"Arise, for morning in the bowl of nightHas chucked a stone to put the stars to flight.And lo! and lo!... Get up, Ali; the caravan ismoving.Oh, make haste!"
"Arise, for morning in the bowl of nightHas chucked a stone to put the stars to flight.And lo! and lo!... Get up, Ali; the caravan ismoving.Oh, make haste!"
("Omar will never be dead so long as Bones quotes him," Hamilton once said; "he simply couldn't afford to be dead and leave it to Bones!")
Ali rose, blinking and shivering, for the early morning was very cold, and he had been sleeping under an old padded dressing-gown which Bones had donated.
"Muster all the hands," said Bones, setting his lantern on the deck.
"Sir," said Ali slowly, "the subjects are not at our disposition. Your preliminary instructionspresupposed that you had made necessary arrangementsre personnel."
Bones scratched his head.
"Dash my whiskers," he said, in his annoyance, "didn't I tell you that I was taking the honourable lady for a trip? Didn't I tell you, you jolly old slacker, to have everything ready by daybreak? Didn't I issue explicit an' particular instructions about grub?"
"Sir," said Ali, "you didn't."
"Then," said Bones wrathfully, "why the dickens do I think I have?"
"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, when enjoying refreshing coma, possess delirium, hallucinations, highly imaginative, which dissipate when the subject recovers consciousness, but retain in brain cavity illusory reminiscences."
Bones thrust his face into the other's.
"Do you mean to tell me I dreamt it?" he hissed.
"Sir," said Ali, "self-preservation compels complete acquiescence in your diagnosis."
"You're childish," said Bones.
He gave a few vague instructions in the best Bones manner, and stole up to the dark Residency. He had solemnly promised Sanders that he would rouse the girl without waking up the rest of the house.
They were to go up stream to the Village Island, where the ironworkers of the Akasava had many curious implements to show her. Breakfast wasto be taken on the boat, and they were to return for tiffin.
Overnight she had shown Bones the window of her room, and Hamilton had offered to make a chalk mark on the sash, so there could be no mistaking the situation of the room.
"If you wake me before sunrise, I shall do something I shall be sorry for," he warned Bones. "If you return without straightening the accounts, I shall do something whichyouwill be sorry for."
Bones remembered this as he crept stealthily along the wooden verandah. To make doubly sure, he took off his boots and dropped them with a crash.
"Sh!" said Bones loudly. "Sh, Bones! Not so much noise, you silly old ass!"
He crept softly along the wooden wall and reconnoitred. The middle window was Hamilton's room, the left was Sanders's, the right was Patricia's. He went carefully to the right window and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. Still no reply. He knocked loudly.
"Is that you, Bones?" growled Sanders's voice.
Bones gasped.
"Awfully sorry, sir," he whispered agitatedly—"my mistake entirely."
He tiptoed to the left window and rapped smartly. Then he whistled, then he rapped again.
He heard a bed creak, and turned his head modestly away.
"It's Bones, dear old sister," he said, in his loudest whisper. "Arise, for mornin' in the bowl of light has——"
Hamilton's voice raged at him.
"I knew it was you, you blithering——"
"Dear old officer," began Bones, "awfully sorry! Go to sleep again. Night-night!"
"Go to the devil!" said a muffled voice.
Bones, however, went to the middle window; here he could make no mistake. He knocked authoritatively.
"Hurry up, ma'am," he said; "time is on the wing——"
The sash was flung up, and again Bones confronted the furious Hamilton.
"Sir," said the exasperated Bones, "how the dooce did you get here?"
"Don't you know this room has two windows? I told you last night, you goop! Pat sleeps at the other end of the building. I told you that, too, but you've got a brain like wool!"
"I am obliged to you, sir," said Bones, on his dignity, "for the information. I will not detain you."
Hamilton groped on his dressing-table for a hair-brush.
"Go back to bed, sir," said Bones, "an' don't forget to say your prayers."
He was searching for the window in the otherwing of the Residency, when the girl, who had been up and dressed for a quarter of an hour, came softly behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Wow!" screeched Bones. "Oh, Lord, dear old sister, you gave me the dickens of a fright! Well, let's get along. Thank heavens, we haven't disturbed anybody."
He was followed to the boat with the imprecations of two pyjamaed figures that stood on the stoep and watched his lank body melt in the darkness.
"Send us a wireless when you're coming back!" roared Hamilton.
"Cad!" said Bones, between his teeth.
Ali Abid had not been idle. He had aroused Yoka, the steersman, and Boosoobi, the engineer, and these two men had accepted the unexpected call with the curious readiness which natives show on such occasions, and which suggests that they have pre-knowledge of the summons, and are only waiting the word.
In one of the small cabins Ali had arranged the much-discussed company accounts ready for his lord's attention, and there was every promise of a happy and a profitable day when Yoka rang the engines "ahead," and theWigglejerked her way to midstream.
