Bones by Edgar Wallace (best color ebook reader txt) 📖

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.

At dawn, on the beach of the city, N'gori met his ally. "I thank all my little gods you have come, my lord," said he, humbly; "for in the night one of my young men saw an Isisi army coming against us."

"Where is the army?" demanded a weary Bosambo.

"Lord, it has not come," said N'gori, glibly; "for hearing of your lordship and your swift canoes, I think it had run away."

Bosambo's force paddled back to the Ochori city the next day. Two nights after, the call was repeated--this time with greater detail. An N'gombi force of countless spears had seized the village of Doozani and was threatening the capital.

Again Bosambo carried his spears to a killing, and again was met by an apologetic N'gori.

"Lord, it was a lie which a sick maiden spread," he explained, "and my stomach is filled with sorrow that I should have brought the mighty Bosambo from his wife's bed on such a night." For the dark hours had been filled with rain and tempest, and Bosambo had nearly lost one canoe by wreck.

"Oh, fool!" said he, justly exasperated, "have I nothing to do--I, who have all Sandi's high and splendid business in hand--but I must come through the rain because a sick maiden sees visions?"

"Bosambo, I am a fool," agreed N'gori, meekly, and again his rescuer returned home.

"Now," said N'gori, "we will summon a secret palaver, sending messengers for all men to assemble at the rise of the first moon. For the N'gombi have sent me new spears, and when next the dog Bosambo comes, weary with rowing, we will fall upon him and there will be no more Bosambo left; for Sandi is gone and there is no law in the land."


III

Curiously enough, at that precise moment, the question of law was a very pressing one with two young Houssa officers who sat on either side of Sanders' big table, wet towels about their heads, mastering the intricacies of the military code; for Tibbetts was entering for an examination and Hamilton, who had only passed his own by a fluke, had rashly offered to coach him.

"I hope you understand this, Bones," said Hamilton, staring up at his subordinate and running his finger along the closely printed pages of the book before him.

"'Any person subject to military law,'" read Hamilton impressively, "'who strikes or ill-uses his superior officer shall, if an officer, suffer death or such less punishment as in this Act mentioned.' Which means," said Hamilton, wisely, "that if you and I are in action and you call me a liar, and I give you a whack on the jaw----"

"You get shot," said Bones, admiringly, "an' a rippin' good idea, too!"

"If, on the other hand," Hamilton went on, "I called you a liar--which I should be justified in doing--and you give me a whack on the jaw, I'd make you sorry you were ever born."

"That's military law, is it?" asked Bones, curiously.

"It is," said Hamilton.

"Then let's chuck it," said Bones, and shut up his book with a bang. "I don't want any book to teach me what to do with a feller that calls me a liar. I'll go you one game of picquet, for nuts."

"You're on," said Hamilton.

* * * * *

"My nuts I think, sir."

Bones carefully counted the heap which his superior had pushed over, "And--hullo! what the dooce do you want?"

Hamilton followed the direction of the other's eyes. A man stood in the doorway, naked but for the wisp of skirt at his waist. Hamilton got up quickly, for he recognized the chief of Sandi's spies.

"O Kelili," said Hamilton in his easy Bomongo tongue, "why do you come and from whence?"

"From the island over against the Ochori, Lord," croaked the man, dry-throated. "Two pigeons I sent, but these the hawks took--a fisherman saw one taken by the Kasai, and my own brother, who lives in the Village of Irons, saw the other go--though he flew swiftly."

Hamilton's grave face set rigidly, for he smelt trouble. You do not send pleasant news by pigeons.

"Speak," he said.

"Lord," said Kelili, "there is to be a killing palaver between the Ochori and the Akasava on the first rise of the full moon, for N'gori speaks of Bosambo evilly, and says that the Chief has raided him. In what manner these things will come about," Kelili went on, with the lofty indifference of one who had done his part of the business, so that he had left no room for carelessness, "I do not know, but I have warned all eyes of the Government to watch."

Bones followed the conversation without difficulty.

"What do people say?" asked Hamilton.

"Lord, they say that Sandi has gone and there is no law."

Hamilton of the Houssas grinned. "Oh, ain't there?" said he, in English, vilely.

"Ain't there?" repeated an indignant Bones, "we'll jolly well show old Thinggumy what's what."

Bosambo received an envoy from the Chief of the Akasava, and the envoy brought with him presents of dubious value and a message to the effect that N'gori spent much of his waking moments in wondering how he might best serve his brother Bosambo, "The right arm on which I and my people lean and the bright eyes through which I see beauty."

Bosambo returned the messenger, with presents more valueless, and an assurance of friendship more sonorous, more complete in rhetoric and aptness of hyperbole, and when the messenger had gone Bosambo showed his appreciation of N'gori's love by doubling the guard about the Ochori city and sending a strong picket under his chief headman to hold the river bend.

"Because," said this admirable philosopher, "life is like certain roots: some that taste sweet and are bitter in the end, and some that are vile to the lips and pleasant to the stomach."

It was a wild night, being in the month of rains. M'shimba M'shamba was abroad, walking with his devastating feet through the forest, plucking up great trees by their roots and tossing them aside as though they were so many canes. There was a roaring of winds