Part 14
"Come with us!" shouted Jim.
The figure on the bank, clear to be seen in his white jellab, made a trumpet of his hands.
"I go to kill one Ofesi, according to orders--say this to Sandi."
Then the boat drifted beyond earshot.
"Up stream or down?" demanded Jim at the wheel. "Down we meet Sanders and up we meet the heathen in his wrath."
"Up," said Coulson, and went aft to count noses.
That night died Iliki, the chief of the Isisi, and I'mini, his brother, stabbed as they sat at meat, also Bosomo of the Little Isisi, and B'ramo of the N'gomi, chiefs all; also the wives and sons of B'ramo and Bosomo; Father O'Leary of the Jesuit Mission at Mosankuli, his lay minister, and the Rev. George Galley, of the Wesleyan Mission at Bogori, and the Rev. Septimus Keen and his wife, at the Baptist Mission at Michi.
Bosambo did not die, because he knew; also a certain headman of Ofesi knew--and died.
Ofesi had planned largely and well. War had come to the territories in the most terrible form, yet Bosambo did not hesitate, though he was aware of his inferiority, not only in point of numbers, but in the more important matter of armament.
For the most dreadful thing had happened, and pigeons flying southward from a dozen points carried the news to Sanders--for the first time in history the rebellious people of the Akasava were armed with rifles--rifles smuggled across the border and placed in the hands of Ofesi's warriors.
The war-drum of the Ochori sounded. At dawn Bosambo led forty war canoes down the river, seized the first village that offered resistance and burnt it. He was for Ofesi's stronghold, and was half-way there when he met the tiny _Grasshopper_ coming up stream.
At first he mistook it for the _Zaire_ and made little effort to disclose the pacific intentions of his forty canoes, but a whistling rifle bullet aimed precisely made him realise the danger of taking things for granted.
He paddled forward alone, ostentatiously peaceable, and Jim received him.
"Rifles?" Coulson was incredulous. "O chief, you are mad!"
"Lord," said Bosambo earnestly, "let Sandi say if I be mad--for Sandi is my bro--is my master and friend," he corrected himself.
Jim knew of Bosambo--the chief enjoyed a reputation along the coast, and trusted him now.
He turned to his companion.
"If all Bosambo says is true there'll be hell in this country," he said quietly. "We can't cut and run. Can you use a rifle?" he asked.
Bosambo drew himself up.
"Suh," he said in plain English, "I make 'um shoot plenty at Cape Coast Cassell--I shoot 'um two bulls' eyes out."
Coulson considered.
"We'll cashee that gold," he said. "It would be absurd to take that with us. O Bosambo, we have a great treasure, and this we will leave in your city."
"Lord," said Bosambo quietly, "it shall be as my own treasure."
"That's exactly what I don't want it to be," said Coulson.
The fleet waited whilst Bosambo returned to Ochori city with the smugglers; there, in Bosambo's hut, and in a cunningly-devised hole beneath the floor, the portmanteau was hidden and the _Grasshopper_ went joyfully with the stream to whatever adventures awaited her.
* * * * *
The moonlight lay in streaks of sage and emerald green--such a green as only the moon, beheld through the mists of the river, can show. Sage green for shadow, bright emerald on the young spring verdure, looking from light to dark or from dark to light, as the lazy breezes stirred the undergrowth. In the gleam of the moonlight there was one bright, glowing speck of red--it was the end of Mr. Commissioner Sanders's cigar.
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.
"Maennlichers!" 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 regime. 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.
* * * * *
The _Grasshopper_, towing forty war canoes of the Ochori, came round a bend of the great river and fell into an ambuscade.
The Ochori were a brave people, but unused to the demoralising effect of firearms, however badly and wildly aimed.
Bosambo from the stern of the little steamer yelled directions to his panic-stricken fleet without effect. They turned and fled, paddling for their lives the way they had come. Jim essayed a turning movement in the literal sense, and struck a submerged log. The ill-fated _Grasshopper_ went down steadily by the bow, and in a last desperate effort ran for the shore under a hail of bullets. They leapt to land, four men--Bosambo's fighting headman was the fourth--and, shooting down immediate opposition, made for the bush.