The east had grown pale, there was a murmur from the dark forests on either bank, the timorous chirping or bad-tempered squawk of a bird, afaint fragrance of burning gumwood from the fishing villages established on the river bank, where, in dancing spots of light, the women were tending their fires.
There is no intermediate stage on the big river between darkness and broad daylight. The stars go out all at once, and the inky sky which serves then becomes a delicate blue. The shadows melt deeper and deeper into the forest, clearly revealing the outlines of the straight-stemmed trees. There is just this interregnum of pearl greyness, a sort of hush-light, which lasts whilst a man counts twenty, before the silver lances of the sun are flashing through the leaves, and the grey veil which blurs the islands to shapeless blotches in a river of dull silver is burnt to nothingness, and the islands are living things of vivid green set in waters of gold.
"The sunrise!" said Bones, and waved his hand to the east with the air of one who was responsible for the miracle.
The girl sat in a deep wicker chair and breathed in the glory and the freshness of the scene. Across the broad river, right ahead of the boat, a flock of parroquets was flying, screeching their raucous chorus. The sun caught their brilliant plumage, and she saw, as it seemed, a rainbow in flight.
"Isn't that wonderful?" she whispered.
Bones peered up at the birds, shading his eyes.
"Just like a jolly old patchwork quilt," hesaid. "What a pity they can't talk till you teach 'em! They're awful bad eatin', too, though some fellers say they make a good curry——"
"Oh, look, look!"
TheWigglewas swerving to the southern bank of the river, and two majestic flamingos standing at the water's edge had arrested the girl's attention.
"They'rebad eatin', too," said the informative Bones. "The flesh is fishy an' too fat; heron are just the same."
"Haven't you a soul, Bones?" she asked severely.
"A soul, dear ma'am?" Bones asked, in astonishment. "Why, that's my specialty!"
It was a delightful morning for the girl, for Bones had retired to his cabin at her earnest request, and was struggling with the company accounts, and she was left to enjoy the splendour of the day, to watch the iron-red waters piling up against theWiggle'sbows, to feel the cool breezes that swept down from the far-away mountains, and all this without being under the necessity of making conversation with Bones.
That gentleman had a no less profitable morning, for Ali Abid was a methodical and clerkly man, and unearthed the missing thirty-nine dollars in the Compensation Record.
"Thank goodness!" said Bones, relieved. "You're a jolly old accountant, Ali. I'd never have found it."
"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, by impetuous application, omit vision of intricate detail. This is due to subjects' lack of concentration."
"Have it your way," said Bones, "but get the statement out for me to copy."
He awoke the girl from a profound reverie—which centred about shy and solemn bachelors who adopted whole nations of murderous children as their own—and proceeded to "take charge."
This implied the noisy issuing of orders which nobody carried out, the manipulation of a telescope, anxious glances at the heavens, deep and penetrating scrutinies of the water, and a promenade back and forward from one side of the launch to the other. Bones called this "pacing the bridge," and invariably carried his telescope tucked under his arm in the process, and, as he had to step over Pat's feet every time, and sometimes didn't, she arrested his nautical wanderings.
"You make me dizzy," she said. "And isn't that the island?"
In the early hours of the afternoon they re-embarked, thecapitaof the village coming to the beach to see them off.
They brought back with them a collection of spear-heads, gruesome execution knives, elephant swords, and wonder-working steel figures.
"And the lunch was simply lovely, Bones," agreed the girl, as theWiggleturned her nosehomeward. "Really, you can be quite clever sometimes."
"Dear old Miss Hamilton," said Bones, "you saw me to-day as I really am. The mask was off, and the real Bones, kindly, thoughtful, considerate, an'—if I may use the word without your foundin' any great hope upon it—tender. You saw me free from carkin' care, alert——"
"Go along and finish your accounts, like a good boy," she said. "I'm going to doze."
Doze she did, for it was a warm, dozy afternoon, and the boat was running swiftly and smoothly with the tide. Bones yawned and wrote, copying Ali's elaborate and accurate statement, whilst Ali himself slept contentedly on the top of the cabin. Even the engineer dozed at his post, and only one man was wide awake and watchful—Yoka, whose hands turned the wheel mechanically, whose dark eyes never left the river ahead, with its shoals, its sandbanks, and its snags, known and unknown.
Two miles from headquarters, where the river broadens before it makes its sweep to the sea, there are three islands with narrow passages between. At this season only one such passage—the centre of all—is safe. This is known as "The Passage of the Tree," because all boats, even theZaire, must pass so close beneath the overhanging boughs of a great lime that the boughs brush their very funnels. Fortunately, the current is never strong here, for the passage is a shallow one. Yokafelt the boat slowing as he reached shoal water, and brought her nearer to the bank of the island. He had reached the great tree, when a noose dropped over him, tightened about his arms, and, before he could do more than lock the wheel, he was jerked from the boat and left swinging between bough and water.
"O Yoka," chuckled a voice from the bough, "between sunrise and moonset is no long time for a man to be with his wife!"
Bones had finished his account, and was thinking. He thought with his head on his hands, with his eyes shut, and his mouth open, and his thought was accompanied by strange guttural noises.
