of private matters, being urged thereto by a red hot spear-head which Bosambo held much too near his face for comfort.
* * * * *
Sanders, at that moment, was hunting for the Long Man, whose name was O'Fasa. O'Fasa was twelve months gone in sleeping-sickness, and had turned from being a gentle husband and a kindly father into a brute beast. He had speared his wife, cut down the Houssa guard left by Sanders to keep the peace of his village, and had made for the forest.
Now, a madman is a king, holding his subjects in the thrall of fear, and since there was no room in the territory for two kings and Sanders, the Commissioner came full tilt up the river, landed half a company of black infantry, and followed on the ravaging trace of the madman.
At the end of eight days he came upon O'Fasa, the Long Man. He was sitting with his back against a gum-tree, his well-polished spears close at hand, and he was singing the death song of the Isisi, a long low, wailing, sorrowful song, which may be so translated into doggerel English:
Life is a thing so smallThat you cannot see it at all;Death is a thing so wiseThat you see it in every guise.Death is the son of life,Pain is his favourite wife.
Life is a thing so smallThat you cannot see it at all;Death is a thing so wiseThat you see it in every guise.Death is the son of life,Pain is his favourite wife.
Life is a thing so small
That you cannot see it at all;
Death is a thing so wise
That you see it in every guise.
Death is the son of life,
Pain is his favourite wife.
Sanders went slowly across the clearing, his automatic pistol in his hand.
O'Fasa looked at him and laughed.
"O'Fasa," said Sanders gently, "I have come to see you, because my King heard you were sick."
"O ko!" laughed the other. "I am a great man when kings send their messengers to me."
Sanders, his eye upon the spears, advanced warily.
"Come with me, O'Fasa," he said.
The man rose to his feet. He made no attempt to reach his spears. Of a sudden he ducked, and turned, running swiftly towards the black heart of the forest. Sanders raised his pistol, and hesitated a second—just too long. He could not kill the man, though by letting him live he might endanger the lives of his fellows and the peace of the land.
The Commissioner was in an awkward predicament. Ten miles beyond was the narrow gap which led into the territory of N'raki. To lead an armed expedition through that gap would bring about complications which it was his duty and desire to avoid. The only hope was that O'Fasa would double back, for the trail they followed left little doubt as to where he had gone. Unerringly, with the instinct of the hunted beast, he had made for the gap.
They came to the gorge, palm-fringed, and damp with the running waters, at sunset, and camped. They found the spoor of the hunted man, lost it, and picked it up again. At daybreak Sanders, with two men, pushed through the narrow pass and came into the forbidden territory. There was no sign of the fugitive.
Sanders'slokalibeat out four urgent messages. They were addressed to a Mr. Grayson Smith, who might possibly be in that neighbourhood, but if he received them, he sent no reply.
Now, madmen and children have a rooted dislike for strange places, and Sanders, backing on this, fixed his ambush in the narrow end of the gorge. Sooner or later O'Fasa would return. At any rate, he decided to give him four days. Thus matters stood when the sometime minister, Ussuf, with a woman and five Arabi, made for the gap, with the swift and tireless guards of the king at their heels.
Three times the Arab had halted to fight off his pursuers, and in one of these engagements he had sustained his only casualty, and had left a dead Arab follower on the ground of his stand.
The gap was in sight, when a regiment of the north, summoned bylokali, swept down on his left and effectively blocked his retreat. Ussuf took up his position on a little rocky hill. His right was protected by swamp land, and his left and rear were open.
"Lapai," he said, when he had surveyed the position, "it seems to me that the death you desire is very close at hand. Now, I am very sorry for you, but God knows my sorrow can do little to save you."
The woman looked at him steadily.
"Lord," she said, "I am very glad if you and I go down to hell together, for in some new, strange world you might love me, and I should be satisfied."
Ussuf laughed, showing his straight rows of white teeth in genuine amusement.
"That we shall see," he said.
The attack came almost at once, but the rifles of the six shot back the assault. At the end of two hours the little party stood intact. A second attack followed; one man of the Arab guard went down with an arrow through his throat, but Ussuf's shooting was effective, and again the northern regiment drew off.
Before the hill, and in the direction of Akarti city, was the king's legion. It was from this point that Ussuf expected the last destroying assault.
"Lapai," he said, turning round, "I——"
The woman had gone! In the fury of the defence he had not noticed her slip away from him. Suddenly she appeared half-way down the hill and turned to him.
"Come back!" he called.
She framed her mouth with two hands that her words might carry better. In the still evening air every word came distinctly.
"Lord," she said, "this is best, for if they have me, they will let you go, and death will come some day to you, and I shall be waiting."
She turned and ran quickly down the hill towards the stiff lines of warriors below.
Then suddenly appeared out of the ground, as It seemed, a tall, lank figure right in her path. She stopped a moment, and the man sprang at her and lifted her without an effort. Ussuf raised his rifle and covered them, but he dare not shoot.
There was another interested spectator. King N'raki, a vengeful man, and agile despite his years, had followed as eagerly as the youngest of his warriors, and now stood in the midst of his counsellors, watching the scene upon the hill.
"What man is that?" he asked. "For I see he is not of our people."
