"Did you ever take a tum-ty up the Nile,Did you ever dumpty dupty in a camp,Or dumpty dumpty on m—m——Or play it in a dumpty dumpty swamp."
He rose, and saluted his senior, as Hamilton came in.
"Exactly what is going to happen when Sanders comes back?" asked Hamilton, and the face of Bones fell.
"Happen, sir? I don't take you, sir—whatcouldhappen—to whom, sir?"
"To Henry," said Hamilton.
Henry looked up at that moment with a seraphic smile.
"Isn't he wonderful, sir?" asked Bones in hushed ecstasy; "you won't believe what I'm going to tell you, sir—you're such a jolly old sceptic, sir—but Henry knows me—positively recognizes me! And when you remember that he's only four months old—why, it's unbelievable."
"But what will you do when Sanders comes—really, Bones, I don't know whether I ought to allow this as it is."
"If exception is taken to Henry, sir," said Bones firmly, "I resign my commission; if a gentleman is allowed to keep a dog, sir, he is surely allowed to keep a baby. Between Henry and me, sir, there is a bond stronger than steel. I may be an ass, sir, I may even be a goop, but come between me an' my child an' all my motherly instincts—if you'll pardon the paradox—all my paternal—that's the word—instincts are aroused, and I will fight like a tiger, sir——"
"What a devil you are for jaw," said Hamilton; "anyway, I've warned you. Sanders is due in a month."
"Henry will be five," murmured Bones.
"Oh, blow Henry!" said Hamilton.
Bones rose and pointed to the door.
"May I ask you, sir," he said, "not to use that language before the child? I hate to speak to you like this, sir, but I have a responsible——"
He dodged out of the open door and the loaf of bread which Hamilton had thrown struck the lintel and rolled back to Henry's eager hands.
The two men walked up and down the parade ground whilst Fa'ma, the wife of Ahmet, carried the child to her quarters where he slept.
"I'm afraid I've got to separate you from your child," said Hamilton; "there is some curious business going on in the Lombobo, and a strangerwho walks by night, of which Ahmet the Spy writes somewhat confusingly."
Bones glanced round in some apprehension.
"Oblige me, old friend," he entreated, "by never speakin' of such things before Henry—I wouldn't have him scared for the world."
Bosambo of the Ochori was a light sleeper, the lighter because of certain stories which had reached him of a stranger who walks by night, and in the middle of the night he suddenly became wide awake, conscious that there was a man in his hut of whose coming the sentry without was ignorant.
Bosambo's hand went out stealthily for his short spear, but before he could reach it, his wrist was caught in a grip of steel, strong fingers gripped his throat, and the intruder whispered fiercely, using certain words which left the chief helpless with wonder.
"I am M'gani of the Night," said the voice with authoritative hauteur, "of me you have heard, for I am known only to chiefs; and am so high that chiefs obey and even devils go quickly from my path."
"O, M'gani, I hear you," whispered Bosambo, "how may I serve you?"
"Get me food," said the imperious stranger, "after, you shall make a bed for me in your inner room, and sit before this house that none maydisturb me, for it is to my high purpose that no word shall go to M'ilitani that I stay in your territory."
"M'gani, I am your dog," said Bosambo, and stole forth from the hut like a thief to obey.
All that day he sat before his hut and even sent away the wife of his heart and the child M'sambo, that the rest of M'gani of the N'gombi should not be disturbed.
That night when darkness had come and the glowing red of hut fires grew dimmer, M'gani came from the hut.
Bosambo had sent away the guard and accompanied his guest to the end of the village.
M'gani, with only a cloak of leopard skin about him, twirling two long spears as he walked, was silent till he came to the edge of the city where he was to take farewell of his host.
"Tell me this, Bosambo, where are Sandi's spies that I may avoid them?"
And Bosambo, without hesitation, told him.
"M'gani," said he, at parting, "where do you go now? tell me that I may send cunning men to guard you, for there is a bad spirit in this land, especially amongst the people of Lombobo, because I have offended B'limi Saka, the chief."
"No soldiers do I need, O Bosambo," said the other. "Yet I tell you this that I go to quiet places to learn that which will be best for my people."
He turned to go.
"M'gani," said Bosambo, "in the day when you shall see our lord Sandi, speak to him for me saying that I am faithful, for it seems to me, so high a man are you that he will listen to your word when he will listen to none other."
"I hear," said M'gani gravely, and slipped into the shadows of the forest.
Bosambo stood for a long time staring in the direction which M'gani had taken, then walked slowly back to his hut.
In the morning came the chief of his councillors for a hut palaver.
"Bosambo," said he, in a tone of mystery, "the Walker-of-the-Night has been with us."
"Who says this?" asked Bosambo.
"Fibini, the fisherman," said the councillor, "for this he says, that having toothache, he sat in the shadow of his hut near the warm fire and saw the Walker pass through the village and with him, lord, one who was like a devil, being big and very ugly."
"Go to Fibini," said a justly annoyed Bosambo, "and beat him on the feet till he cries—for he is a liar and a spreader of alarm."
Yet Fibini had done his worst before the bastinado (an innovation of Bosambo's) had performed its silencing mission, and Ochori mothers shepherded their little flocks with greater care when the sun went down that night, for this new terror which had come to the land, this black ghost with the wildfire fame was reputed especially devilish. In a weekhe had become famous—so swift does news carry in the territories.
Men had seen him passing through forest paths, or speeding with incredible swiftness along the silent river. Some said that he had no boat and walked the waters, others that he flew like a bat with millions of bats behind him. One had met him face to face and had sunk to the ground before eyes "that were very hot and red and thrusting out little lightnings."
He had been seen in many places in the Ochori, in the N'gombi city, in the villages of the Akasava, but mainly his hunting ground was the narrow strip of territory which is called Lombobo.
B'limi Saka, the chief of the land, himself a believer in devils, was especially perturbed lest the Silent Walker should be a spy of Government, for he had been guilty of practices which were particularly obnoxious to the white men who were so swift to punish.