Patricia Hamilton was also thinking, but much more gracefully. Boosoobi sat by his furnace door, nodding. Sometimes he looked at the steam gauge, sometimes he kicked open the furnace door and chucked in a few billets of wood, but, in the main, he was listening to the soothing "chook-a-chook, chook-a-chook" of his well-oiled engines.
"Woo-yow!" yawned Bones, stretched himself, and came blinking into the sunlight. The sun was nearly setting.
"What the dooce——" said Bones. He stared round.
TheWigglehad run out from the mouth of theriver and was at sea. There was no sign of land of any description. The low-lying shores of the territory had long since gone under the horizon.
Bones laid his hand on the shoulder of the sleeping girl, and she woke with a start.
"Dear old shipmate," he said, and his voice trembled, "we're alone on this jolly old ocean! Lost the steersman!"
She realized the seriousness of the situation in a moment.
The dozing engineer, now wide awake, came aft at Bones's call, and accepted the disappearance of the steersman without astonishment.
"We'll have to go back," said Bones, as he swung the wheel round. "I don't think I'm wrong in sayin' that the east is opposite to the west, an', if that's true, we ought to be home in time for dinner."
"Sar," said Boosoobi, who, being a coast boy, elected to speak English, "dem wood she no lib."
"Hey?" gasped Bones, turning pale.
"Dem wood she be done. I look um. I see um. I no find um."
Bones sat down heavily on the rail.
"What does he say?" Pat asked anxiously.
"He says there's no more wood," said Bones. "The horrid old bunkers are empty, an' we're at the mercy of the tempest."
"Oh, Bones!" she cried, in consternation.
But Bones had recovered.
"What about swimmin' to shore with a line?" he said. "It can't be more than ten miles!"
It was Ali Abid who prevented the drastic step.
"Sir," he said, "the subject on such occasions should act with deliberate reserve. Proximity of land presupposes research. The subject should assist rather than retard research by passivity of action, easy respiration, and general normality of temperature."
"Which means, dear old Miss Hamilton, that you've got to keep your wool on," explained Bones.
What might have happened is not to be recorded, for at that precise moment the s.s.Parettacame barging up over the horizon.
There was still steam in theWiggle'slittle boiler, and one log of wood to keep it at pressure.
Bones was incoherent, but again Ali came to the rescue.
"Sir," he said, "for intimating SOS-ness there is upon steamer or launch certain scientific apparatus, unadjusted, but susceptible to treatment."
"The wireless!" spluttered Bones. "Good lor', the wireless!"
Twenty minutes later theWiggleran alongside the gangway of the s.s.Paretta, anticipating the arrival of theZaireby half an hour.
The s.s.Parettawas at anchor when Sanders brought theZaireto the scene.
He saw theWiggleriding serenely by the side of the great ship, looking for all the world like a humming bird under the wings of an ostrich, and uttered a little prayer of thankfulness.
"They're safe," he said to Hamilton. "O Yoka, take theZaireto the other side of the big boat."
"Master, do we go back to-night to seek Ko-boru?" asked Yoka, who was bearing marks which indicated his strenuous experience, for he had fought his way clear of his captors, and had swum with the stream to headquarters.
"To-morrow is also a day," quoth Sanders.
Hamilton was first on the deck of the s.s.Paretta, and found his sister and a debonair and complacent Bones waiting for him. With them was an officer whom Hamilton recognized.
"Company accounts all correct, sir," said Bones, "audited by the jolly old paymaster"—he saluted the other officer—"an' found correct, sir, thus anticipatin' all your morose an' savage criticisms."
Hamilton gripped his hand and grinned.
"Bones was really wonderful," said the girl, "they wouldn't have seen us if it hadn't been for his idea."
"Saved by wireless, sir," said Bones nonchalantly. "It was a mere nothin'—just a flash of inspiration."
"You got the wireless to work?" asked Hamilton incredulously.
"No, sir," said Bones. "But I wanted a little extra steam to get up to the ship, so I burnt the dashed thing. I knew it would come in handy sooner or later."
Beyond the far hills, which no man of the Ochori passed, was a range of blue mountains, and behind this again was the L'Mandi country. This adventurous hunting men of the Ochori had seen, standing in a safe place on the edge of the Great King's country. Also N'gombi people, who are notoriously disrespectful of all ghosts save their own, had, upon a time, penetrated the northern forest to a high knoll which Nature had shaped to the resemblance of a hayrick.
A huntsman climbing this after his lawful quarry might gain a nearer view of the blue mountains, all streaked with silver at certain periods of the year, when a hundred streams came leaping with feathery feet from crag to crag to strengthen the forces of the upper river, or, as some said, to create through underground channels the big lakes M'soobo and T'sambi at the back of the N'gombi country.
And on summer nights, when the big yellow moon came up and showed all things in her ownchaste way, you might see from the knoll of the hayrick these silver ribbons all a-glitter, though the bulk of the mountain was lost to sight.
