The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
these beggars moving, Flagstaff. Hi, alapa’, avanti, trek!”
“These beggars,” a straggling line of them, resumed their loads uncomplainingly. They were good carriers, as carriers go, and only two had died since the march began.
Cuthbert stood and watched them pass, using his stick dispassionately upon the laggards. Then he turned to go.
“Ask him,” he said finally, “why he calls this the road to what-d’ye-call-it?” The old man shook his head.
“Because of the devils,” he said simply.
“Tell him he’s a silly ass!” bellowed Cuthbert and followed his carriers.
This natural path the caravan took extended in almost a straight line through the forest. It was a strange path because of its very smoothness, and the only drawback lay in the fact that it seemed to be the breeding-place of flies — little black flies, as big as the housefly of familiar shape, if anything a little bigger.
They terrified the natives for many reasons, but principally because they stung.
They did not terrify Cuthbert, because he was dressed in tapai cloth; none the less, there were times when these black flies found joints in his armour and roused him to anger. This path extended ten miles and made pleasant travelling. Then the explorer struck off into the forest, following another path, well beaten, but more difficult.
By devious routes Mr Cuthbert came into the heart of Sanders’ territories, and he was successful in this, that he avoided Sanders. He had with him a caravan of sixty men and an interpreter, and in due course he reached his objective, which was the village of a great chief ruling a remarkable province — Bosambo, of the Ochori, no less; sometime Krooman, steward of the Elder Dempster line, chief on sufferance, but none the less an interesting person. Bosambo, you may be sure, came out to greet his visitor.
“Say to him,” said Cuthbert to this interpreter, “that I am proud to meet the great chief.”
“Lord chief,” said the interpreter in the vernacular, “this white man is a fool, and has much money.”
“So I see,” said Bosambo.
“Tell him,” said Cuthbert, with all the dignity of an ambassador, “that I have come to bring him wonderful presents.”
“The white man says,” said the interpreter, “that if he is sure you are a good man he will give you presents. Now,” said the interpreter carefully, “as I am the only man who can speak for you, let us make arrangements. You shall give me one-third of all he offers. Then will I persuade him to continue giving, since he is the father of mad people.”
“And you,” said Bosambo briefly, “are the father of liars.” He made a sign to his guard, and they seized upon the unfortunate interpreter and led him forth. Cuthbert, in a sweat of fear, pulled a revolver.
“Master,” said Bosambo loftily, “you no make um fuss. Dis dam’ nigger, he no good; he make you speak bad t’ings. I speak um English proper. You sit down, we talk um.” So Cuthbert sat down in the village of Ochori, and for three days there was a great giving of presents, and signing of concessions. Bosambo conceded the Ochori country — that was a small thing. He granted forest rights of the Isisi, he sold the Akasava, he bartered away the Lulungo territories and the “native products thereof” — I quote from the written document now preserved at the Colonial Office and bearing the scrawled signature of Bosambo — and he added, as a lordly afterthought, the Ikeli district.
“What about river rights?” asked the delighted Cuthbert.
“What will you give um?” demanded Bosambo cautiously.
“Forty English pounds?” suggested Cuthbert.
“I take um,” said Bosambo.
It was a remarkably simple business; a more knowledgeable man than Cuthbert would have been scared by the easiness of his success, but Cuthbert was too satisfied with himself to be scared at anything.
It is said that his leave-taking with Bosambo was of an affecting character, that Bosambo wept and embraced his benefactor’s feet.
Be that as it may, his “concessions” in his pocket, Cuthbert began his coastward journey, still avoiding Sanders.
He came to Etebi and found a deputy-commissioner, who received him with open arms. Here Cuthbert stayed a week.
Mr Torrington at the time was tremendously busy with a scheme for stamping out sleeping sickness. Until then, Cuthbert was under the impression that it was a pleasant disease, the principal symptom of which was a painless coma. Fascinated, he extended his stay to a fortnight, seeing many dreadful sights, for Torrington had established a sort of amateur clinic, and a hundred cases a day came to him for treatment.
“And it comes from the bite of a tsetse fly?” said Cuthbert. “Show me a tsetse.” Torrington obliged him, and when the other saw the little black insect he went white to the lips.
“My God!” he whispered, “I’ve been bitten by that!”
“It doesn’t follow—” began Torrington; but Cuthbert was blundering and stumbling in wild fear to his carriers’ camp.
“Get your loads!” he yelled. “Out of this cursed country we get as quick as we can!” Torrington, with philosophical calm, endeavoured to reassure him, but he was not to be appeased.
He left Etebi that night and camped in the forest. Three days later he reached a mission station, where he complained of headaches and pains in the neck (he had not attended Torrington’s clinics in vain). The missionary, judging from the man’s haggard appearance and general incoherence that he had an attack of malaria, advised him to rest for a few days; but Cuthbert was all afret to reach the coast.
Twenty miles from the mission, Cuthbert sent his carriers back, and said he would cover the last hundred miles of the journey alone.
To this extraordinary proposition the natives agreed — from that day Cuthbert disappeared from the sight of man.
Sanders was taking a short cut through the forest to avoid the interminable twists and bends of the river, when he came suddenly upon a village of death — four sad little huts, built hastily amidst a tangle of underwood. He called, but nobody answered him. He was too wary to enter any of the crazy habitations.
He knew these little villages in the forest. It was the native custom to take the aged and the dying — especially those who died sleepily — to faraway places, beyond the reach of man, and leave them there with a week’s food and a fire, to die in decent solitude.
He called again, but only the forest answered him. The chattering, noisy forest, all acrackle with the movements of hidden things. Yet there was a fire burning which told of life.
Sanders resumed his journey, first causing a quantity of food to be laid in a conspicuous place for the man who made the fire.
He was on his way to take evidence concerning the disappearance of Cuthbert.
It was the fourth journey of its kind he had attempted. There had been palavers innumerable.
Bosambo, chief of the Ochori, had sorrowfully disgorged the presents he had received, and admitted his fault.
“Lord!” he confessed, “when I was with the white man on the coast I learnt the trick of writing — it is a cursed gift — else all this trouble would not have come about.
“For, desiring to show my people how great a man I was, I wrote a letter in the English fashion, and sent it by messenger to the coast and thence to friends in Sierra Leone, telling them of my fortune. Thus the people in London came to know of the treasure of this land.” Sanders, in a few illuminative sentences, conveyed his impression of Bosambo’s genius.
“You slave and son of a slave,” he said, “whom I took from a prison to rule the Ochori, why did you deceive this white