"Yet," said he to his daughter and (to the disgust of his people, who despised women) his chief councillor, "none know my heart save you, Lamalana."
Lamalana, with her man shoulders and her flat face, peered at her grizzled father sideways.
"Devils hear hearts," she said huskily, "and when they talk of killings and sacrifices are not all devils pleased? Now I tell you this, my father, that I wait for sacrifices which you swore by death you would show me."
B'limi Saka looked round fearfully. Though the ferocity of this chief was afterwards revealed, though secret places in the forest held his horrible secret killing-houses, yet he was a timid man with a certain affection of his eyes which made him dependent upon the childless widow who had been his strength for two years.
The Lombobo were the cruellest of Sanders' people; their chiefs the most treacherous. Neither akin to the N'gombi, the Isisi, the Akasava nor the Ochori, they took on the worst attributes of each race.
Seldom in open warfare did they challenge the Administration, but there was a long tale of slain and mutilated enemies who floated face downwards in the stream; of disappearance of faithful servants of Government, and of acts of cannibalism which went unidentified and unpunished.
For though all the tribes, save the Ochori, had been cannibals, yet by fire and rope, tempered with wisdom, had the Administration brought about a newer era to the upper river.
But reformation came not to the Lombobo. A word from Sanders, a carelessly expressed view, and the Lombobo people would have been swept from existence—wiped ruthlessly from the list of nations, but that was not the way of Government, which is patient and patient and patient again till in the end, by sheer heavy weight of patience, it crushes opposition to its wishes.
They called Lamalana the barren woman, theDrinker of Life, but she had at least drunken without ostentation, and if she murdered with her own large hands, or staked men and women from a sheer lust of cruelty, there were none alive to speak against her.
Outside the town of Lombobo[6]was a patch of beaten ground where no grass grew, and this place was called "wa boma," the killing ground.
Here, before the white men came, sacrifices were made openly, and it was perhaps for this association and because it was, from its very openness, free from the danger of the eavesdropper, that Lamalana and her father would sit by the hour, whilst he told her the story of ancient horrors—never too horrible for the woman who swayed to and fro as she listened as one who was hypnotized.
"Lord," said she, "the Walker of the Night comes not alone to the Lombobo; all people up and down the river have seen him, and to my mind he is a sign of great fortune showing that ghosts are with us. Now, if you are very brave, we will have a killing greater than any. Is there no hole in the hill[7]which Bosambo dug for your shame? And, lord, do not the people of the Ochori say that this child M'sambo is the light of his father's life? O ko! Bosambo shall be sorry."
Later they walked in the forest speaking, for they had no fear of the spirits which the last slantingrays of the dying sun unlocked from the trees. And they talked and walked, and Lombobo huntsmen, returning through the wood, gave them a wide berth, for Lamalana was possessed of an eye which was notoriously evil.
"Let us go back to the city," said Lamalana, "for now I see that you are very brave and not a blind old man."
"There will be a great palaver and who knows but M'ilitani will come with his soldiers?"
She laughed loudly and hoarsely, making the silent forest ring with harsh noise.
"O ko!" she said, then laughed no more.
In the centre of the path was a man; in the half light she saw the leopard skin and the strange belt of metal about his waist.
"O Lamalana," he said softly, "laugh gently, for I have quick ears and I smell blood."
He pointed to the darkening forest path down which they had come.
"Many have been sacrificed and none heard them," he said, "this I know now. Let there be an end to killing, for I am M'gani, the Walker of the Night, and very terrible."
"Wa!" screamed Lamalana, and leapt at him with clawing hands and her white teeth agrin. Then something soft and damp struck her face—full in the mouth like a spray of water, and she fell over struggling for her breath, and rose gasping to her feet to find the Walker had gone.
Before Bosambo's hut Bones sat in a long and earnest conversation, and the subject of his discourse was children. For, alarmed by the ominous suggestion which Bones had put forward, that his superior should be responsible for the well-being of Henry in the absence of his foster-parent, Hamilton had yielded to the request that Henry should accompany Bones on his visit to the north.
And now, on a large rug before Bosambo and his lord, there sat two small children eyeing one another with mutual distrust.
"Lord," said Bosambo, "it is true that your lordship's child is wonderful, but I think that M'sambo is also wonderful. If your lordship will look with kind eyes he will see a certain cunning way which is strange in so young a one. Also he speaks clearly so that I understand him."
"Yet," contested Bones, "as it seems to me, Bosambo, mine is very wise, for see how he looks to me when I speak, raising his thumb."
Bones made a clucking noise with his mouth, and Henry turned frowningly, regarded his protector with cool indifference, and returned to his scrutiny of the other strange brown animal confronting him.
"Now," said Bones that night, "what of the Walker?"
"Lord, I know of him," said Bosambo, "yet I cannot speak for we are blood brothers by certain magic rites and speeches; this I know, that he isa good man as I shall testify to Sandi when he comes back to his own people."
"You sit here for Government," said Bones, "and if you don't play the game you're a jolly old rotter, Bosambo!"
"I know 'um, I no speak 'um, sah," said Bosambo, "I be good fellah, sah, no Yadasi fellah, sah—I be Peter feller, cut 'em ear some like, sah!"
"You're a naughty old humbug," said Bones, and went to bed on theZaireleaving Henry with the chief's wife....
In the dark hours before the dawn he led his Houssas across the beach, revolver in hand, but came a little too late. The surprise party had been well planned. A speared sentry lay twisting before the chief's hut, and Bosambo's face was smothered in blood. Bones took in the situation.
"Fire on the men who fly to the forest," he said, but Bosambo laid a shaking hand upon his arm.
"Lord," he said, "hold your fire, for they have taken the children, and I fear the woman my wife is stricken."
He went into the hut, Bones following.
