About these prisoners. Sanders, who knew something of the gentle Ochori, had sent definite instructions.
When news of the third raid came, Bosambo gave certain orders.
"You march with food for five days," he said to the heads of his army, "and behold you shall feed all the prisoners you take from the grain you carry, giving two hands to each prisoner and one to yourself."
"But, lord," protested the chief, "this is madness, for if we take many prisoners we shall starve."
Bosambo waved him away. "M'bilini," he said, with dignity, "once I was a Christian – just as my brother Sandi, was once a Christian – and we Christians are kind to prisoners."
"But, lord Bosambo," persisted the other, "if we kill our prisoners and do not bring them back it will be better for us."
"These things are with the gods," said the pious Bosambo vaguely.
So M'bilini went out against the bushmen and defeated them. He brought back an army well fed, but without prisoners.
Thus matters stood when Big Ben Hold came leisurely up the river, his canoe paddled close in shore, for here the stream does not run so swiftly.
It had been a long journey, and the big man in the soiled white ducks showed relief as he stepped ashore on the Ochori beach and stretched his legs.
He had no need to inquire which of the party approaching him was Bosambo. For the chief wore his red plush robe, his opera hat, his glass bracelets, and all the other appurtenances of his office.
Big Ben had come up the river in his own good time and was now used to the way of the little chiefs.
His interpreter began a conversational oration, but Bosambo cut him short.
"Nigger," he said, in English, "you no speak 'um – I speak 'um fine English. I know Luki, Marki, John, Judas – all fine fellers. You, sah," he addressed the impressed Mr. Hold, "you lib for me? Sixpence – four dollar, good-night, I love you, mister!"
He delivered his stock breathlessly.
"Fine!" said Mr. Hold, awestricken and dazed.
He felt at home in the procession which marched in stately manner towards the chief's hut; it was as near a circus parade as made no difference.
Over a dinner of fish he outlined the object of his search and the reason for his presence.
It was a laborious business, necessitating the employment of the despised and frightened interpreter until the words "ki-chu" were mentioned, whereupon Bosambo brightened up.
"Sah," interrupted Bosambo, "I savee al dem talk; I make 'um English one time good."
"Fine," said Mr. Hold gratefully, "I get you, Steve."
"You lookum ki-chu," continued Bosambo, "you no find 'um; I see 'um; I am God-man – Christian; I savee Johnny Baptist; Peter cut 'um head off – dam' bad man; I savee Hell an' all dem fine fellers."
"Tell him – " began Big Ben.
"I spik English same like white man!" said the indignant Bosambo. "You no lib for make dem feller talky talk – I savee dem ki-chu."
Big Ben sighed helplessly. All along the river the legend of the ki-chu was common property. Everybody knew of the ki-chu – some had seen those who had seen it. He was not elated that Bosambo should be counted amongst the faithful.
For the retired showman had by this time almost salved his conscience. It was enough, perhaps, that evidence of the ki-chu's being should be afforded – still he would dearly have loved to carry one of the alleged fabulous creatures back to America with him.
He had visions of a tame ki-chu chained to a stake on his Boston lawn; of a ki-chu sitting behind gilded bars in a private menagerie annexe.
"I suppose," said Mr. Hold, "you haven't seen a ki-chu – you savee – you no look 'um?"
Bosambo was on the point of protesting that the ki-chu was a familiar object of the landscape when a thought occurred to him.
"S'pose I find 'um ki-chu you dash4 me plenty dollar?" he asked.
"If you find me that ki-chu," said Mr. Hold slowly, and with immense gravity, "I will pay you a thousand dollars."
Bosambo rose to his feet, frankly agitated.
"Thousan' dollar?" he repeated.
"A thousand dollars," said Big Ben with the comfortable air of one to whom a thousand dollars was a piece of bad luck.
Bosambo put out his hand and steadied himself against the straw-plaited wall of his hut.
"You make 'um hundred dollar ten time?" he asked, huskily, "you make 'um book?"
"I make 'um book," said Ben, and in a moment of inspiration drew a note-book from his pocket and carefully wrote down the substance of his offer.
He handed the note to the chief, and Bosambo stared at it uncomprehendingly.
"And," said Big Ben, confidentially leaning across and tapping the knee of the standing chief with the golden head of his cane, "if you – "
Bosambo raised his hand, and his big face was solemn.
"Master," he said, relapsing into the vernacular in his excitement, "though this ki-chu lives in a village of devils, and ghosts walk about his hut, I will bring him."
