Bosambo of the River

CHAPTER IV

THE FALL OF THE EMPEROR

"My poor soul!" said the Houssa captain.

He looked down into the long-seated chair where Sanders sprawled limply.

"And is the owdacious female gone?" asked the soldier.

"She's gone," said Sanders.

The Houssa clapped his hands, not in applause, but to summon his orderly.

"Ahmet," he said gravely, speaking in Arabic, "mix for the lord Sandi the juice of lemons with certain cunning ingredients such as you know well; let it be as cool as the hand of Azrael, as sweet as the waters of Nir, and as refreshing as the kisses of houris – go with God."

"I wish you wouldn't fool," said Sanders, irritated.

"This is a crisis of our affairs," said Hamilton the Houssa. "You need a tonic. As for myself, if this had happened to me, I should have been in bed with a temperature. Was she very angry?"

Sanders nodded.

"She called me a British loafer and a Jew in the same breath. She flung in my face every British aristocrat who had ever married an American heiress; she talked like the New York correspondent of an Irish paper for five minutes. She threatened me with the whole diplomatic armoury of America and the entire strength of Scottish opinion; if she could have made up her mind whether she was Scot or just Philadelphia I could have answered her, but when she goaded me into a retort about American institutions she opened her kailyard batteries and silenced me."

The Houssa walked up and down the long bungalow.

"It was impossible, of course," he said seriously. "absolutely impossible. She'll land at Sierra Leone and interview Tullerton – he's the U.S. Consul. I think she'll be surprised when she hears Tullerton's point of view."

Sanders stayed to tiffin, and the discussion of Millie Tavish continued intermittently throughout the meal.

"If I hadn't given Yoka permission to overhaul the engines of the Zaire" said Sanders, "I'd start right away for the Isisi and interview Tobolaka. But by this time he'll have her cylinders open. By the way, I've remembered something," he said, suddenly.

He clapped his hands, and Hamilton's orderly came.

"Ahmet," said Sanders, "go quickly to Sergeant Abiboo and tell him to give food to the Isisi boatmen who came this morning. Also that he shall tell them to stay with us, for I have a 'book' to write to the king."

"On my life," said Ahmet conventionally, and went out.

"I will say what I have to say by letter," said the Commissioner, when the man had gone at a jog-trot across the compound; "and, since he has a swift canoe, he will receive evidence of my displeasure earlier than it would otherwise reach him."

Ahmet came back in five minutes, and with him Abiboo.

"Lord," said the latter, "I could not do as you wish, for the Isisi have gone."

"Gone!"

"Lord, that is so, for when the lady came back from the ship she went straight away to the canoe and – "

Sanders was on his feet, his face white.

"When the lady came back from the ship," he repeated slowly, "Did she come back?"

"Master, an hour since. I did not see her, for she came by the short way from the beach to the river-landing. But many saw her."

Sanders nodded.

"Go to Yoka and let him have steam against my coming."

The sergeant's face was blank.

"Lord, Yoka has done many things," he said, "such as removing the shh-shh of the engine" – Sanders groaned – "yet will I go to him and speak with him for steam."

"If he's got the cylinder dismantled," said Sanders in despair, "it will be hours before the Zaire is ready, and I haven't a canoe that can overtake them."

A Houssa came to the door.

"A telegram for you," said Hamilton, taking the envelope from the man.

Sanders tore it open and read. It was from London:

"Washington wires: 'We learn American girl gone to Isisi, West Africa, to marry native king. Government request you advise authorities turn her back at all costs; we indemnify you against any act of arrest to prevent her carrying plan into execution.' Use your discretion and act. Have advised all magistrates. Girl's name Tavish. – Colonial Office."

He had finished reading when Abiboo returned.

"'To-morrow, two hours before the sun, there will be steam, master,' so said Yoka."

"It can't be helped," said Sanders; "we'll have to try another way."

By swift canoe the Isisi is three days' journey from headquarters. From the Isisi to Ochori city is one day. Tobolaka had time to make a last effort to secure magnificence for his wedding feast.

He sent for his councillor, Cala, that he might carry to Bosambo fine words and presents.

"If he refuses to come for my honour," said Tobolaka, "you shall say to him that I am a man who does not forgive, and that one day I will come to with an army and there will be war."

