Everybody knows that water drawn from
rivers is very bad water, for the rivers are the Roads
of the Dead, and in the middle of those nights when
the merest rind of a moon shows, and this slither of
light and two watchful stars form a triangle pointing
to the earth, the spirits rise from their graves and
walk, “singing deadly songs,” towards the
lower star which is the source of all rivers.
If you should be which God forbid on
one of those lonely island graveyards on such nights
you will see strange sights.
The broken cooking-pots which rest
on the mounds and the rent linen which flutters from
little sticks stuck about the graves, grow whole and
new again. The pots are red and hot as they come
from the fire, and the pitiful cloths take on the
sheen of youth and fold themselves about invisible
forms. None may see the dead, though it is said
that you may see the babies.
These the wise men have watched playing
at the water’s edge, crowing and chuckling in
the universal language of their kind, staggering groggily
along the shelving beach with outspread arms balancing
their uncertain steps. On such nights when M’sa
beckons the dead world to the source of all rivers,
the middle islands are crowded with babies the
dead babies of a thousand years. Their spirits
come up from the unfathomed deeps of the great river
and call their mortality from graves.
“How may the waters of the river
be acceptable?” asks the shuddering N’gombi
mother.
Therefore the N’gombi gather
their water from the skies in strange cisterns of
wicker, lined with the leaf of a certain plant which
is impervious, and even carry their drinking supplies
with them when they visit the river itself.
There was a certain month in the year,
which will be remembered by all who attempted the
crossing of the Kasai Forest to the south of the N’gombi
country, when pools and rivulets suddenly dried so
suddenly, indeed, that even the crocodiles, who have
an instinct for coming drought, were left high and
dry, in some cases miles from the nearest water, and
when the sun rose in a sky unflecked by cloud and gave
place at nights to a sky so brilliant and so menacing
in their fierce and fiery nearness that men went mad.
Toward the end of this month, when
an exasperating full moon advertised a continuance
of the dry spell by its very whiteness, the Chief
Koosoogolaba-Muchini, or, as he was called, Muchini,
summoned a council of his elder men, and they came
with parched throats and fear of death.
“All men know,” said Muchini,
“what sorrow has come to us, for there is a
more powerful ju-ju in the land than I remember.
He has made M’shimba M’shamba afraid so
that he has gone away and walks no more in the forest
with his terrible lightning. Also K’li,
the father of pools, has gone into the earth and all
his little children, and I think we shall die, every
one of us.”
There was a skinny old man, with a
frame like a dried goatskin, who made a snuffling
noise when he spoke.
“O Muchini,” he said,
“when I was a young man there was a way to bring
M’shimba M’shamba which was most wonderful.
In those days we took a young maiden and hung her
upon a tree ”
“Those old ways were good,”
interrupted Muchini; “but I tell you, M’bonia,
that we can follow no more the old ways since Sandi
came to the land, for he is a cruel man and hanged
my own mother’s brother for that fine way of
yours. Yet we cannot sit and die because of certain
magic which the Stone Breaker is practising.”
Now Bula Matadi ("The Stone Breaker”)
was in those days the mortal enemy of the N’gombi
people, who were wont to ascribe all their misfortunes
to his machinations. To Bula Matadi (which was
the generic name by which the Government of the Congo
Free State was known) was traceable the malign perversity
of game, the blight of crops, the depredations of
weaver birds. Bula Matadi encouraged leopards
to attack isolated travellers, and would on great
occasions change the seasons of the year that the
N’gombi’s gardens might come to ruin.
“It is known from one end of
the earth to the other that I am a most cunning man,”
Muchini went on, stroking his muscular arm, a trick
of self-satisfied men in their moments of complacence;
“and whilst even the old men slept, I, Koosoogolaba-Muchini,
the son of the terrible and crafty G’sombo,
the brother of Eleni-N’gombi, I went abroad with
my wise men and my spies and sought out devils and
ghosts in places where even the bravest have never
been,” he lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper,
“to the Ewa-Ewa Mongo, the Very Place of Death.”
The gasp of horror from his audience
was very satisfying to this little chief of the Inner
N’gombi, and here was a moment suitable for his
climax.
“And behold!” he cried.
By his side was something covered
with a piece of native cloth. This covering he
removed with a flourish and revealed a small yellow
box.
