The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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      Six hundred fighting men of the N’Gombi checked and halted dead at the sight of it. Bosambo touched the big brass cylinder with his hand and turned it carelessly on its swivel until it pointed in the direction of M’laka, who was ahead of the others, and no more than thirty paces distant.

      As if to make assurance doubly sure, he stooped and glanced along the polished surface, and M’laka dropped his short spear at his feet and raised his hands.

      “Lord Bosambo,” he said mildly, “we come in peace.”

      “In peace you shall go,” said Bosambo, and whistled.

      The city was suddenly alive with armed men. From every hut they came into the open.

      “I love you as a man loves his goats,” said M’laka fervently; “I saw you in a dream, and my heart led me to you.”

      “I, too, saw you in a dream,” said Bosambo; “therefore I arose to meet you, for M’laka, the king of the Lesser Isisi, is like a brother to me.”

      M’laka, who never took his eyes from the brass-coated cylinder, had an inspiration.

      “This much I beg of you, master and lord,” he said; “this I ask, my brother, that my men may be allowed to come into your city and make joyful sacrifices, for that is the custom.”

      Bosambo scratched his chin reflectively.

      “This I grant,” he said; “yet every man shall leave his spear, stuck head downwards into earth — which is our custom before sacrifice.”

      M’laka shifted his feet awkwardly. He made the two little double-shuffle steps which native men make when they are embarrassed.

      Bosambo’s hand went slowly to the tripod.

      “It shall be as you command,” said M’laka hastily; and gave the order.

      Six hundred dejected men, unarmed, filed through the village street, and on either side of them marched a line of Ochori warriors — who were not without weapons. Before Bosambo’s hut M’laka, his brotherin-law, Kulala, his headmen, and the headmen of the Ochori, sat to conference which was half meal and half palaver.

      “Tell me. Lord Bosambo,” asked M’laka, “how does it come about that Sandi gives you the gun that says ‘Ha-ha-ha’? For it is forbidden that the chiefs and people of this land should be armed with guns.”

      Bosambo nodded.

      “Sandi loves me,” he said simply, “for reasons which I should be a dog to speak of, for does not the same blood run in his veins that runs in mine?”

      “That is foolish talk,” said Kulala, the brotherin-law; “for he is white and you are black.”

      “None the less it is true,” said the calm Bosambo; “for he is my cousin, his brother having married my mother, who was a chief’s daughter. Sandi wished to marry her,” he went on reminiscently; “but there are matters which it is shame to talk about. Also he gave me these.”

      From beneath the blanket which enveloped his shoulders he produced a leather wallet. From this he took a little package. It looked like a short, stumpy bato. Slowly he removed its wrapping of fine native cloth, till there were revealed three small cups of wood. In shape they favoured the tumbler of commerce, in size they were like very large thimbles.

      Each had been cut from a solid piece of wood, and was of extreme thinness. They were fitted one inside the other when he removed them from the cloth, and now he separated them slowly and impressively.

      At a word, a man brought a stool from the tent and placed it before him.

      Over this he spread the wisp of cloth and placed the cups thereon upside down.

      From the interior of one he took a small red ball of copal and camwood kneaded together.

      Fascinated, the marauding chiefs watched him.

      “These Sandi gave me,” said Bosambo, “that I might pass the days of the rains pleasantly; with these I play with my headman.”

      “Lord Bosambo,” said M’laka, “how do you play?”

      Bosambo looked up to the warm sky and shook his head sadly.

      “This is no game for you, M’laka,” he said, addressing the heavens; “but for one whose eyes are very quick to see; moreover, it is a game played by Christians.”

      Now the Isisi folk pride themselves on their keenness of vision. Is it not a proverb of the River, “The N’Gombi to hear, the Bushman to smell, the Isisi to see, and the Ochori to run”?

      “Let me see what I cannot see,” said M’laka; and, with a reluctant air, Bosambo put the little red ball on the improvised table behind the cup.

      “Watch then, M’laka! I put this ball under this cup: I move the cup — ?”

      Very leisurely he shifted the cups.

      “I have seen no game like this,” said M’laka; and contempt was in his voice.

      “Yet it is a game which pleased me and my men of bright eyes,” said Bosambo; “for we wager so much rods against so much salt that no man can follow the red ball.”

      The chief of the Lesser Isisi knew where the red ball was, because there was a slight scratch on the cup which covered it.

      “Lord Bosambo,” he said, quoting a saying, “only the rat comes to dinner and stays to ravage — yet if I did not sit in the shadow of your hut, I would take every rod from you.”

      “The nukusa is a Small animal, but he has a big voice,” said Bosambo, giving saying for saying; “and I would wager you could not uncover the red ball.”

      M’laka leant forward.

      “I will stake the spears of my warriors against the spears of the Ochori,” he said.

      Bosambo nodded.

      “By my head,” he said.

      M’laka stretched forward his hand and lifted the cup, but the red ball was not there. Rather it was under the next cup, as Bosambo demonstrated.

      M’laka stared.

      “I am no blind man,” he said roughly; “and your tongue is like the burning of dry sticks — clack, clack, clack!”

      Bosambo accepted the insult without resentment.

      “It is the eye,” he said meditatively; “we Ochori folk see quickly.”

      M’laka swallowed an offensive saying.

      “I have ten bags of salt in my house,” he said shortly, “and it shall be my salt against the spears you have won.”

      “By my heart and life,” said Bosambo, and put the ball under the cup.

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