The Keepers of the King's Peace

An old man is a great lover of life, and after the witch-doctor's head had been twice held under water—for the river was providentially near—he gasped the truth.

The three missioners were very grateful guests indeed. They were the more grateful because Patricia Hamilton was an unexpected hostess. They clicked their heels and kissed her hand and drank her health many times in good hock. The dinner was a feast worthy of Lucullus, they swore, the wine was perfect, and the coffee—which Abiboo handed round with a solemn face—was wonderful.

They sat chatting for a time, and then the bearded man looked at his watch.

"To bed, gentlemen," he said gaily. "We leave you, Herr Commissioner, in good friendship, we trust?"

"Oh, most excellent," said Sanders awkwardly, for he was a poor liar, and knew that his spies were waiting on the bank to "pick up" these potential enemies of his.

He watched them go ashore and disappear into the darkness of the forest path that leads to the village.

The moon was rising over the tall trees, and an expectant gathering of Akasava notables were waiting for a white spokesman who came not, when Bosambo and his bodyguard were engaged in lifting three unconscious men and laying them in a large canoe. He himself paddled the long boat to midstream, where two currents run swiftly, one to the sea and one to the Isisi River, which winds for a hundred miles until it joins the Congo.

"Go with God," said Bosambo piously, as he stepped into his own canoe, and released his hold of the other with its slumbering freight, "for if your king is so great, he will bring you to your own lands; and if he is not great, then you are liars. O Abiboo"—he spoke over his shoulder to the sergeant of Houssas—"tell me, how many of the magic white stones of Bonesi did you put in their drink?"

"Bosambo, I put four in each, as you told me, and if my lord Tibbetti misses them, what shall I say?"

"You shall say," said Bosambo, "that this is Sandi's own word—that when men plan evils they must first sleep. And I think these men will sleep for a long time. Perhaps they will sleep for ever—all things are with God."

CHAPTER VI

THE MEDICINE MAN

At the flood season, before the turbulent tributaries of the Isisi River had been induced to return to their accustomed channels, Sanders came back to headquarters a very weary man, for he had spent a horrid week in an endeavour—successful, but none the less nerve-racking—to impress an indolent people that the swamping of their villages was less a matter of Providence and ghosts than the neglect of elementary precaution.

"For I told you, Ranabini," said an exasperated Sanders, "that you should keep the upper channel free from trees and branches, and I have paid you many bags of salt for your services."

"Lord, it is so," said Ranabini, scratching his brown leg thoughtfully.

"At the full of the moon, before the rains, did I not ask you if the channel was clear, and did you not say it was like the street of your village?" demanded Sanders, in wrath.

"Lord," said Ranabini frankly, "I lied to you, thinking your lordship was mad. For what other man would foresee with his wonderful eye that rains would come? Therefore, lord, I did not think of the upper channel, and many trees floated down and made a little dam. Lord, I am an ignorant man, and my mind is full of my own brother, who has come from a long distance to see me, for he is a very sick man."

Sanders's mind was occupied by no thought of Ranabini's sick brother, as the dazzling white Zaire went thrashing her way down stream. For he himself was a tired man, and needed rest, and there was a dose of malaria looming in the offing, as his aching head told him. It was as though his brains were arranged in slats, like a venetian blind, and these slats were opening and closing swiftly, bringing with each lightning flicker a momentary unconsciousness.

Captain Hamilton met him on the quay, and when Sanders landed—walking a thought unsteadily, and instantly began a long and disjointed account of his adventures on a Norwegian salmon river—Hamilton took him by the arm and led the way to the bungalow.

In ten minutes he was assisting Sanders into his pyjamas, Sanders protesting, albeit feebly, and when, after forcing an astonishing amount of quinine and arsenic down his chief's throat, Hamilton came from the semi-darkness of the bungalow to the white glare of the barrack square, Hamilton was thoughtful.

"Let one of your women watch by the bed of the lord Sandi," said he to Sergeant Abiboo, of the Houssas, "and she shall call me if he grows worse."

"On my life," said Abiboo, and was going off.

"Where is Tibbetti?" asked Hamilton.

The sergeant turned back and seemed embarrassed.

"Lord," he said, "Tibbetti has gone with the lady, your sister, to make a palaver with Jimbujini, the witch-doctor of the Akasava. They sit in the forest in a magic circle, and lo! Tibbetti grows very wise."

Hamilton swore under his breath. He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the drill of some raw Kano recruits who had been sent from the coast.

"Go tell the lord Tibbetti to come to me," he said, "but first send your woman to Sandi."

Lieutenant Tibbetts, with his plain, boyish face all red with his exertions, yet dignified withal, came hurriedly from his studies.

"Come aboard, sir," he said, and saluted extravagantly, blinking at his superior with a curious solemnity of mien which was his own peculiar expression.

"Bones," said Hamilton, "where the dickens have you been?"

Bones drew a long breath. He hesitated, then—

"Knowledge," he said shortly.

Hamilton looked at his subordinate in alarm.

"Dash it, you aren't off your head, too, are you?"

Bones shook his head with vigour.

"Knowledge of the occult, sir and brother-officer," he said. "One is never too old to learn, sir, in this jolly old world."

"Quite right," said Hamilton; "in fact, I'm pretty certain that you'll never live long enough to learn everything."

"Thank you, sir," said Bones.

The girl, who had had less qualms than Bones when the summons arrived, and had, in consequence, returned more leisurely, came into the room.

"Pat," said her brother, "Sanders is down with fever."

"Fever!" she said a little breathlessly. "It isn't—dangerous?"

Bones, smiling indulgently, soothed her.

"Nothin' catchin', dear Miss Patricia Hamilton," he began.

"Please don't be stupid," she said so fiercely that Bones recoiled. "Do you think I'm afraid of catching anything? Is it dangerous for Mr. Sanders?" she asked her brother.

"No more dangerous than a cold in the head," he answered flippantly. "My dear child, we all have fever. You'll have it, too, if you go out at sunset without your mosquito boots."

He explained, with the easy indifference of a man inured to malaria, the habits of the mosquito—his predilection for ankles and wrists, where the big veins and arteries are nearer to the surface—but the girl was not reassured. She would have sat up with Sanders, but the idea so alarmed Hamilton that she abandoned it.

"He'd never forgive me," he said. "My dear girl, he'll be as right as a trivet in the morning."

She was sceptical, but, to her amazement, Sanders turned up at breakfast his usual self, save that he was a little weary-eyed, and that his hand shook when he raised his coffee-cup to his lips. A miracle, thought Patricia Hamilton, and said so.

"Not at all, dear miss," said Bones, now, as ever, accepting full credit for all phenomena she praised, whether natural or supernatural. "This is simply nothin' to what happened to me. Ham, dear old feller, do you remember when I was brought down from the Machengombi River? Simply delirious—ravin'—off my head."

"So much so," said Hamilton, slicing the top off his egg, "that we didn't think you were ill."