"thank god!" said the houssa captain fervently, "there is no war in this country."
"touch wood!" said sanders, and the two men simultaneously reached out and laid solemn hands upon the handle of the coffee-pot, which was vulcanite.
if they had touched wood who knows what might have happened in the first place to ofesi the chief of mc-canti?
who knows what might have happened to the two smugglers of gold from the french territory?
the wife of bikilini might have gone off with her lover, and bikilini resigned and patient taken another to wife, and the death men of the ofesi might never have gone forth upon their unamiable missions, or going forth have been drowned, or grown faint-hearted.
anyway it is an indisputable fact that neither sanders nor captain hamilton touched wood on the occasion.
and as to bannister fish——?
that singular man was a trader in questionable commodities, for he had not the nice sentiments which usually go with the composition of a white man.
some say that he ran slaves from angola to places where a black man or a black woman is worth a certain price; that he did this openly with the connivance of the government of portugal and made a tolerable fortune. he certainly bought more poached ivory than any man in africa, and his crowning infamy up to date was the arming of a south soudanese mahdi—arms for employment against his fellow-countrymen.
there are certain manufacturers of small arms in the midlands who will execute orders to any capacity, produce weapons modern or antiquated at a cost varying with the delicacy or mechanism of the weapon. they have no conscience, but have a hard struggle to pay dividends because there are other firms in liége who run the same line of business, but produce at from 10 per cent. to 25 per cent. lower cost.
mr. bannister fish, a thin, wiry man of thirty-four, as yellow as a guinea and with the temper of a fiend, was not popular on the coast, especially with officials. fortunately africa has many coasts, and since africa in mass was mr. fish's hunting-ground, rather than any particular section, the coast men—as we know the coast—saw little of him.
it was mr. fish's boast that there was not twenty miles of coast line from dakka to capetown, and from lourenço marques to suez, that had not contributed something of beauty to his lordly mansion on the top of highgate hill.
you will observe that he omits reference to the coast which encloses cape colony, and there is a reason. cape colony is immensely civilised, has stipendiary magistrates and a horrible breakwater where yellow-jacketed convicts labour for their sins, and mr. fish's sins were many. he tackled sanders's territory in the same spirit as a racehorse breeder will start raising pekingese poodles—not for the money he could make out of it, but as an amusing sideline.
he worked ruin on the edge of the akasava country, operating from the adjoining foreign territories, and found an unholy joy in worrying sanders, whom he had met once and most cordially disliked.
his dislike was intensified on the next occasion of their meeting, for sanders, making a forced march across the akasava, seized the caravan of mr. bannister fish, burnt his stores out of hand, and submitted the plutocrat of highgate hill to the indignity of marching handcuffed to headquarters. mr. fish was tried by a divisional court and fined £500, or, as an alternative, awarded twelve months imprisonment with hard labour.
the fine was paid, and mr. fish went home saying horrible things about mr. commissioner sanders, which i will not sully these fair pages by repeating.
highgate hill is a prosaic neighbourhood served by prosaic motor-buses, and not the place where one would imagine wholesale murder might be planned, yet from his domain in highgate mr. fish issued certain instructions by telephone and cablegram, and at his word men went secretly into sanders's territory looking for the likely man.
they found ofesi, and highgate spoke to the akasava to some purpose.
in the month of february in a certain year mr. fish drove resplendently in his electric landau from highgate to waterloo. he arrived on the akasava border seven weeks later no less angry with sanders than he had ever been, and of a cheerful countenance because, being a millionaire, he could indulge in his hobbies, and his hobby was the annoyance of a far-away commissioner who, at that precise moment was touching vulcanite and thinking it wood.
ofesi, the son of malaka, the son of g'nani, was predestined.
thus it was predicted by the famous witch-doctor komonobologo, of the akasava.
for it would appear that on the night that ofesi came squealing into the world, there were certain solar manifestations such as an eclipse of the moon and prodigious shooting of stars, which komonobologo translated favourably to the clucking, sobbing and shrill whimpering morsel of whitey-brown humanity.
thus ofesi was to rule all peoples as far as the sun shone (some three hundred miles in all directions according to local calculations), and he should not suffer ignominious death at the hand of any man.
ofesi (literally "the born-lucky") should be mighty in counsel and in war; should shake the earth with the tread of his legions; might risk and gain, never risk and lose; was the favoured of ju-jus and ghosts; and would have many sons.
the hollow-eyed woman stretched on the floor of the hut spoke faintly of her happiness, the baby with greedy mouth satisfying the beast in him said nothing, being too much occupied with his natural and instinctive desires.
such prophecies are common, and some come to nothing. some, for no apparent reason, stick fest to the recipients.
ofesi—his destiny—was of the sticking kind.
when sanders took up his duties on the river, ofesi was a lank and awkward youth of whom his fellows stood in awe.
sanders was in awe of nobody. he listened quietly to the recital of portents, omens, and the like, and when it was finished, he delivered a little homily on the fallibility of human things and the extraordinarily high death-rate which existed amongst those misguided people who walked outside the rigid circle of the land.
ofesi had neighbours more hearty than sanders, and by these he was accepted as something on account of the total wonder which the years would produce.
so ofesi grew and flourished, doing much mischief in his way, which was neither innocent nor boyish, and the friendly hand which is upraised to small boys all the world over never fell sharply upon his well-covered nerves, because ofesi was predestined and immune.
in course of time he was appointed by the then king of the akasava to the chieftainship of the village of mi-lanti, and the city of the akasava breathed a sigh of relief to see his canoe go round the bend of the river out of sight.
no report of the chief's minor misdoings came to sanders because this legend of destiny carried to all the nations save and except one.
it is said that ofesi received more homage and held a more regal court in his tiny principality than did the king his master; that n'gombi, isisi, and the tribes about sent him presents doubly precious, and that he had a household of sixty wives, all contributed by his devotees. it was also said that he made the intoxicating distributions of mr. fish possible, but sanders had no proof of this.
