The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ for slack water and having found it paddled leisurely to the place which her husband had indicated.

      She saw a hippo standing belly high in mud; once she crossed the path of a cow hippo swimming to shore with a little calf on its back.

      She steadied the canoe and waited for it to pass, for a cow hippo with young is easily annoyed.

      At last she found the spot. The water was calm and almost currentless and she threw over her lines and sat down to wait.

      Such drift of the water as there was set toward the shore, very slowly, imperceptibly. Hereabouts there was no sign of solid earth. The green reeds grew thickly from the water. Once the canoe drifted till its blunt bow went rustling amongst the grass and she was forced to take her paddle and stroke away for a few yards.

      Once she thought she heard a sound in the bushes, but there was a gentle night wind and she paid no heed to the noise.

      She pulled in her lines, baited them again with the little silver fish such as is used for the purpose and threw them out again.

      This made a little noise and drowned the click of a tiny steel grapnel thrown by somebody hiding in the grass.

      She felt the boat drifting in again and paddled. But there were two strong arms pulling the canoe. Before she realised her danger, the boat was pulled into the rushes, a hand at her throat strangled her screams.

      “Woman, if you make a noise I will kill you!” said a voice in her ear, and she recognised the elder son of her husband.

      He stepped from the darkness into the canoe ahead of her — he must have abandoned his own — and with strong strokes sent the boat into the darkness of the marsh. She could not see water. The jungle surrounded them. Putting out her hand she could touch the rank grass on either side.

      This way and that the canoe went deeper and deeper into the marsh, and as he paddled her stepson sketched with frankness the life which was ahead of her.

      Strapped to her thigh, hidden by the dyed grass waist skirt, was a thin knife. She had kept it there for reasons of her own. She slipped it out of its case of snake skin, leant forward and with the other hand felt his bare back.

      “Do not touch me, woman!” he snarled over his shoulder.

      “I am afraid,” she said, and kept her hand where it was, a finger on each rib.

      Between her fingers she pushed the thin knife home.

      Without a word he slid over the side of the canoe, and she threw her weight on the other gunwale to prevent it filling.

      His body fell into the water with a loud “plop” and she waited for him to come up again. He gave no sign, though she peered into the water, the knife in her hand.

      Then she paddled back the way she came, driving the canoe stern first.

      There was little mystery about the waterway save the mystery of the spot where creek and river met, and she had little difficulty in reaching open water. She had nearly come to safety when a sound reached her and she stopped paddling. Behind her she could hear the beat of another canoe, the very swishing of the grass as it forced its passage.

      With quick silent strokes she sent her tiny craft the remainder of the journey, and came into the river just as the moon was sinking behind the N’Gombi Forest. Keeping to the shadow of the jungle she passed swiftly along to the north. They could not see her, whoever the mysterious “they” were, and had she reasoned clearly she was safe enough. But she could not reason clearly at the best of times, being but an Isisi girl whose mental equipment found no other stimulus than the thought of lovers and their possibilities. Her breath came quickly in little sobs as she plied her paddles. She skirted the grass until she reached the second headland — the horn of the bay in which the marsh stands.

      Clear of this she paddled boldly into midstream. Looking behind her she saw nothing, yet there were vague, indefinite shadows which might have been anything.

      Her nerve had gone; she was on the point of collapse, when suddenly ahead of her she saw something and dropped her paddles.

      A steamer was coming toward her, its funnel belching sparks, and ahead, as though to feel its way through the darkness, a broad beam of light, a dazzling whiteness.

      She sat spellbound, breathing quickly, until the current carried her into the range of the searchlight.

      She heard the voice of Sanders in the black darkness behind the light, and the tinkle of the engine telegraph as he put the Zaire astern.

      *

      Likilivi believed in the impenetrability of the Marsh as wholeheartedly as he believed in M’shimba-M’shamba and other strange gods.

      “The woman is dead,” he said to his son, “and your brother Okora also, for M’ciba was a wicked woman and very strong.”

      He did not doubt that somewhere in the depths of the lagoon the two lay locked in the grip of death.

      The villagers accepted the drowning of M’dba philosophically and made no inquiries.

      “I will report this matter to Sandi,” said Likilivi.

      “Father,” said his son, “Sandi passed on the night of the killing, which was six nights ago, for men who were fishing saw his devil light.”

      “So much the better,” said Likilivi.

      There had been other deaths in the Marsh, for sickness readily attacks slaves who are chained by the leg and beaten, and who moreover do their work by night, lest the smoke of their fires invites suspicion.

      Likilivi, his two remaining sons and two cousins, set themselves to recruit new labour.

      Three nights they waited on the edge of the Marsh, and on the fourth they were rewarded, for two men came paddling carelessly with trailing fish lines.

      They sang together a N’Gombi song about a hunter who had trusted an Akasava spear and had died from overconfidence.

      Listening in the darkness Likilivi cursed them silently.

      The canoe was close in shore when the elder of the chief’s sons threw the grapnel, and the canoe was drawn into the rushes.

      Two canoes closed in upon it.

      “You come with us or you die,” said Likilivi.

      “Lord, we go with you,” said the N’Gombi promptly.

      They were transferred to the chief’s canoe carrying their blankets, and their boat was taken by the other canoe, turned bottom upwards, and allowed to drift.

      The chief waited until the canoe returned, then the two boats made for the heart of the Marsh.

      For an hour they twisted and turned along the meandering fairway until at length the nose of the foremost canoe grounded gently on a sandy beach.

      They were on the island. The pungent smell of smoke was in the air — Likilivi had wood to spare — and to the ears of the captives came a monotonous СКАЧАТЬ