The river folk saw little of the L'Mandi, because L'Mandi territory lies behind the country of the Great King, who looked with a jealous eye upon comings and goings in his land, and severely restricted the movement and the communications of his own people.
The Great King followed his uncle in the government of the pleasant O'Mongo lands, and he had certain advantages and privileges, the significance of which he very imperfectly interpreted.
His uncle had died suddenly at the hands of Mr. Commissioner Sanders, C.M.G., and the land itself might have passed to the protection of the Crown, for there was gold in the country in large and payable quantities.
That such a movement was arrested was due largely to the L'Mandi and the influence they were able to exercise upon the European Powers by virtue of their military qualities. Downing Street was all for a permanent occupation of the chief city and the institution of a conventionalrégime; but the L'Mandi snarled, clicked their heels, and made jingling noises with their great swords, and there was at that moment a Government in office in England which was rather impressed by heel-clicking and sword-jingling, and so the territory of the Great King was leftintact, and was marked on all maps as Omongoland, and coloured red, as being within the sphere of British influence. On the other hand, the L'Mandi people had it tinted yellow, and described it as an integral portion of the German Colonial Empire.
There was little communication between L'Mandi and Sanders's territory, but that little was more than enough for the Commissioner, since it took the shape of evangelical incursions carried out by missionaries who were in the happy position of not being obliged to say as much as "By your leave," since they had secured from a Government which was, as I say, impressed by heel-clicking and sword-jingling, an impressive document, charging "all commissioners, sub-commissioners, magistrates, and officers commanding our native forces," to give facilities to these good Christian gentlemen.
There were missionaries in the Territories who looked askance at their brethren, and Ferguson, of the River Mission, made a journey to headquarters to lay his views upon the subject before the Commissioner.
"These fellows aren't missionaries at all, Mr. Sanders; they are just political agents utilizing sacred symbols to further a political propaganda."
"That is a Government palaver," smiled Sanders, and that was all the satisfaction Ferguson received. Nevertheless, Sanders was watchful, for there were times when the L'Mandi missionersand their friends strayed outside their sphere.
Once the L'Mandi folk had landed in a village in the middle Ochori, had flogged the headman, and made themselves free of the commodities which the people of the village had put aside for the payment of their taxation.
In his wrath, Bosambo, the chief, had taken ten war canoes; but Sanders, who had been in the Akasava on a shooting trip, was there before him, and had meted out swift justice to the evil-doers.
"And let me tell you, Bosambo," said Sanders severely, "that you shall not bring spears except at my word."
"Lord," said Bosambo, frankness itself, "if I disobeyed you, it was because I was too hot to think."
Sanders nodded.
"That I know," he said. "Now I tell you this, Bosambo, and this is the way of very wise men—that when they go to do evil things with a hot heart, they first sleep, and in their sleep their spirits go free and talk with the wise and the dead, and when they wake, their hearts are cool, and they see all the folly of the night, and their eyes are bright for their own faults."
"Master," said Bosambo, "you are my father and my mother, and all the people of the river you carry in your arms. Now I say to you that when I go to do an evil thing I will first sleep, and I will make all my people sleep also."
There are strange stories in circulation as to the manner in which Bosambo carried out this novel reform. There is the story of an Ochori wife-beater who, adjured by his chief, retired to slumber on his grievance, and came to his master the following morning with the information that he had not closed his eyes. Whereupon Bosambo clubbed him insensible, in order that Sanders's plan might have a fair chance.
At least, this is the story which Hamilton retailed at breakfast one morning. Sanders, appealed to for confirmation, admitted cautiously that he had heard the legend, but did not trouble to make an investigation.
"The art of governing a native country," he said, "is the art of not asking questions."
"But suppose you want to know something?" demanded Patricia.
"Then," said Sanders, with a twinkle in his eyes, "you must pretend that you know."
"What is there to do to-day?" asked Hamilton, rolling his serviette.
He addressed himself to Lieutenant Tibbetts, who, to Sanders's intense annoyance, invariably made elaborate notes of all the Commissioner said.
"Nothin' until this afternoon, sir," said Bones, closing his notebook briskly, "then we're doin' a little deep-sea fishin'."
The girl made a grimace.
"We didn't catch anything yesterday, Bones," she objected.
"We used the wrong kind of worm," said Bones confidently. "I've found a new worm nest in the plantation. Jolly little fellers they are, too."
"What are we doing to-day, Bones?" repeated Hamilton ominously.
Bones puckered his brows.
"Deep-sea fishin', dear old officer and comrade," he repeated, "an' after dinner a little game of tiddly-winks—Bonesv.jolly old Hamilton's sister, for the championship of the River an' the Sanders Cup."
Hamilton breathed deeply, but was patient.
"Your King and your country," he said, "pay you seven and eightpence per diem——"
"Oh," said Bones, a light dawning, "you meanwork?"
"Strange, is it not," mused Hamilton, "that we should consider——Hullo!"
They followed the direction of his eyes.