The chief's wife had a larger hut than Bosambo's own, communicating with her lord's through a passage of wicker and clay, and the raiders had clubbed her to silence, but Bones knew enough of surgery to see that she was in no danger.
In ten minutes the fighting regiments of the Ochori were sweeping through the forest, trackers going ahead to pick up the trail.
"Let all gods hear me," sobbed Bosambo, as he ran, "and send M'gani swiftly to M'sambo my son."
"Now this is very wonderful," said Lamalana, "and it seems, O my father, no matter for a small killing, but for a sacrifice such as all men may see."
It was the hour following the dawn when the world was at its sweetest, when the chattering weaver birds went in and out of their hanging nests gossiping loudly, and faint perfumes from little morning flowers gave the air an unusual delicacy.
All the Lombobo people, the warriors and the hunters, the wives and the maidens, and even the children of tender years, lined the steep slopes of the Cup of Sacrifice. For Lamalana, deaf and blind to reason, knew that her hour was short, and that with the sun would come a man terrible in his anger ... and the soldiers who eat up opposition with fire.
"O people!" she cried.
She was stripped to the waist, stood behind the Stone of Death as though it were a counter, and the two squirming infants under her hands were so much saleable stock: "Here we bring terror to all who hate us, for one of these is the heart of Bosambo and the other is more than the heart of the-man-who-stands-for-Sandi——"
"O woman!"
The intruder had passed unnoticed, almost it seemed by magic, through the throng, and now he stood in the clear space of sacrifice. And there was not one in the throng who had not heard of him with his leopard skin and his belt of brass.
He was as black as the strange Ethiopians who came sometimes to the land with the Arabi traders, his muscular arms and legs were dull in their blackness.
There was a whisper of terror—"The Walker of the Night!—" and the people fell back ... a woman screamed and fell into a fit.
"O woman," said M'gani, "deliver to me these little children who have done no evil."
Open-mouthed the half-demented daughter of B'limi Saka stared at him.
He walked forward, lifted the children in his two arms and went slowly through the people, who parted in terror at his coming.
He turned at the top of the basin to speak.
"Do no wickedness," said he; then he gently stooped to put the children on the ground, for mouthing and bellowing senseless sounds Lamalana came furiously after him, her long, crooked knife in her hand. He thrust his hand into the leopard skin as for a weapon, but before he could withdraw it, a man of Lombobo, half in terror, fell upon and threw his arms about M'gani.
"Bo'ma!" boomed the woman, and drew back her knife for the stroke....
Bones, from the edge of the clearing, jerked up the rifle he carried and fired.
"What man is this?" asked Bones.
Bosambo looked at the stranger.
"This is M'gani," he said, "he who walks in the night."
"The dooce it is!" said Bones, and fixing his monocle glared at the stranger.
"From whence do you come?" he asked.
"Lord, I come from the Coast," said the man, "by many strange ways, desiring to arrive at this land secretly that I might learn the heart of these people and understand." Then, in perfect English, "I don't think we've ever met before, Mr. Tibbetts—my name is Sanders."
TheBorders of Territories may be fixed by treaty, by certain mathematical calculations, or by arbitrary proclamation. In the territories over which Sanders ruled they were governed as between tribe and tribe by custom and such natural lines of demarkation as a river or a creek supplied.
In forest land this was not possible, and there had ever been between the Ochori and the Lombobo a feud and a grievance, touched-up border fights, for hereabouts there is good hunting. Sanders had tried many methods and had hit upon the red gum border as a solution to a great difficulty. For some curious reason there were no red gum trees in the northern fringe of the forest for five miles on the Ochori side of the great wood; it was innocent of this beautiful tree and Sanders' fiat had gone forth that there should be no Ochori hunting in the red gum lands, and that settled the matter and Sanders hoped for good.
But Bosambo set himself to enlarge his bordersby a single expedient. Wherever his hunters came upon a red gum tree they cut it down. B'limi Saka, the chief of the sullen Lombobo, retaliated by planting red gum saplings on the country between the forest and the river—a fact of which Bosambo was not aware until he suddenly discovered a huge wedge of red gum driven into his lawful territory. A wedge so definite as to cut off nearly a thousand square miles of his territory, for beyond this border lay the lower Ochori country.
"How may I reach my proper villages?" he asked Sanders, who had known something of the comedy which was being enacted.
"You shall have canoes at the place of the young gum trees and shall row to a place beyond them," Sanders had said. "I have given my word that the red gum lands are the territory of B'limi Saka, and since you have only your cunning to thank—Oh, cutter of trees—I cannot help you!"
Bosambo would have made short work of the young saplings, but B'limisaka established a guard not to be forced without bloodshed, and Bosambo could do no more in that way of reprisal than instruct his people to hurl insulting references to B'limisaka's as they passed the forbidden ground.
For the maddening thing was that the slip of filched territory was less than a hundred yards wide and men of the Lombobo, who went out by night to widen it, never came out alive—for Bosambo also had a guard.
Sometimes the minion spies of Government wouldcome to headquarters with a twist of rice paper stuck in a quill, the quill inserted in the lobes of the ear in very much the same place as the ladies wore their earrings in the barbarous mid-Victorian period, and on the rice paper with the briefest introduction would be inserted, in perfect Arabic, scraps of domestic news for the information of the Government.
Sometimes news would carry from mouth to mouth and a weary man would squat before Hamilton and recite his lesson.
"Efobi of the Isisi has stolen goats, and because he is the brother of the chief's wife goes unpunished; T'mara of the Akasava has put a curse upon the wife of O'femo the headman, and she has burnt his hut; N'kema of the Ochori will not pay his tax, saying that he is no Ochori man, but a true N'gombi; Bosambo's men have beaten a woodman of B'limi Saka, because he planted trees on Ochori land; the well folk are on the edge of the N'gomb forest, building huts and singing——"
"How long do they stay?" interrupted Hamilton.
"Lord, who knows?" said the man.
"Ogibo of the Akasava has spoken evilly of his king and mightily of himself——"
"Make a note of that, Bones."