It was most certainly no native manufacture,
for its angles were clamped with neat brass corner-pieces
set flush in the polished wood.
The squatting councillors watched
their lord as with easy familiarity he opened the
lid.
There were twenty tiny compartments,
and in each was a slender glass tube, corked and heavily
sealed, whilst about the neck of each tube was a small
white label covered with certain devil marks.
Muchini waited until the sensation
he had prepared had had its full effect.
“By the Great River which runs
to the Allamdani," he said slowly and impressively,
“were white men who had been sent by Bula Matadi
to catch ghosts. For I saw them, I and my wise
men, when the moon was calling all spirits. They
were gathered by the river with little nets and little
gourds and they caught the waters. Also they caught
little flies and other foolish things and took them
to their tent. Then my young men and I waited,
and when all were gone away we went to their tents
and found his magic box which is full of
devils of great power Ro!”
He leapt to his feet, his eye gleaming.
Across the starry dome of the sky there had flicked
a quick flare of light.
There came a sudden uneasy stirring
of leaves, a hushed whisper of things as though the
forest had been suddenly awakened from sleep.
Then an icy cold breeze smote his
cheek, and staring upward, he saw the western stars
disappearing in swathes behind the tumbling clouds.
“M’shimba M’shamba he
lives!” he roared, and the crash of thunder in
the forest answered him.
Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori, was
on the furthermost edge of the forest, for he was
following the impulse of his simple nature and was
hunting in a country where he had no right to be.
The storm (which he cursed, having no scruples about
river and water, and being wholly sceptical as to
ghosts) broke with all its fury over his camp and passed.
Two nights later, he sat before the rough hut his
men had built, discussing the strange ways of the
antelope, when he suddenly stopped and listened, lowering
his head till it almost touched the ground.
Clear to his keen ears came the rattle
of the distant lokali the drum that sends
messages from village to village and from nation to
nation.
“O Secundi,” said Bosambo,
with a note of seriousness in his voice, “I
have not heard that call for many moons for
it is the war call of the N’gombi.”
“Lord, it is no war call,”
said the old man, shifting his feet for greater comfort,
“yet it is a call which may mean war, for it
calls spears to a dance, and it is strange, for the
N’gombi have no enemies.”
“All men are the enemies of
the N’gombi,” Bosambo quoted a river saying
as old as the sun.
He listened again, then rose.
“You shall go back and gather
me a village of spears, and bring them to the borderland
near the road that crosses the river,” he said.
“On my life,” said the other.
Muchini, Chief of the Inner N’gombi,
a most inflated man and a familiar of magical spirits,
gathered his spears to some purpose, for two days
later Bosambo met him by his border and the chiefs
greeted one another between two small armies.
“Which way do you go, Muchini?” asked
Bosambo.
Now, between Muchini and the Chief
of the Ochori was a grievance dating back to the big
war, when Bosambo had slain the N’gombi chief
of the time with his own hands.
“I go to the river to call a
palaver of all free men,” said Muchini; “for
I tell you this, Bosambo, that I have found a great
magic which will make us greater than Sandi, and it
has been prophesied that I shall be a king over a
thousand times a thousand spears. For I have a
small box which brings even M’shimba to my call.”
Bosambo, a head and shoulders taller
than the other, waved his hand towards the forest
path which leads eventually to the Ochori city.
“Here is a fine moment for you,
Muchini,” he said, “and you shall try
your great magic on me and upon my young men.
For I say that you do not go by this way, neither
you nor your warriors, since I am the servant of Sandi
and of his King, and he has sent me here to keep his
peace; go back to your village, for this is the way
to Death.”
Muchini glared at his enemy.
“Yet this way I go, Bosambo,”
he said huskily, and looked over his shoulder towards
his followers.
Bosambo swung round on one heel, an
arm and a leg outstretched in the attitude of an athlete
who is putting the shot. Muchini threw up his
wicker shield and pulled back his stabbing-spear, but
he was a dead man before the weapon was poised.
Thus ended the war, and the N’gombi
folk went home, never so much as striking a blow for
the yellow box which Bosambo claimed for himself as
his own personal loot.
At the time, Mr. Commissioner Sanders,
C.M.G., was blissfully ignorant of the miraculous
happenings which have been recorded. He was wholly
preoccupied by the novelty which the presence of Patricia
Hamilton offered. Never before had a white woman
made her home at the Residency, and it changed things
a little.