"Lord king," said the old man, "you are like an elephant, and the world shakes under your feet."

"That is so," said the king; "also I would have you know that this new wife of mine is white and a great person in her own country."

"Have no fear, lord," said Gala sagely; "I will lie to him."

"If you tell me I lie, I will beat you to death, old monkey," said the wrathful Tobolaka. "This is true that I tell you."

The old man was dazed.

"A white woman," he said, incredulously. "Lord, that is shame."

Tobolaka gasped. For here was a sycophant of sycophants surprised to an expression of opinion opposed to his master's.

"Lord," stammered Cala, throwing a lifetime's discretion to the winds, "Sandi would not have this – nor we, your people. If you be black and she be white, what of the children of your lordship? By Death! they would be neither black nor white, but a people apart!"

Tobolaka's fine philosophy went by the board.

He was speechless with rage. He, a Bachelor of Arts, the favoured of Ministers, the Latinist, the wearer of white man's clothing, to be openly criticised by a barbarian, a savage, a wearer of no clothes, and, moreover, a worshipper of devils.

At a word, Cala was seized and flogged. He was flogged with strips of raw hide, and, being an old man, he died.

Tobolaka, who had never seen a man die of violence, found an extraordinary pleasure in the sight. There stirred within his heart sharp exultation, fierce joys which he had never experienced before. Dormant weeds of unreasoning hate and cruelty germinated in a second to life. He found himself loosening the collar of his white drill jacket as the bleeding figure pegged to the ground writhed and moaned.

Then, obeying some inner command, he stripped first the coat and then the silk vest beneath from his body. He tugged and tore at them, and threw them, a ragged little bundle, into the hut behind him.

Thus he stood, bareheaded, naked to the waist.

His headmen were eyeing him fearfully. Tobolaka felt his heart leap with the happiness of a new-found power. Never before had they looked at him thus.

He beckoned a man to him.

"Go you," he said haughtily, "to Bosambo of the Ochori and bid him, on his life, come to me. Take him presents, but give them proudly."

"I am your dog," said the man, and knelt at his feet.

Tobolaka kicked him away and went into the hut of his women to flog a girl of the Akasava, who, in the mastery of a moment, had mocked him that morning because of his white man's ways.

Bosambo was delivering judgment when the messenger of the king was announced.

"Lord, there comes an Isisi canoe full of arrogance," said the messenger.

"Bring me the headman," said Bosambo.

They escorted the messenger, and Bosambo saw, by the magnificence of his garb, by the four red feathers which stood out of his hair at varying angles, that the matter was important.

"I come from the king of all this land," said the messenger; "from Tobolaka, the unquenchable drinker of rivers, the destroyer of the evil and the undutiful."

"Man," said Bosambo, "you tire my ears."

"Thus says my king," the messenger went on: "'Let Bosambo come to me by sundown that he may do homage to me and to the woman I take to wife, for I am not to be thwarted, nor am I to be mocked. And those who thwart me and mock me I will come up against with fire and spear.'"

Bosambo was amused.

"Look around, Kilimini," he said, "and see my soldiers, and this city of the Ochori, and beyond by those little hills the fields where all things grow well; especially do you look well at those fields by the little hills."

"Lord, I see these," said the messenger.

"Go back to Tobolaka, the black man, and tell him you saw those fields which are more abundant than any fields in the world – and for a reason."

He smiled at the messenger, who was a little out of his depth.

"This is the reason, Kilimini," said Bosambo. "In those fields we buried many hundreds of the Isisi who came against my city in their folly – this was in the year of the Elephants. Tell your king this: that I have other fields to manure. The palaver is finished."

Then out of the sky in wide circles dropped a bird, all blue and white.

Raising his eyes, Bosambo saw it narrowing the orbit of its flight till it dropped wearily upon a ledge that fronted a roughly-made dovecot behind Bosambo's house.

"Let this man have food," said Bosambo, and hastened to examine the bird.

It was drinking greedily from a little trough of baked clay. Bosambo disturbed his tiny servant only long enough to take from its red legs a paper that was twice the size, but of the same substance, as a cigarette-paper.

He was no great Arabic scholar, but he read this readily, because Sanders wrote beautiful characters.

"To the servant of God, Bosambo.

