Bosambo of the River

Sanders nodded, eyeing him thoughtfully, for he suspected the unusual whenever women came into the picture, and was open to the conviction that the man was mad.

"I go now, lord, to serve her," N'mika said, and he played with one of the paddles with some embarrassment; "for my wife desires a tail of a white antelope, and there is no antelope nearer than the N'gombi country – and white antelopes are very little seen."

Sanders's eyebrows rose.

"For many months," continued N'mika, "I must seek my beautiful white swish; but I am pleased, finding happiness in weariness because I serve her."

Sanders made a sign, and the man clambered on deck.

"You have a powerful ju-ju," he said, when N'mika stood before him, "for I will save you all weariness and privation. Three days since I shot a white antelope on the edge of the Mourning Pools, and you shall be given its tail."

Into the hands of the waiting man he placed the precious trophy, and N'mika sighed happily.

"Lord," he said simply, "you are as a god to me – and have been for all time; for you found me, and named me the 'Child of Sacrifice,' and I hope, my fine master, to give my life in your service. This would be a good end for me."

"This is a little thing, N'mika," said Sanders gently; "but I give you now a greater thing, which is a word of wisdom. Do not give all your heart to one woman, lest she squeeze it till you are dead."

"That also would be a great end," said N'mika and went his way.

It was a sad way, for it led to knowledge.

Sanders was coming up the river at his leisure. Two days ahead of him had gone a canoe, swiftly paddled, to summon to the place of snakes, near the elephants' ground where three small rivers meet (it was necessary to be very explicit in a country which abounded in elephants' playgrounds and haunts of snakes, and was, moreover, watered by innumerable rivers), a palaver of the chiefs of his land.

To the palaver in the snake-place came the chiefs, high and puisne, the headmen, great and small, in their various states. Some arrived in war canoes, with lokali shrilling, announcing the dignity and pride of the lazy figure in the stern. Some came in patched canoes that leaked continually. Some tramped long journeys through the forest – Isisi, Ochori, Akasava, Little N'gombi and Greater Isisi. Even the shy bushmen came sneaking down the river, giving a wide berth to all other peoples, and grasping in their delicate hands spears and arrows which, as a precautionary measure, had been poisoned with tetanus.

Egili of the Akasava, Tombolo of the Isisi, N'rambara of the N'gombi, and, last but not least, Bosambo of the Ochori, came, the last named being splendid to behold; for he had a robe of green velvet, sent to him from the Coast, and about his neck, suspended by a chain, jewelled at intervals with Parisian diamonds, was a large gold-plated watch, with a blue enamel dial, which he consulted from time to time with marked insolence.

They sat upon their carved stools about the Commissioner, and he told them many things which they knew, and some which they had hoped he did not know.

"Now, I tell you," said Sanders, "I call you together because there is peace in the land, and no man's hand is against his brother's, and thus it has been for nearly twelve moons, and behold! you all grow rich and fat."

"Kwai!" murmured the chiefs approvingly.

"Therefore," said Sanders, "I have spoken a good word to Government for you, and Government is pleased; also my King and yours has sent you a token of his love, which he has made with great mystery and intelligence, that you may see him always with you, watching you."

He had brought half a hundred oleographs of His Majesty from the headquarters, and these he had solemnly distributed. It was a head-and-shoulder photograph of the King lighting a cigarette, and had been distributed gratis with an English Christmas number.

"Now all people see! For peace is a beautiful thing, and men may lie down in their huts and fear nothing of their using. Also, they may go out to their hunting and fear nothing as to their return, for their wives will be waiting with food in their hands."

"Lord," said a little chief of the N'gombi, "even I, a blind and ignorant man, see all this. Now, I swear by death that I will hold the King's peace in my two hands, offending none; for though my village is a small one, I have influence, owing to my wife's own brother, by the same father and of the same mother, being the high chief of the N'gombi-by-the-River."