She was at times an embarrassment.
When Fubini, the witch-doctor
of the Akasava, despatched five maidens to change
Sandi’s wicked heart Sanders had sent
Fubini to the Village of Irons for six months
for preaching unauthorized magic they came,
in the language of Bones, “doocedly undressed,”
and Patricia had beaten a hurried retreat.
She was sometimes an anxiety, as I
have already shown, but was never a nuisance.
She brought to headquarters an aroma of English spring,
a clean fragrance that refreshed the heat-jaded Commissioner
and her brother, but which had no perceptible influence
upon Bones.
That young officer called for her
one hot morning, and Hamilton, sprawling on a big
cane chair drawn to the shadiest and breeziest end
of the verandah, observed that Bones carried a wooden
box, a drawing-board, a pad of paper, two pencils
imperfectly concealed behind his large ear, and a
water-bottle.
“Shop!” said Hamilton
lazily. “Forward, Mr. Bones what
can we do for you this morning?”
Bones shaded his eyes and peered into the cool corner.
“Talkin’ in your sleep,
dear old Commander,” he said pleasantly, “dreamin’
of the dear old days beyond recall.”
He struck an attitude and lifted his unmusical voice
“When life was
gay, heigho!
Tum tum te tay,
heigho!
Oh, tiddly umpty humpty
umty do,
When life was gay dear
old officer heigho!”
Patricia Hamilton stepped out to the verandah in alarm.
“Oh, please, don’t make
that hooting noise,” she appealed to her brother.
“I’m writing ”
“Don’t be afraid,”
said Hamilton, “it was only Bones singing.
Do it again, Bones, Pat didn’t hear you.”
Bones stood erect, his hand to his white helmet.
“Come aboard, my lady,” he said.
“I won’t keep you a minute,
Bones,” said the girl, and disappeared into
the house.
“What are you doing this morning?”
asked Hamilton, gazing with pardonable curiosity at
the box and drawing-board.
“Polishin’ up my military
studies with Miss Hamilton’s kind assistance botany
and applied science, sir,” said Bones briskly.
“Field fortifications, judgin’ distance,
strategy, Bomongo grammar, field cookery an’
tropical medicines.”
“What has poor little making-up-company-accounts
done?” asked Hamilton, and Bones blushed.
“Dear old officer,” he
begged, “I’ll tackle that little job as
soon as I get back. I tried to do ’em this
mornin’ an was four dollars out it’s
the regimental cash account that’s wrong.
People come in and out helpin’ themselves, and
I positively can’t keep track of the money.”
“As I’m the only person
with the key of the regimental cash-box, I suppose
you mean ?”
Bones raised his hand.
“I make no accusations, dear
old feller it’s a painful subject.
We all have those jolly old moments of temptation.
I tackle the accounts to-night, sir. You mustn’t
forget that I’ve a temperament. I’m
not like you dear old wooden-heads ”
“Oh, shut up,” said the
weary Hamilton. “So long as you’re
going to do a bit of study, it’s all right.”
“Now, Bones,” said Patricia,
appearing on the scene, “have you got the sandwiches?”
Bones made terrifying and warning grimaces.
“Have you got the board to lay
the cloth and the paper to cover it, and the chocolates
and the cold tea?”
Bones frowned, and jerked his head
in an agony of warning.
“Come on, then,” said
the unconscious betrayer of Lieutenant Tibbetts.
“Good-bye, dear.”
“Why ‘good-bye,’
dear old Hamilton’s sister?” asked Bones.
She looked at him scornfully and led the way.
“Don’t forget the field
fortifications,” called Hamilton after them;
“they eat nicely between slices of strategy.”
The sun was casting long shadows eastward
when they returned. They had not far to come,
for the place they had chosen for their picnic was
well within the Residency reservation, but Bones had
been describing on his way back one of the remarkable
powers he possessed, namely, his ability to drag the
truth from reluctant and culpable natives. And
every time he desired to emphasize the point he would
stop, lower all his impedimenta to the ground, cluttering
up the landscape with picnic-box, drawing-board, sketching-blocks
and the numerous bunches of wild flowers he had culled
at her request, and press his argument with much palm-punching.