Before the messengers he would have dispatched could be instructed, the tall man, running lightly with his burden, came towards him, and laid a dead woman almost at the king's feet.
"Man," he said insolently, "I bring you this woman, whom I have killed, because a devil put it into my heart to do so."
"Who are you?" asked N'raki. "For I see you are a stranger."
"I am a king," said O'Fasa, the Long Man; "greater than all kings, for I have behind me the armies of white men."
The humour of this twisted truth struck him of a sudden, for he burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
"You have the armies of the white men behind you?" repeated N'raki slowly, and looked nervously from side to side.
"Behold!" said O'Fasa, stretching out his hand.
The king's eyes followed the direction of the hand. Far away across the bare plain he saw black specks of men advancing at regular intervals. The sinking sun set the bayonets of Sander's little force aglitter. The Commissioner had heard the firing, and had guessed much.
"It is 'They,'" said King N'raki, and blinked furiously at the Long Man, O'Fasa.
He turned swiftly to his guard.
"Kill that man!" he said.
* * * * *
Sanders brought his half-company of Houssas to the hill and was met half-way by Ussuf.
"I heard your rifles," he said. "Have you seen anything of a long chap, of wild and aggressive mien!" He spoke in English, and Ussuf replied in the same language.
"A tall man?" he asked, and Sanders wondered a little that a man so unemotional as was Grayson Smith, of the Colonial Intelligence, should speak so shakily.
"I think he is here," said the Englishman in Arab attire, and he led the way down the hill.
N'raki's armies had moved off swiftly. The fear of "They" had been greater in its effect than all its legions.
The Englishmen made their way to where two figures lay in a calm sleep of death.
"Who is the woman?" asked Sanders.
"A native woman, who loved me," said Grayson Smith simply, and he bent down and closed the eyes of the girl who had loved him so well.
CHAPTER XII
THE AMBASSADORS
There is a saying amongst the Akasava:
"The Isisi sees with his eyes, the N'gombi with his ears, but the Ochori sees nothing but his meat."
This is translated badly, but in its original form it is immensely subtle. In the old days before Bosambo became chief, king, headman, or what you will, of his people, the Ochori were quite prepared to accept the insulting description of their sleepiness without resentment.
But this wascala-cala, and now the Ochori are a proud people, and it is not good to throw insulting proverbs in their direction, lest they throw them back with something good and heavy at the end of it.
The native mind works slowly, and it was not until every tribe within three hundred miles had received some significant indication of the change which had come about in the spirit and character of this timorous people, that they realised the Ochori were no longer a race which might serve as butts for the shafts of wisdom.
There was a petty chief of the Isisi who governed a great district, for, although "Isisi" means "small" the name must not be taken literally. He had power under his king to call palavers on all great national questions, such as the failure of crops, the shifting of fishing-grounds, and the infidelities of highly-placed women.
One day he called his people together—his counsellors, his headmen, and all sons of chiefs—and he laid before them a remarkable proposition.
"In the days of my father," said Embed, "the Ochori were a weak and cowardly people; now they have become strong and powerful. Last week they came down upon our brothers of the Akasava and stole their goats and laid shame upon them, and behold! the Akasava, who are great warriors, did nothing more than send to Sandi the story of their sorrow. Now it seems to me that this is because Bosambo, the chief, has a devil of great potency, and I have sent to my king to ask him to entreat the lord Bosambo to tell us why these things should be."
The gathered counsellors nodded their heads wisely. There was no doubt at all that Bosambo had the advantage of communication with a devil; or if this were not so, he was blessed to a minor degree with a nodding acquaintance with one of those ghosts in which the forest of the Ochori abounded.
"And thus says my lord, the king of the Akasava, and of all the territories and the rivers and the unknown lands beyond the forest as far as the eye can see," the chief went on. "He sends me his message by his counsellor, saying: 'It is true Bosambo has a devil, and for the sake of my people I will send to him, asking him to put his strength in our hands, that we may be wise and bold.'"
Now this was a conclusion which had been arrived at simultaneously by the six nations, and, although the thoughts of their rulers were not communicated in such a public fashion, the faith in Bosambo's inspiration was universal, and the idea that Bosambo should be thus approached was a violent and shameless plagiarism on the part of the chief Emberi.
One morning in the late spring the ambassadors of the powers came paddling up to Ochori city in twelve canoes with their headmen, their warriors, their beaters of drums and their carriers. Bosambo, who had no faith whatever in humanity, was warned of their approach and threw the city into a condition of defence. He himself received the deputation on the foreshore, and the spokesman was Emberi.
"Lord Bosambo," said the chief, "we come in peace, and from the chief and the kings and all the peoples of these lands."
"That may be so," said Bosambo, "and my heart is full of joy to see you. But I beg of you that you land your spearmen and your warriors and your beaters of drums on the other side of the river, for I am a timorous man, and I fear that I cannot in this city show you the love and honour which Sandi has asked me to give even to common people."
"But, lord," protested the chief, who, to do him credit, had no warlike or injurious ideas concerning his host, "on the other side of the water there is only sand and water and evil spirits."