A white bird was circling groggily above the plantation, as though uncertain where to alight. There was weariness in the beat of its wings, in the irregularity of its flight. Bones leapt over the rail of the verandah and ran towards the square. He slowed down as he came to a place beneath the bird, and whistled softly.
Bones's whistle was a thing of remarkable sweetness—it was his one accomplishment, according to Hamilton, and had neither tune nor rhyme. It was a succession of trills, rising and falling, andpresently, after two hesitating swoops, the bird rested on his outstretched hand. He came back to the verandah and handed the pigeon to Sanders.
The Commissioner lifted the bird and with gentle fingers removed the slip of thin paper fastened to its leg by a rubber band.
Before he opened the paper he handed the weary little servant of the Government to an orderly.
"Lord, this is Sombubo," said Abiboo, and he lifted the pigeon to his cheek, "and he comes from the Ochori."
Sanders had recognized the bird, for Sombubo was the swiftest, the wisest, and the strongest of all his messengers, and was never dispatched except on the most critical occasions.
He smoothed the paper and read the letter, which was in Arabic.
"From the servant of God Bosambo, in the Ochori City, to Sandi, where-the-sea-runs."There have come three white men from the L'Mandi country, and they have crossed the mountains. They sit with the Akasava in full palaver. They say there shall be no more taxes for the People of the River, but there shall come a new king greater than any. And every man shall have goats and salt and free hunting. They say the Akasava shall be given all the Ochori country, also guns like the white man. Many guns and a thousand carriers are in the mountains waiting to come. I hold the Ochori with all myspears. Also the Isisi chief calls his young men for your King."Peace be on your house in the name of Allah Compassionate and Merciful."
"From the servant of God Bosambo, in the Ochori City, to Sandi, where-the-sea-runs.
"There have come three white men from the L'Mandi country, and they have crossed the mountains. They sit with the Akasava in full palaver. They say there shall be no more taxes for the People of the River, but there shall come a new king greater than any. And every man shall have goats and salt and free hunting. They say the Akasava shall be given all the Ochori country, also guns like the white man. Many guns and a thousand carriers are in the mountains waiting to come. I hold the Ochori with all myspears. Also the Isisi chief calls his young men for your King.
"Peace be on your house in the name of Allah Compassionate and Merciful."
"M-m!" said Sanders, as he folded the paper. "I'm afraid there will be no fishing this afternoon. Bones, take theWiggleand get up to the Akasava as fast as you can; I will follow on theZaire. Abiboo!"
"Lord?"
"You will find me a swift Ochori pigeon. Hamilton, scribble a line to Bosambo, and say that he shall meet Bones by Sokala's village."
Half an hour later Bones was sending incomprehensible semaphore signals of farewell as theWiggleslipped round the bend of the river.
Sokala, a little chief of the Isisi, was a rich man. He had ten wives, each of whom lived in her own hut. Also each wife wore about her neck a great ring of brass weighing twenty pounds, to testify to the greatness and wealth of her lord.
Sokala was wizened and lined of face, and across his forehead were many deep furrows, and it seemed that he lived in a state of perplexity as to what should become of all his riches when he died, for he was cursed with ten daughters—O'femi, Jubasami, K'sola, M'kema, Wasonga, Mombari, et cetera.
When Wasonga was fourteen, there was revealed to Sokala, her father, a great wonder.
The vision came at the tail end of a year of illness, when his head had ached for weeks together, and not even the brass wire twisted lightly about his skull brought him relief.
Sokala was lying on his fine bed of skins, wondering why strange animals sat by the fire in the centre of his hut, and why they showed their teeth and talked in human language. Sometimes they were leopards, sometimes they were little white-whiskered monkeys that scratched and told one another stories, and these monkeys were the wisest of all, for they discussed matters which were of urgency to the sick man rolling restlessly from side to side.
On this great night two such animals had appeared suddenly, a big grey fellow with a solemn face, and a very little one, and they sat staring into the fire, mechanically seeking their fleas until the little one spoke.
"Sokala is very rich and has ten daughters."
"That is true," said the other; "also he will die because he has no son."
Sokala's heart beat furiously with fear, but he listened when the little black monkey spoke.
"If Sokala took Wasonga, his daughter, into the forest near to The Tree and slew her, his daughters would become sons and he would grow well."
And the other monkey nodded.
As they talked, Sokala recognized the truth of all that they had said. He wondered that he had never thought of the matter before in this way.All night long he lay thinking—thinking—long after the fires had died down to a full red glow amidst white ashes, and the monkeys had vanished. In the cold dawn his people found him sitting on the side of the bed, and marvelled that he should have lived the night through.
"Send me Wasonga, my daughter," he said, and they brought a sleepy girl of fourteen, tall, straight, and wholly reluctant. "We go a journey," said Sokala, and took from beneath his bed his wicker shield and his sharp-edged throwing-spear.
"Sokala hunts," said the people of the village significantly, and they knew that the end was very near, for he had been a great hunter, and men turn in death to the familiar pursuits of life.
