The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ opposition; neither gun banged nor spear flew as he walked swiftly up the broad street. The girl lay before the chief’s hut quite dead, very calm, very still. The hand to cut short her young life had been more merciful than Sanders dared hope. He lifted the child in his arms, and carried her back to the ship. Once he heard a slight noise behind him, but three rifles crashed from the ship, and he heard a thud and a whimper of pain.

      He brought the body on board, and laid it reverently on the little afterdeck.

      Then they told him that the woman had died, and he nodded his head slowly, saying it was better so.

      The Zaire backed out into midstream, and Sanders stood watching the city wistfully. He wanted the chief of the Lulungo badly; he wanted, in his cold rage, to stake him out in spreadeagle fashion, and kill him with slow fires. But the chief and his people were in the woods, and there were the French territories to fly to.

      In the evening he buried the missionary and his family on a little island, then drove downstream, black rage in his soul, and a sense of his impotence, for you cannot fight a nation with twenty Houssa policemen.

      He came to a little “wooding” at dusk, and tied up for the night. In the morning he resumed his journey, and at noon he came, without a moment’s warning, into the thick of a war fleet.

      There was no mistaking the character of the hundred canoes that came slowly upstream four abreast, paddling with machine-like regularity. That line on the right were Akasava men; you could tell that by the blunt noses of the dugouts. On the left were the Ochori; their canoes were streaked with red corn wood. In the centre, in lighter canoes of better make, he saw the white-barred faces of the Isisi people.

      “In the name of heaven!” said Sanders, with raised eyebrows.

      There was consternation enough in the fleet, and its irregular lines wavered and broke, but the Zaire went steaming into the midst of them. Then Sanders stopped his engines, and summoned the chiefs on board.

      “What shame is this?” said Sanders.

      Otako, of the Isisi, king and elder chief, looked uncomfortably to Ebeni of Akasava, but it was Bosambo, self-appointed ruler of the Ochori, who spoke.

      “Lord,” he said, “who shall escape the never-sleeping eye of Sandi? Lo! we thought you many miles away, but like the owl—”

      “Where do you go?” asked Sanders.

      “Lord, we will not deceive you,” said Bosambo. “These great chiefs are my brothers, because certain Lulungo have come down upon our villages and done much harm, stealing and killing. Therefore, because we have suffered equally, and are one in misfortune, we go up against the Lulungo people, for we are human, and our hearts are sore.” A grin, a wicked, mirthless grin, parted Sanders’ lips.

      “And you would burn and slay?” he asked.

      “Master, such was the pleasure we had before us.”

      “Burning the city and slaying the chief, and scattering the people who hide in the forest?”

      “Lord, though they hide in hell we will find them,” said Bosambo; “yet, if you, who are as a father to us all, say ‘nay,’ we will assemble our warriors and tell them it is forbidden.” Sanders thought of the three new graves on a little island.

      “Go!” he said, pointing up the river.

      He stood on the deck of the Zaire and watched the last canoe as it rounded the bend, and listened to the drone of many voices, growing fainter and fainter, singing the Song of the Slayer, such as the Isisi sing before action.

      The People of the River (1911)

       Table of Contents

       I. A Certain Game

       II. The Eloquent Woman

       III. The Affair of the Lady Missionary

       IV. The Swift Walker

       V. Brethren of the Order

       VI. The Village of Irons

       VII. The Thinker and the Gum-Tree

       VIII. Nine Terrible Men

       IX. The Queen of the N’gombi

       X. The Man on the Spot

       XI. The Rising of the Akasava

       XII. The Missionary

       XIII. A Maker of Spears

       XIV. The Praying Moor

       XV. The Sickness Mongo

       XVI. The Crime of Sanders

       XVII. Spring of the Year

      I. A Certain Game

       Table of Contents

      Sanders had been away on a holiday.

      The Commissioner, whose work lay for the main part in wandering through a malarial country in some discomfort and danger, spent his holiday in travelling through another malarial country in as great discomfort and at no less risk. The only perceptible difference, so far as could be seen, between his work and his holiday was that instead of considering his own worries he had to listen to the troubles of somebody else.

      Mr. Commissioner Sanders derived no small amount of satisfaction from such a vacation, which is a sure sign that he was most human.

      His holiday was a long one, for he went by way СКАЧАТЬ