"That may be so," said Bosambo; "but on this side of the river there are me and my people, and we desire to live happily for many years. I tell you, that it is better that you should all die because of the sand and the water and the evil spirits, than that I should be slain by those who do not love me."
"My master," said Emberi pompously, "is a great king and a great lover of you."
"Your master," said Bosambo, "is a great liar."
"He loves you," protested Emberi.
"He is still a great liar," said Bosambo; "for the last time I met him he not only said that he would come with his legions and eat me up, but he also called me evil names, such as 'fish-eater' and 'chicken,' and 'fat dog.'"
Bosambo spoke without fear of consequences because he had a hundred of his picked men behind him, and all the advantage of the sloping beach. He would have turned the delegates back to their homes, but that the persistent and alarmed Emberi succeeded in interesting him in his announcements, and, more important, there were landed from one of the canoes, rich presents, including goats and rice and a looking-glass, which latter was, explained Emberi, the very core of his master's soul.
In the end Bosambo left his hundred men to hold the beach, and Emberi persuaded his reluctant followers to make their home on the sandy shore across the river.
Then, and only then, did Bosambo unbend, and had prepared one of his famous feasts, to which all the chiefs of the land contributed in the shape of meat and drink—all the chiefs, that is, except Bosambo, who made a point of giving nothing away to anybody in any circumstances.
The palaver that followed was very interesting, indeed, to the chief of the Ochori. One by one, from nine in the morning to four in the following morning, the delegates spoke.
Much of their speeches dealt with the superlative qualities which distinguished Bosambo's rule—his magnificent courage, his noble generosity—Bosambo glanced quickly round to see the faces of the counsellors who had reluctantly provided the feast—and to the future which awaited all nations which imitated all his virtues.
"Lord, I speak the truth," said Emberi, "and thus it runs that all people from the sea where the river ends, to the leopard's mouth from whence it has its source, know that you are familiar with devils that give you courage and cunning and tell you magic, so that you can make men from rats."
Bosambo nodded his head gravely.
"All this is true," he said. "I have several devils, although I do not always use them. For, as you know, I am a follower of a particular faith, and was for one life-time a Christian, believing in all manners of mysteries of which you know nothing—Marki, Luki, and Johnny Baptist, who are not for you."
He looked round at the awed men and shook his head.
"Nor do you know of the wonders they worked, such as curing burns, and striking dead, and cutting ears. Now I know these things," he continued impressively, "therefore Sandi loves me, for he also is a God-man, and often comes to me to speak with him concerning these white men."
"Lord, what are devils?" asked an impatient delegate.
"Of the devils," repeated Bosambo, "I have many."
He half closed his eyes and was silent for the space of two minutes. He gave the impression that he was counting his staff—and, indeed, this was the idea precisely that he wished to convey.
"O ko!" said Emberi in a hushed voice. "If it is true, as you say it is, then our master desires that you shall send us one devil or two that we might be taught the peculiar manner of these wonderful ghosts."
Bosambo coughed, and glanced round at the sober faces of his advisers.
"I have many devils who serve me," he began. "There is one I know who is very small and has two noses—one before him and one behind—so that he may smell his enemy who stalks him. Also there is one who is so tall that the highest trees are grass to his feet. And another one who is green and walks upside down."
For an hour Bosambo orated at length on dæmonology, even though he might never have known the word. He drew on the misty depths of his imagination. He availed himself of every recollection dealing with science. He spoke of ghosts who were familiar friends, and came to his bidding much in the same way that the civilised dog comes to his master's whistle.
The delegates retired to their huts for the night in a condition of panic when Bosambo informed them that he had duly appointed a particular brand of devil to serve their individual needs, and protect them against the ills which the flesh is heir to.
Now Ochori city and the Ochori nation had indeed awakened from the spell of lethargy under the beneficent and drastic government of Bosambo, and it is known in the history of nations, however primitive or however advanced they may be, that no matter how excellent may be the changes effected there will be a small but compact party who regard the reformer as one who encumbers the earth. Bosambo had of his own people a small but powerful section who regarded all changes with horror, and who saw in the new spirit which the chief had infused into the Ochori, the beginning of the end. This is a view which is not peculiar to the Ochori.
There were old chiefs and headmen who remembered the fat and idle days which preceded the upraising of Bosambo, who remembered how easy it was to secure slave service, and, remembering, spoke of Bosambo with unkindness. The chief might have settled the matter of devils out of hand in his own way, and would, I doubt not, have sent away the delegation happily enough with such messages of the Koran as he could remember written on the paper Sanders had supplied him for official messages.
But it was not Bosambo's way, nor was it the way with the men with whom he had to deal to expedite important palavers. Normally, such a conference as was now assembled, would last at least three days and three nights. It seemed that it would last much longer, for Bosambo had troubles of his own.
At dawn on the morning following the arrival of the delegation, a dust-stained messenger, naked as he was born, came at a jog-trot and panting heavily from the bush road which leads to the Elivi, and without ceremony stood at the door of the royal hut.
"Lord Bosambo," said the messenger, "Ikifari, the chief of Elivi, brings his soldiers and headmen to the number of a thousand, for a palaver."
"What is in his heart?" said Bosambo.
