The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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      He grew wealthy and powerful; was the King’s Prime Minister, with power of life and death in his master’s absence. He went afield for his lord’s dancing girls and, having nice taste in such matters, was considerably rewarded.

      So he lived, happy and prosperous and content.

      The other brother, M’Kairi, had no such enterprise. He settled in a small village near the Pool of Spirits, and with great labour, being a poor man and only affording one wife, he cleared a garden. Here he sowed industriously, and reaped with a full measure of success, selling his stock at a profit.

      News came to him of his brother’s prosperity, and once, in contempt of all Sanders’ orders, the painted canoe of the Great King’s Premier came flashing down the river bearing gifts to the poor brother.

      Sanders heard of this when he was on a tour of inspection and went out to see M’Kairi.

      “Lord, it was so,” said the man sadly. “These rich gifts come from my brother, who is a slave. Salt and corn and cloth and spearheads he sent me.”

      Sanders looked round at the poor field the man worked.

      “And yet, M’Kairi,” he said, “this is not the garden of a rich man, nor do I see your fine cloth nor the wives that salt would bring you.”

      “Lord,” said the man, “I sent them back, for my heart is very sore that my brother should be a slave and I a free man, toiling in the fields, but free; and I would give my life if I could pay the price of him.”

      He told Sanders he had sent a message asking what that price was, and it happened that Sanders was close at hand when the Great King, for his own amusement, sent back word saying that the price of M’Kamdina was ten thousand matakos — a matako being a brass rod.

      Now it is a fact that for seven years — long, patient, suffering, lean years — M’Kairi laboured in his garden, and sold and bought and reared and bargained until he had acquired ten thousand matakos. These he put into his canoe and paddled to the edge of the land where the Great King ruled, and so came to the presence of his brother and the master of his brother.

      The Great King was amused; M’Kamdina was not so amused, being wrathful at his brother’s simplicity.

      “Go back with your rods,” he said. He sat in his grand hut, and his smiling wives and his slaves sat about him. “Take your rods, M’Kairi my brother, and know that it is better to be a slave in the house of a king than a free man toiling in the fields.”

      And M’Kairi went back to his tiny plantation sick at heart.

      Three weeks later the Great King died. That is the station where the moral of this little story steps off. For according to custom, when the Great King lay stretched upon his bier, they took the principal slave of the great one — and that slave was M’Kamdina — and they cut off his head that his body might be buried with his master to serve his soul’s need in another land.

      And the son of the Great King reigned in his stead, and in course of time died violently.

      “There’s the basis of a good Sunday school yarn in that story,” said the Houssa captain.

      “H’m!” growled Sanders, who was innocent of any desire to furnish material for tracts.

      “Rum beggar, that old king!” said the Houssa thoughtfully, “and the new fellow was a rummer. You hanged him or something, didn’t you?”

      “I forget,” said Sanders shortly. “If your infernal troops were worth their salt there would be no hangings. What is it?”

      His orderly was standing in the doorway of the Houssa skipper’s hut.

      “Lord, there is a book,” said the man.

      Sanders took the soiled envelope from the man’s hand. It was addressed in flowing Arabic:

      “The Lord Commissioner, Who is at the town where the river is broadest near the sea. Two flagstaffs standing up and many soldiers will be seen. Go swiftly, and may God be with you.”

      It was an address and an instruction.

      “Who brought this?”

      “An Arabi,” said the man, “such as trade in the high land.”

      Sanders tore open the letter. He sought first the signature at the top of the letter and found it to be that of Ahmed, a reliable chief of his secret service.

      Sanders read the letter, skipping the flowery introduction wherein Ahmed asked Providence and its authorised agents to bring happiness to the house of the Commissioner.

      “It is well that I should tell you this, though I hide my face when I speak of a woman of your house.”

      (Sanders accepted the innuendo which coupled the name of an innocent missionary lady with himself.)

      “Of this God-woman, who is at present on the river, many stories come, some being that she cries at night because no men of the Akasava take God-magic.

      “And I have heard from an Isisi woman who is her servant that this God-woman would go back to her own land, only she is ashamed because so few have learnt the new God. Also, she has fever. I send this by an Arabi, my friend Ahmed, who is my messenger, being five days in search of an Akasava man who has stolen goats.”

      Sanders laughed helplessly. “That girl will be the death of me,” he said. He left for the mission station that very hour.

      The girl was well enough, but very white and tired; she was obviously glad to see Sanders.

      “It was so good of you to come,” she said. “I was getting a little dispirited; I had half made up my mind to go back to England.”

      “I wish I hadn’t come if that’s the case,” said Sanders bluntly.

      The girl smiled.

      “That isn’t very nice of you, Mr. Sanders,” she said.

      “Nice! Look here.”

      He took off his helmet and pointed to his closely cropped head.

      “Do you see those?” he asked.

      She looked curiously.

      She saw nothing except a face burnt brick-red by the sun, two steady grey eyes in such odd contrasts to the tan that they seemed the lightest blue.

      She saw the lean face, the straight thin nose, the firm jaw and the almost hairless head.

      “What am I looking for?” she asked.

      “Grey hairs,” said Sanders grimly.

      She frowned in pretty perplexity.

      “It is difficult to see any hair at all,” she confessed. “But will you turn your head a little? Yes, I see something which might be grey.”

      “They’re СКАЧАТЬ