Three miles on the forest road to the Isisi city, Sokala bade his daughter sit on the ground.
Bones had met and was in earnest conversation with the Chief of the Ochori, theWigglebeing tied up at a wooding, when he heard a scream, and saw a girl racing through the wood towards him.
Behind her, with the foolish stare on his face which comes to men in the last stages of sleeping sickness, his spear balanced, came Sokala.
The girl tumbled in a wailing, choking heap at Bones's feet, and her pursuer checked at the sight of the white man.
"I see you, Sokala,"[2]said Bones gently.
"Lord," said the old man, blinking at the officer of the Houssas, "you shall see a wonderful magic when I slay this woman, for my daughters shall be sons, and I shall be a well man."
Bones took the spear from his unresisting hand.
"I will show you a greater magic, Sokala, for I will give you a little white stone which will melt like salt in your mouth, and you shall sleep."
The old man peered from Lieutenant Tibbetts to the King of the Ochori. He watched Bones as he opened his medicine chest and shook out two little white pellets from a bottle marked "Veronal," and accepted them gratefully.
"God bless my life," cried Bones, "don't chew 'em, you dear old silly—swallow 'em!"
"Lord," said Sokala soberly, "they have a beautiful and a magic taste."
Bones sent the frightened girl back to the village, and made the old man sit by a tree.
"O Tibbetti," said Bosambo, in admiration, "that was a good palaver. For it is better than the letting of blood, and no one will know that Sokala did not die in his time."
Bones looked at him in horror.
"Goodness gracious heavens, Bosambo," he gasped, "you don't think I've poisoned him?"
"Master," said Bosambo, nodding his head, "he die one time—he not fit for lib—you give um plenty no-good stuff. You be fine Christian feller same like me."
Bones wiped the perspiration from his brow and explained the action of veronal. Bosambo was sceptical. Even when Sokala fell into a profound slumber, Bosambo waited expectantly for his death. And when he realized that Bones had spoken the truth, he was a most amazed man.
"Master," he said, in that fluid Ochori dialect which seems to be made up of vowels, "this is a great magic. Now I see very surely that you hold wonderful ju-jus, and I have wronged you, for I thought you were without wisdom."
"Cheer-oh!" said the gratified Bones.
Near by the city of the Akasava is a small hill on which no vegetation grows, though it rises from a veritable jungle of undergrowth. The Akasava call this place the Hill of the Women, because it was here that M'lama, the King of the Akasava, slew a hundred Akasava maidens to propitiate M'shimba M'shamba, the god of storms. It was on the topmost point of the hill that Sanders erected a fine gallows and hung M'lama for his country's good. It had always been associated with the spiritual history of the Akasava, for ghosts and devils and strange ju-jus had their home hereabouts, and every great decision at which the people arrived was made upon its slopes. At the crest there was a palaver house—no more than a straw-thatched canopy affording shelter for four men at the most.
On a certain afternoon all the chiefs, great and minor, the headmen, the warriors, and the leaders of fishing villages of the Akasava, squatted in a semicircle and listened to the oration of a bearded man, who spoke easily in the river dialect of the happy days which were coming to the people.
By his side were two other white men—a tall, clean-shaven man with spectacles, and a stouter man with a bristling white moustache.
Had the bearded man's address been in plain English, or even plain German, and had it been delivered to European hearers accustomed to taking its religion in allegories and symbols, it would have been harmless. As it was, the illustrations and the imagery which the speaker employed had no other interpretation to the simple-minded Akasava than a purely material one.
"I speak for the Great King," said the orator, throwing out his arms, "a king who is more splendid than any. He has fierce and mighty armies that cover the land like ants. He holds thunder and lightning in his hand, and is greater than M'shimba M'shamba. He is the friend of the black man and the white, and will deliver you from all oppression. He will give you peace and full crops, and make youcapitaover your enemies. When he speaks, all other kings tremble. He is a great buffalo, and the pawing of his hoofs shakes the earth.
"This he says to you, the warrior people of the Akasava——"
The message was destined to be undelivered.
Heads began to turn, and there was a whisper of words. Some of the audience half rose, some on the outskirts of the gathering stole quietly away—the lesser chiefs were amongst these—and others, sitting stolidly on, assumed a blandness and a scepticism of demeanour calculated to meet the needs of the occasion.
For Sanders was at the foot of the hill, a trim figure in white, his solar helmet pushed back to cover the nape of his neck from the slanting rays of the sun, and behind Sanders were two white officers and a company of Houssas with fixed bayonets. Not a word said Sanders, but slowly mounted the Hill of the Dead. He reached the palaver house and turned.
"Let no man go," he said, observing the disposition of the gathering to melt away, "for this is a great palaver, and I come to speak for these God-men."
The bearded orator glared at the Commissioner and half turned to his companions. The stout man with the moustache said something quickly, but Sanders silenced him with a gesture.
"O people," said Sanders, "you all know that under my King men may live in peace, and death comes quickly to those who make war. Also you may worship in what manner you desire, though it be my God or the famous gods of your fathers. And such as preach of God or gods have full liberty. Who denies this?"
