Bosambo of the River

"Now," Ofesi went on to his peroration, "the king of the Akasava is dying and all men are agreed that I shall be king in his place, therefore I would learn to the utmost grain all the secrets of kingship. Therefore, since I cannot sit with you, I ask you, lord Bosambo, to give a home to Tolinobo, my headman, that he may sit for a year in the shadow of your wisdom and tell me the many beautiful things you say."

Bosambo looked thoughtfully at Tolinobo, the headman, a shifty fisherman promoted to that position, and somewhat deficient in sanity, as Bosambo judged.

"He shall sit with me," said Bosambo at length, "and be as my own son, sleeping in a hut by mine, and I will treat him as if he were my brother."

There was a fleeting gleam of satisfaction in Ofesi's eye as he rose to embrace his blood-friend; but then he did not know how Bosambo treated his brother.

The Akasava chief and his two and twenty canoes paddled homeward at daybreak, and Bosambo saw them off.

When they were gone, he turned to his headman.

"Tell me, Solonkinini," he said, "what have we done with this Tolinobo who stays with us?"

"Lord, we build him a new hut this morning in your lordship's shadow."

Bosambo nodded.

"First," he said, "you shall take him to the secret place near the Crocodile Pool and stake him out. Presently I will come, and we will ask him some questions."

"Lord, he will not answer," said the headman. "I myself have spoken with him."

"He shall answer me," said Bosambo, significantly, "and you shall build a fire and make very hot your spears, for I think this Tolinobo has something he will be glad to tell."

Bosambo's prediction was justified by fact.

Ofesi was not half-way home, happy in his success, when a blubbering Tolinobo, stretched ignominiously on the ground, spoke with a lamentable lack of reserve on all manner of private matters, being urged thereto by a red hot spear-head which Bosambo held much too near his face for comfort.

* * * * *

At about this time came Jim Greel, an American adventurer, and Francis E. Coulson, a citizen of the world. They came into Sanders's territory unwillingly, for they were bound, via the French river which skirted the north of the N'gombi land, for German West Africa. There was in normal times a bit of a stream which connected the great river with the Frenchi river. It was, according to a facetious government surveyor, navigable for balloons and paper boats except once in a decade when a mild spring in the one thousand-miles distant mountains coincided with heavy rains in the Isisi watershed. Given the coincidence the tiny dribble of rush-choked water achieved the dignity of riverhood. It was bad luck that Jim and Coulson hit an exceptional season.

Keeping to the left bank, and moving only by night – they had reason for this – the adventurers followed the course of the stream which ordinarily was not on the map, and they were pardonably and almost literally at sea.

Two long nights they worked their crazy little steamer through an unknown territory without realising that it was unknown. They avoided such villages as they passed, shutting off steam and dowsing all lights till they drifted beyond sight and hearing.

At last they reached a stage in their enterprise where the maintenance of secrecy was a matter of some personal danger, and they looked around in the black night for assistance.

"Looks like a village over there, Jim," said Coulson, and the steersman nodded.

"There's shoal water here," he said grimly, "and the forehold is up to water-level."

"Leakin'?"

"Not exactly leakin'," said Jim carefully; "but there's no bottom to the forepart of this tub."

Coulson swore softly at the African night. The velvet darkness had fallen on them suddenly, and it was a case of tie-up or go on – Jim decided to go on.

They had struck a submerged log and ripped away the bottom of the tiny compartment that was magniloquently called "No. 1 hold"; the bulkhead of Nos. 1 and 2 was of the thinnest steel and was bulging perceptibly.

Coulson did not know this, but Jim did.

Now he turned the prow of the ancient steamer to the dark shore, and the revolving paddle-wheels made an expiring effort.

Somewhere on the river bank a voice called to them in the Akasava tongue; they saw the fires of the village, and black shadows passing before them; they heard women laughing.

Jim turned his head and gave an order to one of his naked crew, and the man leapt overboard with a thin rope hawser.

Then the ripped keel of the little boat took the sand and she grounded.

Jim lit his pipe from a lantern that hung in the deck cabin behind him, wiped his streaming forehead with the back of his hand, and spoke rapidly in the Akasava tongue to the little crowd who had gathered on the beach. He spoke mechanically, warning all and sundry for the safety of their immortal souls not to slip his hawser! warning them that if he lost so much as a deck rivet he would flay alive the thief, and ended by commending his admiring audience to M'shimba M'shamba, Bim-bi, O'kili, and such local devils as he could call to his tongue. "That's let me out," he said, and waded ashore through the shallow water as one too much overcome by the big tragedies of life to care very much one way or another whether he was wet or dry.

He strode up the shelving beach and was led by a straggling group of villagers to the headman's hut to make inquiries, and came back to the boat with unpleasant news.

Coulson had brought her nose to the sand, and by a brushwood fire that the men of the village had lit upon the beach, the damage was plainly to be seen.

The tiny hull had torn like brown paper, and part of the cause – a stiff branch of gun-wood – still protruded from the hole.

"We're in Sanders's territory, if it's all the same to you," said Jim gloomily. "The damnation old Frenchi river is in spruit and we've come about eighty miles on the wrong track."

Coulson, kneeling by the side of the boat, a short, black briar clutched between his even white teeth, looked up with a grin.

"'Sande catchee makee hell,'" quoted he. "Do you remember the Chink shaver who used to run the Angola women up to the old king for Bannister Fish?"

Jim said nothing. He took a roll of twist from his pocket, bit off a section, and chewed philosophically.

"There's no slavery outfit in this packet," he said. "I guess even old man Fish wouldn't fool 'round in this land – may the devil grind him for bone-meal!"

There was no love lost between the amiable adventurers and Mr. Bannister Fish. That gentleman himself, sitting in close conference with Ofesi not fifty miles from whence the Grasshopper lay, would have been extremely glad to know that her owners were where they were.

"Fish is out in these territories for good," said Jim; "but it'll do us no good – our not bein' Fish, I mean, if Sandi comes nosing round lookin' for traders' licences – somehow I don't want anybody to inspect our cargo."

Coulson nodded as he wielded a heavy hammer on the damaged plate.

"I guess he'll know all right," Jim went on. "You can't keep these old lokalis quiet – listen to the joyous news bein', so to speak, flashed forth to the expectant world."

Coulson suspended his operations. Clear and shrill came the rattle of the lokali tapping its message:

"Tom-te tom, tom-te tom, tommitty tommitty tommitty-tom."

"There she goes," said the loquacious Jim, complacently. "Two white men of suspicious appearance have arrived in town – Court papers please copy."

Coulson grinned again. He was working his hammer deftly, and already the offending branch had disappeared.

"A ha'porth of cement in the morning," he said, "and she's the Royal yacht."

Jim sniffed.

"It'll take many ha'porths of cement to make her anything but a big intake pipe," he said. He put his hand on the edge of the boat and leapt aboard. Abaft the deck-house were two tiny cupboards of cabins, the length of a man's body and twice his width. Into one of these he dived, and returned shortly afterwards with a small, worn portmanteau, patched and soiled. He jumped down over the bows to the beach, first handing the piece of baggage down to the engineer of the little boat. It was so heavy that the man nearly dropped it.