he raided his friends impartially, did all manner of unpleasant things, terrorised the river from the lesser isisi to the edge of the ochori, and the fishermen watching his war canoes creeping stealthily through the night would say: "let no man see the lord ofesi; lest in the days to come he remember and blind us."
whether from sheer cunning or from the intuitive faculty which is a part of genius, ofesi grew to stout manhood without once violating the border line of the ochori.
until upon a day——
sanders came in great haste one wet april night when the clouds hung so low over the river that you might have touched them with a fishing-rod.
it was a night of billowing mists, of drenching cloud bursts, of loud cracking thunders and the flicker-flacker of lightning so incessant that only the darkness counted as interval.
yet, against the swollen stream, drenched to the skin, his wet face set to the stinging rain and the white rod of his searchlight piercing such gloom as there was, sanders came as fast as stern wheel could revolve for the akasava land.
he came up to the village of mi-lanti in the wild grey of a stormy dawn, and such of the huts as the flooding waters of the heavens had spared stood isolated sentinels amidst smoking ruins.
he landed tired and immensely angry, and found many dead men and one or two who thought they were dead. they told him a doleful story of rapine and murder, of an innocent village set upon by the ochori and taken in its defencelessness. "that is a lie," said sanders promptly, "for you have stockades, built to the west of the village and your dead are all painted as men paint themselves who prepare long for war. also the ochori—such as i have seen—are not so painted, which tells me that they came in haste against a warring people."
the wounded man turned his tired face to sanders.
"it is my faith," he said, in the conventional terminology of his tribe, "that you have eyes like a big cat."
sanders attended to his injuries and left him and his pitiful fellows in a dry hut. then he went to look for bosambo, and found him sitting patiently ten miles up the river. he sat before a steep hill of rock and undergrowth. at the top of the hill was the chief of the village of mi-lanti, and with him were such of his fighting men as were not at the moment in a happier world.
"lord, this is true," said bosambo, "that this dog attacked my river villages and put my men to death and my women to service. so i came down against him, for it is written in the sura of the djinn that no man shall live to laugh at his own evil."
"there will be a palaver," said sanders briefly, and bade the crestfallen chief, ofesi, to come down and stack his spears. since it is not in the nature of the native man to speak the truth when his skin is in peril, it goes without saying that both sides lied fearfully, and sanders, sifting the truth, knew which side lied the least.
"ofesi," he said, at the end of much weariness of listening, "what do you say that i shall not hang you?"
ofesi, a short, thick man with a faint beard, looked up and down, left and right for inspiration. "lord," he said after a while, "this you know, that all my life i have been a good man—and it is said that i have a high destiny, and shall not die by cruelty."
"'man is eternal whilst he lives,'" quoted sanders, "'yet man dies sooner or later.'"
ofesi stared round at bosambo, and bosambo was guilty of an indiscretion—possibly the greatest indiscretion of his life. in the presence of his master, and filled with the exultation and virtuous righteousness which come to the palpably innocent in the face of trial, he said in english, shaking his head the while reprovingly:
"oh, you dam' naughty devil!"
sanders had condemned the man to death in his heart; had mentally chosen the tree on which the marauding chief should swing when bosambo spoke.
sanders had an immense idea as to the sanctity of life in one sense. he had killed many by rope with seeming indifference, and, indeed, he never allowed the question of a man's life or death to influence him one way or the other when an end was in view.
he would watch with unwavering eyes the breath choke out of a swaying body, yet there must be a certain ritual of decency, of fitness, of decorum in such matters, or his delicate sense of justice was outraged.
bosambo's words, grotesque, uncalled for, wholly absurd, saved the life of ofesi the chief.
for a moment sanders's lips twitched irresponsibly, then he turned with a snarl upon the discomfited chief of the ochori.
"back to your land, you monkey man!" he snapped; "this man has offended against the land—yet he shall live, for he is a fool. i know a greater one!"
he sent ofesi back to his village to build up what his folly had overthrown.
"remember, ofesi," he said, "i give you back your life, though you deserve death: and i do this because it comes to me suddenly that you are a child as bosambo is a child. now, i will come back to you with the early spring, and if you have deserved well of me you shall be rewarded with your liberty; and if you have done ill to me, you shall go to the village of irons or to a worse place."
back at headquarters sanders told a sympathetic captain of houssas the story.
"it was horribly weak of course," he said; "but, somehow, when that ass bosambo let rip his infernal english i couldn't hang a sparrow."
"might have brought this ofesi person down to the village," said the captain thoughtfully. "he's got an extraordinary reputation."
sanders sat on the edge of the table, his hands thrust into his breeches pockets.
"i thought of that, too, and it affected me. you see, there was just a fear in my mind that i was being influenced on the wrong side by this fellow's talk of destiny—that i was being, in fact, a little malicious."
the houssa skipper snapped his cigarette case and looked thoughtful.
"i'll get another company down from headquarters," he said.
"you might ask for a machine-gun section also," said sanders. "i've got it in my bones that there's going to be trouble."
a week later the upper river saw many strange faces. isolated fishermen came from nowhere in particular to pursue their mild calling in strange waters.
they built their huts in unfrequented patches of forest, and you might pass up and down a stretch of the beach without knowing that hut was modestly concealed in the thick bush at the back.
also they went about their business at night with fishing spear and light canoe tacking across river and up river, moving without sound in the shadows of the bank, approaching villages and cities with remarkable circumspection.
they were strange fishermen indeed, for they fished with pigeons. in every canoe the birds drowsed in a wicker-work cage, little red labels about their legs on which even an untutored spy might make a rude but significant mark with the aid of an indelible pencil.
sanders took no risks.
he summoned ahmed ali, the chief of his secret men.