"Make a note of which, sir?"
"Ogibo—he looked like a case of sleep-sickness the last time I was in his village—go on."
"Ogibo also says that the father of his father was a great chief and was lord of all the Akasava——"
"That's sleeping sickness all right," said Hamilton bitterly. "Why the devil doesn't he wait till Sanders is back before he goes mad?"
"Drop him a line, sir," suggested Bones, "he's a remarkable feller—dash it all, sir, what the dooce is the good of bein' in charge of the district if you can't put a stop to that sort of thing?"
"What talk is there of spears in this?" asked Hamilton of the spy.
"Lord, much talk—as I know, for I serve in this district."
"Go swiftly to Ogibo, and summon him to me for a highlakimbo,[8]" said Hamilton; "my soldiers shall carry you in my new little ship that burns water[9]—fly pigeons to me that I may know all that happens."
"On my life," said the spy, raised his hand in salute and departed.
"These well people you were talkin' about, sir," asked Bones, "who are they?"
But Hamilton could give no satisfactory answer to such a question, and, indeed, he would have been more than ordinarily clever had he been able to.
The wild territories are filled with stubborn facts, bewildering realities, and extraordinary inconsequences. Up by the N'gombi lands lived a tribe who, for the purposes of office classification, were known as "N'gombi (Interior)," but who wereneither N'gombi nor Isisi, nor of any known branch of the Bantu race, but known as "the people of the well." They had remarkable legends, sayings which they ascribed to a mythical Idoosi; also they have a song which runs:
O well in the forest!Which chiefs have digged;No common men touched the earth,But chiefs' spears and the hands of kings.
Now there is no doubt that both the sayings of Idoosi and the song of the well have come down from days of antiquity, and that Idoosi is none other than the writer of the lost book of the Bible, of whom it is written:
"Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the history of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the vision of Idoo the seer?"[10]....
"Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the history of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the vision of Idoo the seer?"[10]....
And is not the Song of the Well identical with that brief extract from the Book of Wars of the Lord—lost to us for ever—which runs:
"Spring up, O well: sing ye unto it: The well, which the princes digged, Which the nobles of the people delved, With the sceptre ... with their staves."[11]
"Spring up, O well: sing ye unto it: The well, which the princes digged, Which the nobles of the people delved, With the sceptre ... with their staves."[11]
Some men say that the People of the Well are one of the lost tribes, but that is an easy solution which suggests itself to the hasty-minded. Others saythat they are descendants of the Babylonian races, or that they came down from Egypt when Rameses II died, and there arose a new dynasty and a Pharaoh who did not know the wise Jewish Prime Minister who ruled so wisely, who worshipped in the little temple at Karnac, and whose statue you may see in Cairo with a strange Egyptian name. We know him better as "Joseph"—he who was sold into captivity.
Whatever they were, this much is known, to the discomfort of everybody, that they were great diggers of wells, and would, on the slightest excuse, spend whole months, choosing, for some mad reason, the top of hills for their operations, delving in the earth for water, though the river was less than a hundred yards away.
Of all the interesting solutions which have been offered with the object of identifying the People of the Well, none are so interesting as that which Bones put forward at the end of Hamilton's brief sketch.
"My idea, dear old officer," he said profoundly, "that all these Johnnies are artful old niggers who've run away from their wives in Timbuctoo—and for this reason——"
"Oh, shut up!" said Hamilton.
Two nights later the bugles were ringing through the Houssa lines, and Bones, sleepy-eyed, with an armful of personal belongings, was racing for theZaire, for Ogibo of the Akasava had secured a following.
The chief Ogibo who held the law and kept the peace for his master, the King of the Akasava, was bitten many times by the tsetse on a hunting trip into the bad lands near the Utur forest. Two years afterwards, of a sudden, he was seized with a sense of his own importance, and proclaimed himself paramount chief of the Akasava, and all the lands adjoining. And since it is against nature that any lunatic should be without his following, he had no difficulty in raising all the spears that were requisite for his immediate purpose, marched to Igili, the second most important town in the Akasava kingdom, overthrew the defensive force, destroyed the town, and leaving half his fighting regiment to hold the conquered city he moved through the forest toward the Akasava city proper. He camped in the forest, and his men spent an uncomfortable night, for a thunderstorm broke over the river, and the dark was filled with quick flashes and the heavens crashed noisily. There was still a rumbling and a growling above his head when he assembled his forces in the grey dawn, and continued his march. He had not gone half an hour before one of his headmen came racing up to where he led his force in majesty.
"Lord," said he, "do you hear no sound?"
"I hear the thunder," said Ogibo.
"Listen!" said the headman.
They halted, head bent.
"It is thunder," said Ogibo, as the rumble and moan of the distant storm came to him. Then above the grumble of the thunder came a sharper note, a sound to be expressed in the word "blong!"
"Lord," said the headman, "that is no thunder, rather is it the fire-thrower of M'ilitani."
So Ogibo in his wrath turned back to crush the insolent white men who had dared attack the garrison he had left behind to hold Igili.
Bones with a small force was pursuing him, totally unaware of the strength that Ogibo mustered. A spy brought to the chief news of the smallness of the following force.
"Now," said Ogibo, "I will show all the world how great a chief I am, for my bravery I will destroy all these soldiers that are sent against me."
He chose his ambush well—though he had need to send scampering with squeals of terror half a hundred humble aliens who were at the moment of interruption digging a foolish well on the top of the hill where Ogibo was concealing his shaking force.
Bones with his Houssas saw how the path led up a tolerably steep hill—one of the few in the country—and groaned aloud, for he hated hills.
He was half-way up at the head of his men, when Ogibo on the summit gave the order, "Boma!" said he, which means kill, and three abreast, shields locked and spears gripped stomach high, the rebels charged down the path. Bones saw them coming and slipped out his revolver. There was no room tomanœuvre his men, the path was fairly narrow, dense undergrowth masked each side.