"Master," said the man, "this is in his heart: there shall be no roads in the Ochori, for the men of Elivi are crying out against the work. They desire to live in peace and comfort."
Bosambo had instituted a law of his own—with the full approval of Sanders—and it was that each district should provide a straight and well-made forest road from one city to another, and a great road which should lead from one district to its neighbour.
Unfortunately, every little tribe did not approach the idea with the enthusiasm which Bosambo himself felt, nor regard it with the approval which was offered to this most excellent plan by the King's Government.
For road-making is a bad business. It brings men out early in the morning, and keeps them working with the sweat running off their bare backs in the hot hours of the day. Also there were fines and levies which Bosambo the chief took an unholy joy in extracting whenever default was made.
Of all the reluctant tribes, the Elivi were the most frankly so. Whilst all the others were covered with a network of rough roads—slovenly made, but roads none the less—Elivi stood a virgin patch of land two hundred miles square in the very heart of make-shift civilisation.
Bosambo might deal drastically with the enemy who stood outside his gate. It was a more delicate matter when he had to deal with a district tacitly rebellious, and this question of roads threatened to develop, unhappily.
He had sent spies into the land of the Elivi and this was the first man back.
"Now it seems to me," said Bosambo, half to himself, "that I have need of all my devils, for Ikifari is a bitter man, and his sons and his counsellors are of a mind with him."
He sent his headman to his guests with a message that for the whole day he would be deep in counsel with himself over this matter of ghosts; and when late in the evening the van of the Elivi force was sighted on the east of the village, Bosambo, seated in state in his magnificent palaver-house, adorned with such Christmas plates as came his way, awaited their arrival.
Limberi, the headman, went out to meet the disgruntled force.
"Chief," he said, "it is our lord's wish that you leave your spears outside the city."
"Limberi," said Ikifari, a hard man of forty, all wiry muscle and leanness, "we are people of your race and your brothers. Why should we leave our spears—we who are of the Ochori?"
"You do not come otherwise," said Limberi decisively. "For across the river are many enemies of our lord, and he loves you so much, that for his own protection, he desired your armed men—your spearmen and your swordsmen—to sit outside. Thus he will be confident and happy."
There was no more to be done than to obey.
Ikifari with his counsellors followed the headman to the palaver, and his insolence was notable.
"I speak for all Elivi," he said, without any ceremonious preliminaries. "We are an oppressed people, lord Bosambo, and our young men cry out with great voices against your cruelty."
"They shall cry louder," said Bosambo, and Ikifari, the chief, scowled.
"Lord," he said sullenly, "if it is true that Sandi loves you, he also loves us, and no man is so great in this land that he may stir a people to rebellion."
Bosambo knew this was true—knew it without the muttered approval of Ikifari's headmen. He ran his eye over the little party. They were all there—the malcontents. Tinif'si, the stout headman, M'kera and Calasari, the lesser chiefs; and there was in their minds a certain defiance which particularly exasperated Bosambo. He might punish one or two who set themselves up against his authority, but here was an organised rebellion. Punishment would mean fighting, and fighting would weaken his position with Sanders.
It was the moment to temporise.
Fortunately the devil deputation was not present. It was considered to be against all etiquette for men of another nation to be present at the domestic councils of their neighbours. Otherwise some doubt might have been born in the bosom of Emberi as to the efficacy of Bosambo's devils at this particular moment.
"And this I would say to you, lord," said Ikifari, and Bosambo knew that the crux of the situation would be revealed. "We Elivi are your dogs. You do not send for us to come to your great feasts, nor do you honour us in any way. But when there is fighting you call up our spears and our young men, and you send us abroad to be eaten up by your terrible enemies. Also," he went on, "when you choose your chiefs and counsellors to go pleasant journeys to such places where they are honoured and feasted, you send only men of the Ochori city."
It may be said here that from whatever source Bosambo derived his inspiration, he had certainly acquired royal habits which were foreign to his primitive people. Thus he would dispatch envoys and ambassadors on ceremonious visits bearing gifts and presents which they themselves provided and returning with richer presents which Bosambo acquired. It was, if the truth be told, a novel and pleasant method of extracting blackmail—pleasant because it gave Bosambo little trouble, and afforded his subordinates titillation of importance, and no one had arisen to complain save these unfortunate cities of Akasava—Isisi and N'gombi—which entertained his representatives.
"It is true I have never sent you," said Bosambo, "and my heart is sore at the thought that you should think evil of me because I have saved you all this trouble. For my heart is like water within me. Yet a moon since I sent Kill, my headman, bearing gifts to the king of the bush people, and they chopped him so that he died, and now I fear to send other messengers."
There was an unmistakable sneer on Ikifari's face.
"Lord," he said, with asperity, "Kili was a foolish man and you hated him, for he had spoken evilly against you, stirring up your people. Therefore you sent him to the bushmen and he did not come back." He added significantly: "Now I tell you that if you send me to the bushmen I do not go."
Bosambo thought a moment.
"Now I see," he said, almost jovially, "that Ikifari, whom I love better than my own brother"—this was true—"is angry with me because I have not sent him on a journey. Now I shall show how much I love you, for I will send you all—each of you—as guests of my house, bearing my word to such great nations as the Akasava, the Isisi, the N'gombi; also to the people beyond the river, who are great and give large presents."
