Bosambo of the River

She was interested – more interested than Bosambo.

"God is all-seeing and beneficent," he said devoutly. "Leave me now, for I have holy thoughts and certain magical ideas for finding this killer of Olandi, though I wish him no harm."

* * * * *

Sanders had a trick of accepting alarming statements with a disconcerting calm.

People who essayed the task of making his flesh creep had no reward for their labours; his politely incredulous "O, ko!" which, uttered in certain tones, means, "Oh, indeed!" made his informant curl up inwardly.

Komo, pompous to a degree, anxious to impress his lord with the fact that he, Komo, was no ordinary chief, but a watchful, zealous, and conscientious regent, came fussing down the river in a glad sweat to speak of happenings on the edge of his territory.

Sanders granted the man an immediate audience, though he arrived in the dark hours of the night.

If you will visualise the scene, you have Sanders sitting up in bed in his pyjamas, and two Houssas splashed with rain – for a thunderstorm was raging – one of whom holds a lantern, all the light necessary to reveal a reeking Komo, shiny and wet, who, squatting on the floor, is voluble and ominous.

"As is my practice, lord," said Komo, "I watch men and things for your honour's comfort, being filled with a desire to serve you. And thus it is that I have learnt of certain things, dances and spells of evil, which are practised by the Ochori."

"The Ochori?"

Sanders was puzzled.

"By the Ochori – the trusted."

There was no mistaking the arch turn to his speech; the two words were charged with gentle irony.

"Is Bosambo dead that these things should be?" asked Sanders dryly. "Or has he perchance joined with the dancers?"

"Lord," said Komo impressively, "Bosambo dances with his people. For, being chief, he is the first to stamp his foot and say 'Ho!' He, too, assists at sacrifices and is ripe for abominable treachery."

"Oh, indeed!" said Sanders, with an inward sigh of relief. "Now I tell you this, Komo; there was once a great lord who trusted no man, nor did he trust his household, his wives, nor his slaves, and he walked ever with his back to the sun so that his shadow should run before him, for he did not trust his shadow. And one day he came to a river in flood, and behold! his shadow lay before him. And because he feared to turn his back upon his shadow, he plunged in and was drowned."

"Lord, I have heard the story. He was a king, and a great one," said Komo. Sanders nodded.

"Therefore, Komo, heed this: I trust all men – a little. I trust Bosambo much, for he has been my man in fair weather and foul." He turned to the silent Houssas. "Let this man be lodged according to his dignity and give him a present of cloth. The palaver is finished."

And Sanders, drawing the bedclothes up to his neck, the night being cold, turned over and was asleep before the chief and his escort had cleared the verandah.

"A busybody," was Sanders's verdict on Komo; yet, since there is no smoke without fire, he deemed it advisable to investigate at first hand.

Two days after the crestfallen chief had started on his way home the Zaire passed his canoe in mid-stream, going the same way, and the sight of her white hull and twin smokestacks brought consolation to Komo.

"My lord has considered my words," said he to his headman; "for at his village they said that the puc-a-puc did not leave till the new moon came, and here he comes, though the old moon is still sowing his rind."

"Chief," said the headman, "you are great in council, and even Sandi hearkens and obeys. You are wiser than an owl, swift and terrible as a hawk, and your voice is like the winds of a storm."

"You speak truly," said Komo, who had no false sense of modesty. "I am also very cunning, as you shall see."

Sanders was indeed beating up to the Ochori country. He was perturbed, not by reason of Komo's sinister suggestion, but because his spies had been silent. If there were dances in the Ochori country he should have been told, however innocent those dances were.

Pigeons had gone ahead of him to tell of his journey, and he found the first of his agents awaiting him at the junction of the Ikeli with the Isisi.

"Lord, it is true that the Ochori dance," said the man, "yet, knowing your lordship trusted Bosambo, I did not make report."

"There you did wrong," said Sanders; "for I tell you that if a hawk kills a parrot, or the crocodiles find new breeding-places, I wish to know what there is to know."

He gleaned more of these mysterious revels which Bosambo held in the forest as he grew nearer to the Ochori country, and was more puzzled than ever.

"Master," said the chief of the N'gombi village, "many folk go to the Ochori dance, for Bosambo the chief has a great magic."

"What manner of magic?"

"Lord, it is a magic with whiteness," and he exhibited his hand proudly.

Straight across the reddish-brown palm was an irregular streak of white paint.

"This the lord Bosambo did," he said, "and, behold, every day this remains will be fortunate for me."

Sanders regarded the sign with every evidence of strong emotion.

Two months before Sanders had sent many tins of white paint with instructions to the Ochori chief that his men should seek out the boundary posts of his kingdom – and particularly those that impinged upon foreign territories – and restore them to startling freshness.

"Many people of the Isisi, N'gombi, and Akasava go to Bosambo," the little chief continued; "for, behold, this magic of Bosambo's wipes away all soil. And if a man has been guilty of wickedness he is released of punishment. I," he added proudly, "once killed my wife's father cala cala, and frequently I have sorrowed because of this and because my wife often reminds me. Now, lord, I am a clean man, so clean that when the woman spoke to me this morning about my faraway sin, I hit her with my spear, knowing that I am now innocent."

Sanders thought rapidly.

"And what do you pay Bosambo for this?" he asked.

"Nothing, lord," said the man.

"Nothing!" repeated Sanders incredulously.

"Lord, Bosambo gives his magic freely, saying he has made a vow to strange gods to do this; and because it is free, many men go to his dance for purification. The lord Kambara, the Silent One, he himself passed at sunrise to-day."

Sanders smiled to himself. Kambara would have an interest in stray confessions of guilt —

That was it! The meaning of Bosambo's practice came to him in a flash. The painting of hands – the lure of purification; Bosambo was waiting for the man with the scarred hand.

Sanders continued his journey, tied up five miles short of the Ochori city, and went on foot through the forest to the place of meeting.

It was dark by the time he had covered half the journey, but there was no need of compass to guide him, even had the path been more difficult to follow. Ahead was a dull red glow in the sky where Bosambo's fires burnt.

Four fires there were, set at the points of an imaginary square. In the centre a round circle of stones, and in the centre again three spears with red hafts.

Bosambo had evidently witnessed, or been participant in, an initiation ceremony of a Monrovian secret society.

Within the circle moved Bosambo, and without it, two or three deep, the moving figures of those who sought his merciful services.

Slowly he moved. In one hand a bright tin of Government paint, in the other a Government brush.