He heard the yell, saw above the bush, which concealed the winding way, the dancing head-dresses of the attackers, and advanced his pistol arm. The rustle of bare feet on the path, a louder roar than ever—then silence.
Bones waited, a Houssa squeezed on either side of him, but the onrushing enemy did not appear, and only a faint whimper of sound reached him.
"Lord! they go back!" gasped his sergeant; and Bones saw to his amazement a little knot of men making their frantic way up the hill.
At first he suspected an ambush within an ambush, but it was unlikely; he could never be more at Ogibo's mercy than he had been.
Cautiously he felt his way up the hill path, a revolver in each hand.
He rounded a sharp corner of the path and saw....
A great square chasm yawned in the very centre of the pathway, the bushes on either side were buried under the earth which the diggers of wells had flung up, and piled one on the other, a writhing, struggling confusion of shining bodies, were Ogibo's soldiers to the number of a hundred, with a silent Ogibo undermost, wholly indifferent to his embarrassing position, for his neck was broken.
Hamilton came up in the afternoon and brought villagers to assist at the work of rescue and afterwards he interviewed the chief of the shy and timid Well-folk.
"O chief," said Hamilton, "it is an order of Sandi that you shall dig no wells near towns, and yet you have done this."
"Bless his old heart!" murmured Bones.
"Lord, I break the law," said the man, simply, "also I break all custom, for to-day, by your favour, I cross the river, I and my people. This we have never done since time was."
"Whither do you go?"
The chief of the wanderers, an old man remarkably gifted—for his beard was long and white, and reached to his waist—stuck his spear head down in the earth.
"Lord, we go to a place which is written," he said; "for Idoosi has said, 'Go forth to the natives at war, they that fight by the river; on the swift water shall you go, even against the water'—many times have we come to the river, master, but ever have we turned back; but now it seems that the prophecy has been fulfilled, for there are bleeding men in these holes and the sound of thunders."
The People of the Well crossed to the Isisi, using the canoes of the Akasava headmen, and made a slow progress through territory which gave them no opportunity of exercising their hobby, since water lay less than a spade's length beneath the driest ground.
"Poor old Sanders," said Hamilton ruefully, when he was again on theZaire, "I've so mixed up his people that he'll have to get a new map made to find them again."
"You might tell me off to show him round, sir,"suggested Bones, but Hamilton did not jump at the offer.
He was getting more than a little rattled. Sanders was due back in a month, and it seemed that scarcely a week passed but some complication arose that further entangled a situation which was already too full of loose and straying threads for his liking.
"I suppose the country is settled for a week at any rate," he said with a little sigh of relief—but he reckoned without his People of the Well.
They moved, a straggling body of men and women, with their stiff walk and their doleful song, a wild people with strange, pinched faces and long black hair, along the river's edge.
A week's journeyings brought them to the Ochori country and to Bosambo, who was holding a most important palaver.
It was held on Ochori territory, for the forbidden strip was by this time so thickly planted with young trees that there was no place for a man to sit.
"Lord," said Bosambo, "if you will return me the land which you have stolen, so that I may pass unhindered from one part of my territory to the other, I will give you many islands on the river."
"That is a foolish palaver," said B'limisaka; "for you have no islands to give."
"Now I tell you, B'limisaka," said Bosambo, "my young men are crying out against you, for, as you know, you have planted your trees on the high ground, and my people, taking to their canoes, must climb down to the water's edge a long way, sothat it wearies their legs, soon, I fear, I shall not hold them, for they are very fierce and full of arrogance."
"Lord," said B'limisaka, significantly, "my young men are also fierce."
The palaver was dispersing, and the last of the Lombobo councillors were disappearing in the forest, when the Diggers of the Well came through the forbidden territory to the place where Bosambo sat.
"We are they of whom you have heard, O my Lord," said the old man, who led them, "also we carry a book for you."
He unwound the cloth about his thin middle, and with many fumblings produced a paper which Bosambo read.
"From M'ilitani, by Ogibo's village in the Akasava."To Bosambo—may God preserve him!"I give this to the chief of Well diggers that you shall know they are favoured by me, being simple people and very timid. Give them a passage through your territory, for they seek a holy land, and find them high places for the digging of holes, for they seek truth. Now peace on your house, Bosambo.""On my ship, by channel of rocks."
"From M'ilitani, by Ogibo's village in the Akasava.
"To Bosambo—may God preserve him!
"I give this to the chief of Well diggers that you shall know they are favoured by me, being simple people and very timid. Give them a passage through your territory, for they seek a holy land, and find them high places for the digging of holes, for they seek truth. Now peace on your house, Bosambo."
"On my ship, by channel of rocks."
"Lord, it is true," said the old chief, "we seek a shining thing that will stay white when it is white, and black when it is black, and the wise Idoosi has said, 'Go down into the earth for truth, seek it in the deeps of the earth, for it lies in secret places, in centre of the world it lies.'"
Bosambo thought long and rapidly, then there came to him the bright light of an inspiration.
"What manner of holes do you dig, old man?"
"Lord, we dig them deep, for we are cunning workers, and do not fear death as common men do; also we dig them straightly—into the very heart of hills we dig them."
Bosambo looked at the sloping ground covered with hateful gum.
"Old man," said he softly, "here shall you dig, you and your people, for in the heart of this hill is such a truth as you desire—my young men shall bring you food and build huts for you, and I will place one who is cunning in the way of hills to show you the way."
The old man's eyes gleamed joyously, and he clasped the ankles of his magnanimous host.
"Lord," said he humbly, "now is the prophecy fulfilled, for it was said by the great Idoosi, 'You shall come to a land where the barbarian rules, and he shall be to you as a brother!'"
"Nigger," said Bosambo in his vile English—yet with a certain hauteur, "you shall dig 'um tunnel—you no cheek 'um, no chat 'um, you lib for dear tunnel one time."