"Lord, you speak the truth," said an eager headman.
"Therefore," said Sanders, "my King has given these God-men a book[3]that they may speak to you, and they have spoken. Of a great king they tell. Also of wonders which will come to you if you obey him. But this king is the same king of whom the God-cross men and the water-God men tell. For he lives beyond the stars, and his name is God. Tell me, preacher, if this is the truth?"
The bearded man swallowed something and muttered, "This is true."
"Also, there is no king in this world greater than my King, whom you serve," Sanders continued, "and it is your duty to be obedient to him, and his name is D'jorja." Sanders raised his hand to his helmet in salute. "This also the God-men will tell you."
He turned to the three evangelists.
Herr Professor Wiessmann hesitated for the fraction of a second. The pause was pardonable, for he saw the undoing of three months' good work, and his thoughts at that moment were with a certain party of carriers who waited in the mountains.
"The question of earthly and heavenly dominion is always debatable," he began in English, but Sanders stopped him.
"We will speak in the Akasava tongue," hesaid, "and let all men hear. Tell me, shall my people serve my King, or shall they serve another?"
"They shall serve your King," growled the man, "for it is the law."
"Thank you," said Sanders in English.
The gathering slowly dispersed, leaving only the white men on the hill and a few lingering folk at the foot, watching the stolid native soldiery with an apprehension born of experience.
"We should like you to dine with us," said Sanders pleasantly.
The leader of the L'Mandi mission hesitated, but the thin man with the spectacles, who had been silent, answered for him.
"We shall be pleased, Mr. Commissioner," he said. "After eating with these swine for a month, a good dinner would be very acceptable."
Sanders said nothing, though he winced at the inelegant description of his people, and the three evangelists went back to their huts, which had been built for their use by the Akasava chief.
An hour later that worthy sent for a certain witch-doctor.
"Go secretly," he said, "and call all headmen and chiefs to the Breaking Tree in the forest. There they shall be until the moon comes up, and the L'Mandi lords will come and speak freely. And you shall tell them that the word he spoke before Sandi was no true word, but to-night he shall speak the truth, and when Sandi is gone weshall have wonderful guns and destroy all who oppose us."
This the witch-doctor did, and came back by the river path.
Here, by all accounts, he met Bosambo, and would have passed on; but the Chief of the Ochori, being in a curious mind and being, moreover, suspicious, was impressed by the importance of the messenger, and made inquiries....
An old man is a great lover of life, and after the witch-doctor's head had been twice held under water—for the river was providentially near—he gasped the truth.
The three missioners were very grateful guests indeed. They were the more grateful because Patricia Hamilton was an unexpected hostess. They clicked their heels and kissed her hand and drank her health many times in good hock. The dinner was a feast worthy of Lucullus, they swore, the wine was perfect, and the coffee—which Abiboo handed round with a solemn face—was wonderful.
They sat chatting for a time, and then the bearded man looked at his watch.
"To bed, gentlemen," he said gaily. "We leave you, Herr Commissioner, in good friendship, we trust?"
"Oh, most excellent," said Sanders awkwardly, for he was a poor liar, and knew that his spieswere waiting on the bank to "pick up" these potential enemies of his.
He watched them go ashore and disappear into the darkness of the forest path that leads to the village.
The moon was rising over the tall trees, and an expectant gathering of Akasava notables were waiting for a white spokesman who came not, when Bosambo and his bodyguard were engaged in lifting three unconscious men and laying them in a large canoe. He himself paddled the long boat to midstream, where two currents run swiftly, one to the sea and one to the Isisi River, which winds for a hundred miles until it joins the Congo.
"Go with God," said Bosambo piously, as he stepped into his own canoe, and released his hold of the other with its slumbering freight, "for if your king is so great, he will bring you to your own lands; and if he is not great, then you are liars. O Abiboo"—he spoke over his shoulder to the sergeant of Houssas—"tell me, how many of the magic white stones of Bonesi did you put in their drink?"
"Bosambo, I put four in each, as you told me, and if my lord Tibbetti misses them, what shall I say?"
"You shall say," said Bosambo, "that this is Sandi's own word—that when men plan evils they must first sleep. And I think these men will sleep for a long time. Perhaps they will sleep for ever—all things are with God."
At the flood season, before the turbulent tributaries of the Isisi River had been induced to return to their accustomed channels, Sanders came back to headquarters a very weary man, for he had spent a horrid week in an endeavour—successful, but none the less nerve-racking—to impress an indolent people that the swamping of their villages was less a matter of Providence and ghosts than the neglect of elementary precaution.
"For I told you, Ranabini," said an exasperated Sanders, "that you should keep the upper channel free from trees and branches, and I have paid you many bags of salt for your services."
"Lord, it is so," said Ranabini, scratching his brown leg thoughtfully.
"At the full of the moon, before the rains, did I not ask you if the channel was clear, and did you not say it was like the street of your village?" demanded Sanders, in wrath.
