The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
dear full days he knew! Sanders coughed and swore at himself.
"Oh, Sandi!" called the headman of the boat, as she went lumbering over the clear green swell, "remember us, your servants!"
"I will remember, man," said Sanders, a-choke, and turned quickly to his cabin.
Hamilton sat in the stern of the surf-boat, humming a song to himself; but he felt awfully solemn, though in his pocket reposed a commission sealed redly and largely on parchment and addressed to: "Our well-beloved Patrick George Hamilton, Lieutenant, of our 133rd 1st Royal Hertford Regiment. Seconded for service in our 9th Regiment of Houssas--Greeting...."
"Master," said his Kroo servant, who waited his landing, "you lib for dem big house?"
"I lib," said Hamilton.
"Dem big house," was the Residency, in which a temporarily appointed Commissioner must take up his habitation, if he is to preserve the dignity of his office.
"Let us pray!" said Hamilton earnestly, addressing himself to a small snapshot photograph of Sanders, which stood on a side table. "Let us pray that the barbarian of his kindness will sit quietly till you return, my Sanders--for the Lord knows what trouble I'm going to get into before you return!"
The incoming mail brought Francis Augustus Tibbetts, Lieutenant of the Houssas, raw to the land, but as cheerful as the devil--a straight stick of a youth, with hair brushed back from his forehead, a sun-peeled nose, a wonderful collection of baggage, and all the gossip of London.
"I'm afraid you'll find I'm rather an ass, sir," he said, saluting stiffly. "I've only just arrived on the Coast an' I'm simply bubbling over with energy, but I'm rather short in the brain department."
Hamilton, glaring at his subordinate through his monocle, grinned sympathetically.
"I'm not a whale of erudition myself," he confessed. "What is your name, sir?"
"Francis Augustus Tibbetts, sir."
"I shall call you Bones," said Hamilton, decisively.
Lieut. Tibbetts saluted. "They called me Conk at Sandhurst, sir," he suggested.
"Bones!" said Hamilton, definitely.
"Bones it is, skipper," said Mr. Tibbetts; "an' now all this beastly formality is over we'll have a bottle to celebrate things." And a bottle they had.
It was a splendid evening they spent, dining on chicken and palm-oil chop, rice pudding and sweet potatoes. Hamilton sang, "Who wouldn't be a soldier in the Army?" and--by request--in his shaky falsetto baritone, "My heart is in the Highlands"; and Lieut. Tibbetts gave a lifelike imitation of Frank Tinney, which convulsed, not alone his superior officer, but some two-and-forty men of the Houssas who were unauthorized spectators through various windows and door cracks and ventilating gauzes.
Bones was the son of a man who had occupied a position of some importance on the Coast, and though the young man's upbringing had been in England, he had the inestimable advantage of a very thorough grounding in the native dialect, not only from Tibbetts, senior, but from the two native servants with whom the boy had grown up.
"I suppose there is a telegraph line to headquarters?" asked Bones that night before they parted.
"Certainly, my dear lad," replied Hamilton. "We had it laid down when we heard you were coming."
"Don't flither!" pleaded Bones, giggling convulsively; "but the fact is I've got a couple of dozen tickets in the Cambridgeshire Sweepstake, an' a dear pal of mine--chap named Goldfinder, a rare and delicate bird--has sworn to wire me if I've drawn a horse. D'ye think I'll draw a horse?"
"I shouldn't think you could draw a cow," said Hamilton. "Go to bed."
"Look here, Ham----" began Lieut. Bones.
"To bed! you insubordinate devil!" said Hamilton, sternly.
In the meantime there was trouble in the Akasava country.
II
Scarcely had Sanders left the land, when the _lokali_ of the Lower Isisi sent the news thundering in waves of sound.
Up and down the river and from village to village, from town to town, across rivers, penetrating dimly to the quiet deeps of the forest the story was flung. N'gori, the Chief of the Akasava, having some grievance against the Government over a question of fine for failure to collect according to the law, waited for no more than this intelligence of Sandi's going. His swift loud drums called his people to a dance-of-many-days. A dance-of-many-days spells "spears" and spears spell trouble. Bosambo heard the message in the still of the early night, gathered five hundred fighting men, swept down on the Akasava city in the drunken dawn, and carried away two thousand spears of the sodden N'gori.
A sobered Akasava city woke up and rubbed its eyes to find strange Ochori sentinels in the street and Bosambo in a sky-blue table-cloth, edged with golden fringe, stalking majestically through the high places of the city.
"This I do," said Bosambo to a shocked N'gori, "because my lord Sandi placed me here to hold the king's peace."
"Lord Bosambo," said the king sullenly, "what peace do I break when I summon my young men and maidens to dance?"
"Your young men are thieves, and it is written that the maidens of the Akasava are married once in ten thousand moons," said Bosambo calmly; "and also, N'gori, you speak to a wise man who knows that clockety-clock-clock on a drum spells war."
There was a long and embarrassing silence.
"Now, Bosambo," said N'gori, after a while, "you have my spears and your young men hold the streets and the river. What will you do? Do you sit here till Sandi returns and there is law in the land?"
This was the one question which Bosambo had neither the desire nor the ability to answer. He might swoop down upon a warlike people, surprising them to their abashment, rendering their armed forces impotent, but exactly what would happen afterwards he had not foreseen.
"I go back to my city," he said.
"And my spears?"
"Also they go with me," said Bosambo.
They eyed each other: Bosambo straight and muscular, a perfect figure of a man, N'gori grizzled and skinny, his brow furrowed with age.
"Lord," said N'gori mildly, "if you take my spears you leave me bound to my enemies. How may I protect my villages against oppression by evil men of Isisi?"
Bosambo sniffed--a sure sign of mental perturbation. All that N'gori said was true. Yet if he left the spears there would be trouble for him. Then a bright thought flicked:
"If bad men come you shall send for me and I will bring my fine young soldiers. The palaver is finished."
With this course N'gori must feign agreement. He watched the departing army--paddlers sitting on swathes of filched spears. Once Bosambo was out of sight, N'gori collected all the convertible property of his city and sent it in ten canoes to the edge of the N'gombi country, for N'gombi folk are wonderful makers of spears and have a saleable stock hidden against emergency.
For the space of a month there was enacted a comedy of which Hamilton was ignorant. Three days after Bosambo had returned in triumph to his city, there came a frantic call for succour--a rolling, terrified rat-a-plan of sound which the _lokali_ man of the Ochori village read.
"Lord," said he, waking Bosambo in the dead of night, "there has come down a signal from the Akasava, who are pressed by their enemies and have no spears."
Bosambo was in the dark street instanter, his booming war-drum calling urgently. Twenty canoes filled with fighting men, paddling desperately with the stream, raced to the aid of the defenceless Akasava.