"go to the akasava country, and there you will find ofesi, a chief of the village mi-lanti. watch him, for he is an evil man. on the day that he moves against me and my people you shall judge whether i can come in time with my soldiers. if there is time send for me: but if he moves swiftly you shall shoot him dead and you shall not be blamed. go with god."
"master," said ahmed, "ofesi is already in hell."
if all reports worked out, and they certainly tallied, ofesi, the predestined chief, gave no offence. he rebuilt his city, choosing higher ground and following a long and unexpected hunting trip, which took him to the edge of the akasava country, and he projected a visit of love and harmony to bosambo.
he even sent swift couriers to sanders to ask permission for the ceremonial, though such permission was wholly unnecessary. sanders granted the request, delaying the deputation until he had sent his own messengers to bosambo.
so on a bright june morning ofesi set forth on his mission, his two and twenty canoes painted red, and even the paddles newly burnt to fantastic and complimentary designs; and he came to the ochori and was met by bosambo, a profound sceptic but outwardly pleasant.
"i see you," said ofesi, "i see you, lord bosambo, also your brave and beautiful people; yet i come in peace and it grieves me that you should meet me with so many spears."
for in truth the beach bristled a steel welcome and three fighting regiments of the ochori, gallantly arrayed, were ranked in hollow square, the fourth side of which was the river.
"lord ofesi," said bosambo suavely, "this is the white man's way of doing honour and, as you know, i have much white blood in my veins, being related to the english prime minister."
he surveyed the two-and-twenty canoes with their twenty paddlers to each, and duly noted that each paddler carried his fighting spears as a matter of course.
that ofesi had any sinister design upon the stronghold of the ochori may be dismissed as unlikely. he was cast in no heroic mould, and abhorred unnecessary risk, for destiny requires some assistance.
he had brought his spears for display rather than for employment. willy-nilly he must stack them now—an unpleasant operation, reminiscent of another stacking under the cold eye of sanders.
so it may be said that the rapprochement between the ochori and the akasava chief began inauspiciously. bosambo led the way to his guest-house—new-thatched as is the custom.
there was a great feast in ofesi's honour, and a dance of girls—every village contributing its chief dancer for the event. next day there was a palaver with sacrifices of fowl and beast, and blood friendships were sworn fluently. bosambo and ofesi embraced before all the people assembled, and ate salt from the same dish.
"now i will tell you all my business, my brother," said ofesi that night. "to-morrow i go back to my people with your good word, and i shall speak of you by day and night because of your noble heart."
"i also will have no rest," said bosambo, "till i have journeyed all over this land, speaking about my wonderful brother ofesi."
with a word ofesi dismissed his counsellors, and bosambo, accepting the invitation, sent away his headmen.
"now i will tell you," said ofesi.
and what he said, what flood of ego-oratory, what promises, what covert threats, provided bosambo with reminiscences for long afterwards.
"yet," he concluded, "though all things have moved to make me what i am, yet there is much i have to learn, and from none can i learn so well as from you, my brother."
"that is very true," said bosambo, and meant it.
"now," ofesi went on to his peroration, "the king of the akasava is dying and all men are agreed that i shall be king in his place, therefore i would learn to the utmost grain all the secrets of kingship. therefore, since i cannot sit with you, i ask you, lord bosambo, to give a home to tolinobo, my headman, that he may sit for a year in the shadow of your wisdom and tell me the many beautiful things you say."
bosambo looked thoughtfully at tolinobo, the headman, a shifty fisherman promoted to that position, and somewhat deficient in sanity, as bosambo judged.
"he shall sit with me," said bosambo at length, "and be as my own son, sleeping in a hut by mine, and i will treat him as if he were my brother."
there was a fleeting gleam of satisfaction in ofesi's eye as he rose to embrace his blood-friend; but then he did not know how bosambo treated his brother.
the akasava chief and his two and twenty canoes paddled homeward at daybreak, and bosambo saw them off.
when they were gone, he turned to his headman.
"tell me, solonkinini," he said, "what have we done with this tolinobo who stays with us?"
"lord, we build him a new hut this morning in your lordship's shadow."
bosambo nodded.
"first," he said, "you shall take him to the secret place near the crocodile pool and stake him out. presently i will come, and we will ask him some questions."
"lord, he will not answer," said the headman. "i myself have spoken with him."
"he shall answer me," said bosambo, significantly, "and you shall build a fire and make very hot your spears, for i think this tolinobo has something he will be glad to tell."
bosambo's prediction was justified by fact.
ofesi was not half-way home, happy in his success, when a blubbering tolinobo, stretched ignominiously on the ground, spoke with a lamentable lack of reserve on all manner of private matters, being urged thereto by a red hot spear-head which bosambo held much too near his face for comfort.
at about this time came jim greel, an american adventurer, and francis e. coulson, a citizen of the world. they came into sanders's territory unwillingly, for they were bound, via the french river which skirted the north of the n'gombi land, for german west africa. there was in normal times a bit of a stream which connected the great river with the frenchi river. it was, according to a facetious government surveyor, navigable for balloons and paper boats except once in a decade when a mild spring in the one thousand-miles distant mountains coincided with heavy rains in the isisi watershed. given the coincidence the tiny dribble of rush-choked water achieved the dignity of riverhood. it was bad luck that jim and coulson hit an exceptional season.
keeping to the left bank, and moving only by night—they had reason for this—the adventurers followed the course of the stream which ordinarily was not on the map, and they were pardonably and almost literally at sea.
two long nights they worked their crazy little steamer through an unknown territory without realising that it was unknown. they avoided such villages as they passed, shutting off steam and dowsing all lights till they drifted beyond sight and hearing.
at last they reached a stage in their enterprise where the maintenance of secrecy was a matter of some personal danger, and they looked around in the black night for assistance.
"looks like a village over there, jim," said coulson, and the steersman nodded.
"there's shoal water here," he said grimly, "and the forehold is up to water-level."
"leakin'?"