He saw the faces brighten, and seized the psychological moment.
"The palaver is finished," said Bosambo magnificently.
He ordered a feast to be made outside the city for his unwelcome guests, and summoned the devil delegates to his presence.
"My friends," he said, "I have given this matter of devils great thought, and since I desire to stand well with you and with your master, I have spent this night in company with six great devils, who are my best friends and who help me in all matters. Now I tell you this—which is known only to myself and to you, whom I trust—that to-day I send to your master six great spirits which inspire me."
There was a hush. The sense of responsibility, which comes to the nervous who are suddenly entrusted with the delivery of a ferocious bull, fell upon the men of the delegation.
"Lord, this is a great honour," said Emberi, "and our masters will send many more presents than your lordship has ever seen. But how may we take these devils with us, for we are fearful and are not used to their ways?"
Bosambo bowed his head graciously.
"That also filled my thoughts," he said, "and thus I have ordered it. I shall take six of my people—six counsellors and chiefs, who are to me as the sun and the flowers—and by magic I will place inside the heart of each chief and headman one great devil. You shall take these men with you, and you shall listen to all they say save this." He paused. "These devils love me, and they will greatly desire to return to my city and to my land, where they have been so long. Now I tell you that you must treat them kindly. Yet you must hold them, putting a guard about them, and keeping them in a secret place, so that Sandi may not find them and hear of them. And they will bring you fortune and prosperity and the courage of lions."
* * * * *
Sanders was coming up river to settle a woman palaver, when he came slap into a flotilla of such pretension and warlike appearance that he did not hesitate for one moment.
At a word, the canvas jackets were slipped from the Hotchkiss guns, and they were swung over the side. But there was no need for such preparations, as he discovered when Emberi's canoe came alongside.
"Tell me, Emberi," said Sanders, "what is this wonderful thing I see—that the Akasavas and the Isisi, and the N'gombi and the people of the lower forest sail together in love and harmony?"
"Lord," said Emberi proudly, "this is Bosambo's doing."
Sanders was all suspicion.
"Now I know that Bosambo is a clever man," he said, "yet I did not know that he was so great a character that he could bring together all men in peace, but rather the contrary."
"He has done this because of devils," said Emberi importantly. "Behold, there are certain things about which I must not speak to you, and this is one of them. So, Sandi, ask me no more, for I have sworn an oath."
Leaning over the steamer Sanders surveyed the flotilla. His keen eyes ranged the boat from stem to stern. He noted with interest the presence of one Ikifari, who was known to him. And Ikifari in a scarlet coat was a happy and satisfied man.
"O Ikifari," bantered Sanders, "what of my roads?"
The chief looked up. "Lord, they shall be made," he said, "though my young men die in the making. I go now to make a grand palaver for my friend and father Bosambo, for he trusts me above all men and has sent me to the Isisi."
Sanders knew something of Bosambo's idiosyncrasies, and nodded.
"When you come back," he said, "I will speak on the matter of these roads. Tell me now, my friend, how long do you stay with the Isisi?"
"Lord," said Ikifari, "I stay for the time of a moon. Afterwards I go back to the Ochori, bearing rich presents which my lord Bosambo has made me swear I will keep for myself."
"The space of a moon," repeated Sanders.
He turned to ring the engines "Ahead" and did not see Emberi's hand go up to cover a smile.
CHAPTER XIII
GUNS IN THE AKASAVA
"Thank God!" said the Houssa captain fervently, "there is no war in this country."
"Touch wood!" said Sanders, and the two men simultaneously reached out and laid solemn hands upon the handle of the coffee-pot, which was vulcanite.
If they had touched wood who knows what might have happened in the first place to Ofesi the chief of Mc-Canti?
Who knows what might have happened to the two smugglers of gold from the French territory?
The wife of Bikilini might have gone off with her lover, and Bikilini resigned and patient taken another to wife, and the death men of the Ofesi might never have gone forth upon their unamiable missions, or going forth have been drowned, or grown faint-hearted.
Anyway it is an indisputable fact that neither Sanders nor Captain Hamilton touched wood on the occasion.
And as to Bannister Fish——?
That singular man was a trader in questionable commodities, for he had not the nice sentiments which usually go with the composition of a white man.
Some say that he ran slaves from Angola to places where a black man or a black woman is worth a certain price; that he did this openly with the connivance of the Government of Portugal and made a tolerable fortune. He certainly bought more poached ivory than any man in Africa, and his crowning infamy up to date was the arming of a South Soudanese Mahdi—arms for employment against his fellow-countrymen.
There are certain manufacturers of small arms in the Midlands who will execute orders to any capacity, produce weapons modern or antiquated at a cost varying with the delicacy or mechanism of the weapon. They have no conscience, but have a hard struggle to pay dividends because there are other firms in Liége who run the same line of business, but produce at from 10 per cent. to 25 per cent. lower cost.