But they were in the heart of the enemy's land--within shooting distance of the Akasava city. Long before they had crossed the league of wood, the _lokali_ had brought reinforcements to oppose them. They were borne down by sheer weight of numbers at a place called Iffsimori, and that night came into the presence of the great King Ofesi, the Predestined.
They came, four wounded and battered men bound tightly with cords of grass, spared for the great king's sport.
"O brother," greeted Ofesi in the face of all his people, "look at me and tell me what has become of Tobolono, my dear headman?"
Bosambo, his face streaked with dried blood, stared at him insolently.
"He is in hell," he said, "being _majiki_" (predestined).
"Also you will be in hell," said the king, "because men say that you are Sandi's brother."
Bosambo was taken aback for a moment.
"It is true," he said, "that I am Sandi's brother; for it seems that this is not the time for a man to deny him. Yet I am Sandi's brother only because all men are brothers, according to certain white magic I learnt as a boy."
Ofesi sat before the door of his hut, and it was noticeable that no man stood or sat nearer to him than twenty paces distant.
Jim, glancing round the mob, which surrounded the palaver, saw that every other man carried a rifle, and had hitched across his naked shoulders a canvas cartridge-belt. He noticed, too, now and then, the king would turn his head and speak, as it were, to the dark interior of the hut.
Ofesi directed his gaze to the white prisoners.
"O white men," he said, "you see me now, a great lord, greater than any white man has ever been, for all the little chiefs of this land are dead, and all people say 'Wah, king,' to Ofesi."
"I dare say," said Coulson in English.
"To-night," the king went on, "we sacrifice you, for you are the last white men in this land--Sandi being dead."
"Ofesi, you lie!"
It was Bosambo, his face puckered with rage, his voice shrill.
"No man can kill Sandi," he cried, "for Sindi alone of all men is beyond death, and he will come to you bringing terror and worse than death!"
Ofesi made a gesture of contempt.
He waved his hand to the right and as at a signal the crowd moved back.
Bosambo held himself tense, expecting to see the lifeless form of his master. But it was something less harrowing he saw--a prosaic stack of wooden boxes six feet high and eight feet square.
"Ammunition," said Jim under his breath. "The devil had made pretty good preparation."
"Behold!" said Ofesi, "therein is Sanders' death--listen all people!"
He held up his hand for silence.
Bosambo heard it--that faint rattle of the _lokali_. From some far distant place it was carrying the news. "Sanders dead!" it rolled mournfully, "distantly--moonlight--puc-a-puc--middle of river--man on bank--boat at shore--Sandi dead on ground--many wounds." He pieced together the tidings. Sandi had been shot from the bank and the boat had landed him dead. The chief of the Ochori heard the news and wept.
"Now you shall smell death," said Ofesi.
He turned abruptly to the door of the hut and exchanged a dozen quick words with the man inside. He spoke imperiously, sharply.
Alas! Mr. Bannister Fish, guest of honour on the remarkable occasion, the Ofesi you deal with now is not the meek Ofesi with whom you drove your one-sided bargain in the deep of the Akasava forest! Camel-train and boat have brought ammunition and rifles piecemeal to your enemy's undoing. Ofesi owes his power to you, but the maker of tyrants was ever a builder if his own prison-house.
Mr. Fish felt his danger keenly, pulled two long-barrelled automatic pistols from his pocket and mentally chose his route for the border, cursing his own stupidity that he had not brought his Arab bodyguard along the final stages of the journey.
"Ofesi," he muttered, "there shall be no killing until I am gone."
"Fisi," replied the other louder, "you shall see all that I wish you to see," and he made a signal.
They stripped the white men as naked as they were on the day they were born, pegged them at equal distance on the ground spread-eagle fashion. Heads to the white man's feet they laid Bosambo and his headman.
When all was finished Ofesi walked over to them.
"When the sun comes up," he said, "you will all be dead--but there is half the night to go."
"Nigger!" said Bosambo in English, "yo' mother done be washerwomans!"
It was the most insulting expression in his vocabulary, and he reserved it for the last.