"not exactly leakin'," said jim carefully; "but there's no bottom to the forepart of this tub."
coulson swore softly at the african night. the velvet darkness had fallen on them suddenly, and it was a case of tie-up or go on—jim decided to go on.
they had struck a submerged log and ripped away the bottom of the tiny compartment that was magniloquently called "no. 1 hold"; the bulkhead of nos. 1 and 2 was of the thinnest steel and was bulging perceptibly.
coulson did not know this, but jim did.
now he turned the prow of the ancient steamer to the dark shore, and the revolving paddle-wheels made an expiring effort.
somewhere on the river bank a voice called to them in the akasava tongue; they saw the fires of the village, and black shadows passing before them; they heard women laughing.
jim turned his head and gave an order to one of his naked crew, and the man leapt overboard with a thin rope hawser.
then the ripped keel of the little boat took the sand and she grounded.
jim lit his pipe from a lantern that hung in the deck cabin behind him, wiped his streaming forehead with the back of his hand, and spoke rapidly in the akasava tongue to the little crowd who had gathered on the beach. he spoke mechanically, warning all and sundry for the safety of their immortal souls not to slip his hawser! warning them that if he lost so much as a deck rivet he would flay alive the thief, and ended by commending his admiring audience to m'shimba m'shamba, bim-bi, o'kili, and such local devils as he could call to his tongue. "that's let me out," he said, and waded ashore through the shallow water as one too much overcome by the big tragedies of life to care very much one way or another whether he was wet or dry.
he strode up the shelving beach and was led by a straggling group of villagers to the headman's hut to make inquiries, and came back to the boat with unpleasant news.
coulson had brought her nose to the sand, and by a brushwood fire that the men of the village had lit upon the beach, the damage was plainly to be seen.
the tiny hull had torn like brown paper, and part of the cause—a stiff branch of gun-wood—still protruded from the hole.
"we're in sanders's territory, if it's all the same to you," said jim gloomily. "the damnation old frenchi river is in spruit and we've come about eighty miles on the wrong track."
coulson, kneeling by the side of the boat, a short, black briar clutched between his even white teeth, looked up with a grin.
"'sande catchee makee hell,'" quoted he. "do you remember the chink shaver who used to run the angola women up to the old king for bannister fish?"
jim said nothing. he took a roll of twist from his pocket, bit off a section, and chewed philosophically.
"there's no slavery outfit in this packet," he said. "i guess even old man fish wouldn't fool 'round in this land—may the devil grind him for bone-meal!"
there was no love lost between the amiable adventurers and mr. bannister fish. that gentleman himself, sitting in close conference with ofesi not fifty miles from whence the grasshopper lay, would have been extremely glad to know that her owners were where they were.
"fish is out in these territories for good," said jim; "but it'll do us no good—our not bein' fish, i mean, if sandi comes nosing round lookin' for traders' licences—somehow i don't want anybody to inspect our cargo."
coulson nodded as he wielded a heavy hammer on the damaged plate.
"i guess he'll know all right," jim went on. "you can't keep these old lokalis quiet—listen to the joyous news bein', so to speak, flashed forth to the expectant world."
coulson suspended his operations. clear and shrill came the rattle of the lokali tapping its message:
"tom-te tom, tom-te tom, tommitty tommitty tommitty-tom."
"there she goes," said the loquacious jim, complacently. "two white men of suspicious appearance have arrived in town—court papers please copy."
coulson grinned again. he was working his hammer deftly, and already the offending branch had disappeared.
"a ha'porth of cement in the morning," he said, "and she's the royal yacht."
jim sniffed.
"it'll take many ha'porths of cement to make her anything but a big intake pipe," he said. he put his hand on the edge of the boat and leapt aboard. abaft the deck-house were two tiny cupboards of cabins, the length of a man's body and twice his width. into one of these he dived, and returned shortly afterwards with a small, worn portmanteau, patched and soiled. he jumped down over the bows to the beach, first handing the piece of baggage down to the engineer of the little boat. it was so heavy that the man nearly dropped it.
"what's the idea?" coulson mopped the sweat from his forehead with a pocket-handkerchief, and turned his astonished gaze to the other.
"'tis the loot," said jim significantly. "we make a cache of this to-night lest a worse thing happen.
"oh, god, this man!" prayed coulson, appealing heavenward. "with the eyes of the whole dam' barbarian rabble directed on him, he stalks through the wilderness with his grip full of gold and his heart full of innocent guile!"
jim refilled his pipe leisurely from a big, leather pouch that hung at his waist before he replied. "coulson," he said between puffs, "in the language of that ridiculous vaudeville artiste we saw before we quit london, you may have brains in your head, but you've got rabbit's blood in your feet. there's no occasion for getting scared, only i surmise that one of your fellow-countrymen will be prowling around here long before the bows of out stately craft take the water like a thing of life, and since he is the lord high everything in this part of the world, and can turn out a man's pocket without so much as a 'damn ye,' i am for removing all trace of the frenchi creed river diggings."
coulson had paused in his work, and sat squatting on his heels, his eyes fixed steadily on his partner's. he was a good-looking young man of twenty-seven, a few years the junior of the other, whose tanned face was long and thin, but by no means unpleasant.
"what does it matter?" asked coulson after a while. "he can only ask where we got the dust, and we needn't tell him; and if we do we've got enough here to keep us in comfort all our days."
jim smiled.
"suppose he holds this gold?" he asked quietly. "suppose he just sends his spies along to discover where the river digging is—and suppose he finds it is in french territory and that there is a prohibitive export duty from the french country. oh! there's a hundred suppositions, and they're all unpleasant."
coulson rose stiffly.
"i think we'll take the risk of the boat foundering, jim," he said. "put the grip back."
jim hesitated, then with a nod he swung the portmanteau aboard and followed. a few minutes later he was doubled up in the perfectly inadequate space of no. 1 hold, swabbing out the ooze of the river, and singing in a high falsetto the love song of a mythical bedouin.
it was past midnight when the two men, tired, aching, and cheerful, sought their beds.