"Lord," said Ranabini frankly, "I lied to you, thinking your lordship was mad. For what otherman would foresee with his wonderful eye that rains would come? Therefore, lord, I did not think of the upper channel, and many trees floated down and made a little dam. Lord, I am an ignorant man, and my mind is full of my own brother, who has come from a long distance to see me, for he is a very sick man."
Sanders's mind was occupied by no thought of Ranabini's sick brother, as the dazzling whiteZairewent thrashing her way down stream. For he himself was a tired man, and needed rest, and there was a dose of malaria looming in the offing, as his aching head told him. It was as though his brains were arranged in slats, like a venetian blind, and these slats were opening and closing swiftly, bringing with each lightning flicker a momentary unconsciousness.
Captain Hamilton met him on the quay, and when Sanders landed—walking a thought unsteadily, and instantly began a long and disjointed account of his adventures on a Norwegian salmon river—Hamilton took him by the arm and led the way to the bungalow.
In ten minutes he was assisting Sanders into his pyjamas, Sanders protesting, albeit feebly, and when, after forcing an astonishing amount of quinine and arsenic down his chief's throat, Hamilton came from the semi-darkness of the bungalow to the white glare of the barrack square, Hamilton was thoughtful.
"Let one of your women watch by the bed ofthe lord Sandi," said he to Sergeant Abiboo, of the Houssas, "and she shall call me if he grows worse."
"On my life," said Abiboo, and was going off.
"Where is Tibbetti?" asked Hamilton.
The sergeant turned back and seemed embarrassed.
"Lord," he said, "Tibbetti has gone with the lady, your sister, to make a palaver with Jimbujini, the witch-doctor of the Akasava. They sit in the forest in a magic circle, and lo! Tibbetti grows very wise."
Hamilton swore under his breath. He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the drill of some raw Kano recruits who had been sent from the coast.
"Go tell the lord Tibbetti to come to me," he said, "but first send your woman to Sandi."
Lieutenant Tibbetts, with his plain, boyish face all red with his exertions, yet dignified withal, came hurriedly from his studies.
"Come aboard, sir," he said, and saluted extravagantly, blinking at his superior with a curious solemnity of mien which was his own peculiar expression.
"Bones," said Hamilton, "where the dickens have you been?"
Bones drew a long breath. He hesitated, then—
"Knowledge," he said shortly.
Hamilton looked at his subordinate in alarm.
"Dash it, you aren't off your head, too, are you?"
Bones shook his head with vigour.
"Knowledge of the occult, sir and brother-officer," he said. "One is never too old to learn, sir, in this jolly old world."
"Quite right," said Hamilton; "in fact, I'm pretty certain that you'll never live long enough to learn everything."
"Thank you, sir," said Bones.
The girl, who had had less qualms than Bones when the summons arrived, and had, in consequence, returned more leisurely, came into the room.
"Pat," said her brother, "Sanders is down with fever."
"Fever!" she said a little breathlessly. "It isn't—dangerous?"
Bones, smiling indulgently, soothed her.
"Nothin' catchin', dear Miss Patricia Hamilton," he began.
"Please don't be stupid," she said so fiercely that Bones recoiled. "Do you think I'm afraid of catching anything? Is it dangerous for Mr. Sanders?" she asked her brother.
"No more dangerous than a cold in the head," he answered flippantly. "My dear child, we all have fever. You'll have it, too, if you go out at sunset without your mosquito boots."
He explained, with the easy indifference of aman inured to malaria, the habits of the mosquito—his predilection for ankles and wrists, where the big veins and arteries are nearer to the surface—but the girl was not reassured. She would have sat up with Sanders, but the idea so alarmed Hamilton that she abandoned it.
"He'd never forgive me," he said. "My dear girl, he'll be as right as a trivet in the morning."
She was sceptical, but, to her amazement, Sanders turned up at breakfast his usual self, save that he was a little weary-eyed, and that his hand shook when he raised his coffee-cup to his lips. A miracle, thought Patricia Hamilton, and said so.
"Not at all, dear miss," said Bones, now, as ever, accepting full credit for all phenomena she praised, whether natural or supernatural. "This is simply nothin' to what happened to me. Ham, dear old feller, do you remember when I was brought down from the Machengombi River? Simply delirious—ravin'—off my head."
"So much so," said Hamilton, slicing the top off his egg, "that we didn't think you were ill."
"If you'd seen me," Bones went on, solemnly shaking one skinny forefinger at the girl, "you'd have said: 'Bones is for the High Jump.'"
"I should have said nothing so vulgar, Bones," she retorted. "And was it malaria?"
"Ah," said Hamilton triumphantly, "I was too much of a gentleman to hint that it wasn't. Press the question, Pat."
Bones shrugged his shoulders and cast a look of withering contempt upon his superior.
"In the execution of one's duty, dear Miss Patricia H," he said, "the calibre of the gun that lays a fellow low, an' plunges his relations an' creditors into mournin', is beside the point. The only consideration, as dear old Omar says, is—