The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
spoke to a woman about the event. It was unforgivable. It was against all tradition. Likilivi, for the honour of his house, ordered a public whipping.
And at sunset one evening, before the assembled visitors, with the chief sitting on his stool, M’ciba was led forth, and whilst his sons held her the chief took the hide.
“Woman,” he said, “I do this that all the world may know you as shameless and a destroyer of honour — behold…”
So far he got, when the crowd opened to allow of the passage of a dapper man in white, a broad and spotless helmet on his head, an ebony stick in his hand.
Likilivi was staggered.
“Lord Sandi,” he said in confusion, “this woman is my wife, and I go to whip her because of certain abominations.” Sanders eyed him unpleasantly.
“Release this woman,” he said, and the two sons obeyed instanter.
“It seems,” he said to the embarrassed chief, “that you are old and evil. And when I place a man above others to be chief of those people, I desire that he shall so live that all common people shall say ‘Lo! as our lord lives, so shall we.’ And if he is evil, then all the village is evil. You are certainly no chief for me.”
“Lord,” said the old man tremulously, “if you take from me my chieftainship I shall die of shame.”
“That I shall certainly do,” said Sanders, “and whip you also if you injure this woman, your wife.” And Sanders meant it, for he respected only the law which has neither age nor sex.
He took the girl apart.
“As to you, M’ciba,” he said, “be pleasant to this man who is your husband, for he is old and will soon die.”
“Lord, I pray for his death,” she said passionately.
Sanders looked at her from under his brows.
“Pray,” he said drily, “yet give him no glass in his food, or I shall come quickly, and then you will be sorry.”
She shivered and a look of terror came into her eyes.
“You know all things, master,” she gasped.
Sanders did not attempt to disabuse her mind. The faith in his omnipotence was a healthy possession.
“You shall be beaten no more,” he said, for she was in a state — being prepared for a further whipping — that revealed something of her husband’s previous ferocity.
Sanders dismissed the people to their homes — some had departed quickly on his appearance, and he had a few words with Likilivi.
“O chief,” he said softly, “I have a mind to take my stick to you.”
“I am an old man,” quavered the other.
“The greater evil,” said Sanders, “that you should beat this child.”
“Lord, she spoke with women of our Marsh Mystery,” said the chief.
“More of this mystery,” warned Sanders, “and I will bring my soldiers and we will clear the grass till your infernal mystery is a mystery no longer.”
In all his long life Likilivi had never heard so terrible a threat, for the mystery of the Marsh was the most sacred of his possessions.
Sanders was smiling to himself as the Zaire went speeding down the river. These childish mysteries amused him. They were part of the life of his people.
Admitting the fact that the Marsh was an impenetrable buffer state between Isisi and Akasava, it was less a factor in the preservation of peace than it had been in the bad years of long ago.
Sanders’ trip was in a sense a cruise of leisure. He was on his way to the N’Gombi to make an inquiry and to point a lesson.
N’Gombi signifies forest. When Stanley first penetrated the interior of the great land, he was constantly hearing of a N’Gombi city of fabulous wealth. Not until he had made several ineffective expeditions did he discover the true significance of the name.
Though of the forest, there are N’Gombi folk who live on the great river, and curiously enough whilst they preserve the characteristic which distinguishes them from the riverain people in that they cannot swim, are yet tolerable fishermen.
Sanders was bound for the one N’Gombi town which stands on the river, and his palaver would be, as he knew, an unsatisfactory one.
He saw the smoke of the N’Gombi fires — they are great iron workers hereabouts — long before he came in sight of the place.
As he turned to give directions to the steersman, Abiboo, who stood on the further side of the helmsman, said something in Bomongo, and the man at the wheel laughed.
“What was that?” asked Sanders.
“Lord, it was a jest,” said Abiboo; “I spoke of the N’Gombi people, for there is a saying on the river that N’Gombi crocodiles are fat.”
The subtlety of the jest may be lost to the reader, but to Sanders it was plain enough.
The town is called Oulu, but the natives have christened it by a six-syllable word which means “The Town of the Sinkers.”
Sanders nodded. An extraordinary fatality pursued this place. In the last four or five years there had been over twenty drowning accidents.
Men had gone out in the evening to fish. In the morning their waterlogged canoes had been found, but the men had disappeared, their bodies being either carried away by the swift stream, or, as popular legend had it, going to some secret larder of the crocodile in the river bed.
It was on account of the latest disaster, which had involved the death of three men, that Sanders paid his visit.
He swung the Zaire to shallow water and reached the N’Gombi foreshore.
The headman who met him was grimed with smoke and very hot. He carried the flat hammer of his craft in his hand, and was full of grievances. And the least of these was the death of three good workmen by drowning.
“Men who go on the water are fools,” he said, “for it is not natural that any should go there but fish and the dogs of Akasava.”
“That is not good palaver,” said Sanders sharply. “Dogs are dogs and men are men; therefore, my man, speak gently in my presence of other tribes or you will be sorry.”
“Lord Sandi,” said the man bitterly, “these Akasava would starve us and especially Likilivi the chief.”
It was an old grievance between the two villages, the N’Gombi holding themselves as being chartered by Providence to supply all that was crafty and cunning in iron work.
“For as you know, master,” the man went on, “iron is hard to come by in these parts.”
Sanders remembered a certain anvil stolen at this very village, and nodded.
“Also it is many years before young men learn the magic which makes iron bend. How it must be heated so, cooled so, tapped and fashioned and hammered.”
“This I know,” said Sanders.
“And if we do not receive so much salt and so many rods for each spear head,” the headman continued, “we starve, because…”
It was the old story, as old as the world, the story of fair return for labour. The N’Gombi sold their spears at the finest margin of profit.
“Once we grew fat with wealth,” said the headman, “because for every handful of salt we ate, when we worked two handfuls came for the spears we made. Now, lord, few spears go out from the N’Gombi and many from Likilivi, because he sells cheaper.”
Sanders sighed wearily.
“Such things