Mr. Bannister Fish, a thin, wiry man of thirty-four, as yellow as a guinea and with the temper of a fiend, was not popular on the coast, especially with officials. Fortunately Africa has many coasts, and since Africa in mass was Mr. Fish's hunting-ground, rather than any particular section, the coast men—as we know the coast—saw little of him.
It was Mr. Fish's boast that there was not twenty miles of coast line from Dakka to Capetown, and from Lourenço Marques to Suez, that had not contributed something of beauty to his lordly mansion on the top of Highgate Hill.
You will observe that he omits reference to the coast which encloses Cape Colony, and there is a reason. Cape Colony is immensely civilised, has stipendiary magistrates and a horrible breakwater where yellow-jacketed convicts labour for their sins, and Mr. Fish's sins were many. He tackled Sanders's territory in the same spirit as a racehorse breeder will start raising Pekingese poodles—not for the money he could make out of it, but as an amusing sideline.
He worked ruin on the edge of the Akasava country, operating from the adjoining foreign territories, and found an unholy joy in worrying Sanders, whom he had met once and most cordially disliked.
His dislike was intensified on the next occasion of their meeting, for Sanders, making a forced march across the Akasava, seized the caravan of Mr. Bannister Fish, burnt his stores out of hand, and submitted the plutocrat of Highgate Hill to the indignity of marching handcuffed to headquarters. Mr. Fish was tried by a divisional court and fined £500, or, as an alternative, awarded twelve months imprisonment with hard labour.
The fine was paid, and Mr. Fish went home saying horrible things about Mr. Commissioner Sanders, which I will not sully these fair pages by repeating.
Highgate Hill is a prosaic neighbourhood served by prosaic motor-buses, and not the place where one would imagine wholesale murder might be planned, yet from his domain in Highgate Mr. Fish issued certain instructions by telephone and cablegram, and at his word men went secretly into Sanders's territory looking for the likely man.
They found Ofesi, and Highgate spoke to the Akasava to some purpose.
In the month of February in a certain year Mr. Fish drove resplendently in his electric landau from Highgate to Waterloo. He arrived on the Akasava border seven weeks later no less angry with Sanders than he had ever been, and of a cheerful countenance because, being a millionaire, he could indulge in his hobbies, and his hobby was the annoyance of a far-away Commissioner who, at that precise moment was touching vulcanite and thinking it wood.
Ofesi, the son of Malaka, the son of G'nani, was predestined.
Thus it was predicted by the famous witch-doctor Komonobologo, of the Akasava.
For it would appear that on the night that Ofesi came squealing into the world, there were certain solar manifestations such as an eclipse of the moon and prodigious shooting of stars, which Komonobologo translated favourably to the clucking, sobbing and shrill whimpering morsel of whitey-brown humanity.
Thus Ofesi was to rule all peoples as far as the sun shone (some three hundred miles in all directions according to local calculations), and he should not suffer ignominious death at the hand of any man.
Ofesi (literally "the Born-Lucky") should be mighty in counsel and in war; should shake the earth with the tread of his legions; might risk and gain, never risk and lose; was the favoured of ju-jus and ghosts; and would have many sons.
The hollow-eyed woman stretched on the floor of the hut spoke faintly of her happiness, the baby with greedy mouth satisfying the beast in him said nothing, being too much occupied with his natural and instinctive desires.
Such prophecies are common, and some come to nothing. Some, for no apparent reason, stick fest to the recipients.
Ofesi—his destiny—was of the sticking kind.
When Sanders took up his duties on the river, Ofesi was a lank and awkward youth of whom his fellows stood in awe.
Sanders was in awe of nobody. He listened quietly to the recital of portents, omens, and the like, and when it was finished, he delivered a little homily on the fallibility of human things and the extraordinarily high death-rate which existed amongst those misguided people who walked outside the rigid circle of the land.
Ofesi had neighbours more hearty than Sanders, and by these he was accepted as something on account of the total wonder which the years would produce.
So Ofesi grew and flourished, doing much mischief in his way, which was neither innocent nor boyish, and the friendly hand which is upraised to small boys all the world over never fell sharply upon his well-covered nerves, because Ofesi was predestined and immune.
In course of time he was appointed by the then king of the Akasava to the chieftainship of the village of Mi-lanti, and the city of the Akasava breathed a sigh of relief to see his canoe go round the bend of the river out of sight.
No report of the chief's minor misdoings came to Sanders because this legend of destiny carried to all the nations save and except one.
It is said that Ofesi received more homage and held a more regal court in his tiny principality than did the king his master; that N'gombi, Isisi, and the tribes about sent him presents doubly precious, and that he had a household of sixty wives, all contributed by his devotees. It was also said that he made the intoxicating distributions of Mr. Fish possible, but Sanders had no proof of this.
He raided his friends impartially, did all manner of unpleasant things, terrorised the river from the Lesser Isisi to the edge of the Ochori, and the fishermen watching his war canoes creeping stealthily through the night would say: "Let no man see the lord Ofesi; lest in the days to come he remember and blind us."
Whether from sheer cunning or from the intuitive faculty which is a part of genius, Ofesi grew to stout manhood without once violating the border line of the Ochori.
Until upon a day——
Sanders came in great haste one wet April night when the clouds hung so low over the river that you might have touched them with a fishing-rod.
