Bosambo of the River

"I will not forget," said that bright young man; "and, by the way, if anything happens to me, you might find out how it all came about, and drop a note to my people – suppressing the beastly details."

Sanders nodded.

"I will make it a pretty story," he said; "and, whatever happens, your death will be as instantaneous and as painless as my fountain-pen can make it."

"You're a brick!" said Grayson Smith, and turned to swear volubly in Swaheli at his headman – for Smith, albeit young, was a great linguist.

Sanders watched the big canoe as it swung into the yellow waters of the Fasai; watched it until it disappeared round a bank, then sent his steamer round to the current, and set his course homeward.

To appreciate the full value of the Akartis' independence, and their immunity from all attack, it must be remembered that the territory ranged from the Forest-by-the-Waters to the Forest-by-the-Mountains. It was a stretch of broad, pastoral lands, enclosed by natural defences. Forest and swamp on the westward kept back the rapacious people of the Great King, mountain and forest on the south held the Ochori, the Akasava, and the Isisi.

The boldest of the N'gombi never ventured across the saw-shaped peaks of the big mountains, even though loot and women were there for the taking.

The king of the Akarti was undisputed lord of vast territories, and he had ten regiments of a thousand men, and one regiment of women, whom he called his "Angry Maidens," who drank strong juices, and wrestled like men.

Since he was king from the Forest-by-the-Mountains to the Forest-by-the-Waters he was powerful and merciless, and none said "nay" to N'raki's "yea," for he was too fierce, and too terrible a man to cross.

Culuka of the Wet Lands once came down into N'raki's territory, and brought a thousand spears.

Now the Wet Lands are many miles from the city of the king, and the raid that Culuka planned injured none, for the raided territories were poor and stony.

But N'raki, the killer, was hurt in his tenderest spot, and he led his thousands across the swamps to the city of Culuka, and he fought him up to the stockades and beyond. The city he burnt. The men and children he slew out of hand. Culuka he crucified before his flaming hut, and, thereafter, the borders of the killer were immune from attack.

This was a lesson peculiarly poignant, and when the French Government – for Culuka dwelt in a territory which was nominally under the tricolour – sent a mission to inquire into the wherefores of the happening, N'raki cut off the head of the leader, and sent it back with unprintable messages intended primarily for the governor of French West Africa, and eventually for the Quai d'Orsay.

N'raki lived, therefore, undisturbed, for the outrage coincided with the findings of the Demarcation Commission which had been sitting for two years to settle certain border-line questions. By the finding of the Commission all the Akarti country became, in the twinkling of an eye, British territory, and N'raki a vassal of the King of England – though he was sublimely unconscious of the honour.

N'raki was an autocrat of autocrats, and of his many battalions of skilled fighting men, all very young and strong, with shining limbs and feathered heads, he was proudest of his first regiment.

These were the tallest, the strongest, the fleetest, and the fiercest of fighters, and he forbade them to marry, for all men know that women have an evil effect upon warriors; and no married man is brave until he has children to defend, and by that time he is fat also.

So this austere regiment knew none of the comforts or languor of love, and they were proud that their lord, the king, had set them apart from all other men, and had so distinguished them.

At the games they excelled, because they were stronger and faster, knowing nothing of women's influence; and the old king saw their excellence, and said "Wa!"

There was a man of the regiment whose name was Taga'ka, who was a fine man of twenty. There was also in the king's city a woman of fifteen, named Lapai, who was a straight, comely girl, and a great dancer.

She was a haughty woman, because her uncle was the chief witch-doctor, and such was her power that she had put away two husbands.

One day, at the wells, she saw Taga'ka, and loved him; and meeting him alone in the forest, she fell down before him and clasped his feet.

"Lord Taga'ka," said she, "you are the one man in the world I desire."

"I am beyond desire," said Taga'ka, in his arrogant pride; "for I am of the king's regiment, and women are grass for our feet."

And not all her allurements could tempt him to so much as stroke her face; and the heart of the woman was wild with grief.

Then the king fell sick, and daily grew worse.

