The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
silent again. By and by he spoke. “‘Do you say your prayers, Abdul?’ he asked.” ‘Four times every day,’ I replied. “‘You shall say your prayers four times a day, but each day you shall say your prayers in a new place,’ and he waved his hand thus.”
Abdul Azrael waved his hand slowly before his eyes. Sanders was interested. He knew the Moors for born storytellers, and was interested. “Well?” he said.
The man paused impressively. “Well, favoured and noble master,” he said, “from that day I have wandered through the world, praying in new places, for I am cursed by the holy man because I lied to him, and there is that within me which impels me. And, lord, I have wandered from Damaraland to Mogador, and from Mogador to Egypt, and from Egypt to Zanzibar.”
“Very pretty,” said Sanders. “You have a tongue like honey and a voice like silk, and it is written in the Sura of the Djinn, ‘Truth is rough and a lie comes smoothly. Let him pass whose speech is pleasing.’”
Sanders was not above taking liberties with the Koran, as this quotation testifies.
“Give him food,” said Sanders to his orderly, “later I will send him on his way.”
A little later, the Commissioner crossed over to the police lines, and interrupted the Houssa Captain at his studies — Captain Hamilton had a copy of Squire’s Companion to the British Pharmacopaeia open before him, and he was reading up arsenic (i) as a cure for intermittent fever; (ii) as an easy method of discharging himself from the monotony of a coast existence.
Sanders, who had extraordinary eyesight, comprehended the study at a glance and grinned.
“If you do not happen to be committing suicide for an hour or so,” he said, “I should like to introduce you to the original Wandering Jew from Tangier.”
The Houssa closed his book with a bang, lit a cigarette and carefully extinguished the match.
“This,” he said, addressing the canvas ceiling of his hut, “is either the result of overwork, or the effect of fishing in the sun without proper head protection.”
Sanders threw himself into a long seated chair and felt for his cheroots.
Then, ignoring the Houssa’s insult, he told the story of Abdul Azrael, the Moor.
“He’s a picturesque mendicant,” he said, “and has expressed his intention of climbing the river and crossing Africa to Uganda.”
“Let him climb,” said the Houssa; “from what I know of your people he will teach them nothing in the art of lying. He may, however, give them style, and they stand badly in need of that.”
Abdul Azrael accordingly left headquarters by the store canoe which carried government truck to the Isisi villages.
There was a period of calm on the river. Sanders found life running very smoothly. There were returns to prepare (these his soul loathed), reports from distant corners of his little empire to revise; acts of punishments administered by his chiefs to confirm — and fishing.
Once he ran up the river to settle a bigger palaver than the new king of the Akasava could decide upon, but that was the only break in the monotony. There was a new Administrator, a man who knew his job, and knew, too, the most important job of all was to leave his subordinates to work out their own salvation.
Sanders finished his palaver with the Akasava, gave judgment, which was satisfactory to all parties, and was returning to the enjoyment of that contentment which comes to a man who has no arrears of work or disease of conscience.
He left the Akasava city at sunset, travelling through the night for his own convenience. The river hereabout is a real river, there being neither sandbank nor shoal to embarrass the steersman. At five o’clock he passed Chumbiri.
He had no reason to believe that all was not well at Chumbiri, or cause to give it anything but a passing glance. He came downstream in the grey of dawn and passed the little village without suspicion. He saw, from the bridge of the Zaire, the dull glow of a fire on the distant foreshore — he was in midstream, and here the river runs two miles wide from bank to bank. Day came with a rush. It was little better than twilight when he left the village to starboard, and long before he came to the sharp bend which would hide Chumbiri from view, the world was flooded with strong white light.
One acquires the habit of looking all ways in wild Africa. It was, for example, a matter of habit that he cast one swift glance backward to the village, before he signalled to the helmsman with a slight bend of his head, to bring the helm hard-a-port. One swift glance he threw and frowned. The tiny town was clearly to be seen. Three straight rows of huts, on a sloping bank, with Isisi palms running the length of each street.
“Turn about,” he said, and the steersman spun the wheel.
The little steamer listed over as the full power of the swift current caught her amidships, then she slowly righted and the waters piled themselves up at her bows as she breasted the current again.
“Abiboo,” said Sanders to his sergeant, “I see no people in the streets of this village, neither do I see the smoke of fires.”
“Lord, they may go hunting,” said Abiboo wisely.
“Fishermen do not hunt,” said Sanders, “nor do women and old people.”
Abiboo did not advance the preposterous suggestion that they might sleep, for if the men were sluggards they would not be sufficiently lost to shame to allow their womenfolk to escape their duties.
Sanders brought the steamer into slack water near the beach and none came to meet him.
There was no dog or goat within sight — only the remains of a big fire still smouldering upon the beach.
His men waded ashore with their hawsers and secured the steamer, and Sanders followed.
He walked through the main street and there was no sign of life. He called sharply — there was no response. Every hut was empty; the cooking pots, the beds, every article of necessity was in its place. The rough mills for the grinding of corn stood before the huts, the matchets and crude N’Gombi axes for the cutting of timber, the N’Gombi spades, all these things were in evidence, but of the people, young or old, man or woman or child, well or sick, there was no trace. The only living being he saw was Abdul Azrael. He came upon that pious man on a sheltered beach near the village; his praying carpet was spread and he faced toward Mecca in rapt contemplation.
Sanders waited for the prayers to finish and questioned him.
“Lord, I have seen nothing,” he said, “but I will tell you a story. Once—”
“I want no stories,” snapped Sanders.
He put the nose of the steamer across the river. Exactly opposite was Fezembini, a larger town, and since constant communication was maintained between the two places, some explanation of the people’s absence might be secured.
Fezembini was alive and bustling, and all that could walk came down to the beach to say “O ai!” to the Commissioner, but Mondomi, the chief, had no solution.
He was a tall, thin man, with a thin curl of beard on his chin.
“Lord, they were there last night,” he said, “for I heard their drums beating and I saw their fires; also I heard laughter and the rattle of the dancers’ little cages.”*
[* A sort of wickerwork dumb-bell, containing stones — not unlike a double-headed baby’s rattle.]
“H’m!” said Sanders.
He pursued his inquiries at the neighbouring villages, but was no nearer a satisfactory explanation of the vanishing of three hundred people at the end of his investigation.
He sat down in the cool and quiet of his cabin to reason the matter out. The Chumbiri folk were as law-abiding as Akasava people can be; they had paid their taxes; there was no charge against any of them,