Bones of the River (10 page)

Lieutenant Tibbetts, in khaki, a long sword slapping at his leg, stalked over from his hut, his helmet tilted over one eye in the fashion set by a remarkable admiral, and coming to a halt before the guard, glared at the four inoffensive soldiers.

“The guard is present, lord,” the sergeant said in queer, guttural Arabic.

“Let it be dismissed, Ahmet,” said Bones. “Now bring me the prisoner.”

There came, blinking into the light from the dark prison hut, a man, at the sight of whom Lieutenant Tibbetts’ jaw dropped – and it took a lot (as Bones often said) to surprise him.

“Bosambo!” he squeaked in English. “Goodness gracious heavens alive, well I’m dashed!”

The big man grinned sheepishly. “I be damned, sah, too, one time. I make ’um foolish all time, Bonesi.”

“Not so much of that Bonesi,” said Bones severely. “You naughty old reveller – you disgustin’ carousin’ old sinner. Really, really, Bosambo, I wonder you’re not ashamed of yourself!”

Bosambo did not look particularly ashamed, although he, king and paramount chief of the Ochori, had suffered the indignity of spending a night in the guard-room, and had been carried there in the middle of the night by four stalwart Houssas.

“I no be drunken, Tibbetti,” he began earnestly. “I be good Matt’ew Marki Luki Christian–”

“Monkey talk,” said Bones unpleasantly, and this time he spoke in Bomongo.

“Lord,” said Bosambo in that language, “I came by night because of certain news which my spies brought to me. And because I came secretly, not wishing your lordship’s soldiers to know me, I did not tell them who I was when they fell upon me as I crossed the square. And if I fought them, using terrible words, there was this reason, for I thought that in the night I could break away and go my way.”

Bones went up to the residency, leaving the “prisoner” in his own hut. Hamilton, shaving (in his pyjamas) on the verandah, saw the martial figure – he would have heard the slap of the sword anyway – and suspended operations.

“Morning, Mars – is there a war on?” he demanded, returning to his grimaces at the mirror and the manipulation of his safety razor.

“Dear old officer, there are certain aspects of military service that no self-respecting old commander jests about,” said Bones testily. “If I hadn’t turned out in jolly old regimentals, you would have kicked.”

“Well, did you court-martial and shoot the noisy devil?” asked Hamilton. “He woke Sanders – who was he and what was he doing? Abiboo said it was somebody trying to break into the residency.”

“It was Bosambo,” said Bones, with dramatic emphasis.

He was entitled to enjoy the sensation his words created.

“Bo – sambo? Bosh!”

Bones raised his eyebrows and closed his eyes. “Very good, jolly old sir. I have done my duty: I can do no more,” he said.

“Bosambo!”

Sanders stood in the doorway, and Bones saluted.

“Yes, excellency: Bosambo. I had a suspicion it was he last night.”

“You said that you knew it was a Lower River fisherman who had got square face,” began Hamilton, but Sanders’ hand called for silence.

“Send him here, Bones,” he said quietly.

Bosambo arrived, more self-possessed than Bones thought was decent.

“Lord, it is true that it was I who came like a thief, desiring secret word with you,” he said frankly, “for this is a big thing that I had to tell, and my stomach was troubled.”

“You have brought me much news before,” said Sanders sternly, “yet you came in daylight and met me in palaver. Now you come like an Isisi robber, and my soldiers have shamed you, and therefore have shamed me and my king. Are there no grey birds or swift messengers?”

“Lord, there are all these,” said Bosambo calmly. “One grey pigeon came to me last week, and about his little red leg was a book
[1]
which said that I must not seek Dhoti any more, as he had gone a long journey into the Lower Isisi.”

Sanders sat up in his chair with a start. “Man, what are you saying? I sent no message but about your taxation.”

Bosambo fumbled in his leopard-skin robe and took out a folded paper, handing it to the Commissioner without a word.

Sanders read and frowned. “I did not send this message,” he said. “As to Dhoti,
[2]
he went into the Frenchi country two moons gone, and you sent me a book saying this.”