He watched them as, singing the song of the well, they went to work, women, men, and even little children undermining the Chief B'limisaka's territory and creating for Bosambo the right of way for which his soul craved.
Calacala, as they say, seven brothers lived near the creek of the Green One. It was not called the creek of the Green One in those far-off days, for the monstrous thing had no existence.
And the seven brothers had seven wives who were sisters, and it would appear from the legend that these seven wives were unfaithful to their husbands, and upon a certain night in the full of the moon, the brothers returning from an expedition into the forest, discovered the extent of their infamy, and they tied the sisters together, the wrists of one to the ankles of the other, and they led them to the stream, and no sooner had they disappeared beneath the black waters than there was almighty splashing and bubbling of water, and there came crawling from the place where the unfaithful wives had sunk so terrible a monster that the seven brothers fled in fear.
This was the Green One, with his long ugly snout, cold, vicious eyes, and his great clawed feet. Some say that these women had been changed by magic into the Crocodile of the Pool, and many peoplebelieve this and speak of the Green One in the plural.
Certain it is, that this terrible crocodile lived through the ages—none hunting her, she was left in indisputable possession of the flat sand-bank wherein to lay her eggs, and ranged the sandy shore of the creek undisturbed.
She was regarded with awe; sacrifices, living and dead, were offered to her from time to time, and sometimes a cripple or two was knocked on the head and left by the water's edge for her pleasure. She was indeed a veritable scavenger of crime for the neighbouring villages about, and earned some sort of respect, for, as the saying went:
"Sandi does not speak the language of the Green One."
Sometimes M'zooba would go afield, leaving the quietude of the creek and the pool, which was her own territory, for the more adventurous life of the river, and here one day she lay, the whole of her body submerged and only her wicked eyes within an eighth of an inch of the water's surface, when a timorous young roebuck came picking a cautious way through the forest across the open plantations to the water's edge. He stopped from time to time apprehensively, trembling in every limb at the slightest sound, looking this way and that, then taking a few more steps and again searching the cruel world for danger before he reached the water's edge.
Then, after a final look round, he lowered his soft muzzle to the cool waters. Swift as lightning theGreen One flashed her long snout out of the water, and gripped the tender head of the buck. Ruthlessly she pulled, dragging the struggling deer after her till first its neck and then its shoulders, then finally the last frantic waving stump of its white tail went under the dark waters.
Out in midstream a white little boat was moving steadily up the river and on the awning-shaded bridge an indignant young man witnessed the tragedy. The Green One had her larder under a large shelving rock half a dozen feet beneath the water. Into this cavity her long hard nose flung her dead victim, and her four powerful hands covered the entrance to the water cave with sand and rock. More than satisfied with her morning's work, the Green One came to the surface of the water to bask in the glowing warmth of the morning sunlight.
She took a survey upon the world, made up of low-lying shores and a hot blue sky. She saw a river, broad and oily, and a strange white object which she had seen often before smoking towards her.
And that was the last thing she ever saw; for Bones, on the bridge of theZaire, squinted along the sights of his Express and pressed the trigger. Struck in the head by an explosive bullet, the Green One went out in a flurry of stormy water.
"Thus perish all rotten old crocodiles," said Bones, immensely pleased with himself, and he placed the rifle on the rack.
"What the devil are you shooting at, so early in the morning?" asked Hamilton.
He came out in his pyjamas, sun helmet on his head, pliant mosquito boots reaching to his knees.
"A crocodile, sir," said Bones.
"Why waste good ammunition on crocodiles?" asked Hamilton; "was it something exceptional?"
"A tremendous chap, sir," said the enthusiastic Bones, "some fifty feet long, and as green as——"
"As green!" repeated Hamilton quickly, "where are we?"
He looked with a swift glance along the shore for landmarks.
"I hope to goodness you have not shot old M'zooba," he said.
"I don't know your friend by name," said Bones, "but why shouldn't I shoot him?"
"Because, you silly ass," said Hamilton, "she is a sort of sacred crocodile."
"She was never so sacred as she is now, sir, for:
"She's flapping her wings in the crocodile heaven," said Bones, flippantly; "for I'm one of those dead shots—once I draw a bead on an animal——"
"Get out a canoe and set the woodmen to dive for the Green One," said Hamilton to his orderly, for a shot crocodile invariably sinks to the bottom and can only be recovered by diving.
They brought it to the surface, and Hamilton groaned.
"It is M'zooba," he said in resigned exasperation. "Oh, Bones, what an ass you are!"
Bones said nothing, but walked to the stern of theship and lowered the blue ensign to half-mast—a piece of impertinence which Hamilton did not discover till a long time afterwards.
Now whatever might be the desire or wish of Hamilton, and however much he might on ordinary occasions depend upon the loyalty of his warders and his men, in this matter of the green crocodile he was entirely at their mercy, for he could not call them together asking them to speak no death of the Green One without magnifying the importance of Lieutenant Tibbetts' rash act. The only attitude he could adopt was to treat the Green One and her untimely end as something which was in the day's work neither to be lamented nor acclaimed, and when, at the first village, a doleful deputation, comprising a worried chief and a sulky witch doctor, called upon him to bemoan the tragedy, he treated the matter with great joviality.
"For what is a crocodile more or less in this river?" he asked.
"Lord, this was no crocodile," said the witch doctor, "but a very reverend ghost, and it has been our Ju-ju for many years, bringing us good crops and fair weather for our goodness, and has eaten up all the devils and sickness which came to our villages. Now it is gone nothing but ill fortune can come to us."
"Bugobo," said Hamilton, "you talk like a foolish one, for how may a crocodile who does not leave the water, and moreover is evil and old, a stealer of women and children and dangerous to yourgoats, how can this thing bring good fortune to any people?"
"How can the river run, lord?" replied the man, "and yet it does."
Hamilton thought for a moment.
"Now I tell you this, and you shall say to all people who ask you, that by my magic I will bring another green one to this stream, greater and larger than the one who has gone, and she shall be ju-ju for all men."
