The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
with more than four paddlers--winding his slow way up stream--and Hamilton was not laughing.
He went back to his canvas chair before the Residency, and sat for half an hour, alternately pinching and rubbing his bare arms--he was in his shirt sleeves--in a reverie which was not pleasant.
Here Lieutenant Augustus Tibbetts, returning from an afternoon's fishing, with a couple of weird-looking fish as his sole catch, found him and would have gone on with a little salute.
"Bones!" called Hamilton, softly.
Bones swung round. "Sir!" he said stiffly.
"Come off your horse, Bones," coaxed Hamilton.
"Not me," replied Bones; "I've finished with you, dear old fellow; as an officer an' a gentleman you've treated me rottenly--you have, indeed. Give me an order--I'll obey it. Tell me to lead a forlorn hope or go to bed at ten--I'll carry out instructions accordin' to military law, but outside of duty you're a jolly old rotter. I'm hurt, Ham, doocidly hurt. I think----"
"Oh shut up and sit down!" interrupted his chief, irritably. "You jaw and jaw till my head aches."
Reluctantly Lieutenant Tibbetts walked back, depositing his catch with the greatest care on the ground.
"What on earth have you got there?" asked Hamilton, curiously.
"I don't know whether it's cod or turbot," said the cautious Bones, "but I'll have 'em cooked and find out."
Hamilton grinned. "To be exact, they're catfish, and poisonous," he said, and whistled his orderly. "Oh, Ahmet," he said in Arabic, "take these fish and throw them away."
Bones fixed his monocle, and his eyes followed his catch till they were out of sight.
"Of course, sir," he said with resignation, "if you like to commandeer my fish it's not for me to question you."
"I'm a little worried, Bones," began Hamilton.
"A conscience, sir," said Bones, smugly, "is a pretty rotten thing for a feller to have. I remember years ago----"
"There's a little unrest up there"--Hamilton waved his hand towards the dark green forest, sombre in the shadows of the evening--"a palaver I don't quite get the hang of. If I could only trust you, Bones!"
Lieutenant Tibbetts rose. He readjusted his monocle and stiffened himself to attention--a heroic pose which invariably accompanied his protests. But Hamilton gave him no opportunity.
"Anyway, I have to trust you, Bones," he said, "whether I like it or not. You get ready to clear out. Take twenty men and patrol the river between the Isisi and the Akasava."
In as few words as possible he explained the legend of the N'bosini. "Of course, there is no such place," he said; "it is a mythical land like the lost Atlantis--the home of the mysterious and marvellous tribes, populated by giants and filled with all the beautiful products of the world."
"I know, sir," said Bones, nodding his head. "It is like one of those building estate advertisements you read in the American papers: Young-man-go-west-an'-buy-Dudville Corner Blocks----"
"You have a horrible mind," said Hamilton. "However, get ready. I will have steam in the _Zaire_ against your departure."
"There is one thing I should like to ask you about," said Bones, standing hesitatingly first on one leg and then on the other. "I think I have told you before that I have tickets in a Continental sweepstake. I should be awfully obliged----"
"Go away!" snarled Hamilton.
Bones went cheerfully enough.
He loved the life on the _Zaire_, the comfort of Sanders' cabin, the electric reading lamp and the fine sense of authority. He would stand upon the bridge for hours, with folded arms and impassive face, staring ahead as the oily waters moved slowly under the bow of the stern-wheeler. Now and again he would turn to give a fierce order to the steersman or to the patient Yoka, the squat black _Krooman_ who knew every inch of the river, and who stood all the time, his hand upon the lever of the telegraph ready to "slow" at the first sign of a new sand-bank.
For, in parts, the river was less than two or three feet deep and the bed was constantly changing. The sounding boys, who stood on the bow of the steamer, whirling their long canes and singing the depth monotonously, would shout a warning cry, but long before their lips had framed a caution, Yoka would have pulled the telegraph over to "stop." His eyes would have detected the tiny ripple on the waters ahead which denoted a new "bank."
To Bones, the river was a deep, clear stream. He had no idea as to the depth and never troubled to inquire. These short, stern orders of his that he barked to left and right from time to time, nobody took the slightest notice of, and Bones would have been considerably embarrassed if they had. Observing that the steamer was tacking from shore to shore, a proceeding which, to Bones' orderly mind, seemed inconsistent with the dignity of the Government boat, he asked the reason.
"Lord," said the steersman, one Ebibi, "there are many banks hereabout, large sands, which silt up in a night, therefore we must make a passage for the _puc-a-puc_, by going from shore to shore."
"You're a silly ass," said Bones, "and let it go at that."
Yet, for all his irresponsibility, for all his wild and unknowledgeable conspectus of the land and its people, there was instilled in the heart of Lieutenant Tibbetts something of the spirit of dark romance and adventure-loving, which association with the Coast alone can bring.
In the big house at Dorking where he had spent his childhood, the ten-acre estate, where his father had lorded (himself a one-time Commissioner), he had watered the seed of desire which heredity had irradicably sown in his bosom; a desire not to be shaped by words, or confirmed in phrase, but best described as the discovery-lust, which send men into dark, unknown places of the world to joyously sacrifice life and health that their names might be associated with some scrap of sure fact for the better guidance of unborn generations.
Bones was a dreamer of dreams.
On the bridge of the _Zaire_ he was a Nelson taking the _Victory_ into action, a Stanley, a Columbus, a Sir Garnet Wolseley forcing the passages of the Nile.
Small wonder that he turned from time to time to the steersman with a sharp "Put her to starboard," or "Port your helm a little."
Less wonder that the wholly uncomprehending steersman went on with his work as though Bones had no separate or tangible existence.
On the fourth evening after leaving headquarters, Bones summoned to his cabin Mahomet Ali, the sergeant in charge of his soldiers.
"O, Mahomet," said he, "tell me of this N'bosini of which men speak, and in which all native people believe, for my lord M'ilitani has said that there is no such place and that it is the dream of mad people."
"Master, that I also believe," said Mahomet Ali; "these people of the river are barbarians, having no God and being foredoomed for all time to hell, and it is my belief that his idea of N'bosini is no more than the Paradise of the faithful, of which the barbarians have heard and converted in their wild way."
"Tell me, who talks of N'bosini," said Bones, crossing his legs and leaning back in his chair, his hands behind his head; "for, remember that I am a stranger amongst you, Mahomet Ali, coming from a far land and having seen such marvels as----"
He paused, seeking the Arabic for "gramaphone" and "motor-'bus," then he went on wisely: "Such marvels as you cannot imagine."
"This I know of N'bosini," said the sergeant, "that all men along this river believe in it; all save Bosambo of the Ochori who, as is well known, believes in nothing, since he is a follower of the Prophet and the one God."
Mahomet Ali salaamed devoutly.
"And