“Lord,” said Bosambo, “I sent no such book, nor have I seen Dhoti. And because of things I heard, I sent my spies into the Akasava and they did not come back. I myself would have gone, but my young and cunning listeners told me that Ofaba waited to seize me, and his canoes watched the river. So, lord, I came secretly.”

Sanders fingered his chin, his face set and hard.

“Get steam in the
Zaire
, Hamilton. I leave for the Upper River just as soon as you are ready. I shall want ten soldiers and a rope.”

*  *  *

In the deepest jungle of the Forest of Dreams, and in a secret place between two marshes was a hut, and stretched on a bed of skins before the door lay a young man. He was yellow of face, unshaven, gaunt. The fever which comes to white men in this forest of illusions was on him, and his teeth chattered dismally. Nevertheless, he smiled, and his eyes lit up as the girl came from a belt of trees, carrying in her arms a large and steaming pot.

“By jove, M’mina, I am glad to see you,” he said in English, as he reached out and took her hand.

“My husband and my lover,” she murmured, fondling the thin fingers between her palms, “I do not understand you when you speak with that tongue. I have brought you food, and I have spoken with the devils that you shall get well.”

Terence chuckled weakly. “The grey birds have not come?” he asked.

“One will come soon – my spirit tells me,” she said, squatting on the ground by the side of him.

He dropped his arm on her shoulder and looked fondly down into the round and comely face.

“There is no woman like you in the world, M’mina. You are the most wonderful of all. And I will take you across the black water, and you shall be a great lady.”

“Lord, I will stay here, and you also,” she said calmly; “for I knew when I saw you first, that you were the husband that the ghosts had whispered to me about.”

He was looking at her raptly. “O woman,” he said in Bomongo, “you are very beautiful.” And then he stopped, for her eyes were searching the heavens. Suddenly she sprang up, and, pursing her lips, sent forth a long trill of melody. It was less a whistle than a high vocal note, and though it was not loud, the swift bird that was crossing the patch of sky checked, wheeled and came in narrowing circles lower and lower, till it dropped at her feet. She stooped, picked up the grey pigeon and smoothed its plumage. Then, with fingers deft with practice, she took the tissue paper that was fastened about the leg by a rubber band and gave it to the man.

He peered down at the Arabic characters. “It is from Sandi to Bosambo,” he said, “and he says all is well.”

She nodded. “Then this little bird may go,” she answered; “and my lord need not write any message to deceive the fat man of the Ochori. Lord, I fear this man, and have spoken with Ofaba that he may be killed.”

Terence Doughty fell back on his pillow and closed his eyes.

“You’re a wonderful girl,” he murmured in English, and she tried to repeat the words. “Clever girl…what a splendid mind you must have!”

She stooped and covered him with a skin rug, and then, at the sound of footsteps, she turned quickly. A lean man in white duck was crossing the clearing, and behind him she saw the glint of steel and the red tarbosh of soldiers.

“O Sandi,” she greeted him without embarrassment, “so you have found me and my husband.”

“And three little graves, M’mina,” said Sanders quietly. “Now you shall answer to me for your life.”

She shook her head. “You will not kill me, Sandi, because that is not your way. In all time you have never hanged any woman from the high tree, and I think I shall live, because I am well loved by certain devils and ghosts, and my ju-ju is strong for me. Also for this man.”

Terence was staring up at Sanders, a frown on his emaciated face.

“’Morning,” he said, a little resentfully. “You know my wife?”

“I know her very well,” said Sanders softly.

“Hope you didn’t mind my fooling round with your messages,” said Doughty. “By the way, I’ve at last got the Bomongo word for…” His voice sank into a drowsy murmur. Mr Terence Doughty did not wholly recover consciousness until he was halfway on the voyage to England, and then he woke as from a bad dream. In that dream there figured a strange and gracious figure, which he could not identify or remember. All his life, even when he was comfortably and respectably married, there hovered in the background of his mind the illusion of a greater happiness which he had once experienced.

Sitting in the Village of Irons, in that portion reserved for the women who had worked evilly against the Government, M’mina often said to her fellows in durance: “Sandi has taken my man, but my soul and spirit and ghost is with him always, and my devil shall whisper in his ear: ‘M’mina waits for you in the Forest of Dreams.’”