He stopped for the last time on the
very edge of the barrack square, put down his cargo
and proceeded to demolish the doubt she had unwarily
expressed.
“That’s where you’ve
got an altogether erroneous view of me, dear old sister,”
he said triumphantly. “I’m known up
an’ down the river as the one man that you can’t
deceive. Go up and ask the Bomongo, drop in on
the Isisi, speak to the Akasava, an’ what will
they say? They’ll say, ’No, ma’am,
there’s no flies on jolly old Bones not
on your life, Harriet!’”
“Then they would be very impertinent,”
smiled Pat.
“Ask Sanders (God bless him!).
Ask Ham. Ask ” he was
going on enthusiastically.
“Are you going to camp here,
or are you coming in?” she challenged.
Bones gathered up his belongings, never ceasing to
talk.
“Fellers like me, dear young
friend, make the Empire paint the whole
bally thing red, white an’ blue ’unhonoured
an’ unsung, until the curtain’s rung,
the boys that made the Empire and the Navy.’”
“Bones, you promised you wouldn’t
sing,” she said reproachfully; “and, besides,
you’re not in the navy.”
“That doesn’t affect the
argument,” protested Bones, and was rapidly
shedding his equipment in preparation for another discourse,
when she walked on towards Sanders who had come across
the square to meet them.
Bones made a dive at the articles
he had dropped, and came prancing (no other word describes
his erratic run) up to Sanders.
“I’ve just been telling
Miss Hamilton, sir and Excellency, that nobody can
find things that old Bones you’ll
remember, sir, the episode of your lost pyjama legs.
Who found ’em?”
“You did,” said Sanders;
“they were sent home in your washing. Talking
about finding things, read this.”
He handed a telegraph form to the
young man, and Bones, peering into the message until
his nose almost touched the paper, read
“Very urgent.
Clear the line. Administration.
“To Sanders, Commission River
Territories. Message begins. Belgian Congo
Government reports from Leopoldville, Bacteriological
Expedition carriers raided on edge of your territory
by Inner N’gombi people, all stores looted
including case of 20 culture tubes. Stop.
As all these cultures are of virulent diseases, inoculate
Inner N’gombi until intact tubes recovered.
Message ends.”
Bones read it twice, and his face
took on an appearance which indicated something between
great pain and intense vacancy. It was intended
to convey to the observer the fact that Bones was
thinking deeply and rapidly, and that he had banished
from his mind all the frivolities of life.
“I understand, sir you
wish me to go to the dear old Congo Government and
apologize I shall be ready in ten minutes.”
“What I really want you to do,”
said Sanders patiently, “is to take the Wiggle
up stream and get that box.”
“I quite understand, sir,”
said Bones, nodding his head. “To-day is
the 8th, to-morrow is the 9th the box shall
be in your hands on the 15th by half-past seven in
the evening, dear old sir.”
He saluted and turned a baleful glare
upon the girl, the import of which she was to learn
at first hand.
“Duty, Miss Patricia Hamilton!
Forgive poor old Bones if he suddenly drops the mask
of dolce far niente I go!”
He saluted again and went marching
stiffly to his quarters, with all the dignity which
an empty lunch-box and a dangling water-bottle would
allow him.
The next morning Bones went forth
importantly for the Ochori city, being entrusted with
the task of holding, so to speak, the right flank of
the N’gombi country.
“You will use your discretion,”
Sanders said at parting, “and, of course, you
must keep your eyes open; if you hear the merest hint
that the box is in your neighbourhood, get it.”
“I think, your Excellency,”
said Bones, with heavy carelessness, “that I
have fulfilled missions quite as delicate as this,
and as for observation, why, the gift runs in my family.”
“And runs so fast that you’ve
never caught up with it,” growled Hamilton.
Bones turned haughtily and saluted.
It was a salute full of subdued offence.
He went joyously to the northward,
evolving cunning plans. He stopped at every village
to make inquiries and to put the unoffending villagers
to considerable trouble for he insisted
upon a house-to-house search before, somewhat
wearied by his own zeal, he came to the Ochori.
Chief Bosambo heard of his coming
and summoned his councillors.
“Truly has Sandi a hundred ears,”
he said in dismay, “for it seems that he has
heard of the slaying of Muchini. Now, all men
who are true to me will swear to the lord Tibbetti
that we know nothing of a killing palaver, and that
we have not been beyond the trees to the land side
of the city. This you will all say because you
love me; and if any man says another thing I will
beat him until he is sick.”