It was a night of billowing mists, of drenching cloud bursts, of loud cracking thunders and the flicker-flacker of lightning so incessant that only the darkness counted as interval.
Yet, against the swollen stream, drenched to the skin, his wet face set to the stinging rain and the white rod of his searchlight piercing such gloom as there was, Sanders came as fast as stern wheel could revolve for the Akasava land.
He came up to the village of Mi-lanti in the wild grey of a stormy dawn, and such of the huts as the flooding waters of the heavens had spared stood isolated sentinels amidst smoking ruins.
He landed tired and immensely angry, and found many dead men and one or two who thought they were dead. They told him a doleful story of rapine and murder, of an innocent village set upon by the Ochori and taken in its defencelessness. "That is a lie," said Sanders promptly, "for you have stockades, built to the west of the village and your dead are all painted as men paint themselves who prepare long for war. Also the Ochori—such as I have seen—are not so painted, which tells me that they came in haste against a warring people."
The wounded man turned his tired face to Sanders.
"It is my faith," he said, in the conventional terminology of his tribe, "that you have eyes like a big cat."
Sanders attended to his injuries and left him and his pitiful fellows in a dry hut. Then he went to look for Bosambo, and found him sitting patiently ten miles up the river. He sat before a steep hill of rock and undergrowth. At the top of the hill was the chief of the village of Mi-lanti, and with him were such of his fighting men as were not at the moment in a happier world.
"Lord, this is true," said Bosambo, "that this dog attacked my river villages and put my men to death and my women to service. So I came down against him, for it is written in the Sura of the Djinn that no man shall live to laugh at his own evil."
"There will be a palaver," said Sanders briefly, and bade the crestfallen chief, Ofesi, to come down and stack his spears. Since it is not in the nature of the native man to speak the truth when his skin is in peril, it goes without saying that both sides lied fearfully, and Sanders, sifting the truth, knew which side lied the least.
"Ofesi," he said, at the end of much weariness of listening, "what do you say that I shall not hang you?"
Ofesi, a short, thick man with a faint beard, looked up and down, left and right for inspiration. "Lord," he said after a while, "this you know, that all my life I have been a good man—and it is said that I have a high destiny, and shall not die by cruelty."
"'Man is eternal whilst he lives,'" quoted Sanders, "'yet man dies sooner or later.'"
Ofesi stared round at Bosambo, and Bosambo was guilty of an indiscretion—possibly the greatest indiscretion of his life. In the presence of his master, and filled with the exultation and virtuous righteousness which come to the palpably innocent in the face of trial, he said in English, shaking his head the while reprovingly:
"Oh, you dam' naughty devil!"
Sanders had condemned the man to death in his heart; had mentally chosen the tree on which the marauding chief should swing when Bosambo spoke.
Sanders had an immense idea as to the sanctity of life in one sense. He had killed many by rope with seeming indifference, and, indeed, he never allowed the question of a man's life or death to influence him one way or the other when an end was in view.
He would watch with unwavering eyes the breath choke out of a swaying body, yet there must be a certain ritual of decency, of fitness, of decorum in such matters, or his delicate sense of justice was outraged.
Bosambo's words, grotesque, uncalled for, wholly absurd, saved the life of Ofesi the chief.
For a moment Sanders's lips twitched irresponsibly, then he turned with a snarl upon the discomfited chief of the Ochori.
"Back to your land, you monkey man!" he snapped; "this man has offended against the land—yet he shall live, for he is a fool. I know a greater one!"
He sent Ofesi back to his village to build up what his folly had overthrown.
"Remember, Ofesi," he said, "I give you back your life, though you deserve death: and I do this because it comes to me suddenly that you are a child as Bosambo is a child. Now, I will come back to you with the early spring, and if you have deserved well of me you shall be rewarded with your liberty; and if you have done ill to me, you shall go to the Village of Irons or to a worse place."
Back at headquarters Sanders told a sympathetic captain of Houssas the story.
"It was horribly weak of course," he said; "but, somehow, when that ass Bosambo let rip his infernal English I couldn't hang a sparrow."
"Might have brought this Ofesi person down to the village," said the captain thoughtfully. "He's got an extraordinary reputation."
Sanders sat on the edge of the table, his hands thrust into his breeches pockets.
"I thought of that, too, and it affected me. You see, there was just a fear in my mind that I was being influenced on the wrong side by this fellow's talk of destiny—that I was being, in fact, a little malicious."
The Houssa skipper snapped his cigarette case and looked thoughtful.
"I'll get another company down from headquarters," he said.
"You might ask for a machine-gun section also," said Sanders. "I've got it in my bones that there's going to be trouble."
A week later the upper river saw many strange faces. Isolated fishermen came from nowhere in particular to pursue their mild calling in strange waters.
They built their huts in unfrequented patches of forest, and you might pass up and down a stretch of the beach without knowing that hut was modestly concealed in the thick bush at the back.
Also they went about their business at night with fishing spear and light canoe tacking across river and up river, moving without sound in the shadows of the bank, approaching villages and cities with remarkable circumspection.
