Bosambo of the River

Bosambo drew a long breath.

"Now I will tell you something," he said, lowering his voice. "Against my old age and the treachery of a disloyal people I have stored great stores of ivory. I have taken this ivory from my people. I have won it in bloody battles. I have hunted many elephants. Siskolo, my brother," he went on, speaking under stress of emotion, "all this I give you because I love you and my beautiful relations. Go now in peace, but do not return, for when my people learn that you are seeking the treasures of the nation they will not forgive you and, though I am their chief, I cannot hold them."

All through the night they sat, Bosambo mournful but informative, Siskolo a-quiver with excitement.

At dawn the brother left by water for the border-line of the Isisi, where five trees grew in the form of a crescent.

* * * * *

"Lord," said Bosambo, a bitter and an injured man, "I have been a Christian, a worshipper of devils, a fetish man, and now I am of the true faith – though as to whether it is true I have reason to doubt." He stood before Sanders at headquarters.

Away down by the little quay on the river his sweating paddlers were lying exhausted, for Bosambo had come by the river day and night.

Sanders did not speak. There was a twinkle in his eye, and a smile hovered at the corners of his mouth.

"And it seems to me," said Bosambo tragically, "that none of the gods loves me."

"That is your palaver," said Sanders, "and remember your brother loves you more than ever."

"Master," said Bosambo, throwing out his arms in despair, "did I know that beneath the middle tree of five was buried ten tusks of ivory? Lord, am I mad that I should give this dog such blessed treasure? I thought – "

"I also thought it was an old man's story," said Sanders gently.

"Lord, may I look?"

Sanders nodded, and Bosambo walked to the end of the verandah and looked across the sea.

There was a smudge of smoke on the horizon. It was the smoke of the departing mail-boat which carried Siskolo and his wonderful ivory back to Monrovia.

Bosambo raised a solemn fist and cursed the disappearing vessel.

"O brother!" he wailed. "O devil! O snake! Nigger! Nigger! Dam' nigger!"

Bosambo wept.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CHAIR OF THE N'GOMBI

The N'gombi people prized a certain chair beyond all other treasures.

For it was made of ivory and native silver, in which the N'gombi are clever workers.

Upon this chair sat kings, great warriors, and chiefs of people; also favoured guests of the land.

Bosambo of the Ochori went to a friendly palaver with the king of the N'gombi, and sat upon the chair and admired it.

After he had gone away, four men came to the village by night and carried off the treasure, and though the King of N'gombi and his councillors searched the land from one end to the other the chair was never found.

It might never have been found but for a Mr. Wooling, a trader and man of parts.

He was known from one end of the coast to the other as a wonderful seller of things, and was by all accounts rich.

One day he decided to conquer new worlds and came into Sanders's territory with complete faith in his mission, a cargo of junk, and an intense curiosity.

Hitherto, his trading had been confined to the most civilized stretches of the country – to places where the educated aboriginal studied the rates of exchange and sold their crops forward.

He had long desired to tread a country where heathenism reigned and where white men were regarded as gods and were allowed to swindle on magnificent scale.

Wooling had many shocks, not the least of which was the discovery that gin, even when it was German gin in square bottles, gaudily labelled and enclosed in straw packets, was not regarded as a marketable commodity by Sanders.

"You can take anything you like," said Sanders, waving his fly-whisk lazily, "but the bar is up against alcohol and firearms, both of which, in the hands of an enthusiastic and experimental people, are peculiarly deadly."

"But, Mr. Sanders!" protested the woolgatherer, with the confident little smile which represented seventy-five per cent. of his stock-in-trade. "I am not one of these new chums straight out from home! Damn it! I know the people, I speak all their lingo, from Coast talk to Swaheli."

"You don't speak gin to them, anyway," said Sanders; "and the palaver may be regarded as finished."

And all the persuasive eloquence of Mr. Wooling did not shift the adamantine Commissioner; and the trader left with a polite reference to the weather, and an unspoken condemnation of an officious swine of a British jack-in-office which Sanders would have given money to have heard.

Wooling went up-country and traded to the best of his ability without the alluring stock, which had been the long suit in his campaign, and if the truth be told – and there is no pressing reason why it should not – he did very well till he tied up one morning at Ochori city and interviewed a chief whose name was Bosambo.

Wooling landed at midday, and in an hour he had arrayed his beautiful stores on the beach.

They included Manchester cotton goods from Belgium, genuine Indian junk from Birmingham, salt which contained a sensible proportion of good river sand, and similar attractive bargains.

His visit to the chief was something of an event. He found Bosambo sitting before his tent in a robe of leopard skins.

"Chief," he said in the flowery manner of his kind, "I have come many weary days through the forest and against the current of the river, that I may see the greatness of all kings, and I bring you a present from the King of England, who is my personal friend and is distantly related to me."

And with some ceremony he handed to his host a small ikon representing a yellow St. Sebastian perforated with purple arrows – such as may be purchased from any manufacturer on the Baltic for three cents wholesale.

Bosambo received the gift gravely.

"Lord," he said, "I will put this with other presents which the King has sent me, some of which are of great value, such as a fine bedstead of gold, a clock of silver, and a crown so full of diamonds that no man has ever counted them."

He said this easily; and the staggered Mr. Wooling caught his breath.

"As to this beautiful present," said Bosambo, handling the ikon carelessly, and apparently repenting of his decision to add it to his collection, "behold, to show how much I love you – as I love all white lords – I give it to you, but since it is a bad palaver that a present should be returned, you shall give me ten silver dollars: in this way none of us shall meet with misfortune."

"Chief," said Mr. Wooling, recovering himself with a great effort, "that is a very beautiful present, and the King will be angry when he hears that you have returned it, for there is a saying, 'Give nothing which has been given,' and that is the picture of a very holy man."

Bosambo looked at the ikon.

"It is a very holy man," he agreed, "for I see that it is a picture of the blessed Judas – therefore you shall have this by my head and by my soul."

In the end Mr. Wooling compromised reluctantly on a five-dollar basis, throwing in the ikon as a sort of ecclesiastical makeweight.

More than this, Bosambo bought exactly ten dollars' worth of merchandise, including a length of chiffon, and paid for them with money. Mr. Wooling went away comforted.