The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
came back laughing amongst themselves. The cousin of M’Wafamba, who went with them, did not come back.
“It is time,” said his headman. “In two hours the moon will be here.”
Very quickly the fires were extinguished and the cooking-pots stacked in the forepart of the big canoe, and in silence, with paddles striking evenly, they crossed the river.
The canoe was beached two hundred yards from the mission house, near a clump of bush. From here to the path was a few steps.
In single file, headed by the white-robed Arab, the party made its stealthy way along the twisting path. On either side the trees rose steeply, and save for the call of night birds there was no sound.
The forest ended abruptly. Ahead of them was a little clearing and in the centre the dark bulk of the mission hut.
“Now may Allah further our enterprise,” breathed Mackiney, and took a step forward.
Out of the ground, almost at his feet, rose a dark figure.
“Who walks in the night?” asked a voice.
“Damn you!” grunted Mackiney in English.
The figure moved ever so slightly.
“Master,” he said, “that is a white man’s word, yet you have the dress of an Arabi.”
Mackiney recovered himself.
“Man, whoever you are, stand on one side, for I have business with the God-woman.”
“I also,” was the calm reply, “for our Lord Sandi put me here; and I am as he; here have I stood every night save one.”
Mackiney had a revolver in his hand, but he dare not fire for fear of alarming the occupants of the hut.
“Let me go on,” he said. He knew, rather than saw, the long spear that was levelled at his breast in the darkness. “Let me be, and I will give you many bags of salt and rods more numerous than the trees of the forest.”
He heard a little chuckle in the darkness.
“You give too much for too little,” said the voice. “Oh, M’laka!”
Mackiney heard the pattering of feet; he was trapped, for somewhere ahead of him armed men were holding the path.
He raised his revolver and fired twice at the figure.
A spear whizzed past him, and he leapt forward and grappled with the man in his path.
He was strong as a young lion, but the man whose hand caught his throat was no weakling. For an instant they swayed, then fell, rolling over and over in the path.
Mackiney reached his hand for another revolver. It closed round the butt, when he felt a shock — something hit him smoothly in the left side — something that sent a thrill of pain through every nerve in his body.
“Oh, dear!” said Mackiney in English.
He never spoke again.
“Arabi, or white man, I do not know,” said Bosambo of Monrovia; “and there is none to tell us, because my people were quick to kill, and only one of his followers is left alive and he knows nothing.”
“What have you done with this Arabi?” asked Sanders.
They held their palaver in the mission house in the first hours of the dawn and the girl, pale and troubled, sat at the table looking from one man to the other, for she knew little of the language.
“Lord,” said Bosambo, “him I buried according to my desire that no man should know of this raid, lest it put evil thoughts in their heads.”
“You did wisely,” said Sanders.
He went back to headquarters a little puzzled, for he knew none of the facts of the case.
And when, months after, urgent inquiries came to him respecting the whereabouts of one Burney Mackiney, he replied in all truth that he could give no information.
IV. The Swift Walker
They have a legend in the Akasava country of a green devil. He is taller than the trees, swifter than the leopard, more terrible than all other ghosts, for he is green — the fresh, young green of the trees in spring — and has a voice that is a strangled bark, like the hateful, rasping gr-r-r of a wounded crocodile.
This is M’shimba-m’shamba, the Swift Walker.
You sometimes find his erratic track showing clearly through the forest. For the space of twelve yards’ width the trees are twisted, broken and uprooted, the thick undergrowth swept together in tangled heaps, as though by two huge clumsy hands.
This way and that goes the path of M’shimba-m’shamba, zig-zag through the forest — and woe to the hut or the village that stands in his way!
For he will leave this hut intact, from this hut he will cut the propped verandah of leaves; this he will catch up in his ruthless fingers and tear it away swiftly from piece to piece, strewing the wreckage along the village street.
He has lifted whole families and flung them broken and dying into the forest; he has wiped whole communities from the face of the earth.
Once, by the Big River, was a village called N’kema-n-’kema, and means literally, “monkey-monkey.” It was a poor village, and the people lived by catching fish and smoking the same. This they sold to inland villages, profiting on occasions to the equivalent of twelve shillings a week. Generally it was less; but, more or less, some fifty souls lived in comfort on the proceeds.
Some there were in that village that believed in M’shimba-m’shamba, and some who scoffed at him.
And when the votaries of the green devil went out to make sacrifices to him the others laughed. So acute did the division between the worshippers and the non-worshippers become, that the village divided itself into two, some building their dwellings on the farther side of the creek which ran near by, and the disbelievers remaining on the other bank.
For many months the sceptics gathered to revile the famous devil. Then one night M’shimba-m’shamba came. He came furiously, walking along the water of the creek — for he could do such miraculous things — stretching out his hairy arms to grab tree and bush and hut.
In the morning the worshippers were alone alive, and of the village of the faithless there was no sign save one tumbled roof, which heaved now and then very slightly, for under it was the chief of the village, who was still alive.
The worshippers held a palaver, and decided that it would be a sin to rescue him since their lord, M’shimba-m’shamba, had so evidently decreed his death. More than this, they decided that it would be a very holy thing and intensely gratifying to their green devil, if they put fire to the hut — the fallen roof of wood and plaited grass heaved pathetically at the suggestion — and completed the destruction.
At this moment there arrived a great chief of an alien tribe, Bosambo of the Ochori, who came up against the tide in his State canoe, with its fifty paddlers and his State drummer.
He was returning from a visit of ceremony and had been travelling before daylight, when he came upon the village and stopped to rest his paddlers and eat.
“Most wonderful chief,” said the leader of the believers, “you have come at a moment of great holiness.” And he explained the passing of M’shimba-m’shamba, and pointed to the fallen roof, which showed at long intervals a slight movement. “Him we will burn,” said the headman simply; “for he has been a sinful reviler of our lord the devil, calling him by horrible names, such as ‘snake eater’ and ‘sand drinker.’”
“Little man,” said Bosambo magnificently,