Bones came and was greeted by the
chief and Bosambo was carried to the beach
on a litter.
“Lord,” said Bosambo weakly,
“now the sight of your simple face will make
me a well man again. For, lord, I have not left
my bed since the coming of the rains, and there is
strength neither in my hands and feet.”
“Poor old bird,” said
Bones sympathetically, “you’ve been sittin’
in a draught.”
“This I tell you, Tibbetti,”
Bosambo went on, as yet uncertain of his ruler’s
attitude, since Bones must need, at this critical moment,
employ English and idiomatic English, “that
since the last moon was young I have lain in my hut
never moving, seeing nothing and hearing nothing,
being like a dead man all this my headman
will testify.”
Bones’s face dropped, for he
had hoped to secure information here. Bosambo,
watching his face through half-closed lids, saw the
dismal droop of the other’s mouth, and came
to the conclusion that whatever might be the cause
of the visit, it was not to hold the Ochori or their
chief to account for known misdeeds.
“O Bosambo,” said Bones,
in the river dialect, “this is sad news, for
I desire that you shall tell me certain things for
which Sandi would have given you salt and rods.”
The Chief of the Ochori sat up in
his litter and went so far as to put one foot to the
ground.
“Lord,” said he heartily,
“the sound of your lovely voice brings me from
the grave and gives me strength. Ask, O Bonesi,
for you are my father and my mother; and though I
saw and heard nothing, yet in my sickness I had wonderful
visions and all things were made visible that
I declare to you, Bonesi, before all men.”
“Don’t call me ‘Bonesi,’”
said Bones fiercely. “You’re a jolly
cheeky feller, Bosambo you’re very,
very naughty, indeed!”
“Master,” said Bosambo
humbly, “though I rule these Ochori I am a foreigner
in this land; in the tongue of my own people, Bonesi
means ‘he-who-is-noble-in-face-and-a-giver-of-justice.’”
“That’s better,”
nodded the gratified Bones, and went on speaking in
the dialect. “You shall help me in this it
touches the people of the Inner N’gombi ”
Bosambo fell back wearily on to the
litter, and rolled his eyes as one in pain.
“This is a sorrow for me, Bo Tibbetti,”
he said faintly, “but I am a sick man.”
“Also,” continued Bones,
“of a certain box of wood, full of poisons ”
As well as he could Bones explained
the peculiar properties of germ culture.
“Oh, ko!” said Bosambo,
closing his eyes, and was to all appearances beyond
human aid.
“Lord,” said Bosambo,
at parting, “you have brought me to life, and
every man of every tribe shall know that you are a
great healer. To all the far and quiet places
of the forest I will send my young men who will cry
you aloud as a most wonderful doctor.”
“Not at all,” murmured Bones modestly,
“not at all.”
“Master,” said Bosambo,
this time in English, for he was not to be outdone
in the matter of languages, for had he not attended
a great mission school in Monrovia? “Master,
you dam’ fine feller, you look ’um
better feller, you no find um. You be same
like Moses and Judi Escariot, big fine feller, by
golly yas.”
All night long, between the visits
which Bones had been making from the moored Wiggle
to the village (feeling the patient’s pulse with
a profound and professional air and prescribing brandy
and milk), Bosambo had been busy.
“Stand you at the door, Secundi,”
he said to his headman, “and let one of your
men go to the shore to warn me of my lord Tibbetti’s
coming, for I have work to do. It seems this
Maker of Storms were better with Sandi than with me.”
“Tibbetti is a fool, I think,” suggested
Secundi.
Bosambo, kneeling on a rush mat, busy
with a native chisel and a pot of clay paint, looked
up.
“I have beaten older men than
you with a stick until they have wept,” he said,
“and all for less than you say. For this
is the truth, Secundi, that a child cannot be a fool,
though an old man may be a shame. This is the
word of the blessed prophet. As for Tibbetti,
he has a clean and loving heart.”
There was a rustle at the door and a whispered voice.
The box and the tools were thrust
under a skin rug and Bosambo again became the interesting
invalid.
In the morning Bosambo had said farewell,
and a blushing Bones listened with unconcealed pleasure
to the extravagant praise of his patient.
