Bosambo of the River

He sat in the ink-black shadow cast by the awning on the foredeck of the Zaire. His feet, encased in long, pliant mosquito boots that reached to his knees, rested on the rail of the boat, and he was a picture of contentment and cheerful idleness.

An idle man might be restless. You might expect to hear the creak of the wicker chair as he changed his position ever so slightly, yet it is a strange fact that no such sound broke the pleasant stillness of the night.

He sat in silence, motionless. Only the red tip of the cigar glowed to fiery brightness and dulled to an ashen red as he drew noiselessly at his cheroot.

A soft felt hat, pulled down over his eyes, would have concealed the direction of his gaze, even had the awning been removed. His lightly clasped hands rested over one knee, and but for the steady glow of the cigar he might have been asleep.

Yet Sanders of the River was monstrously awake. His eyes were watching the tousled bushes by the water's edge, roving from point to point, searching every possible egress.

There was somebody concealed in those bushes – as to that Sanders had no doubt. But why did they wait – for it was a case of "they" – and why, if they were hostile, had they not attacked him before?

Sanders had had his warnings. Some of the pigeons came before he had left headquarters; awkwardly scrawled red labels had set the bugles ringing through the Houssa quarters. But he had missed the worst of the messages. Bosambo's all-Arabic exclamation had fallen into the talons of a watchful hawk – poor winged messenger and all.

Sanders rose swiftly and silently. Behind him was the open door of his cabin, and he stepped in, walked in the darkness to the telephone above the head of his bunk and pressed a button.

Abiboo dozing with his head against the buzzer answered instantly.

"Let all men be awakened," said Sanders in a whisper. "Six rifles to cover the bush between the two dead trees."

"On my head," whispered Abiboo, and settled his tarboosh more firmly upon that section of his anatomy.

Sanders stood by the door of his cabin, a sporting Lee-Enfield in the crook of his arm, waiting.

Then from far away he heard a faint cry, a melancholy, shrill whoo-wooing. It was the cry that set the men of the villages shuddering, for it was such a cry as ghosts make.

Men in the secret service of Sanders, and the Government also, made it, and Sanders nodded his head.

Here came a man in haste to tell him things.

A long pause and "Whoo-woo!" drearily, plaintively, and nearer. The man was whooing then at a jog-trot, and they on the bank were waiting —

"Fire!" cried Sanders sharply.

Six rifles crashed like a thunderclap, there was a staccato flick-flack as the bullets struck the leaves, and two screams of anguish.

Out of the bush blundered a dark figure, looked about dazed and uncertain, saw the Zaire and raised his hand.

Bang!

A bullet smacked viciously past Sanders's head.

"Guns!" said Sanders with a gasp, and as the man on the bank rattled back the lever of his repeater, Sanders shot him.

"Bang! bang!"

This time from the bush, and the Houssas answered it. Forty men fired independently at the patch of green from whence the flashes had come.

Forty men and more leapt into the water and waded ashore, Sanders at their head.

The ambush had failed. Sanders found three dead men of the Isisi and one slightly injured and quite prepared for surrender.

"Männlichers!" said Sanders, examining the rifles, and he whistled.

"Lord," said the living of the four, "we did what we were told; for it is an order that no man shall come to you with tidings; also, on a certain night that we should shoot you."

"Whose order?" demanded Sanders.

"Our lord Ofesi's," said the man. "Also, it is an order from a certain white lord who dwells with his people on the border of the land."

They were speaking when the whoo-ing messenger came up at a jog-trot, too weary to be cautioned by the sound of guns.

He was a tired man, dusty, almost naked, and he carried a spear and a cleft-stick.

Sanders read the letter which was stuck therein. It was in ornamental Arabic, and was from Ahmed Ali.

He read it carefully; then he spoke.

"What do you know of this?" he asked.

"Lord," said the tired man, flat on the bare ground and breathing heavily, "there is war in this land such as we have never seen, for Ofesi has guns and has slain all chiefs by his cunning; also there is a white man whom he visits secretly in the forest."

Sanders turned back to the Zaire, sick at heart. All these years he had kept his territories free from an expeditionary force, building slowly towards the civilisation which was every administrator's ideal. This meant a punitive force, the introduction of a new régime. The coming of armed white men against these children of his.

Who supplied the arms? He could not think. He had never dreamt of their importation. His people were too poor, had too little to give.

"Lord," called the resting messenger, as Sanders turned, "there are two white men in a puc-a-puc who rest by the Akasava city."

Sanders shook his head.

These men – who knew them by name? – were smugglers of gold, who had come through a swollen river by accident. (His spies were very efficient, be it noted.)

Whoever it was, the mischief was done.

"Steam," he said briefly to the waiting Abiboo.

"And this man, lord?" asked the Houssa, pointing to the last of the would-be assassins.

Sanders walked to the man.

"Tell me," he said, "how many were you who waited to kill me?"

"Five, lord," said the man.

"Five?" said Sanders, "but I found only four bodies."

It was at that instant that the fifth man fired from the bank.

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