The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
by example, by word of mouth, and by such punishment as occasion required. Of all methods, punishment was the least productive of result, for memory lasts only so long as pain, and men who had watched with quaking hearts a strapped body as it swayed from a tree branch, straightway forgot the crime for which the criminal died just as soon as the malefactor was decently interred.
Sanders taught the men of the Zaire to stack wood. He showed them that if it was stacked in the bow, the vessel would sink forward, or if it was stacked all on one side, the vessel would list. He stood over them, day after day, directing and encouraging them, and the same men were invariably his pupils because Sanders did not like new faces.
He was going up river in some haste when he tied to a wooding to replenish his stock.
At the end of six years’ tuition he left them to pile wood whilst he slept, and they did all the things which they should not have done.
This he discovered when he returned to the boat.
“Master,” said the headman of the wooders, and he spoke with justifiable pride, “we have cut and stored the wood for the puc-a-puc in one morning, whereas other and slower folk would have worked till sundown, but because we love your lordship we have worked till the sweat fell from our bodies.”
Sanders looked at the wood piled all wrong, and looked at the headman.
“It is not wise,” he said, “to store the wood in the bow, for thus the ship will sink, as I have often told you.”
“Lord, we did it because it was easiest,” said the man simply.
“That I can well believe,” said Sanders, and ordered the restacking, without temper.
You must remember that he was in a desperate hurry: that every hour counted. He had been steaming all night — a dangerous business, for the river was low and there were new sandbanks which did not appear on his homemade chart. Men fret their hearts out, dealing with such little problems as ill-stacked wood, but Sanders neither fretted nor worried. If he had, he would have died, for things like this were part of his working day. Yet the headman’s remissness worried him a little, for he knew the man was no fool.
In an hour the wood was more evenly distributed and Sanders rang the engines ahead. He put the nose of the boat to the centre of the stream and held on his course till at sunset he came to a place where the river widened abruptly, and where little islands were each a great green tangle of vegetation.
Here he slowed the steamer, carefully circumnavigating each island, till darkness fell, then he picked a cautious way to shore, through much shoal water. The Zaire bumped and shivered as she struck or grazed the hidden sandbanks.
Once she stopped dead, and her crew of forty slipped over the side of the boat, and wading, breast high, pushed her along with a deep-chested song.
At last he came to a shelving beach, and here, fastened by her steel hawsers to two trees, the boat waited for dawn.
Sanders had a bath, dressed, and came into his little deckhouse to find his dinner waiting.
He ate the tiny chicken, took a stiff peg of whiskey, and lit his cigar. Then he sent for Abiboo.
“Abiboo,” he said, “once you were a man in these parts.”
“Lord, it is so,” said Abiboo. “I was a spy here for six months.”
“What do you know of these islands?”
“Lord, I only know that in one of them the Isisi bury their dead, and of another it is said that magic herbs grow; also that witchdoctors come thither to practise certain rites.”
Sanders nodded.
“Tomorrow we seek for the Island of Herbs,” he said, “for I have information that evil things will be done at the full of the moon.”
“I am your man,” said Abiboo.
It happened two nights following this that a chief of the N’Gombi, a simple old man who had elementary ideas about justice and a considerable faith in devils, stole down the river with twelve men and with labour they fastened two pieces of wood shaped like a St. Andrew’s Cross between two trees.
They bent a young sapling, trimming the branches from the top, till it reached the head of the cross, and this they made fast with a fishing line. Whatever other preparations they may have contemplated making were indefinitely postponed because Sanders, who had been watching them from behind a convenient copal-tree, stepped from his place of concealment, and the further proceedings failed to yield any satisfaction to the chief.
He eyed Sanders with a mild reproach.
“Lord, we set a trap for a leopard,” he explained, “who is very terrible.”
“In other days,” mused Sanders aloud, “a man seeing this cross would think of torture, O chief — and, moreover, leopards do not come to the middle island — tell me the truth.”
“Master,” said the old chief in agitation, “this leopard swims, therefore he fills our hearts with fear.”
Sanders sighed wearily.
“Now you will tell me the truth, or I shall be more than any leopard.”
The chief folded his arms so that the flat of his hands touched his back, he being a lean man, and his hands fidgeted nervously.
“I cannot tell you a lie,” he said, “because you are as a very bat, seeing into dark places readily and moving at night. Also you are like a sudden storm that comes up from trees without warning, and you are most terrible in your anger.”
“Get along,” said Sanders, passively irritable.
“Now this is the truth,” said the chief huskily.
“There is a man who comes to my village at sunset, and he is an evil one, for he has the protection of the Christ-man and yet he does abominable things — so we are for chopping him.”
Sanders peered at the chief keenly.
“If you chop him, chief, you will surely die,” he said softly, “even if he be as evil as the devil — whichever type of devil you mostly fear. This is evidently a bad palaver indeed, and I will sit down with you for some days.”
He carried the chief and his party back to the village and held a palaver.
Now Sanders of the River in moments such as these was a man of inexhaustible patience; and of that patience he had considerable need when two hours after his arrival there came stalking grandly into the village a man whose name was Ofalikari, a man of the N’Gombi by a Congolaise father.
His other name was Joseph, and he was an evangelist.
This much Sanders discovered quickly enough.
“Fetch this man to me,” he said to Sergeant Abiboo, for the preacher made his palaver at the other end of the village.
Soon Abiboo returned.
“Master,” he said, “this man will not come, being only agreeable to the demands of certain gods with which your honour is acquainted.”
Sanders showed his teeth.
“Go to him,” he said softly, “and bring him; if he will come for no other cause, hit him with the flat of your bayonet.”
Abiboo saluted stiffly — after the style of native noncommissioned officers — and departed, to return with Ofalikari, whom he drew with him somewhat unceremoniously by the ear.
“Now,” said Sanders to the man, “we will have a little talk, you and I.”
The sun went down, the moon came up, flooding the black river with mellow light, but still the talk went on — for this was a very serious palaver indeed.
A big fire was built in the very middle of the village street and here all the people gathered,