"if sanders turns up," shouted jim as he arranged his mosquito curtain (the shouting was necessary, since he was addressing his companion through a matchboard partition between the two cabins), "you've got to lie, coulson."
"i hate lying," grumbled coulson loudly; "but i suppose we shall have to?"
"betcher!" yawned the other, and said his prayers with lightning rapidity.
daylight brought dismay to the two voyagers.
the hole in the hull was not alone responsible for the flooded hold. there was a great gash in her keel—the plate had been ripped away by some snag or snags unknown. coulson looked at jim, and jim returned the despairing gaze.
"a canoe for mine," said jim after a while. "me for the german river and so home. that is the way i intended moving, and that is the way i go."
coulson shook his head.
"flight!" he said briefly. "you can explain being in sanders's territory, but you can't explain the bolt—stick it out!"
all that morning the two men laboured in the hot sun to repair the damage. fortunately the cement was enough to stop up the bottom leak, and there was enough over to make a paste with twigs and sun-dried sand to stop the other. but there was no blinking the fact that the protection afforded was of the frailest. the veriest twig embedded in a sandbank would be sufficient to pierce the flimsy "plating." this much the two men saw when the repairs were completed at the end of the day. the hole in the bow could only be effectively dealt with by the removal of one plate and the substitution of another, "and that," said jim, "can hardly happen."
the german river was eighty miles upstream and a flooded stream that ran five knots an hour at that. allow a normal speed of nine knots to the tiny grasshopper, and you have a twenty hours' run at best.
"the river's full of floatin' timber," said jim wrathfully, eyeing the swift sweep of the black waters, "an' we stand no better chance of gettin' anywhere except to the bottom; it's a new plate or nothing."
thus matters stood with a battered grasshopper high and dry on the shelving beach of the akasava village, and two intrepid but unhappy gold smugglers discussing ways and means, when complications occurred which did much to make the life of mr. commissioner sanders unbearable.
there was a woman of the akasava who bore the name of ufambi, which means a "bad woman." she had a lover—indeed, she had many, but the principal was a hunter named logi. he was a tall, taciturn man, and his teeth were sharpened to two points. he was broad-shouldered, his hair was plastered with clay, and he wore a cloak that was made from the tails of monkeys. for this reason he was named logi n'kemi, that is to say, logi the monkey.
he had a hut far in the woods, three days' journey, and in this wood were several devils; therefore he had few visitors.
ufambi loved this man exceedingly, and as fervently hated her husband, who was a creature of ofesi. also, he was not superior to the use of the stick.
one day ufambi annoyed him and he beat her. she flew at him like a wild cat and bit him, but he shook her off and beat her the more, till she ran from the hut to the cool and solitary woods, for she was not afraid of devils.
here her lover found her, sitting patiently by the side of the forest path, her well-moulded arms hugging her knees, her chin sunk, a watchful, brooding and an injured woman.
they sat together and talked, and the woman told him all there was to be told, and logi the monkey listened in silence.
"furthermore," she went on, "he has buried beneath the floor of the hut certain treasures given to him by white men, which you may take."
she said this pleadingly, for he had shown no enthusiasm in the support of her plan.
"yet how can i kill your husband," said logi, carefully, "and if i do kill him and sandi comes here, how may i escape his cruel vengeance? i think it would be better if you gave him death in his chop, for then none would think evilly of me."
she was not distressed at his patent selfishness. it was understandable that a man should seek safety for himself, but she had no intention of carrying out her lover's plan.
she returned to her husband, and found him so far amiable that she escaped a further beating. moreover, he was communicative.
"woman," he said, "to-morrow i go a long journey because of certain things i have seen, and you go with me. in a secret place, as you know, i have hidden my new canoe, and when it is dark you shall take as much fish and my two little dogs and sit in the canoe waiting for me."
"i will do this thing, lord," she said meekly.
he looked at her for a long time.
"also," he said after a while, "you shall tell no man that i am leaving, for i do not desire that sandi shall know, though," he added, "if all things be true that ofesi says, he will know nothing."
"i will do this as you tell me, lord," said the woman.
he rose from the floor of the hut where he had been squatting and went out of the hut.
"come!" he said graciously, and she followed him to the beach and joined the crowd of villagers who watched two white men labouring under difficulties.
by and by she saw her husband detach himself from the group and make his cautious way to where the white men were.
now bikilari—such was the husband's name—was a n'gombi man, and the n'gombi folk are one of two things, and more often than not, both. they are either workers in iron or thieves, and jim, looking up at the man, felt a little spasm of satisfaction at the sight of the lateral face marks which betrayed his nationality.
"ho, man!" said jim in the vernacular, "what are you that you stand in my sun?"
"i am a poor man, lord," said bikilari, "and i am the slave of all white men: now i can do things which ignorant men cannot, for i can take iron and bend it by heat, also i can bend it without heat, as my fathers and my tribe have done since the world began."
coulson watched the man keenly, for he was no lover of the n'gombi.
"try him out, jim," he said, so they gave bikilari a hammer and some strips of steel, and all the day he worked strengthening the rotten bow of the grasshopper.
in the evening, tired and hungry, he went back to his hut for food; but his wife had watched him too faithfully for his comfort, and the cooking-pot was cold and empty. bikilari beat her with his stick, and for two hours she sobbed and blew upon the embers of the fire alternately whilst my lord's fish stewed and spluttered over her bent head.
jim was a good sleeper but a light one. he woke on the very smell of danger. here was something more tangible than scent—a dog-like scratching at his door. in the faint moonlight he saw a figure crouching in the narrow alley-way, saw, too, by certain conformations, that it was a woman, and drew an uncharitable conclusion. yet, since she desired secrecy, he was willing to observe her wishes. he slid back the gauze door and flickered an electric lamp (most precious possession, to be used with all reserve and economy). she shrank back at this evidence of magic and breathed an entreaty.