Which in a sense was perfectly true, though Terence Doughty would have been shocked if he could have identified the woman who flitted through his thoughts and was the foundation of many dreams…

Once he woke with a cry, and his wife asked him if he was ill.

“No, no… I was thinking…a nice gel… I wonder who she was?”

His wife smiled. She was wise enough never to probe into the past, but sometimes she wondered who that nice gel was.

There is no tribe on the river that has not its most secret mystery. In the course of the years, Mr Commissioner Sanders had acquired a working knowledge of hundreds, yet was well aware that he had but touched the fringe of multitudes. For within every mystery is yet another. He knew that within the pods of a specie of wild pea there dwelt a beneficent spirit called “Cha”, that brought luck and prosperity, but that if the pea was split into four and given to four people, one would die within a moon, but he did not learn for years that if one of the four quarters remained green, there would be no fish in the river for the space of nine moons.

Every plant and flowering tree had its peculiar familiar, good or bad, and once he had been brought a hundred and fifty miles to a great palaver, and all because a mealy stalk had produced only one cob – which was a sign of coming pestilence. Sometimes a peculiar potent would not appear at all and a hundred thousand men and women would sit and shiver their apprehension, whilst search parties would go forth and seek it.

In the end Sanders evolved a formula. At headquarters was a squat concrete house, built at the time of a serious war to store ammunition. The magazine was still employed for that purpose, but Sanders found it a new use. It became a repository of ju-jus. When M’shimba M’shamba (which is another name for a small typhoon) did not put in an appearance, and the Isisi and N’gombi people met in solemn conclave to discuss what evil had been done that the great green spirit did not walk abroad, Sanders came.

“Have no fear, for M’shimba stays with me in my Ghost House, being very weary.”

When the famous Tree of the World was uprooted in a storm and swept out of sight down the river, Sanders could reassure a trembling people.

“This great tree Is. It lives in my strange House of Ghosts, and none other shall see it. There it sits making good magic for the Isisi.”

Bones came to be custodian of the Ghost House by natural processes. Finding that certain credit attached to the position, he claimed it for his own, and when the lower river folk lost their ju-ju (maliciously conveyed on to the
Zaire
by a native workman and concealed in the engine furnace) Bones assumed responsibility.

“This fine ju-ju came to my Ghost House, and there he lives, and every morning I speak to him and he speaks to me.”

“Lord, we should like to see our beautiful ju-ju, for he was made wonderfully out of a magic tree by our fathers,” said one of the troubled elders.

“Him you may see,” said Bones significantly, “but if you look upon the other ghosts who live with him, your eyes will fall out.”

They decided to leave the ju-ju to his tender care.

The plan worked exceedingly well until Bosambo fell out with the Akasava.

Bosambo, Paramount Chief of the Ochori, best-eared of all chiefs, had an elementary but effective system of justice. For him no frontiers existed, no sovereignty was sacred, though he rigidly enforced the restrictions of frontier and the holiness of the Ochori territory upon others. There came into the forest land at the extreme southern edge of his land a party of Akasava huntsmen in search of game, and these with a lordly indifference to the inviolability of his territority, speared and shot without so much as “by your leave.”

They were in search of the small monkeys with white whiskers, which are considered a delicacy by the epicureans of the Akasava, and are found nowhere else than in the southern Ochori. They are killed with arrows, to the heads of which a yard of native rope is attached. When the monkey is hit, the barbed arrowhead falls off, and the rope and shaft becoming entangled in the small branches of the trees in which the little people live, they are easily caught and despatched.

Now the people of the Ochori do not eat monkeys. They capture them and train them into domestic pets, so that you cannot pass through an Ochori village without seeing little white-whiskered figures squatting contentedly on the roof of the huts, engaged mainly in an everlasting hunt for fleas.

Messengers brought news of the invasion, and Bosambo left hurriedly for the south, taking with him fifty spearmen. They came upon the Akasava hunting party sitting about a fire over which shrivelled monkey-meat was roasting.

What followed need not be described in these pure pages; Bosambo had no right to brand the poachers with red-hot spear blades, and certainly his treatment did not err on the side of delicacy.

Ten days later, the weary hunting party came to the Akasava city and carried their grievances.