* * * * *
Sanders saw the glow of the great fire long before he reached the Akasava, his own _lokali_ sounding forth the news of his premature decease--Sanders with the red weal of a bullet across his cheek, and a feeling of unfriendliness toward Ofesi in his heart. All the way up the river through the night his _lokali_ sent forth the joyless tidings. Villagers heard it and shivered--but sent it on. A half-naked man crouching in the bushes near Akasava city heard it and sobbed himself sick, for Ahmed Ali saw in himself a murderer. He who had sworn by the prophet to end the life of Ofesi had left the matter until it was too late.
In a cold rage he crept nearer to the crowd which was gathered about the king's hut--a neck-craning, tip-toeing crowd of vicious men-children. The moment of torment had come. At Ofesi's feet crouched two half-witted Akasava youths giggling at one another in pleasurable excitement, and whetting the razor-keen edges of their skinning knives on their palms.
"Listen, now," said Ofesi in exultation. "I am he, the predestined, the ruler of all men from the black waters to the white mountains. Thus you see me, all people, your master, and master of white men. The skins of these men shall be drums to call all other nations to the service of the Akasava--begin Ginin and M'quasa."
The youths rose and eyed the silent victims critically--and Mr. Bannister Fish stepped out of the hut into the light of the fire, a pistol in each hand.
"Chief," said he, "this matter ends here. Release those men or you die very soon."
Ofesi laughed.
"Too late, lord Fisi," he said, and nodded his head.
One shot rang out from the crowd--a man, skilled in the use of arms, had waited for the gun-runner's appearance. Bannister Fish, of Highgate Hill, pitched forward dead.
"Now," said Ofesi.
Ahmed Ali came through the crowd like a cyclone, but quicker far was the two-pound shell of a Hotchkiss gun. Looking upward into the moonlit vault of the sky, Jim saw a momentary flash of light, heard the "pang!" of the gun and the whine of the shell as it curved downward; heard a roar louder than any, and was struck senseless by the sharp edge of an exploded cartridge-box.
* * * * *
"Ofesi," said Sanders, "I think this is your end."
"Lord, I think so too," said Ofesi.
Sanders let him hang for two hours before he cut him down.
"Mr. Sanders," said Jim, dressed in a suit of the Commissioner's clothes which fitted none too well, "we ought to explain----"
"I understand," said Sanders with a smile. "Gold smuggling!"
Jim nodded.
"And where is your gold--at the bottom of the river?"
It was in the American's heart to lie, but he shook his head. "The chief Bosambo is holding it for me," he confessed.
"H'm!" said Sanders. "Do you know to an ounce how much you have?"
Coulson shook his head.
"Where is Bosambo?" asked Sanders of his orderly.
"Lord, he has gone in haste to his city with twenty paddlers," said Abiboo.
Sanders looked at Jim queerly.
"You had better go in haste, too," he said dryly. "Bosambo has views of his own on portable property."
"We wept for you," said the indignant Jim, something of a sentimentalist.
"You'll be weeping for yourself if you don't hurry," said the practical Sanders.
THE END.
* * * * * * * *
POPULAR NOVELS
BY
EDGAR WALLACE
PUBLISHED BY WARD, LOCK & Co., LIMITED. _In Various Editions._
SANDERS OF THE RIVER BONES BOSAMBO OF THE RIVER BONES IN LONDON THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE THE COUNCIL OF JUSTICE THE DUKE IN THE SUBURBS THE PEOPLE OF THE RIVER DOWN UNDER DONOVAN PRIVATE SELBY THE ADMIRABLE CARFEW THE MAN WHO BOUGHT LONDON THE JUST MEN OF CORDOVA THE SECRET HOUSE KATE, PLUS TEN LIEUTENANT BONES THE ADVENTURES OF HEINE JACK O' JUDGMENT THE DAFFODIL MYSTERY THE NINE BEARS THE BOOK OF ALL POWER MR. JUSTICE MAXELL THE BOOKS OF BART THE DARK EYES OF LONDON CHICK SANDI, THE KING-MAKER THE THREE OAK MYSTERY THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG BLUE HAND GREY TIMOTHY A DEBT DISCHARGED THOSE FOLK OF BULBORO THE MAN WHO WAS NOBODY THE GREEN RUST