"what do you want?" he asked in a low voice.
"lord," she answered, her voice muffled, "if you desire your life, do not stay here."
jim thrust his face nearer to the woman's.
"say what you must say very quickly," he said.
"lord," she began again, "my husband is bikilari, a worker in iron. he is the man of ofesi, and to-night ofesi sends his killers to do his work upon all white men and upon all chiefs who thwart him. also upon you because you are white and there is treasure in your ship."
"wait," said jim, and turned to tap on coulson's door. there was no need. coulson was out of bed at the first sound of whispering and now stood in the doorway, the moonlight reflected in a cold blue line on the revolver he held in his hand.
"it may be a fake—but there's no reason why it should be," he said when the story was told. "we'll chance the hole in the bow."
jim ran forward and woke the sleeping engineer, and came back with the first crackle of burning wood in the furnace.
he found the woman waiting.
"what is your name?" he asked.
she stood with her back to the tiny rail, an easy mark for the man who had followed her and now crouched in the shadow of the hull. he could reach up and touch her. he slipped out his long n'gombi hunting knife and felt the point.
"lord," said the woman, "i am——"
then she slipped down to the deck.
coulson fired twice at the fleeing bikilari, and missed him. logi, the lover, leapt at him from the beach but fell before a quick knife-thrust.
bikilari reached the bushes in safety and plunged into the gloom—and into the arms of ahmed ali, a swift, silent man, who caught the knife arm in one hand and broke the neck of the murderer with the other—for ahmed ali was a famous wrestler in the kono country.
the city was aroused, naked feet pattered through the street. jim and coulson, lying flat on the bow of the steamer, held the curious at bay.
two hours they lay thus whilst the cold boilers generated energy. then the paddle wheel threshed desperately astern, and the grasshopper dragged herself to deep water.
a figure hailed them from the bank in swaheli.
"lord," it said, "go you south and meet sandi—northward is death, for the isisi are up and the akasava villagers are in their canoes—also all white men in this land are dead, save sandi."
"who are you?" megaphoned jim, and the answer came faintly as the boat drifted to mid-stream.
"i am ahmed ali, the servant of sandi, whom may god preserve!"
"come with us!" shouted jim.
the figure on the bank, clear to be seen in his white jellab, made a trumpet of his hands.
"i go to kill one ofesi, according to orders—say this to sandi."
then the boat drifted beyond earshot.
"up stream or down?" demanded jim at the wheel. "down we meet sanders and up we meet the heathen in his wrath."
"up," said coulson, and went aft to count noses.
that night died iliki, the chief of the isisi, and i'mini, his brother, stabbed as they sat at meat, also bosomo of the little isisi, and b'ramo of the n'gomi, chiefs all; also the wives and sons of b'ramo and bosomo; father o'leary of the jesuit mission at mosankuli, his lay minister, and the rev. george galley, of the wesleyan mission at bogori, and the rev. septimus keen and his wife, at the baptist mission at michi.
bosambo did not die, because he knew; also a certain headman of ofesi knew—and died.
ofesi had planned largely and well. war had come to the territories in the most terrible form, yet bosambo did not hesitate, though he was aware of his inferiority, not only in point of numbers, but in the more important matter of armament.
for the most dreadful thing had happened, and pigeons flying southward from a dozen points carried the news to sanders—for the first time in history the rebellious people of the akasava were armed with rifles—rifles smuggled across the border and placed in the hands of ofesi's warriors.
the war-drum of the ochori sounded. at dawn bosambo led forty war canoes down the river, seized the first village that offered resistance and burnt it. he was for ofesi's stronghold, and was half-way there when he met the tiny grasshopper coming up stream.
at first he mistook it for the zaire and made little effort to disclose the pacific intentions of his forty canoes, but a whistling rifle bullet aimed precisely made him realise the danger of taking things for granted.
he paddled forward alone, ostentatiously peaceable, and jim received him.
"rifles?" coulson was incredulous. "o chief, you are mad!"
"lord," said bosambo earnestly, "let sandi say if i be mad—for sandi is my bro—is my master and friend," he corrected himself.
jim knew of bosambo—the chief enjoyed a reputation along the coast, and trusted him now.
he turned to his companion.
"if all bosambo says is true there'll be hell in this country," he said quietly. "we can't cut and run. can you use a rifle?" he asked.
bosambo drew himself up.
"suh," he said in plain english, "i make 'um shoot plenty at cape coast cassell—i shoot 'um two bulls' eyes out."
coulson considered.
"we'll cashee that gold," he said. "it would be absurd to take that with us. o bosambo, we have a great treasure, and this we will leave in your city."
"lord," said bosambo quietly, "it shall be as my own treasure."
"that's exactly what i don't want it to be," said coulson.
the fleet waited whilst bosambo returned to ochori city with the smugglers; there, in bosambo's hut, and in a cunningly-devised hole beneath the floor, the portmanteau was hidden and the grasshopper went joyfully with the stream to whatever adventures awaited her.
the moonlight lay in streaks of sage and emerald green—such a green as only the moon, beheld through the mists of the river, can show. sage green for shadow, bright emerald on the young spring verdure, looking from light to dark or from dark to light, as the lazy breezes stirred the undergrowth. in the gleam of the moonlight there was one bright, glowing speck of red—it was the end of mr. commissioner sanders's cigar.
he sat in the ink-black shadow cast by the awning on the foredeck of the zaire. his feet, encased in long, pliant mosquito boots that reached to his knees, rested on the rail of the boat, and he was a picture of contentment and cheerful idleness.
an idle man might be restless. you might expect to hear the creak of the wicker chair as he changed his position ever so slightly, yet it is a strange fact that no such sound broke the pleasant stillness of the night.
