The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Bosambo had twenty men with him, men he could trust. The darkness was coming on, and at the far end of the city he could see the big fire where the “Eloquent Woman” talked and talked and talked.

      He went first to his hut. He found his Kano wife alone, for the other women of his house had fled.

      “Lord, I did not expect to see you alive,” she said, “so I waited for death when the time came.”

      “That shall be many years away,” said Bosambo.

      He sent her with two of his men to the woods to wait his coming, then the rest of the party, in twos and threes, made their way to the outskirt of the throng before his headman’s hut.

      It was admirably placed for a forum. It stood on the crest of a sharp rise, flanked on either side by other huts.

      Halfway down the slope a big fire blazed, and the leaping flames lit the slim figure that stood with arms outstretched before the hut.

      “… Who made you the slaves of a slave — the slave of Bosambo? Who gave him power to say ‘Go forth’ or ‘Remain’? None. For he is a man like you, no different in make, no keener of eye, and if you stab him with a spear, will he not die just as you will die?

      “And Sandi, is he not a man, though white? Is he stronger than Efambi or Elaki or Yako? Now I say to you that you will not be a free people whilst Bosambo lives or Sandi lives.”

      Bosambo was a man with keen animal instincts. He felt the insurrection in the air; he received through every tingling nerve the knowledge that his people were out of hand. He did not hesitate.

      A solid mass of people stood between him and the woman. He could not reach her.

      Never taking his eyes from her, he put his hand beneath his shield and drew his throwing spear. He had space for the swing; balanced and quivering, it lay on his open palm, his arm extended to the fullest.

      “Whew-w!”

      The light lance flickered through the air quicker than eye could follow.

      But she had seen the outstretched arm and recognised the thrower, and leapt on one side.

      The spear struck the man who stood behind her — and Fabadimo, the chief headman, died without speaking.

      “Bosambol” screamed the girl, and pointed. “Bosambo, kill — kill!”

      He heard the rustle of disengaging spears, and fled into the darkness.

      Sanders, at headquarters, was lying in a hammock swung between a pole of his verandah and a hook-fastened to the wall of his bungalow. He was reading, or trying to read, a long and offensive document from headquarters. It had to do with a census return made by Sanders, and apparently this return had fallen short in some respects.

      Exactly how, Sanders never discovered, for he fell asleep three times in his attempt and the third time he was awakened by his orderly, who carried a tired pigeon in his hand.

      “Master, here is a book,”* said the man.

      [Any written thing — a letter, a note.]

      Sanders was awake instantly and out of his hammock in a second. Fastened about one red leg of the bird by a long indiarubber band was a paper twice the size of a cigarette paper and of the same texture. He smoothed it out.

      Written in copying pencil were a few words in Arabic: “From Abiboo, the servant of God, to Sandi, the ever-wakeful father of his people.

      “Peace be to you and on your house. Declaring that there is but one God, the true and indivisible, I send you news that the woman you gave to Bosambo is causing great trouble. This has come to me by messengers, Bosambo having fled with twenty men to the edge of the Isisi country.

      “Written at a place on the Isisi River, where there are three crocodile creeks meeting in the form of an arrow.”

      Now Abiboo had been left in the village from which M’fashimbi had been ejected. He had been left to clear up the mystery of Otapo’s death and he was not a man easily alarmed.

      Pulling on his mosquito boots, Sanders walked over to the house occupied by the officer of Houssa.

      He found that gentleman sipping tea in solitary state.

      “I shall want you,” said Sanders; “there’s a dust-up in the Ochori country.”

      The officer raised his eyebrows. He was a young man on the cynical side of twentyfive.

      “Not the gentle Bosambo,” he protested ironically; “not that mirror of chivalry?”

      “Don’t be comic, my man,” snarled Sanders. “The Ochori are up, and there is a lady missionary somewhere on the border.”

      The Houssa captain sprang to his feet.

      “Bless the woman, I forgot her!” he said in a worried tone. He took a whistle from his breast pocket and blew it, and a barelegged bugler raced across the little parade ground from the guard hut.

      “Ta-ta-ta!” said the Houssa captain, and the quavering note of the assembly sounded.

      “What is the palaver?” demanded the officer, and briefly Sanders related the circumstances.

      With a full head of steam the little Zaire pushed her way upstream. Day and night she steamed till she came to the place “where three crocodile creeks meet in the form of an arrow,” and here Sanders stopped to relieve Abiboo and his handful of Houssas.

      Sanders learnt with relief that the fighting had not threatened the mission stations.

      “What of Bosambo?” he asked.

      “Living or dead, I do not know,” said Abiboo philosophically; “and if he is dead he died a believer, for the Kano woman he took to wife is a believer in the one Allah and of Mahmut, his prophet.”

      “All this may be true,” said Sanders patiently, “yet I am less concerned by his prospects of immortality than the present disposition of his body.”

      About this Abiboo could tell him nothing, save that ten miles farther on Bosambo had held an island in the middle of the river, and that up to two days before he was still holding it.

      Hereabouts the river twists and turns, and there was no sight of the middle island till the Zaire came curving round a sharp bend. “Stand by those maxims!” said Sanders sharply.

      The Houssa captain sank on the saddle seat of one little brass-coated gun, and Abiboo took the other.

      The water was alive with canoes.

      The Ochori were attacking the island; the thunder of the Zaire’s wheel drowned all sound.

      “They’re fighting all right,” said the captain. “What do you say, Sanders?”

      Sanders, with his hands on the wheel, waited, his eyes fixed ahead.

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