“And this I tell you, Tibbetti,”
said Bosambo, standing thigh-deep in the river by
the launch’s side, “that knowing you are
wise man who gathers wisdom, I have sent to the end
of my country for some rare and beautiful thing that
you may carry it with you.”
He signalled to a man on the bank,
and his servant brought him a curious object.
It was, Bones noted, a square box
apparently of native make, for it was fantastically
carved and painted. There were crude heads and
hideous forms which never were on land or sea.
The paint was brilliant; red, yellow and green indiscriminately
splashed.
“This is very ancient and was
brought to my country by certain forest people.
It is a Maker of Storms, and is a powerful ju-ju for
good and evil.”
Bones, already a collector of native
work, was delighted. His delight soothed him
for his failure in other respects.
He returned to headquarters empty-handed
and sat the centre of a chilling group if
we except Patricia Hamilton and endeavoured,
as so many successful advocates have done, to hide
his short-comings behind a screen of rhetoric.
He came to the part of his narrative
where Bosambo was taken ill without creating any notable
sensation, save that Sanders’s grey eyes narrowed
a little and he paid greater heed to the rest of the
story.
“There was poor old Bosambo
knocked out, sir ab-so-lutely done for fortunately
I did not lose my nerve. You know what I am, dear
old officer, in moments of crisis?”
“I know,” said Hamilton
grimly, “something between a Welsh revivalist
and a dancing dervish.”
“Please go on, Bones,”
begged the girl, not the least interested of the audience.
“I dashed straight back to the
Wiggle,” said Bones breathlessly, “searched
for my medicine chest it wasn’t there!
Not so much as a mustard plaster what was
I to do, dear old Miss Hamilton?” he appealed
dramatically.
“Don’t tell him, Pat,”
begged Hamilton, “he’s sure to guess it.”
“What was I to do? I seized
a bottle of brandy,” said Bones with relish,
“I dashed back to where Bosambo was lyin’.
I dashed into the village, into his hut and got a
glass ”
“Well, well!” said Sanders
impatiently, “what happened after all this dashing?”
Bones spread out his hands.
“Bosambo is alive to-day,”
he said simply, “praisin’ if
I may be allowed to boast the name of Bones
the Medicine Man. Look here, sir.”
He dragged towards him along the floor
of the hut a package covered with a piece of native
sacking. This he whisked away and revealed the
hideous handiwork of an artist who had carved and painted
as true to nature as a man may who is not quite certain
whether the human eye is half-way down the nose or
merely an appendage to his ear.
“That, sir,” said Bones
impressively, “is one of the most interestin’
specimens of native work I have ever seen: a gift!
From Bosambo to the jolly old doctor man who dragged
him, if I might so express it, from the very maws
of death.”
He made his dramatic pause.
Sanders bent down, took a penknife
from his pocket and scraped the paint from a flat
oblong space on the top.
There for all men to see save
Bones who was now engaged in a relation of his further
adventure to his one sympathizer was a brass
plate, and when the paint had been scraped away, an
inscription
Department du Medicins,
Etat CONGO BELGE.
Sanders and Hamilton gazed, fascinated
and paralysed to silence.
“I’ve always had a feelin’
I’d like to be a medicine man.” Bones
prattled on. “You see ”
“One moment, Bones,” interrupted
Sanders quietly. “Did you open this box
by any chance?”
“No, sir,” said Bones.
“And did you see any of its contents?”
“No, sir,” said Bones
confidentially, “that’s the most interestin’
thing about the box. It contains magic which,
of course, honoured sir and Excellency, is all rubbish.”
Sanders took a bunch of keys from
his pocket, and after a few trials opened the case
and scrutinized the contents, noting the comforting
fact that all the tubes were sealed. He heaved
a deep sigh of thankfulness.
“You didn’t by chance
discover anything about the missing cultures, Bones?”
he asked mildly.
Bones shook his head, shrugged his
shoulders, and looked disconsolately at his chief.
“You think I’ve been feeble,
but I haven’t lost hope, sir,” he said,
with fine resolution. “I’ve got a
feelin’ that if I were allowed to go into the
forest, disguised, sir, as a sort of half-witted native
chap, sir ”
“Disguised!” said Hamilton.
“Good Lord, what do you want a disguise for?”