The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
“There will be some whipping here tomorrow.”
His first impulse was to send the girl straight back; he had no fear that the temporary withdrawal of the guard would lead to any serious consequence — that thought never for one moment entered his head — but he was a cautious man, and his instinct was against taking risk of any kind.
He was halfway back to the boat when he decided that, as the girl was here and had, moreover, come a long way, he had better get the thing over.
“You had best confine yourself to the women’s quarters,” he said. “I will send Abiboo with you — for myself, I have a little palaver with one M’dali.”
He unlocked the steel gate that led to the women’s compound, and stood watching the slim white figure of the girl as she moved up the tiny street — the straight, broad-shouldered Houssa at her elbow.
Then he crossed the lane which separated the men from the women, opened the gate, and entered, double-locking it behind him.
None came to speak to him, which was strange. Usually they clamoured to him for a hearing, goodnaturedly calling him by his familiar name — which in English is “The-Little-Butcher-Bird-Who-Flies-by-Night.”
Now they sat before their huts, chins on knees, watching him silently, fearfully.
“I don’t like this,” said Sanders.
He slipped his hand carelessly in his pocket and pushed down the safety catch of his Browning.
His second finger searched carefully for the butt of the pistol to feel if the magazine was pushed home.
He stood on a bare patch of well-swept roadway, and had an uninterrupted view of the street.
One quick glance he gave to the right. He could see Ruth talking to some native women — a group of three who squatted at her feet.
Behind her, clear of the group, was Abiboo, his Winchester carbine — a gift of Sanders — in the crook of his arm.
As the Commissioner looked he saw the Houssa furtively bring the lever back.
“Abiboo is loading,” said something in Sanders’ brain.
His eyes came back to the men’s village. There was no move. The convicts sat before their huts, silent and expectant. A thrill of apprehension ran through his frame. He glanced again at Abiboo. He had unostentatiously withdrawn still further from the women and now he was holding the rifle with both hands — the right gripping the butt, the left supporting the barrel.
Then he turned his head slightly and nodded, and Sanders knew the signal was for him.
Sanders turned swiftly. Whatever danger there was lay in the women’s village. He walked quickly back the way he came. Four men who had sat quietly rose and came out to meet him, showing no sign of haste.
“Lord, we have a petition,” began one.
“Go back to your hut, Tembeli!” said Sanders steadily. “I will come again for your petition.”
“Crack!”
Abiboo was firing into a hut, and the girl was flying along the street towards the gate.
All this Sanders saw as he turned his head, and then the four men were upon him.
A great hand covered his face, a cruel thumb fumbled for his eye. Tembeli went down shot through the heart, and Sanders tore himself free. He raced for the gate, taking out the key as he went.
He turned and shot at two of his pursuers, but they had no heart for the fight.
His steady hand unlocked the gate and closed it behind him. He saw Abiboo on the ground in the midst of a swaying tangle of men. The girl had disappeared. Then he saw her struggling with two of the women, and the halfwitted Koforo slashing at her over the shoulders.
He reached the women as one grasped the girl by her hair and pulled back her head.
Koforo saw him coming, and dropped his hand.
“Ho, father!” he said, in his foolish, jocose way. “I am to kill you because you are a devil!”
The women shrank back, and Sanders caught the fainting girl by the waist and swung her out of reach.
Koforo came at him mouthing and grimacing, the little spade-shaped razor in his hand.
Sanders shot definitely because he had only five more cartridges, then he turned his attention to Abiboo.
He was lying on the ground insensible; his assailants had fled, for the sentry and his relief were firing through the wire-netting — and your trained Houssa is a tolerably good shot.
Together they bore the girl to the boat, and Abiboo was revived, stitched, and bandaged.
At four in the afternoon the crestfallen guard returned, and Sanders made an inspection of both camps.
“Lord,” said one who had been but a passive conspirator, “it was the plan to take you in the women’s quarters. Therefore certain men concealed themselves in the huts, thinking your lordship would not carry your little gun amongst women. All this was dreamt by M’dali, who has escaped.”
“No man escapes from the Village of Irons,” said Sanders. “Which way did M’dali go?”
The man pointed to the wire fence by the little canal.
Sanders made his way to the fence and looked down into the weed-grown stream.
“I saw him climb the first fence,” said his informant; “but the second I did not see him climb.”
The Commissioner stooped, and, picking up a handful of grass, threw it at a green log that lay on the water.
The log opened a baleful eye and growled hatefully, for he had fed well, and resented the interruption to his slumbers.
VII. The Thinker and the Gum-Tree
There are three things which are beyond philosophy and logic.
Three things which turn mild men to rage and to the performance of heroic deeds. The one is love, the other is religion, and the third is land.
There was a man of the Isisi people who was a great thinker. He thought about things which were beyond thought, such as the stars and the storms and time, which began and ended nowhere.
Often he would go to the edge of the river and, sitting with his chin on his knees, ponder on great matters for days at a time. The people of the village — it was Akalavi by the creek — thought, not unnaturally, that he was mad, for this young man kept himself aloof from the joyous incidents of life, finding no pleasure in the society of maidens, absenting himself from the dances and the feasts that make up the brighter side of life on the river.
K’maka — such was this man’s name — was the son of Yoko, the son of N’Kema, whose father was a fierce fighter in the days of the Great King. And on the dam side he went back to Pikisamoko, who was also a strong and bloody man, so that there was no hint of softness in his pedigree. “Therefore,” said Yoko, his father, “he must be mad, and if the matter can be arranged without Sandi knowing, we will put out his eyes and take him a long way into the forest. There he will quickly die from hunger or wild beasts.”
And all the relations who were bidden to the family palaver agreed, because a mad son is an abomination. He wanders about the village, and in his wanderings or in the course of his antics, he breaks things and does damage for which the family is legally responsible. They talked this matter over for the greater part of the night and came to no decision. The palaver was resumed the next day, and the elder of the family, a very old and a very wise chief from another village, gave his decision. “If he is mad,” he said,