They were strange fishermen indeed, for they fished with pigeons. In every canoe the birds drowsed in a wicker-work cage, little red labels about their legs on which even an untutored spy might make a rude but significant mark with the aid of an indelible pencil.
Sanders took no risks.
He summoned Ahmed Ali, the chief of his secret men.
"Go to the Akasava country, and there you will find Ofesi, a chief of the village Mi-lanti. Watch him, for he is an evil man. On the day that he moves against me and my people you shall judge whether I can come in time with my soldiers. If there is time send for me: but if he moves swiftly you shall shoot him dead and you shall not be blamed. Go with God."
"Master," said Ahmed, "Ofesi is already in hell."
If all reports worked out, and they certainly tallied, Ofesi, the predestined chief, gave no offence. He rebuilt his city, choosing higher ground and following a long and unexpected hunting trip, which took him to the edge of the Akasava country, and he projected a visit of love and harmony to Bosambo.
He even sent swift couriers to Sanders to ask permission for the ceremonial, though such permission was wholly unnecessary. Sanders granted the request, delaying the deputation until he had sent his own messengers to Bosambo.
So on a bright June morning Ofesi set forth on his mission, his two and twenty canoes painted red, and even the paddles newly burnt to fantastic and complimentary designs; and he came to the Ochori and was met by Bosambo, a profound sceptic but outwardly pleasant.
"I see you," said Ofesi, "I see you, lord Bosambo, also your brave and beautiful people; yet I come in peace and it grieves me that you should meet me with so many spears."
For in truth the beach bristled a steel welcome and three fighting regiments of the Ochori, gallantly arrayed, were ranked in hollow square, the fourth side of which was the river.
"Lord Ofesi," said Bosambo suavely, "this is the white man's way of doing honour and, as you know, I have much white blood in my veins, being related to the English Prime Minister."
He surveyed the two-and-twenty canoes with their twenty paddlers to each, and duly noted that each paddler carried his fighting spears as a matter of course.
That Ofesi had any sinister design upon the stronghold of the Ochori may be dismissed as unlikely. He was cast in no heroic mould, and abhorred unnecessary risk, for destiny requires some assistance.
He had brought his spears for display rather than for employment. Willy-nilly he must stack them now—an unpleasant operation, reminiscent of another stacking under the cold eye of Sanders.
So it may be said that therapprochementbetween the Ochori and the Akasava chief began inauspiciously. Bosambo led the way to his guest-house—new-thatched as is the custom.
There was a great feast in Ofesi's honour, and a dance of girls—every village contributing its chief dancer for the event. Next day there was a palaver with sacrifices of fowl and beast, and blood friendships were sworn fluently. Bosambo and Ofesi embraced before all the people assembled, and ate salt from the same dish.
"Now I will tell you all my business, my brother," said Ofesi that night. "To-morrow I go back to my people with your good word, and I shall speak of you by day and night because of your noble heart."
"I also will have no rest," said Bosambo, "till I have journeyed all over this land, speaking about my wonderful brother Ofesi."
With a word Ofesi dismissed his counsellors, and Bosambo, accepting the invitation, sent away his headmen.
"Now I will tell you," said Ofesi.
And what he said, what flood of ego-oratory, what promises, what covert threats, provided Bosambo with reminiscences for long afterwards.
"Yet," he concluded, "though all things have moved to make me what I am, yet there is much I have to learn, and from none can I learn so well as from you, my brother."
"That is very true," said Bosambo, and meant it.
"Now," Ofesi went on to his peroration, "the king of the Akasava is dying and all men are agreed that I shall be king in his place, therefore I would learn to the utmost grain all the secrets of kingship. Therefore, since I cannot sit with you, I ask you, lord Bosambo, to give a home to Tolinobo, my headman, that he may sit for a year in the shadow of your wisdom and tell me the many beautiful things you say."
Bosambo looked thoughtfully at Tolinobo, the headman, a shifty fisherman promoted to that position, and somewhat deficient in sanity, as Bosambo judged.
"He shall sit with me," said Bosambo at length, "and be as my own son, sleeping in a hut by mine, and I will treat him as if he were my brother."
There was a fleeting gleam of satisfaction in Ofesi's eye as he rose to embrace his blood-friend; but then he did not know how Bosambo treated his brother.
The Akasava chief and his two and twenty canoes paddled homeward at daybreak, and Bosambo saw them off.
When they were gone, he turned to his headman.
"Tell me, Solonkinini," he said, "what have we done with this Tolinobo who stays with us?"
"Lord, we build him a new hut this morning in your lordship's shadow."
Bosambo nodded.
"First," he said, "you shall take him to the secret place near the Crocodile Pool and stake him out. Presently I will come, and we will ask him some questions."
"Lord, he will not answer," said the headman. "I myself have spoken with him."
"He shall answer me," said Bosambo, significantly, "and you shall build a fire and make very hot your spears, for I think this Tolinobo has something he will be glad to tell."
Bosambo's prediction was justified by fact.
Ofesi was not half-way home, happy in his success, when a blubbering Tolinobo, stretched ignominiously on the ground, spoke with a lamentable lack of reserve on all manner of private matters, being urged thereto by a red hot spear-head which Bosambo held much too near his face for comfort.