The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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      He did not mention the fact that he was going to the Ochori — for reasons of his own. Yet it was to the Ochori country that he headed. It was peculiar to his office that no man knew to whither the Commissioner was bound. He stood by the steersman, and by a wave of his hand, this way or that, set the steamer’s course.

      If he so willed, the Zaire would deviate to the left or right bank — if he wished the steamer kept a straight course till night fell, when the nearest wooding was his apparent objective.

      Before night came, late in the afternoon, he fetched up at a wooding where a year before he had felled ten trees, leaving them to season and to dry. For two hours the men of the Zaire sawed and chopped at the fallen trunks, stacking the wood on the well-deck below.

      At night the Zaire resumed her journey. The big lamp on the right of the steersman hissed and spluttered as Sanders switched on the current, and a white fan of light shot ahead of the ship.

      It searched the water carefully — a great unwinking eye which looked closely for shoal and sandbank.

      At midnight Sanders tied up to give himself a little rest.

      He reached the Ochori city in the afternoon, and his interview with Bosambo was a brief one.

      By evening he was gone, the steamer sweeping back to Lukalela.

      Bosambo held a court every morning of his life, save on those mornings when work and pleasure were forbidden by the Koran, which he imperfectly knew, but which he obeyed at second hand — his wife was of the faith, and had made an obedient, if a careless, convert in her husband.

      In the time of the Ramadhan, Bosambo did no work, but fasted in the privacy of the forest — whither on the previous day he had removed a store of food and water sufficient to last him over a very trying twentyfour hours. For, though it was his pleasure to humour his wife, it was not his wish to humour her to his own discomfort.

      On the morning after Sanders’ visit, Bosambo sat upon a wooden chair — a gift of Sanders — painted alternately red, green, and yellow — the paint also being a gift of Sanders, though he was unaware of the fact — and dealt with the minor offences and the little difficulties of his people.

      “Lord Bosambo,” said a thin young man from an outlying village, “I bring salt to your justice.”*

      [* A River saying, meaning: “I am so certain of the meal, I have brought the flavouring.”]

      “Speak, my brother,” said Bosambo; “you shall have your meal.”

      “I have two wives, lord; one I bought from her father for three skins, and one came to me after the great [Akasava] war. Now the woman I bought has put shame upon me, for she has a lover. In the days before you came, lord, it would be proper to put her to death; but now she and other women laugh at our beatings, and continue in sin.”

      “Bring the woman,” said Bosambo.

      The young man dragged her forward, a comely girl of sixteen, with defiant laughter in her eyes, and she was unabashed.

      “Woman,” said Bosambo severely, “though no death awaits you by Sandi’s orders, and my pleasure, yet there are ways, such as you know, of teaching you wisdom. I have built a prison in the Forest of Dreams, where devils come nightly, and it seems a proper place for you.”

      “Lord,” she gasped, “I am afraid.”

      “Yet I will not send you there, for I love my people,” said Bosambo. “Now you shall go to the God-woman who dwells by Kosumkusu, and you shall do as she tells you. And you shall say that you have come to learn of the new God-magic, and you shall do all the strange things she desires, such as shutting your eyes at proper moments and saying ‘Ah-min.’”

      “Lord, I will do this,” said the girl.

      “It will be well for you if you do,” said Bosambo.

      The next case was that of a man who claimed goats from his neighbour in lieu of other benefits promised.

      “For he said, speaking with an evil and a lying tongue, ‘If you help me with my fishing for a year I will give you the first young of my goat after the rains,’” said the man.

      The dispute centred in the words “after the rains,” for it would appear that the goats were born before the rains came.

      “This is a difficult palaver,” said Bosambo, “and I need time to take the counsel of Sandi. You, Kalo, shall go to the God-woman by Kosumkusu; and you too,” he said, addressing the other party to the dispute, “and there you shall learn the God-magic and do all the things she desires, telling her that you come to learn of her wisdom, and in course of time it shall be revealed to me who is right and who is wrong.”

      And for every man and woman who came before him he had one solution, one alternative to punishment — a visit to the God-woman and the cultivation of a spirit of humility. Some there were who demurred.

      “Lord, I will not go,” said a man violently, “for this God-woman speaks slightingly of my god and my ju-ju, and I do not want to know the new God-magic.”

      “Tie him to a tree,” said Bosambo calmly, “and whip him till he says ‘Ah-min.’”

      Willing hands bound the unfortunate to a tree, and a rhinoceros whip whistled in the air and fell once, twice, thrice —

      “Ah-min!” yelled the malcontent, and was released to make his pilgrimage to Kosumkusu.

      At the close of the palaver, Bosambo, with his chief councillor, Olomo, a wise old man, walked through the street of the city together.

      “Lord,” said Olomo, shaking his head, “I do not like this new way of government, for it is not proper that the young people of the Ochori should—”

      Bosambo stopped and looked at him thoughtfully.

      “You are right, Olomo,” he said softly; “it is not wise that only the young people should go. Now I think it would please me if you went with them that they might feel no shame.”

      “Lord, I do not desire,” said the alarmed old man.

      “For I should like you to bring me news of my people,” Bosambo went on, “and you could teach them, being so full of wisdom, how to shut their eyes and say ‘Ah-min’ when certain words are spoken; also, you could prevent them running away.”

      “By Ewa, I will not go!” said the old man, trembling with passion.

      “By Ewa, you will go,” said Bosambo, “or I will take you by the beard, old he-goat, and pull you through the village.”

      “I am your slave,” muttered Olomo, and tottered off to make preparations for the journey.

      Sanders made a longer stay in Kukalala than he had expected. And there had been an outbreak of beri-beri in an interior village which made his presence necessary.

      He came to the mission station, wondering, hoping, and a little fearful.

      He went ashore and walked up the little path СКАЧАТЬ