he sat in silence, motionless. only the red tip of the cigar glowed to fiery brightness and dulled to an ashen red as he drew noiselessly at his cheroot.
a soft felt hat, pulled down over his eyes, would have concealed the direction of his gaze, even had the awning been removed. his lightly clasped hands rested over one knee, and but for the steady glow of the cigar he might have been asleep.
yet sanders of the river was monstrously awake. his eyes were watching the tousled bushes by the water's edge, roving from point to point, searching every possible egress.
there was somebody concealed in those bushes—as to that sanders had no doubt. but why did they wait—for it was a case of "they"—and why, if they were hostile, had they not attacked him before?
sanders had had his warnings. some of the pigeons came before he had left headquarters; awkwardly scrawled red labels had set the bugles ringing through the houssa quarters. but he had missed the worst of the messages. bosambo's all-arabic exclamation had fallen into the talons of a watchful hawk—poor winged messenger and all.
sanders rose swiftly and silently. behind him was the open door of his cabin, and he stepped in, walked in the darkness to the telephone above the head of his bunk and pressed a button.
abiboo dozing with his head against the buzzer answered instantly.
"let all men be awakened," said sanders in a whisper. "six rifles to cover the bush between the two dead trees."
"on my head," whispered abiboo, and settled his tarboosh more firmly upon that section of his anatomy.
sanders stood by the door of his cabin, a sporting lee-enfield in the crook of his arm, waiting.
then from far away he heard a faint cry, a melancholy, shrill whoo-wooing. it was the cry that set the men of the villages shuddering, for it was such a cry as ghosts make.
men in the secret service of sanders, and the government also, made it, and sanders nodded his head.
here came a man in haste to tell him things.
a long pause and "whoo-woo!" drearily, plaintively, and nearer. the man was whooing then at a jog-trot, and they on the bank were waiting——
"fire!" cried sanders sharply.
six rifles crashed like a thunderclap, there was a staccato flick-flack as the bullets struck the leaves, and two screams of anguish.
out of the bush blundered a dark figure, looked about dazed and uncertain, saw the zaire and raised his hand.
bang!
a bullet smacked viciously past sanders's head.
"guns!" said sanders with a gasp, and as the man on the bank rattled back the lever of his repeater, sanders shot him.
"bang! bang!"
this time from the bush, and the houssas answered it. forty men fired independently at the patch of green from whence the flashes had come.
forty men and more leapt into the water and waded ashore, sanders at their head.
the ambush had failed. sanders found three dead men of the isisi and one slightly injured and quite prepared for surrender.
"männlichers!" said sanders, examining the rifles, and he whistled.
"lord," said the living of the four, "we did what we were told; for it is an order that no man shall come to you with tidings; also, on a certain night that we should shoot you."
"whose order?" demanded sanders.
"our lord ofesi's," said the man. "also, it is an order from a certain white lord who dwells with his people on the border of the land."
they were speaking when the whoo-ing messenger came up at a jog-trot, too weary to be cautioned by the sound of guns.
he was a tired man, dusty, almost naked, and he carried a spear and a cleft-stick.
sanders read the letter which was stuck therein. it was in ornamental arabic, and was from ahmed ali.
he read it carefully; then he spoke.
"what do you know of this?" he asked.
"lord," said the tired man, flat on the bare ground and breathing heavily, "there is war in this land such as we have never seen, for ofesi has guns and has slain all chiefs by his cunning; also there is a white man whom he visits secretly in the forest."
sanders turned back to the zaire, sick at heart. all these years he had kept his territories free from an expeditionary force, building slowly towards the civilisation which was every administrator's ideal. this meant a punitive force, the introduction of a new régime. the coming of armed white men against these children of his.
who supplied the arms? he could not think. he had never dreamt of their importation. his people were too poor, had too little to give.
"lord," called the resting messenger, as sanders turned, "there are two white men in a puc-a-puc who rest by the akasava city."
sanders shook his head.
these men—who knew them by name?—were smugglers of gold, who had come through a swollen river by accident. (his spies were very efficient, be it noted.)
whoever it was, the mischief was done.
"steam," he said briefly to the waiting abiboo.
"and this man, lord?" asked the houssa, pointing to the last of the would-be assassins.
sanders walked to the man.
"tell me," he said, "how many were you who waited to kill me?"
"five, lord," said the man.
"five?" said sanders, "but i found only four bodies."
it was at that instant that the fifth man fired from the bank.
the grasshopper, towing forty war canoes of the ochori, came round a bend of the great river and fell into an ambuscade.
the ochori were a brave people, but unused to the demoralising effect of firearms, however badly and wildly aimed.
bosambo from the stern of the little steamer yelled directions to his panic-stricken fleet without effect. they turned and fled, paddling for their lives the way they had come. jim essayed a turning movement in the literal sense, and struck a submerged log. the ill-fated grasshopper went down steadily by the bow, and in a last desperate effort ran for the shore under a hail of bullets. they leapt to land, four men—bosambo's fighting headman was the fourth—and, shooting down immediate opposition, made for the bush.
but they were in the heart of the enemy's land—within shooting distance of the akasava city. long before they had crossed the league of wood, the lokali had brought reinforcements to oppose them. they were borne down by sheer weight of numbers at a place called iffsimori, and that night came into the presence of the great king ofesi, the predestined.
they came, four wounded and battered men bound tightly with cords of grass, spared for the great king's sport.
"o brother," greeted ofesi in the face of all his people, "look at me and tell me what has become of tobolono, my dear headman?"
bosambo, his face streaked with dried blood, stared at him insolently.
"he is in hell," he said, "being majiki" (predestined).
"also you will be in hell," said the king, "because men say that you are sandi's brother."
bosambo was taken aback for a moment.