"And now," he said to Bones, when the deputation had left, "it is up to you to go out and find a nice, respectable crocodile to take the place of the lady you have so light-heartedly destroyed."
Bones gasped.
"Dear old feller," he said feebly, "the habits and customs of fauna of this land are entirely beyond me. I will fetch you a crocodile, sir, with the greatest of pleasure, although as far as I know there is nothing laid down in the King's regulations of the warrants for pay and promotion defining the catching of crocodiles as part of an officer's duty."
Hamilton made no further move towards replacing the lost Spirit of the Pool until he learnt that his offer had been taken very seriously, and that the coming of the great new Green One to the pool, was a subject of discussion up and down the river.
Now here is a fact which official records go to substantiate. Although the "Reports of the Territories" take no cognizance of ghosts and spirits and other occult influence, dealing rather with suchmundane facts as the condition of crops and the discipline of the races, yet the reports of that particular year in this one district made gloomy reading both for Hamilton and for the Administrator in his far-off stone house.
Though the crops throughout the whole of the country were good that Hamilton was apprehensive about the consequences—for men fight better with a full larder behind them—yet in this immediate neighbourhood of the pool, within its sphere of influence, so to speak, the crops failed miserably, and the fish which haunt the shallow stream beneath the big stream near the channel took it into their silly heads to migrate to other distant waters. Here, then, was the consequence of Bones' murder demonstrated to a most alarming extent. There was a blight in the potatoes; the maize crop, for some unaccountable reason, was a meagre one; there were three unexpected cases of sleeping sickness followed by madness in an interior village, and, crowning disaster of all, one of those sudden storms which sweep across the river came upon the village, and lightning struck the huts.
"My son," said Hamilton, when they brought the news to him, "you have got to go out and find a green crocodile, quick."
So Bones went up the river with the naphtha launch, leaving to Hamilton the delicate task of finding a natural explanation for all the horrors which had come upon the unfortunate people.
Green crocodiles are rare even on the great riverwhich had half a million other kinds of crocodiles to its credit, for green is both a sign of age, and by common report indicative of cannibalistic tendencies.
In whatever veneration the Green One of the Pool might be held, such respect did not extend to other parts of the river, where the green ones were sought out and slain in their early youth. Bones spent an exciting seven days chasing, lassoing and, at tunes in self-defence, shooting at great reptiles without getting any nearer to the object of his search.
"Ahmet," said he, in despair, "it seems that there are no green crocodiles on this river."
"Lord, there are very few," admitted the man; "for the people kill green crocodiles owing to their evil influence."
At every village there was news for Bones which lightened his heart. Some one had seen such a monster, it lived in a pool or lorded some creek, generally only get-at-able in a canoe; and here Bones, with his Houssas, would wait smoking furiously, with baited lines cunningly laid from thick underbrush or some tethered goat, bleating invitingly on the banks. But never once did the hunter catch so much as a glimpse of green. There were yellow crocodiles, grey crocodiles, crocodiles the colour of the sand, or the dark brown bed of the river, but nothing which by any stretch of imagination could be called green.
And urgent messages came to Bones. TheZaireitself, in charge of Abiboo, came steaming up carrying a letter filled with unnecessary abuse, for Hamiltonwas getting rattled by the extraordinary manifestations which he received every day of the potency of this slain monster. Bones sent the sergeant back in the launch with an insubordinate message, and commandeered theZairewith her superior accommodation for himself.
"There is only one thing to do," he said, "and that is to consult jolly old Bosambo."
So he put the head of theZaireto the Ochori country, and on the second day arrived at the city.
"Lord," said Bosambo, loftily, "crocodiles I have by thousands."
"Green ones?" asked Bones anxiously.
"Lord, of every colour," said Bosambo, "blue or green or red, even golden crocodiles have I in my splendid river. But they will cost great money because they are very cunning, and my hunters of crocodiles are independent men who do not care to work."
Bones dried up the flood of eloquence quickly.
"O Bosambo," said he, "there is no money for this palaver, but a green crocodile I must have because the evil people of the Lower Isisi say I have put a spell on their land because I slew the Green One, M'zooba, also this crocodile must I have before the moon is due. My Lord M'ilitani has sent me many powerful messages to this effect."
This was another matter, and Bosambo looked dubious.
"Lord," said he, "what manner of green was this crocodile, for I never saw it?"
Bones looked round.
Neither the green of the trees he saw, nor the green of the grass underfoot, nor the green of the elephant grass growing strongly on the river's edge, nor the tender green of the high trees above, nor the tender green of the young Isisi palms; and yet the exact shade of green it was necessary to secure. He ransacked all his books, turned over all his possessions and Hamilton's too, in an endeavour to match the crocodile. There was a suit of pyjamas of Hamilton's which had a stripe very near, but not quite.
"O Ahmet," said Bones at last in desperation, "go to the storeman, and let him bring all the paints he has so that I may show Bosambo a certain colour."
They found the exact shade at last on a ten-pound tin of Aspinall enamels, and Bosambo thought long.
"Lord," said he, "I think I know where I may find just such a crocodile as you want."
Late that night Bones met Bosambo before his hut in a long and earnest palaver, and an hour before dawn he went out with Bosambo and his huntsmen, and was pulled to a certain creek in the Ochori land which is notorious for the size and strength of its crocodiles.
No doubt but Hamilton had a serious task before him, for although the grievance which he had to allay was limited to the restricted area over whichthe spirit of M'zooba brooded, yet the people of the crocodile had many sympathizers who resented as bitterly as the affected parties this interference with what Downing Street called "local religious customs."
A wholly unauthorized palaver was held in the forest which was attended by delegations from the Akasava and the N'gombi, and spies brought the news to Hamilton that the little witch doctors were going through the villages carrying stories of desolation which had come as the result of M'zooba's death.
