The Keepers of the King's Peace

"H.M. Launch No. 36 (Territories)," as it was officially described on the stores record, had another name, which she earned in her early days through certain eccentricities of construction. Though she might not in justice be called the Wiggle any longer, yet the Wiggle she was from one end of the river to the other, and even native men called her "Komfuru," which means "that which does not run straight."

It had come to be recognized that the Wiggle was the especial charge of Lieutenant Tibbetts. Bones himself was the first to recognize this right. There were moments when he inferred that the Wiggle's arrival on the station at the time he was making his own first appearance was something more than a coincidence.

She was not, in the strictest sense of the word, a launch, for she possessed a square, open dining saloon and two tiny cabins amidships. Her internal works were open to the light of day, and her engineer lived in the engine-room up to his waist and on deck from his waist up, thus demonstrating the possibility of being in two places at once.

The Wiggle, moreover, possessed many attributes which are denied to other small steamers. She had, for example, a Maxim gun on her tiny forecastle. She had a siren of unusual power and diabolical tone, she was also fitted with a big motor-horn, both of which appendages were Bones's gift to his flagship. The motor-horn may seem superfluous, but when the matter is properly explained, you will understand the necessity for some less drastic method of self-advertisement than the siren.

The first time the siren had been fitted Bones had taken the Wiggle through "the Channel." Here the river narrows and deepens, and the current runs at anything from five to seven knots an hour. Bones was going up stream, and met the Bolalo Mission steamer coming down. She had dipped her flag to the Wiggle's blue ensign, and Bones had replied with two terrific blasts on his siren.

After that the Wiggle went backwards, floating with the current all ways, from broadside on to stern first, for in those two blasts Bones had exhausted the whole of his steam reserve.

She was also equipped with wireless. There was an "aerial" and an apparatus which Bones had imported from England at a cost of twelve pounds, and which was warranted to receive messages from two hundred miles distant. There was also a book of instructions. Bones went to his hut with the book and read it. His servant found him in bed the next morning, sleeping like a child, with his hand resting lightly upon the second page.

Sanders and Hamilton both took a hand at fixing the Wiggle's wireless. The only thing they were all quite certain about was that there ought to be a wire somewhere. So they stretched the aerial from the funnel to the flagstaff at the stern of the boat, and then addressed themselves to the less simple solution of "making it work."

They tried it for a week, and gave it up in despair.

"They've had you, Bones," said Hamilton. "It doesn't 'went.' Poor old Bones!"

"Your pity, dear old officer, is offensive," said Bones stiffly, "an' I don't mind tellin' you that I've a queer feelin'—I can't explain what it is, except that I'm a dooce of a psychic—that that machine is goin' to be jolly useful."

But though Bones worked day and night, read the book of instructions from cover to cover, and took the whole apparatus to pieces, examining each part under a strong magnifying glass, he never succeeded either in transmitting or receiving a message, and the machine was repacked and stored in the spare cabin, and was never by any chance referred to, except by Hamilton in his most unpleasant moments.

Bones took an especial delight in the Wiggle; it was his very own ship, and he gave her his best personal attention.

It was Bones who ordered from London especially engraved notepaper headed "H. M. S. Komfuru"—the native name sounded more dignified than Wiggle, and more important than "Launch 36." It was Bones who installed the little dynamo which—when it worked—lit the cabins and even supplied power for a miniature searchlight. It was Bones who had her painted Service grey, and would have added another funnel if Hamilton had not detected the attempted aggrandizement. Bones claimed that she was dustproof, waterproof, and torpedo-proof, and Hamilton had voiced his regret that she was not also fool-proof.

At five o'clock the next morning, when the world was all big hot stars and shadows, and there was no sound but the whisper of the running river and the "ha-a-a-a—ha-a-a-a" of breakers, Bones came from his hut, crossed the parade-ground, and, making his way by the light of a lantern along the concrete quay—it was the width of an average table—dropped on to the deck and kicked the custodian of the Wiggle to wakefulness.

Bones's satellite was one Ali Abid, who was variously described as Moor, Egyptian, Tripolitan, and Bedouin, but was by all ethnological indications a half-breed Kano, who had spent the greater part of his life in the service of a professor of bacteriology. This professor was something of a purist, and the association with Ali Abid, plus a grounding in the elementary subjects which are taught at St. Joseph's Mission School, Cape Coast Castle, had given Ali a gravity of demeanour and a splendour of vocabulary which many better favoured than he might have envied.

"Arise," quoth Bones, in the cracked bass which he employed whenever he felt called upon to deliver his inaccurate versions of Oriental poets—

"Arise, for morning in the bowl of night
Has chucked a stone to put the stars to flight.
And lo! and lo!… Get up, Ali; the caravan is
moving.
Oh, make haste!"

("Omar will never be dead so long as Bones quotes him," Hamilton once said; "he simply couldn't afford to be dead and leave it to Bones!")

Ali rose, blinking and shivering, for the early morning was very cold, and he had been sleeping under an old padded dressing-gown which Bones had donated.

"Muster all the hands," said Bones, setting his lantern on the deck.

"Sir," said Ali slowly, "the subjects are not at our disposition. Your preliminary instructions presupposed that you had made necessary arrangements re personnel."

Bones scratched his head.

"Dash my whiskers," he said, in his annoyance, "didn't I tell you that I was taking the honourable lady for a trip? Didn't I tell you, you jolly old slacker, to have everything ready by daybreak? Didn't I issue explicit an' particular instructions about grub?"

"Sir," said Ali, "you didn't."

"Then," said Bones wrathfully, "why the dickens do I think I have?"

"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, when enjoying refreshing coma, possess delirium, hallucinations, highly imaginative, which dissipate when the subject recovers consciousness, but retain in brain cavity illusory reminiscences."

Bones thrust his face into the other's.

"Do you mean to tell me I dreamt it?" he hissed.

"Sir," said Ali, "self-preservation compels complete acquiescence in your diagnosis."

"You're childish," said Bones.

He gave a few vague instructions in the best Bones manner, and stole up to the dark Residency. He had solemnly promised Sanders that he would rouse the girl without waking up the rest of the house.

They were to go up stream to the Village Island, where the ironworkers of the Akasava had many curious implements to show her. Breakfast was to be taken on the boat, and they were to return for tiffin.

Overnight she had shown Bones the window of her room, and Hamilton had offered to make a chalk mark on the sash, so there could be no mistaking the situation of the room.

"If you wake me before sunrise, I shall do something I shall be sorry for," he warned Bones. "If you return without straightening the accounts, I shall do something which you will be sorry for."

Bones remembered this as he crept stealthily along the wooden verandah. To make doubly sure, he took off his boots and dropped them with a crash.

"Sh!" said Bones loudly. "Sh, Bones! Not so much noise, you silly old ass!"

He crept softly along the wooden wall and reconnoitred. The middle window was Hamilton's room, the left was Sanders's, the right was Patricia's. He went carefully to the right window and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. Still no reply. He knocked loudly.

"Is that you, Bones?" growled Sanders's voice.

Bones gasped.

"Awfully sorry, sir," he whispered agitatedly—"my mistake entirely."

He tiptoed to the left window and rapped smartly. Then he whistled, then he rapped again.

He heard a bed creak, and turned his head modestly away.

"It's Bones, dear old sister," he said, in his loudest whisper. "Arise, for mornin' in the bowl of light has–"

Hamilton's voice raged at him.

"I knew it was you, you blithering–"

"Dear old officer," began Bones, "awfully sorry! Go to sleep again. Night-night!"

"Go to the devil!" said a muffled voice.