The next morning Bosambo disappeared, taking with him three hunters of skill, and to those who met him and said, "Ho! Bosambo; where do you walk?" he answered no word, but men who saw his face were shocked, for Bosambo had been a Christian and knew the value of money.
Eight days he was absent, and Big Ben Hold found life very pleasant, for he was treated with all the ceremony which is usually the privilege of kings.
On the evening of the eighth day Bosambo returned, and he brought with him the ki-chu.
Looking at this wonder Big Ben Hold found his heart beating faster.
"My God!" he said, and his profanity was almost excusable.
For the ki-chu exceeded his wildest dreams. It was like a man, yet unlike. Its head was almost bald, the stick tied bit-wise between his teeth had been painted green and added to the sinister appearance of the brute. Its long arms reaching nearly to its knees were almost human, and the big splayed feet dancing a never-ceasing tattoo of rage were less than animal.
"Lord," said Bosambo proudly, "I have found the ki-chu!"
The chief's face bore signs of a fierce encounter. It was gashed and lacerated. His arms, too, bore signs of rough surgical dressing.
"Three hunters I took with me," said Bosambo, "and one have I brought back, for I took the ki-chu as he sat on a tree, and he was very fierce."
"My God!" said Big Ben again, and breathed heavily.
They built a cage for the ki-chu, a cage of heavy wooden bars, and the rare animal was screened from the vulgar gaze by curtains of native cloth.
It did not take kindly to its imprisonment.
It howled and gibbered and flung itself against the bars, and Bosambo viewed its transports with interest.
"Lord," he said, "this only I ask you: that you take this ki-chu shortly from here. Also, you shall not show it to Sandi lest he be jealous that we send away from our country so rare a thing."
"But," protested Mr. Hold to the interpreter, "you tell the chief that Mr. Sanders just wants me to catch the ki-chu – say, Bosambo, you savee, Sandi wantee see dem ki-chu?"
They were sitting before the chief's hut on the ninth day of the American's visit. The calm of evening lay on the city, and save for the unhappy noises of the captive no sound broke the Sabbath stillness of the closing day.
Bosambo was sitting at his ease, a bundle of English banknotes suspended by a cord about his neck, and the peace of heaven in his heart.
He had opened his mouth to explain the idiosyncrasies of the Commissioner when —
"Whiff – snick!"
Something flicked past Big Ben's nose – something that buried its head in the straw of the hut with a soft swish!
He saw the quivering arrow, heard the shrill call of alarm and the dribbling roll of a skin-covered drum.
Then a hand like steel grasped his arm and flung him headlong into the hut, for Sakola's headman had come in person to avenge certain indignities and the city of the Ochori was surrounded by twenty thousand bushmen.
Night was falling and the position was desperate. Bosambo had no doubt as to that. A wounded bushman fell into his hands – a mad little man, who howled and spat and bit like a vicious little animal.
"Burn him till he talks," said Bosambo – but at the very sight of fire the little man told all – and Bosambo knew that he spoke the truth.
The lokali on the high watch tower of the city beat its staccato call for help and some of the villagers about answered.
Bosambo stood at the foot of the rough ladder leading to the tower, listening.
From east and south and north came the replies – from the westward – nothing. The bushmen had swept into the country from the west, and the lokaliswere silent where the invader had passed.
Big Ben Hold, an automatic pistol in his hand, took his part in the defence of the city. All through that night charge after charge broke before the defences, and at intervals the one firearm of the defending force spat noisily out into the darkness.
With the dawn came an unshaven Sanders. He swept round the bend of the river, two Hotchkiss guns banging destructively, and the end of the bush war came when the rallied villagers of the Ochori fell on the left flank of the attackers and drove them towards the guns of the Zaire.
Then it was that Bosambo threw the whole fighting force of the city upon the enemy.
Sanders landed his Houssas to complete the disaster; he made his way straight to the city and drew a whistling breath of relief to find Big Ben Hold alive, for Big Ben was a white man, and moreover a citizen of another land. The big man held out an enormous hand of welcome.
"Glad to see you," he said.
Sanders smiled.
"Found that ki-chu?" he asked derisively, and his eyes rose incredulously at the other's nod.
"Here!" said Mr. Hold triumphantly, and he drew aside the curtains of the cage.
It was empty.
"Hell!" bellowed Big Ben Hold, and threw his helmet on the ground naughtily.