"Lord Sandi," said Bosambo, and all eyes were fixed upon a chief so brave and so gallantly arrayed, who was, moreover, by all understanding, related too nearly to Sandi for the Commissioner's ease. "Lord Sandi," said Bosambo, "that I am your faithful slave all men know. Some have spoken evilly of me, but, lo! where are they? They are in hell, as your lordship knows, for we were both Christians before I learnt the true way and worshipped God and the Prophet. Nevertheless, lord, Mussulman and Christian are one alike in this, that they have a very terrible hell to which their enemies go – "

"Bosambo," said Sanders interrupting, "your voice is pleasant, and like the falling of rain after drought, yet I am a busy man, and there are many to speak."

Bosambo inclined his head gravely. The conference looked at him now in awe, for he had earned an admonition from Sandi, and still lived – nay! still preserved his dignity.

"Lord," said Bosambo. "I speak no more now, for, as you say, we have many private palavers, where much is said which no man knows; therefore it is unseemly to stand between other great speakers and your honour." He sat down.

"You speak truly, Bosambo," said Sanders calmly. "Often we speak in private, you and I, for when I speak harshly to chiefs it is thus – in the secrecy of their huts that I talk, lest I put shame upon them in the eyes of their people."

"O, ko!" said the dismayed Bosambo under his breath, for he saw the good impression his cryptic utterance had wrought wearing off with some rapidity.

After the palaver had dispersed, a weary Sanders made his way to the Zaire. A bath freshened him, and he came out to a wire-screened patch of deck to his dinner with some zest. A chicken of microscopic proportions had been the main dish every night for months.

He ate his meal in solitude, a book propped up against a bottle before him, a steaming cup of tea at one elbow, and a little electric hand-lamp at the other.

He was worried. For nine months he had kept a regiment of the Ochori on the Isisi border prepared for any eventualities. This regiment had been withdrawn. Sanders had an uncomfortable feeling that he had made a bad mistake. It would take three weeks to police the border again.

Long after the meal had been cleared away he sat thinking, and then a familiar voice, speaking with Abiboo on the lower deck, aroused him.

He turned to the immobile Houssa orderly who squatted outside the fly wire.

"If that voice is the voice of the chief Bosambo, bring him to me."

A minute later Bosambo came, standing before the meshed door of the fly-proof enclosure.

"Enter, Bosambo," said Sanders, and when he had done so: "Bosambo," he said, "you are a wise man, though somewhat boastful. Yet I have some faith in your judgment. Now you have heard all manner of people speaking before me, and you know that there is peace in this land. Tell me, by your head and your love, what things are there which may split this friendship between man and man?"

"Lord," said Bosambo, preparing to orate at length, "I know of two things which may bring war, and the one is land and such high matters as fishing rights and hunting grounds, and the other is women. And, lord, since women live and are born to this world every hour of the day, faster – as it seems to me – than they die, there will always be voices to call spears from the roof."

Sanders nodded. "And now?" he asked.

Bosambo looked at him swiftly. "Lord," he said suavely, "all men live in peace, as your lordship has said this day, and we love one another too well to break the King's peace. Yet we keep a regiment of my Ochori on the Akasava border to keep the peace."

"And now?" said Sanders again, more softly.

Bosambo shifted uncomfortably. "I am your man," he said, "I have eaten your salt, and have shown you by various heroic deeds, and by terrible fighting, how much I love you, lord Sandi."

"Yet," said Sanders, speaking rather to the swaying electric bulb hanging from the awning, "and yet I did not see the chief of the little Isisi at my palaver."

Bosambo was silent for a moment. Then he heaved a deep sigh.

"Lord," he said, with reluctant admiration, "you have eyes all over your body. You can see the words of men before they are uttered, and are very quick to read thoughts. You are all eyes," he went on extravagantly, "you have eyes on the top of your head and behind your ears. You have eyes – "

"That will do," said Sanders quietly. "I think that will do, Bosambo."

There was another long pause.

"And I tell you this, because there are no secrets between you and me. It was I who persuaded the little chief not to come."

Sanders nodded. "That I know," he said.

"For, lord, I desired that this should be a very pleasant day for your lordship, and that you should go away with your heart filled with gladness, singing great songs; also, as your lordship knows, the Ochori guard has left the Akasava border."

There was no mistaking the significance.

"Why should Bimebibi make me otherwise?" asked Sanders, ignoring the addition.