The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

for him a banana grove and gave him seed.

      Then he demanded for wife the daughter of the chief, and although he offered nothing in payment the girl came to him. That a stranger lived in the chief village of the Ochori was remarked by the other tribes, for news of this kind spreads, but since he was married, and into the chief’s family at that, it was accepted that the man must be of the Ochori folk, and such was the story that came to headquarters. Then the chief of the Ochori died. He died suddenly in some pain; but such deaths are common, and his son ruled in his place. Then the son died after the briefest reign, and Bosambo called the people together, the elders, the wise men, and the headman of the country.

      “It appears,” he said, “that the many gods of the Ochori are displeased with you, and it has been revealed to me in a dream that I shall be chief of the Ochori.

      “Therefore, O chiefs and wise men and headmen, bow before me, as is the custom, and I will make you a great people.” It is characteristic of the Ochori that no man said “nay” to him, even though in the assembly were three men who by custom might claim the chieftainship.

      Sanders heard of the new chief and was puzzled. “Etabo?” he repeated — this was how Bosambo called himself— “I do not remember the man — yet if he can put backbone into the people I do not care who he is.” Backbone or cunning, or both, Bosambo was certainly installed.

      “He has many strange practices,” reported a native agent to Sanders. “Every day he assembles the men of the village and causes them to walk past a pelebi (table) on which are many eggs. And it is his command that each man as he passes shall take an egg so swiftly that no eye may see him take it. And if the man bungle or break the egg, or be slow, this new chief puts shame upon him, whipping him.”

      “It is a game,” said Sanders; but for the life of him he could not see what game it was. Report after report reached him of the new chief’s madness. Sometimes he would take the unfortunate Ochori out by night, teaching them such things as they had never known before. Thus he instructed them in what manner they might seize upon a goat so that the goat could not cry. Also how to crawl on their bellies inch by inch so that they made no sound or sign. All these things the Ochori did, groaning aloud at the injustice and the labour of it.

      “I’m dashed if I can understand it!” said Sanders, knitting his brows, when the last report came in. “With anybody but the Ochori this would mean war. But the Ochori!” Notwithstanding his contempt for their fighting qualities, he kept his Police Houssas ready.

      But there was no war. Instead, there came complaint from the Akasava that “many leopards were in the woods.” Leopards will keep, thought Sanders, and, anyway, the Akasava were good enough hunters to settle that palaver without outside help. The next report was alarming. In two weeks these leopards had carried off three score of goats, twenty bags of salt, and much ivory.

      Leopards eat goats; there might conceivably be fastidious leopards that cannot eat goats without salt; but a leopard does not take ivory tusks even to pick his teeth with. So Sanders made haste to journey up the river, because little things were considerable in a country where people strain at gnats and swallow whole caravans.

      “Lord, it is true,” said the chief of the Akasava, with some emotion, ‘these goats disappear night by night, though we watch them; also the salt and ivory, because that we did not watch.”

      “But no leopard could take these things,” said Sanders irritably. “These are thieves.”

      The chief’s gesture was comprehensive. “Who could thieve?” he said. “The N’Gombi people live very far away; also the Isisi. The Ochori are fools, and, moreover, afraid.” The Sanders remembered the egg games, and the midnight manoeuvres of the Ochori.

      “I will call on this new chief,” he said; and crossed the river that day.

      Sending a messenger to herald his coming, he waited two miles out of the city, and the councillors and wise men came out to him with offerings of fish and fruit.

      “Where is your chief?” he asked.

      “Lord, he is ill,” they said gravely. “This day there came to him a feeling of sickness, and he fell down moaning. We have carried him to his hut.”

      Sanders nodded. “I will see him,” he said grimly.

      They led him to the door of the chief’s hut, and Sanders went in. It was very dark, and in the darkest corner lay a prostrate man. Sanders bent over him, touched his pulse lightly, felt gingerly for the swelling on the neck behind the ears for a sign of sleeping sickness. No symptom could he find; but on the bare shoulder, as his fingers passed over the man’s flesh, he felt a scar of singular regularity; then he found another, and traced their direction. The convict brand of the Monrovian Government was familiar to him.

      “I thought so,” said Sanders, and gave the moaning man a vigorous kick.

      “Come out into the light, Bosambo of Monrovia,” he said; and Bosambo rose obediently and followed the Commissioner into the light.

      They stood looking at one another for several minutes; then Sanders, speaking in the dialect of the Pepper Coast, said, “I have a mind to hang you, Bosambo.”

      “That is as your Excellency wishes,” said Bosambo.

      Sanders said nothing, tapping his boot with his walkingstick and gazing thoughtfully downward.

      “Having made thieves, could you make men of these people?” he said, after a while.

      “I think they could fight now, for they are puffed with pride because they have robbed the Akasava,” said Bosambo.

      Sanders bit the end of his stick like a man in doubt.

      “There shall be neither theft nor murder,” he said. “No more chiefs or chiefs’ sons shall die suddenly,” he added significantly.

      “Master, it shall be as you desire.”

      “As for the goats you have stolen, them you may keep, and the teeth [ivory — EW] and the salt also. For if you hand them back to Akasava you will fill their stomachs with rage, and that would mean war.” Bosambo nodded slowly. “Then you shall remain, for I see you are a clever man, and the Ochori need such as you. But if—”

      “Master, by the fat of my heart I will do as you wish,” said Bosambo; “for I have always desired to be a chief under the British.”

      Sanders was halfway back to headquarters before he missed his field-glasses, and wondered where he could have dropped them. At that identical moment Bosambo was exhibiting the binoculars to his admiring people.

      “From this day forth,” said Bosambo, “there shall be no lifting of goats nor stealing of any kind. This much I told the great Sandi, and as a sign of his love, behold, he gave me these things of magic that eat up space.”

      “Lord,” said a councillor in awe, “did you know the Great One?”

      “I have cause to know him,” said Bosambo modestly, “for I am his son.” Fortunately Sanders knew nothing of this interesting disclosure.

IV. The Drowsy One

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      There were occasions when Sanders came up against the outer world, when he learnt, with something like bewilderment, that beyond the farthermost forests, beyond the lazy, swelling, blue sea, there were men and women who lived in houses and carefully tabooed such subjects as violent death and such horrid happenings as were daily features of his life.

      He had to treat with folk who, in the main, were illogical and who believed in spirits. When you deal in the abstract with government of races so influenced, a knowledge of constitutional law and economics is fairly valueless.

      There is one type of man that can rule native provinces wisely,