The palaver Hamilton dispensed with some brusqueness. Twenty soldiers and a machine gun were uninvited guests to the gathering, and the meeting retired in disorder. Two of the witch doctors Hamilton's men caught. One he flogged with all the village looking on, and the other he sent to the Village of Irons for twelve months.
And all the time he spoke of the newer green one which was coming, which his magic would invoke, and which would surely appear "tied by one leg" to a stake near the pool, for all men to see.
He founded a sect of new-green-one worshippers (quite unwittingly). It needed only the corporeal presence of his novel deity to wipe out the feelings of distrust which violence had not wholly dispelled.
Day after day passed, but no word came from Bones, and Captain Hamilton cursed his subordinate, his subordinate's relations, and all the cruelty of fate which brought Bones into his command. Then, unexpectantly, the truant arrived, arrived proudand triumphant in the early morning before Hamilton was awake. He sneaked into the village so quietly that even the Houssa sentry who dozed across the threshold of Hamilton's hut was not aware of his return; and silently, with fiercely whispered injunctions, so that the surprise should be all the more complete, Bones landed his unruly cargo, its feet chained, his great muzzle lassoed and bound with raw hide, its powerful and damaging tail firmly fixed between two planks of wood (a special idea for which Bones was responsible). Then Lieutenant Tibbetts went to the hut of his chief and woke him.
"So here you are, are you?" said Hamilton.
"I am here," said Bones with trembling pride, so that Hamilton knew his subordinate had been successful; "according to your instructions, sir, I have captured the green crocodile. He is of monstrous size, and vastly superior to your partly-worn lady friend. Also," he said, "as per your instructions, conveyed to me in your letter dated the twenty-third instant, I have fastened same by right leg in the vicinity of the pool; at least," he corrected carefully, "he was fastened, but owing to certain technical difficulties he slipped cable, so to speak, and is wallowing in his native element."
"You are not rotting, Bones, are you?" asked Hamilton, busy with his toilet.
"Perfectly true and sound, sir, I never rot," said Bones stiffly; "give me a job of work to do, give me a task, put me upon my metal, sir, and with the assistance of jolly old Bosambo——"
"Is Bosambo in this?"
Bones hesitated.
"He assisted me very considerably, sir," he said; "but, so to speak, the main idea was mine."
The chief's drum summoned the villages to the palaver house, but the news had already filtered through the little township, and a crowd had gathered waiting eagerly to hear the message which Hamilton had to give them.
"O people," he said, addressing them from the hill of palaver, "all I have promised you I have performed. Behold now in the pool—and you shall come with me to see this wonder—is one greater than M'zooba, a vast and splendid spirit which shall protect your crops and be as M'zooba was, and better than was M'zooba. All this I have done for you."
"Lord Tibbetti has done for you," prompted Bones, in a hoarse whisper.
"All this have I done for you," repeated Hamilton firmly, "because I love you."
He led the way through the broad, straggling plantation to the great pool which begins in a narrow creek leading from the river and ends in a sprawl of water to the east of the village.
The whole countryside stood about watching the still water, but nothing happened.
"Can't you whistle him and make him come up or something?" asked Hamilton.
"Sir," said an indignant Bones, "I am no crocodile tamer; willing as I am to oblige you, andclever as I am with parlour tricks, I have not yet succeeded in inducing a crocodile to come to heel after a week's acquaintance."
But native people are very patient.
They stood or squatted, watching the unmoved surface of the water for half an hour, and then suddenly there was a stir and a little gasp of pleasurable apprehension ran through the assembly.
Then slowly the new one came up. He made for a sand-bank, which showed above the water in the centre of the pool; first his snout, then his long body emerged from the water, and Hamilton gasped.
"Good heavens, Bones!" he said in a startled whisper, and his astonishment was echoed from a thousand throats.
And well might he be amazed at the spectacle which the complacent Bones had secured for him.
For this great reptile was more than green, he was a green so vivid that it put the colours of the forest to shame. A bright, glittering green and along the centre of his broad back one zig-zag splash of orange.
"Phew," whistled Hamilton, "this is something like."
The roar of approval from the people was unmistakable. The crocodile turned his evil head and for a moment, as it seemed to Bones, his eyes glinted viciously in the direction of the young and enterprising officer. And Bones admitted after to a feeling of panic.
Then with a malignant "woof!" like the hoarse, growling bark of a dog, magnified a hundred times,he slid back into the water, a great living streak of vivid green and disappeared to the cool retreat at the bottom of the pool.
"You have done splendidly, Bones, splendidly!" said Hamilton, and clapped him on the back; "really you are a most enterprising devil."
"Not at all, sir," said Bones.
He ate his dinner on theZaire, answering with monosyllables the questions which Hamilton put to him regarding the quest and the place of the origin of this wonderful beast. It was after dinner when they were smoking their cigars in the gloom as theZairewas steaming across its way to the shore where a wooding offered an excuse for a night's stay, and Bones gave voice to his thoughts.
And curiously enough his conversation did not deal directly or indirectly with his discovery.
"When was this boat decorated last, sir?" he asked.
"About six months before Sanders left," replied Hamilton in surprise; "just why do you ask?"
"Nothing, sir," said Bones, and whistled light-heartedly. Then he returned to the subject.
"I only asked you because I thought the enamel work in the cabin and all that sort of thing has worn very well."
"Yes, it is good wearing stuff," said Hamilton.
"That green paint in the bathroom is ratherchic, isn't it? Is that good wearing stuff?"
"The enamel?" smiled Hamilton. "Yes, I believe that is very good wearing. I am not a whale ondomestic matters, Bones, but I should imagine that it would last for another year without showing any sign of wear."
"Is it waterproof at all?" asked Bones, after another pause.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean would it wash off if a lot of water were applied to it?"
"No, I should not imagine it would," said Hamilton, "what makes you ask?"
"Oh, nothing!" said Bones carelessly and whistled, looking up to the stars that were peeping from the sky; and the inside of Lieutenant Tibbetts was one large expansive grin.