The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ He landed his guests at headquarters and went back to the Upper River to await developments.

      The Zaire had a complement of fifty men. They were technically deck hands and their duty lay in collecting wood, in taking aboard and discharging such stores as he brought with him and in assisting in the navigation of the boat.

      He went to a wooding on the Calali River to replenish his stock of fuel and very wisely he “wooded” by daylight.

      The same night the whole of his men deserted, and he was left with twenty Houssas, Yoka, the engineer, and a Congo boy, who acted as his cook.

      This was his position when he dropped down stream to an Isisi river where he hoped news would await him.

      For all the volcano which trembled beneath his feet, he gave no outward sign of perturbation. The movement could be checked, might indeed be destroyed, if Ofalikari were laid by the heels, but the “missioner” had vanished and there was no reliable word as to his whereabouts.

      Somewhere in the country he directed the operations of the society.

      There was a lull; a sudden interval of inactivity That was bad, as bad as it could be.

      Sanders reviewed the position and saw no good in it; he remembered the Commissioner who brought war to the Niger and shivered, for he loved the country and he loved his work.

      There were two days of heavy rains, and these were followed by two days of sweltering heat — and then Bosambo, a native chief, with all a native’s malignity and indifference to suffering grafted to knowledge of white men, sent a message to Sanders.

      Two fast paddlers brought the messenger, and he stood up in his canoe to deliver his word.

      “Thus said our lord Bosambo,” he shouted, keeping a respectful distance from the little boat. “‘Go you to Sandi, but go not on board his ship on your life. Say to Sandi: The White Goat dies, and the people of these lands come back to wisdom before the moon is full.’”

      “Come to the ship and tell me more,” called Sanders. The man shook his head.

      “Lord, it is forbidden,” he said, “for our lord was very sure on that matter; and there is nothing to tell you, for we are ignorant men, only Bosambo being wiser than all men save your lordship.”

      Sanders was puzzled. He knew the chief well enough to believe that he did not prophesy lightly, and yet —

      “Go back to your chief,” he said, “tell him that I have faith in him.”

      Then he sat down at the junction of the Isisi and Calali Rivers for Bosambo to work miracles.

      Bosambo, chief of the Ochori, had had in his time many gods. Some of these he retained for emergencies or because their possession added to his prestige. He neither loved nor feared them. Bosambo loved or feared no man, save Sanders.

      The White Goats might have the chief of the Ochori in a cleft stick; they might seduce from their allegiance half and more than half of his people, as they had done, but Bosambo, who knew that weak men who acquire strength of a sudden, invariably signalise their independence by acquiring new masters, accepted the little troubles which accompany the chieftainship of such a tribe as his with pleasing philosophy.

      It was a trying time for him, and it was a period not without some excitement for those who tried him.

      A dish of fish came to him from his chief cook one morning. Bosambo ate a little, and sent for the same cook, who was one of his titular wives.

      “Woman,” said Bosambo, “if you try to poison me, I will burn you alive, by Ewa!”

      She was speechless with terror and fell on her knees before him.

      “As matters are,” said Bosambo, “I shall not speak of your sin to Sandi, who is my sister’s own child by a white father, for if Sandi knew of this, he would place you in boiling water till your eyes bulged like a fish. Go now, woman, and cook me clean food.”

      Other attempts were made on his life. Once a spear whizzed past his head as he walked alone in the forest. Bosambo uttered a shriek and fell to the ground and the thrower, somewhat incautiously, came to see what mischief he had wrought, and if need be to finish the good work… Bosambo returned from his walk alone. He stopped by the river to wash his hands and scour his spears with wet sand, and that was the end of the adventure so far as his assailant was concerned.

      But the power of the society was growing. His chief councillor was slain at meat, another was drowned, and his people began to display a marked insolence.

      The air became electric. The Akasava had thrown off all disguise, the influence of the White Goat predominated. Chiefs and headmen obeyed the least of their hunters, or themselves joined in the lewd ritual celebrated nightly in the forest. The chief who had brought about the arrest of Ofalikari was pulled down and murdered in the open street by the very men who had lodged complaints, and the first to strike was his own son.

      All these things were happening whilst Sanders waited at the junction of the Isisi and Calali Rivers, his Houssas sleeping by the guns.

      Bosambo saw the end clearly. He had no illusions as to his ultimate fate. “Tomorrow, light of my eyes,” he said to his first wife, “I send you in a canoe to find Sandi, for men of the White Goat come openly — one man from every tribe, calling upon me to dance and make sacrifice.”

      His wife was a Kano woman; tall and straight and comely. “Lord,” she said simply, “at the end you will take your spear and kill me, for here I sit till the end. When you die, life is death to me.”

      Bosambo put his strong arm about her and patted her head.

      The following day he sat at palaver, but few were the applicants for justice. There was a stronger force abroad in the land; a higher dispenser of favour.

      At the moment he had raised his hand to signify the palaver was finished a man came running from the forest. He ran unsteadily, like one who was drunken, throwing out his arms before him as though he was feeling his way.

      He gained the village street, and came stumbling along, his sobbing breath being audible above the hum of the Ochoris’ wondering talk.

      Then suddenly a shrill voice cried a word in fear, and the people went bolting to their huts — and there was excuse, for this wanderer with the glazed eyes was sick to death, and his disease was that dreaded bush plague which decimates territories. It is an epidemic disease which makes its appearance once in twenty years; it has no known origin and no remedy.

      Other diseases: sleeping sickness, beri-beri, malaria, are called by courtesy the sickness mongo— “The Sickness Itself” — but this mysterious malady alone is entitled to the description.

      The man fell flat on the ground at the foot of the little hill where Bosambo sat in solitude — his headmen and councillors fleeing in panic at the sick man’s approach.

      Bosambo looked at him thoughtfully.

      “What may I do for you, my brother?” he asked.

      “Save me,” moaned the man.

      Bosambo was silent. He was a native, and a native mind СКАЧАТЬ