"it is true," he said, "that i am sandi's brother; for it seems that this is not the time for a man to deny him. yet i am sandi's brother only because all men are brothers, according to certain white magic i learnt as a boy."
ofesi sat before the door of his hut, and it was noticeable that no man stood or sat nearer to him than twenty paces distant.
jim, glancing round the mob, which surrounded the palaver, saw that every other man carried a rifle, and had hitched across his naked shoulders a canvas cartridge-belt. he noticed, too, now and then, the king would turn his head and speak, as it were, to the dark interior of the hut.
ofesi directed his gaze to the white prisoners.
"o white men," he said, "you see me now, a great lord, greater than any white man has ever been, for all the little chiefs of this land are dead, and all people say 'wah, king,' to ofesi."
"i dare say," said coulson in english.
"to-night," the king went on, "we sacrifice you, for you are the last white men in this land—sandi being dead."
"ofesi, you lie!"
it was bosambo, his face puckered with rage, his voice shrill.
"no man can kill sandi," he cried, "for sindi alone of all men is beyond death, and he will come to you bringing terror and worse than death!"
ofesi made a gesture of contempt.
he waved his hand to the right and as at a signal the crowd moved back.
bosambo held himself tense, expecting to see the lifeless form of his master. but it was something less harrowing he saw—a prosaic stack of wooden boxes six feet high and eight feet square.
"ammunition," said jim under his breath. "the devil had made pretty good preparation."
"behold!" said ofesi, "therein is sanders' death—listen all people!"
he held up his hand for silence.
bosambo heard it—that faint rattle of the lokali. from some far distant place it was carrying the news. "sanders dead!" it rolled mournfully, "distantly—moonlight—puc-a-puc—middle of river—man on bank—boat at shore—sandi dead on ground—many wounds." he pieced together the tidings. sandi had been shot from the bank and the boat had landed him dead. the chief of the ochori heard the news and wept.
"now you shall smell death," said ofesi.
he turned abruptly to the door of the hut and exchanged a dozen quick words with the man inside. he spoke imperiously, sharply.
alas! mr. bannister fish, guest of honour on the remarkable occasion, the ofesi you deal with now is not the meek ofesi with whom you drove your one-sided bargain in the deep of the akasava forest! camel-train and boat have brought ammunition and rifles piecemeal to your enemy's undoing. ofesi owes his power to you, but the maker of tyrants was ever a builder if his own prison-house.
mr. fish felt his danger keenly, pulled two long-barrelled automatic pistols from his pocket and mentally chose his route for the border, cursing his own stupidity that he had not brought his arab bodyguard along the final stages of the journey.
"ofesi," he muttered, "there shall be no killing until i am gone."
"fisi," replied the other louder, "you shall see all that i wish you to see," and he made a signal.
they stripped the white men as naked as they were on the day they were born, pegged them at equal distance on the ground spread-eagle fashion. heads to the white man's feet they laid bosambo and his headman.
when all was finished ofesi walked over to them.
"when the sun comes up," he said, "you will all be dead—but there is half the night to go."
"nigger!" said bosambo in english, "yo' mother done be washerwomans!"
it was the most insulting expression in his vocabulary, and he reserved it for the last.
sanders saw the glow of the great fire long before he reached the akasava, his own lokali sounding forth the news of his premature decease—sanders with the red weal of a bullet across his cheek, and a feeling of unfriendliness toward ofesi in his heart. all the way up the river through the night his lokali sent forth the joyless tidings. villagers heard it and shivered—but sent it on. a half-naked man crouching in the bushes near akasava city heard it and sobbed himself sick, for ahmed ali saw in himself a murderer. he who had sworn by the prophet to end the life of ofesi had left the matter until it was too late.
in a cold rage he crept nearer to the crowd which was gathered about the king's hut—a neck-craning, tip-toeing crowd of vicious men-children. the moment of torment had come. at ofesi's feet crouched two half-witted akasava youths giggling at one another in pleasurable excitement, and whetting the razor-keen edges of their skinning knives on their palms.
"listen, now," said ofesi in exultation. "i am he, the predestined, the ruler of all men from the black waters to the white mountains. thus you see me, all people, your master, and master of white men. the skins of these men shall be drums to call all other nations to the service of the akasava—begin ginin and m'quasa."
the youths rose and eyed the silent victims critically—and mr. bannister fish stepped out of the hut into the light of the fire, a pistol in each hand.
"chief," said he, "this matter ends here. release those men or you die very soon."
ofesi laughed.
"too late, lord fisi," he said, and nodded his head.
one shot rang out from the crowd—a man, skilled in the use of arms, had waited for the gun-runner's appearance. bannister fish, of highgate hill, pitched forward dead.
"now," said ofesi.
ahmed ali came through the crowd like a cyclone, but quicker far was the two-pound shell of a hotchkiss gun. looking upward into the moonlit vault of the sky, jim saw a momentary flash of light, heard the "pang!" of the gun and the whine of the shell as it curved downward; heard a roar louder than any, and was struck senseless by the sharp edge of an exploded cartridge-box.
"ofesi," said sanders, "i think this is your end."
"lord, i think so too," said ofesi.
sanders let him hang for two hours before he cut him down.
"mr. sanders," said jim, dressed in a suit of the commissioner's clothes which fitted none too well, "we ought to explain——"
"i understand," said sanders with a smile. "gold smuggling!"
jim nodded.
"and where is your gold—at the bottom of the river?"
it was in the american's heart to lie, but he shook his head. "the chief bosambo is holding it for me," he confessed.
"h'm!" said sanders. "do you know to an ounce how much you have?"
coulson shook his head.
"where is bosambo?" asked sanders of his orderly.
"lord, he has gone in haste to his city with twenty paddlers," said abiboo.
sanders looked at jim queerly.
"you had better go in haste, too," he said dryly. "bosambo has views of his own on portable property."
"we wept for you," said the indignant jim, something of a sentimentalist.
"you'll be weeping for yourself if you don't hurry," said the practical sanders.