The witch-doctors made seven sacrifices, and learnt from grisly portents, which need not be described in detail, that the king should take a long journey to the far end of his kingdom, where he should meet a man with one eye, who would live in the shadow of the royal hut.

This he did, journeying for three months, till he came to the appointed place, where he met a man afflicted in accordance with the prediction. And the man sat in the shadow of the king's hut.

Now, it is a fact, which none will care to deny, that the niece of the chief witch-doctor had planned the treatment of the king. She had planned it with great cleverness, and she it was who saw to it that the deformed man waited at the king's hut.

For she loved Taga'ka with all the passion of her soul, and when the long months passed, and the king remained far away, and Lapai whispered into the young man's ear, he took her to wife, though death would be his penalty for his wrong-doing.

The other men of the royal regiment, who held Taga'ka a model in all things austere, seeing this happen, said: "Behold! Taga'ka, the favourite of the king, has taken a woman to himself. Now, if we all do this, it would be better for Taga'ka, and better for us. The king, the old man, will forgive him, and not punish us."

It might have been that N'raki, the king, would have ended his days in the place to which his medicine-man had sent him, but there arose in that district a greater magician than any – a certain wild alien of the Wet Lands, who possessed magical powers, and cured pains in the king's legs by a no more painful process than the laying on of hands, and whom the king appointed his chief magician. And this was the end of the uncle of Lapai; for, if no two kings can rule in one land, most certainly no two witch-doctors can hold power.

And they killed the deposed uncle of Lapai, and used the blood for making spells.

One morning the new witch-doctor stood in the presence of N'raki the king.

"Lord king," he said, "I have had a dream, and it says that your lordship shall go back to your city, and that you shall travel secretly, so that the devils who guard the way shall not lay hands upon you."

N'raki, the king, went back to his city unattended, save by his personal guard, and unheralded, to the discomfort of the royal regiment.

And when he learnt what he learnt, he administered justice swiftly. He carried the forbidden wives to the top of a high mountain and cast them over a cliff, one by one, to the number of six hundred.

And that mountain is to this day called "The Mountain of Sorrowful Women."

One alone he spared – Lapai. Before the assembled people in judgment he spared her.

"Behold this woman, people of the Akarti!" he said; "she that has brought sorrow and death to my regiment. To-day she shall watch her man, Taga'ka, burn; and from henceforth she shall live amongst you to remind you that I am a very jealous king, and terrible in my anger."

The news of the massacre filtered slowly through the territories. It came to the British Government, but the British Government is a cautious Government where primitive natives are concerned.

Sanders, sitting between Downing Street and the District Commissioners of many far-away and isolated spots, realised the futility of an expedition. He sent two special messages, one of which was to a young man named Farquharson, who, at the moment, was shooting snipe on the big swamp south of the Ambalina Mountains. And this young man swore like a Scotsman because his sport had been interrupted, but girded up his loins, and, with half a company of the King's African Rifles, trekked for the city.

On his way he ran into an ambush, and swore still more, for he realised that death had overtaken him before he had had his annual holiday.

He called for his orderly.

"Hafiz," he said in Arabic, "if you should escape, cross the country to the Ochori land by the big river. There you will find Sandi; give him my dear love, and say that Fagozoni sent a cheerful word, also that the Slayer of Regiments is killing his people."

An hour later Farquharson, or Fagozoni, as they called him, was lying before the king, his unseeing eyes staring at the hard, blue heavens, his lips parted in the very ghost of a smile.

"This is a bad palaver," said the king, looking at the dead man. "Now they will come, and I know not what will happen."

In his perturbation he omitted to take into his calculations the fact that he had in his city a thousand men sick with grief at the loss of their wives.

N'raki, the king, was no coward. There was a prompt smelling out of all suspicious characters. Even the councillors about his person were not exempt, for the new witch-doctor found traces of disloyalty in every one.

With the aid of his regiment of virgins, he held his city, and ruthlessly disposed of secret critics. These included men who stood at his very elbow, and there came a time when he found none to whom he might transmit his thoughts with any feeling of security.

News came to him that there was an Arab caravan traversing his western border, trading with his people, and the report he received was flattering to the intelligence and genius of the man in charge of the party.