Bosambo of the River

Night was falling and the position was desperate. Bosambo had no doubt as to that. A wounded bushman fell into his hands – a mad little man, who howled and spat and bit like a vicious little animal.

"Burn him till he talks," said Bosambo – but at the very sight of fire the little man told all – and Bosambo knew that he spoke the truth.

The lokali on the high watch tower of the city beat its staccato call for help and some of the villagers about answered.

Bosambo stood at the foot of the rough ladder leading to the tower, listening.

From east and south and north came the replies – from the westward – nothing. The bushmen had swept into the country from the west, and the lokaliswere silent where the invader had passed.

Big Ben Hold, an automatic pistol in his hand, took his part in the defence of the city. All through that night charge after charge broke before the defences, and at intervals the one firearm of the defending force spat noisily out into the darkness.

With the dawn came an unshaven Sanders. He swept round the bend of the river, two Hotchkiss guns banging destructively, and the end of the bush war came when the rallied villagers of the Ochori fell on the left flank of the attackers and drove them towards the guns of the Zaire.

Then it was that Bosambo threw the whole fighting force of the city upon the enemy.

Sanders landed his Houssas to complete the disaster; he made his way straight to the city and drew a whistling breath of relief to find Big Ben Hold alive, for Big Ben was a white man, and moreover a citizen of another land. The big man held out an enormous hand of welcome.

"Glad to see you," he said.

Sanders smiled.

"Found that ki-chu?" he asked derisively, and his eyes rose incredulously at the other's nod.

"Here!" said Mr. Hold triumphantly, and he drew aside the curtains of the cage.

It was empty.

"Hell!" bellowed Big Ben Hold, and threw his helmet on the ground naughtily.

"There it is!" He pointed across the open stretch of country which separated the city from the forest. A little form was running swiftly towards the woods. Suddenly it stopped, lifted something from the ground, and turned towards the group. As its hands came up, Sergeant Abiboo of the Houssas raised his rifle and fired; and the figure crumpled up.

"My ki-chu!" wailed the showman, as he looked down at the silent figure.

Sanders said nothing. He looked first at the dead Sakola, outrageously kidnapped in the very midst of his people, then he looked round for Bosambo, but Bosambo had disappeared.

At that precise moment the latter was feverishly scraping a hole in the floor of his hut wherein to bank his ill-gotten reward.

CHAPTER X

THE CHILD OF SACRIFICE

Out of the waste came a long, low wail of infinite weariness. It was like the cry of a little child in pain. The Government steamer was drifting at the moment. Her engine had stopped whilst the engineer repaired a float which had been smashed through coming in contact with a floating log.

Assistant-Commissioner Sanders, a young man in those days, bent his head, listening. Again the wail arose; this time there was a sob at the end of it. It came from a little patch of tall, coarse elephant grass near the shore.

Sanders turned to his orderly.

"Take a canoe, O man," he said in Arabic, "and go with your rifle." He pointed. "There you will find a monkey that is wounded. Shoot him, that he may suffer no more, for it is written, 'Blessed is he that giveth sleep from pain.'"

Obedient to his master's order, Abiboo leapt into a little canoe, which the Zaire carried by her side, and went paddling into the grass.

He disappeared, and they heard the rustle of elephant grass; but no shot came.

They waited until the grass rattled again, and

Abiboo reappeared with a baby boy in the crook of his arm, naked and tearful.

This child was a first-born, and had been left on a sandy spit so that a crocodile might come and complete the sacrifice.

This happened nearly twenty years ago, and the memory of the drastic punishment meted out to the father of that first-born is scarcely a memory.

"We will call this child 'N'mika,'" Sanders had said, which means "the child of sacrifice."

N'mika was brought up in the hut of a good man, and came to maturity.

* * * * *

When the monkeys suddenly changed their abiding-place from the little woods near by Bonganga, on the Isisi, to the forest which lies at the back of the Akasava, all the wise men said with one accord that bad fortune was coming to the people of Isisi.

N'mika laughed at these warnings, for he was in Sanders's employ, and knew all things that happened in his district.

Boy and man he served the Government faithfully; loyalty was his high fetish, and Sanders knew this.

The Commissioner might have taken this man and made him a great chief; and had N'mika raised the finger of desire, Sanders would have placed him above all others of his people; but the man knew where he might serve best, and at nineteen he had scotched three wars, saved the life of Sanders twice, and had sent three petty chiefs of enterprising character to the gallows.

Then love came to N'mika.

He loved a woman of the Lesser Isisi – a fine, straight girl, and very beautiful by certain standards. He married her, and took her to his hut, making her his principal wife, and investing her with all the privileges and dignity of that office.

Kira, as the woman was called, was, in many ways, a desirable woman, and N'mika loved her as only a man of intelligence could love her; and she had ornaments of brass and of beads exceeding in richness the possessions of any other woman in the village.

Now, there are ways of treating a woman the world over, and they differ in very little degree whether they are black or white, cannibal or vegetarian, rich or poor.

N'mika treated this woman too well. He looked in the forest for her wishes, as the saying goes, and so insistent was this good husband on serving his wife, that she was hard put to it to invent requirements.

"Bright star reflected in the pool of the world," he said to her one morning, "what is your need this day? Tell me, so that I may go and seek fulfilment."

She smiled. "Lord," she said, "I desire the tail of a white antelope."

"I will find this tail," he said stoutly, and went forth to his hunting, discouraged by the knowledge that the white antelope is seen once in the year, and then by chance.

Now this woman, although counted cold by many former suitors, and indubitably discovered so by her husband, had one lover who was of her people, and when the seeker of white antelope tails had departed she sent a message to the young man.

That evening Sanders was "tied up" five miles from the village, and was watching the sun sinking in the swamp which lay south and west of the anchorage, when N'mika came down river in his canoe, intent on his quest, but not so intent that he could pass his lord without giving him due obeisance.

"Ho, N'mika!" said Sanders, leaning over the rail of the boat, and looking down kindly at the solemn figure in the canoe, "men up and down the river speak of you as the wonderful lover."

"That is true, lord," said N'mika simply; "for, although I paid two thousand matakos for this woman, I think she is worth more rods than have ever been counted."