The Keepers of the King's Peace. Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
and sometimes—and more often—of death and disaster. Into this shuddering group strode Bones, very finely clad in white raiment yet limp withal, for the night was close and the way had been long and rough.
The sitters scrambled to their feet, their knuckles at their teeth, for this was a moment of great embarrassment.
"Oh, M'lama," said Bones agreeably, and spoke in the soft dialect of the Isisi by-the-River, "prophesy for me!"
She looked up sullenly, divining trouble for herself.
"Lord," she said, with a certain smooth venom, "there is a great sickness for you—and behold you will go far away and die, and none shall miss you."
Bones went very red, and shook an indignant forefinger at the offending prophetess.
"You're a wicked old storyteller!" he stammered. "You're depressin' the people—you naughty girl! I hate you—I simply loathe you!"
As he spoke in English she was not impressed.
"Goin' about the country puttin' people off their grub, by Jove!" he stormed; "tellin' stories … oh, dash it, I shall have to be awfully severe with you!"
Severe he was, for he arrested her, to the relief of her audience, who waited long enough to discover whether or not her ju-ju would strike him dead, and being obviously disappointed by her failure to provide this spectacle, melted away.
Close to the gangway of the Zaire she persuaded one of her Houssa guard to release his hold. She persuaded him by the simple expedient of burying her sharp white teeth in the fleshy part of his arm—and bolted. They captured her half mad with panic and fear of her unknown fate, and brought her to the boat.
Bones, fussing about the struggling group, dancing with excitement, was honourably wounded by the chance contact of his nose with a wild and whirling fist.
"Put her in the store cabin!" he commanded breathlessly. "Oh, what a wicked woman!"
In the morning as the boat got under way Ali came to him with a distressing story.
"Your Excellency will be pained to hear," he said, "that the female prisoner has eradicated her costume."
"Eradicated … ?" repeated the puzzled Bones, gently touching the patch of sticking-plaster on his nose.
"In the night," explained this former slave of science, "the subject has developed symptoms of mania, and has entirely dispensed with her clothes—to wit, by destruction."
"She's torn up her clothes?" gasped Bones, his hair rising and Ali nodded.
Now, the dress of a native woman varies according to the degree in which she falls under missionary influence. Isongo was well within the sphere of the River Mission, and so M'lama's costume consisted of a tight-fitting piece of print which wound round and round the body in the manner of a kilt, covering the figure from armpit to feet.
Bones went to the open window of the prison cabin, and steadfastly averting his gaze, called—
"M'lama!"
No reply came, and he called again.
"M'lama," he said gently, in the river dialect, "what shall Sandi say to this evil that you do?"
There was no reply, only a snuffling sound of woe.
"Oh, ai!" sobbed the voice.
"M'lama, presently we shall come to the Mission house where the God-men are, and I will bring you clothing—these you will put on you," said Bones, still staring blankly over the side of the ship at the waters which foamed past her low hull; "for if my lord Sandi see you as I see you—I mean as I wouldn't for the world see you, you improper person," he corrected himself hastily in English—"if my lord Sandi saw you, he would feel great shame. Also," he added, as a horrible thought made him go cold all over, "also the lady who comes to my lord Militini—oh, lor!"
These last two words were in English.
Fortunately there was a Jesuit settlement near by, and here Bones stopped and interviewed the stout and genial priest in charge.
"It's curious how they all do it," reflected the priest, as he led the way to his storehouse. "I've known 'em to tear up their clothes in an East End police cell—white folk, the same as you and I."
He rummaged in a big box and produced certain garments.
"My last consignment from a well-meaning London congregation," he smiled, and flung out a heap of dresses, hats, stockings and shoes. "If they'd sent a roll or two of print I might have used them—but strong religious convictions do not entirely harmonize with a last year's Paris model."
Bones, flushed and unhappy, grabbed an armful of clothing, and showering the chuckling priest with an incoherent medley of apology and thanks, hurried back to the Zaire.
"Behold, M'lama," he said, as he thrust his loot through the window of the little deck-house, "there are many grand things such as great ladies wear—now you shall appear before Sandi beautiful to see."
He logged the happening in characteristic language, and was in the midst of this literary exercise when the tiny steamer charged a sandbank, and before her engines could slow or reverse she had slid to the top and rested in two feet of water.
A rueful Bones surveyed the situation and returned to his cabin to conclude his diary with—
"12.19 struck a reef off B'lidi Bay. Fear vessel total wreck. Boats all ready for lowering."
As a matter of fact there were neither boats to lower nor need to lower them, because the crew were already standing in the river (up to their hips) and were endeavouring to push the Zaire to deep water.
In this they were unsuccessful, and it was not for thirty-six hours until the river, swollen by heavy rains in the Ochori region, lifted the Zaire clear of the obstruction, that Bones might record the story of his salvage.
He had released a reformed M'lama to the greater freedom of the deck, and save for a shrill passage at arms between that lady and the corporal she had bitten, there was no sign of a return to her evil ways. She wore a white pique skirt and a white blouse, and on her head she balanced deftly, without the aid of pins, a yellow straw hat with long trailing ribbons of heliotrope. Alternately they trailed behind and before.
"A horrible sight," said Bones, shuddering at his first glimpse of her.
The rest of the journey was uneventful until the Zaire had reached the northernmost limits of the Residency reserve. Sanders had partly cleared and wholly drained four square miles of the little peninsula on which the Residency stood, and by barbed wire and deep cutting had isolated the Government estate from the wild forest land to the north.
Here, the river shoals in the centre, cutting a passage to the sea through two almost unfathomable channels close to the eastern and western banks. Bones had locked away his journal and was standing on the bridge rehearsing the narrative which was to impress his superiors with a sense of his resourcefulness—and incidentally present himself in the most favourable light to the new factor which was coming into his daily life.
He had thought of Hamilton's sister at odd intervals and now. …
The Zaire was hugging the western bank so closely that a bold and agile person might have stepped ashore.
M'lama, the witch, was both bold and agile.
He turned with open mouth to see something white and feminine leap the space between deck and shore, two heliotrope ribbons streaming wildly in such breeze as there was.
"Hi! Don't do that … naughty, naughty!" yelled the agonized Bones, but she had disappeared into the undergrowth before the big paddle-wheel of the Zaire began to thresh madly astern.
Never was the resourcefulness of Bones more strikingly exemplified. An ordinary man would have leapt overboard in pursuit, but Bones was no ordinary man. He remembered in that moment of crisis, the