Bosambo of the River

Sanders, from his place of observation, grinned approvingly at the solemnity in which Bosambo clothed the ceremony.

One by one he daubed the men – a flick of the brush, a muttered incantation, and the magic was performed.

Sanders saw Kambara in the front rank and was puzzled, for the man was in earnest. If he had come to scoff he remained to pray. Big beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead, the outstretched hands were shaking.

Bosambo approached him, lifted his brush, peered down, then with a sweep of his arm he drew the N'gombi chief to him.

"Brother," he said pleasantly, "I have need of you."

Sanders saw what it meant, and went crashing through the undergrowth to Bosambo's side, and the yelling throng that had closed round the struggling pair drew back.

"Lord, here is your man!" said Bosambo, and forcibly pulled forward Kambara's palm.

Sanders took his prisoner back to the Zaire, and from thenceforward, so far as the crime was concerned, there was no difficulty, for Kambara told the truth.

"Lord," he said, "my hand alone is in fault; for, though my people were with me, none struck Olandi but I. Now do with me what you will, for my wife hates me and I am sick for sleep."

"This is a bad palaver," said Sanders gravely, "for I trusted you."

"Lord, you may trust no man," said Kambara, "when his woman is the palaver. I shall be glad to die, for I was her dog. And Olandi came and stayed one night in my village, and all that I was to her and all that I have given her was as nothing. And now she weeps all day for him, as does the Ochori woman I took with her. And, lord, if women worship only the dead, make an end, for I am sick of her scorn."

Sanders, with his head sunk, his hands clasped behind, his eyes examining the floor of his cabin – they were on board the Zaire– whistled a tune, a trick of his when he was worried.

"Go back to your village," he said. "You shall pay the family of Olandi thirty goats and ten bags of salt for his blood."

* * * * *

"Master," said Bosambo. "I have great joy in my heart that you did not hang this man, for it seems that Olandi did not die too soon. As for the Ochori girl," he went on, "I would have killed Olandi on her account – only Kambara was there first. This," he added, "I tell you, lord, for your secret hearing, for I knew this girl."

Sanders looked at Bosambo keenly.

"They tell me that you have but one wife, Bosambo," he said.

"I have one," said Bosambo evasively, "but in my lifetime I have many perils, of which the woman my wife knows nothing, for it is written in the Sura of the Djinn, 'Men know best who know most, but a woman's happiness lies in her delusions.'"

CHAPTER VI

THE PEDOMETER

Bosambo, the chief of the Ochori, was wont to style himself in moments of magnificent conceit, King of the Ochori, Lord Chief of the Elebi River, High Herd of Untamable Buffaloes and of all Goats.

There were other titles which I forget, but I merely mention his claims in order that I may remark that he no longer refers to the goats of his land. There is a reason.

Hikilari, the wise old chief of the Akasava, went hunting in strange territories. That was the year when game went unaccountably westward, some say through the spell of M'Shimba M'Shamba; but, as Sanders knew, because of the floods.

Hikilari went by river for three days and across a swamp, he and his hunters, before they found elephant. Then they had a good kill, and his bearers came rollicking back to Akasava city, laden with good teeth, some weighing as much as two hundred kilos.

It was good fortune, but he paid for it tremendously, for when he yearned to return he was troubled with extraordinary drowsiness, and had strange pains in his head. For this he employed the native remedy, which was binding a wire tightly round his head. None the less he grew no better, and there came a time when Hikilari, the Wise One, rose in the middle of the night and, going out into the main street of the village, danced and sang foolishly, snapping his fingers.

His sons, with his nephews and his brothers, held a palaver, and the elder of his sons, M'Kovo, an evil man, spoke thuswise:

"It seems that my father is sick with the sickness mongo, for he is now foolish, and will soon be dead. Yet I desire that no word of this shall go to Sandi. Let us therefore put my father away safely, saying he has gone a long journey; and, whilst he is absent, there are many things we may do and many enemies of whom we may rid ourselves. And if Sandi comes with the soldiers and says, 'Why did you these things?' we shall say, 'Lord, who is chief here? A madman. We did as he bid; let it be on his head.'"

The brother of the sick king thought it would be best to kill him privily, but against this the king's son set his face.

"Whilst he is alive he is chief," he said significantly; "if he be dead, be sure Sandi will find somebody to punish, and it may well be me."

For three days they kept the king to his hut, whilst witch-doctors smeared him with red clay and ingola and chanted and put wet clay on his eyes. At the end of that time they removed him by night to a hastily thatched hut in the forest, and there he was left to M'Kovo's creatures.

Sanders, who knew many things of which he was supposed to be ignorant, did not know this. He knew that Hikilari was a wise man; that he had been on a journey; that there were no reasons why he (Sanders) should not make a tour to investigate affairs in the Akasava.

He was collecting hut tax in the N'gombl country from a simple pastoral people who objected on principle to pay anything, when the news came to him that a party of Akasava folk had crossed the Ochori border, raided a village, and, having killed the men, had expeditiously carried away the women and goats.

Sanders was in the midst of an interminable palaver when the news came, and the N'gombi people who squatted at his feet regarded him with expectant hope, a hope which was expressed by a small chief who at the moment had the ear of the assembly.

"Lord, this is bad news," he said in the friendly manner of his kind, "and we will not trouble your lordship any farther with our grievances, which are very small. So, therefore, if on account of our bad crops you remit a half of our taxation, we will go peaceably to our villages saying good words about your honour's justice."

"You shall pay all your taxation," said Sanders brusquely. "I waste my time talking with you."

"Remit one-third," murmured the melancholy speaker. "We are poor men, and there has been no fish in the river – "

Sanders rose from his seat of state wearily.

"I will return with the moon," he said, "and if all taxes be not paid, there will be sad hearts in this village and sore backs, believe me. The palaver is finished."

He sent one messenger to the chief of the Akasava, and he himself went by a short cut through the forest to the Ochori city, for at the psychological moment a cylinder head on the Zaire had blown out.

He reached the Ochori by way of Elebi River, through Tunberi – which was swamp, owing to unexpected, unseasonable, and most atrocious rains. Three days he waded, from knee-deep to waist-high, till his arms ached maddeningly from holding his rifle above the black ooze and mud.

And he came upon hippo and water-snake, and once the "boy" who walked ahead yelled shrilly and went down, and Sanders himself was nearly knocked off his feet by the quick rush of the crocodile bearing his victim to the near-by river.

At the end of three days Sanders came to the higher land, where a man might sleep elsewhere than in trees, and where, too, it was possible to bathe in spring water, unpack shirts from headborne loads and count noses.

He was now a day's march from the Ochori, but considerably less than a day's march from the Ochori army, for two hours after he had resumed his journey he came upon the chief Bosambo and with him a thousand spears.

And Bosambo was naked, save for his kilt of monkey-tails, and in the crook of the arm which carried his wicker shield, he carried his five fighting spears.

He halted his army at the sight of Sanders, and came out to meet him.

"Bosambo," said Sanders quietly, "you do me honour that you bring the pick of your fighting men to guard me."

"Lord," said Bosambo with commendable frankness, "this is no honour to you, for I go to settle an account with the King of the Akasava."

Sanders stood before him, his head perched on one side like a bird's, and he slapped his leg absent-mindedly with his pliant cane.

"Behold," he said, "I am he who settles all accounts as between kings and kings and men and men, and I tell you that you go back to your city and sit in patience whilst I do the work for which my lord the King appointed me."

Bosambo hesitated. He was pardonably annoyed.