The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ rolls, rising and falling, a slow rattle, a roll, a tattoo, another roll.

      That stood for Sandi — Sandi the swift, Sandi the sharp in anger, Sandi the alarmer, Sandi the giver of justice.

      All these qualities and characteristics were expressed by the distant drummer.

      Twice the faraway lokali spoke Sandi’s name, then a long roll, a short roll, and silence.

      Again — a long roll, a short roll — silence.

      “Sandi dies!”

      Toloni’s voice was harsh and exultant.

      “Listen!” he whispered.

      A metallic tattoo, punctuated by an irregular procession of low, deep notes — that stood for the Arabi.

      “Tap — tap — tap — tap.”

      There had been more shooting.

      Then Sanders’ name occurred again — the long roll, the short roll, and silence.

      It was clear to those who could read the message — the message that ten miles away had been received by the lokali man and hammered forth from his hollow tree trunk to yet another village.

      Even now Toloni’s signaller was sending the message on. All night long, through the length and breadth of the land, the message would be repeated till it came to the edges of wild lands, where Sandi was unknown and the message itself incomprehensible.

      “All gods and devils are with me,” said the King of the Akasava. “Now is the time.”

      Stretched on his bunk, Sanders, with the aid of Abiboo and a small hand-mirror, located his injury.

      He had suffered the slightest of wounds — the bullet had struck a steel chain purse he carried in his pocket and had deflected and taken a piece of flesh out of his left forearm, and had fetched up in the roof of the cabin before which he had been standing.

      Beyond a pained bruised side and the wound in his arm, he had suffered no hurt. Abiboo dressed both places from the medicine chest, and there the matter should have ended, for Sanders was a healthy man.

      But the next morning found him in a highly feverish condition. The arm had swollen to twice its normal dimensions, and was terribly painful. Sanders suspected a poisoned bullet, and was probably justified. He did not consider the matter very fully, for he was too busily engaged in an impossible argument with the Administration to give much heed to such trivialities. It was a tedious argument about a tall hat. Should Sanders wear a tall hat for the Coronation Naval Review, or should he not? The Administration was firm, but Sanders was equally determined.

      “I’ve a shocking headache, and you ask me to wear a tall hat, your Excellency,” he said in anger, and burst into tears.

      It was so unlike Sanders, and he knew it was so unlike him, that by a tremendous effort of will, he came back to actualities.

      He was lying in his cabin. His head and his arm ached diabolically. His face was wet with perspiration and his tongue was like a strip of leather.

      Abiboo, squatting by the side of the bed, rose as Sanders opened his eyes.

      “Where do you go?” asked Sanders.

      “To the God-woman who gives medicine,” said. Abiboo, without any display of emotion. “For I fear that you will die, and I wish for a book that I did everything properly.”

      “Cautious devil,” muttered Sanders, and relapsed again into unconsciousness.

      When he awoke again he did not hear the beat of the steamer’s paddles. It was to a surprising calm and ease he awoke. He was lying in a big room in a small bed, and the sheets were of the finest linen — which on the steamer they had not been. ‘There was a big bowl of blue flowers on a table near the bed, and a strange fragrance.

      It cannot be said that he recognised the place, because he had never before seen the interior of Miss Glandynne’s bedroom; but he had a dim recollection that somebody had said he was to be taken to her. His first conscious emotion was one of extreme annoyance that he had been a nuisance to somebody, his second was one of doubt as to his own condition.

      He turned his head slowly to view the erring arm. He would not have been surprised if he had found it missing. It was here safe enough, and he sighed his relief. Also it was near enough to normal size to be comforting.

      He ventured to move the hand of the injured limb, and to his great pleasure found no difficulty to and experienced no pain.

      Then Ruth Glandynne came in — a beautiful vision in that dark land.

      She smiled, lifted a warning finger, shifted his pillow a little, and sat down by his side.

      “What is wrong with the Akasava?” he asked suddenly. It was apropos of nothing; he had not even been thinking of the Akasava, but something impelled the question.

      He saw her face go suddenly grave.

      “I — I think you had better not bother about the Akasava,” she faltered. “You must keep very quiet.”

      “I must know!” he said.

      His voice was cracked and weak, but she knew that, whatever might be the result, she must tell him.

      He lay quietly with closed eyes while she spoke, and when she had finished he lay silent — so silent that she thought he had relapsed into unconsciousness.

      Then he opened his eyes.

      “Send a messenger to the Ochori,” he said, “and bid Bosambo the chief come to me.”

      Bosambo was immensely unpopular amongst all other chiefs and peoples.

      Bosambo was an alien — being a Krooman who had fled from Liberia owing to the persecutions of the government of that model republic. If you should ask how it came about that the majestic machinery of state came to be put into motion against so insignificant a man as Bosambo — a common man, if you might judge him by his place in the state — I enlighten you by offering the explanation that Bosambo had killed a warder at the convict settlement whither he had been sent for theft. The adventurer wandered across Africa till he came to the milk-hearted Ochori, in which he became paramount chief of the tribe on the sudden and inexplicable death of its rightful chief.

      It is sufficient to say that this exconvict made men of a timid people, giving them pride and a sort of spurious courage which was made up as to three-parts of fear — for Bosambo had pliant whips of rhinoceros hide, and was very quick to take offence.

      One morning, in the spring of the year, Bosambo came out of his hut to find the world exquisitely beautiful — being covered with the freshest green of growing things, the sky flecked with white clouds, and a gentle breeze wrinkling the surface of the big river.

      The city of the Ochori was built on the slope of a hill, and you looked across the N’Gombi Forest to the faint blur of the mountain of trees, which is in the Akasava territory.

      Bosambo, СКАЧАТЬ