"There it is!" He pointed across the open stretch of country which separated the city from the forest. A little form was running swiftly towards the woods. Suddenly it stopped, lifted something from the ground, and turned towards the group. As its hands came up, Sergeant Abiboo of the Houssas raised his rifle and fired; and the figure crumpled up.
"My ki-chu!" wailed the showman, as he looked down at the silent figure.
Sanders said nothing. He looked first at the dead Sakola, outrageously kidnapped in the very midst of his people, then he looked round for Bosambo, but Bosambo had disappeared.
At that precise moment the latter was feverishly scraping a hole in the floor of his hut wherein to bank his ill-gotten reward.
CHAPTER X
THE CHILD OF SACRIFICE
Out of the waste came a long, low wail of infinite weariness. It was like the cry of a little child in pain. The Government steamer was drifting at the moment. Her engine had stopped whilst the engineer repaired a float which had been smashed through coming in contact with a floating log.
Assistant-Commissioner Sanders, a young man in those days, bent his head, listening. Again the wail arose; this time there was a sob at the end of it. It came from a little patch of tall, coarse elephant grass near the shore.
Sanders turned to his orderly.
"Take a canoe, O man," he said in Arabic, "and go with your rifle." He pointed. "There you will find a monkey that is wounded. Shoot him, that he may suffer no more, for it is written, 'Blessed is he that giveth sleep from pain.'"
Obedient to his master's order, Abiboo leapt into a little canoe, which the Zaire carried by her side, and went paddling into the grass.
He disappeared, and they heard the rustle of elephant grass; but no shot came.
They waited until the grass rattled again, and
Abiboo reappeared with a baby boy in the crook of his arm, naked and tearful.
This child was a first-born, and had been left on a sandy spit so that a crocodile might come and complete the sacrifice.
This happened nearly twenty years ago, and the memory of the drastic punishment meted out to the father of that first-born is scarcely a memory.
"We will call this child 'N'mika,'" Sanders had said, which means "the child of sacrifice."
N'mika was brought up in the hut of a good man, and came to maturity.
* * * * *When the monkeys suddenly changed their abiding-place from the little woods near by Bonganga, on the Isisi, to the forest which lies at the back of the Akasava, all the wise men said with one accord that bad fortune was coming to the people of Isisi.
N'mika laughed at these warnings, for he was in Sanders's employ, and knew all things that happened in his district.
Boy and man he served the Government faithfully; loyalty was his high fetish, and Sanders knew this.
The Commissioner might have taken this man and made him a great chief; and had N'mika raised the finger of desire, Sanders would have placed him above all others of his people; but the man knew where he might serve best, and at nineteen he had scotched three wars, saved the life of Sanders twice, and had sent three petty chiefs of enterprising character to the gallows.
Then love came to N'mika.
He loved a woman of the Lesser Isisi – a fine, straight girl, and very beautiful by certain standards. He married her, and took her to his hut, making her his principal wife, and investing her with all the privileges and dignity of that office.
Kira, as the woman was called, was, in many ways, a desirable woman, and N'mika loved her as only a man of intelligence could love her; and she had ornaments of brass and of beads exceeding in richness the possessions of any other woman in the village.
Now, there are ways of treating a woman the world over, and they differ in very little degree whether they are black or white, cannibal or vegetarian, rich or poor.
N'mika treated this woman too well. He looked in the forest for her wishes, as the saying goes, and so insistent was this good husband on serving his wife, that she was hard put to it to invent requirements.
"Bright star reflected in the pool of the world," he said to her one morning, "what is your need this day? Tell me, so that I may go and seek fulfilment."
She smiled. "Lord," she said, "I desire the tail of a white antelope."
"I will find this tail," he said stoutly, and went forth to his hunting, discouraged by the knowledge that the white antelope is seen once in the year, and then by chance.
Now this woman, although counted cold by many former suitors, and indubitably discovered so by her husband, had one lover who was of her people, and when the seeker of white antelope tails had departed she sent a message to the young man.
That evening Sanders was "tied up" five miles from the village, and was watching the sun sinking in the swamp which lay south and west of the anchorage, when N'mika came down river in his canoe, intent on his quest, but not so intent that he could pass his lord without giving him due obeisance.
"Ho, N'mika!" said Sanders, leaning over the rail of the boat, and looking down kindly at the solemn figure in the canoe, "men up and down the river speak of you as the wonderful lover."
"That is true, lord," said N'mika simply; "for, although I paid two thousand matakos for this woman, I think she is worth more rods than have ever been counted."
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."