"Peace be upon your house. Take canoe and go quickly down-river. Here is to be met the canoe of Tobolaka, the king of Isisi, and a white woman travels therein. You shall take the white woman, though she will not go with you; nevertheless you shall take her, and hold her for me and my king. Let none harm her, on your head. Sanders, of the River and the People, your friend, writes this.

"Obey in the name of God."

Bosambo came back to the king's messenger.

"Tell me, Kilimini," he said, "what palaver is this that the king your master has?"

"Lord, it is a marrying palaver;" said the man, "and he sends you presents."

"These I accept," said Bosambo; "but tell me, who is this woman he marries?"

The man hesitated.

"Lord," he said reluctantly, "they speak of a white woman whom my lord loved when he was learning white men's ways."

"May he roast in hell!" said Bosambo, shocked to profanity. "But what manner of dog is your master that he does so shameful a thing? For between night and day is twilight, and twilight is the light of evil, being neither one thing nor the other; and between men there is this same. Black is black and white is white, and all that is between is foul and horrible; for if the moon mated with the sun we should have neither day nor night, but a day that was too dark for work and a night that was too light for sleep."

Here there was a subject which touched the Monrovian deeply, pierced his armour of superficial cynicism, overset his pinnacle of self-interest.

"I tell you, Kilimini," he said, "I know white folk, having once been on ship to go to the edge of the world. Also, I have seen nations where white and black are mingled, and these people are without shame, with no pride, for the half of them that is proud is swallowed by the half of them that is shameful, and there is nothing of them but white man's clothing and black man's thoughts."

"Lord," said Kilimini timidly, "this I know, though I fear to say such things, for my king is lately very terrible. Now we Isisi have great sorrow because he is foolish."

Bosambo turned abruptly.

"Go now, Kilimini," he said. "Later I shall see you."

He waved the messenger out of his thoughts. Into his hut, through this to his inner hut, he went.

His wife sat on the carpeted floor of Bosambo's harem, her brown baby on her knees.

"Heart of gold," said Bosambo, "I go to a war palaver, obeying Sandi. All gods be with you and my fine son.

"And with you, Bosambo, husband and lord," she said calmly; "for if this is Sandi's palaver it is good."

He left her, and sent for his fighting headman, the one-eyed Tembidini, strong in loyalty.

"I shall take one war canoe to the lower river," said Bosambo. "See to this: fifty fighting men follow me, and you shall raise the country and bring me an army to the place where the Isisi River turns twice like a dying snake."

"Lord, this is war," said his headman.

"That we shall see," said Bosambo.

"Lord, is it against the Isisi?"

"Against the king. As to the people, we shall know in good time."

Miss Millie Tavish, seated luxuriously upon soft cushions under the thatched roof of a deck-house, dreamt dreams of royalty and of an urbane negro who had raised his hat to her. She watched the sweating paddlers as they dug the water rhythmically singing a little song, and already she tasted the joys of dominion.

She had the haziest notion of the new position she was to occupy. If she had been told that she would share her husband with half-a-dozen other women – and those interchangeable from time to time – she would have been horrified.

Sanders had not explained that arrangement to her, partly because he was a man with a delicate mind, and partly because he thought he had solved the problem without such explanation.

She smiled a triumphant little smile every time she thought of him and her method of outwitting him. It had been easier than she had anticipated.

She had watched the Commissioner out of sight and had ordered the boat to return to shore, for standing an impassive witness to her embarkation had been the headman Tobolaka had sent. Moreover, in the letter of the king had been a few simple words of Isisi and the English equivalent.

She thought of many things – of the busy city she had left, of the dreary boarding-house, of the relations who had opposed her leaving, of the little legacy which had come to her just before she sailed, and which had caused her to hesitate, for with that she could have lived in fair comfort.

But the glamour of a throne – even a Central African throne – was upon her – she – Miss Tavish – Millie Tavish – a hired help —

And here was the actuality. A broad river, tree-fringed banks, high rushes at the water edge, the feather-headed palms of her dreams showing at intervals, and the royal paddlers with their plaintive song.

She came to earth as the paddlers ceased, not together as at a word of command but one by one as they saw the obstruction.

There were two canoes ahead, and the locked shields that were turned to the king's canoe were bright with red n'gola – and red n'gola means war.

The king's headman reached for his spear half-heartedly. The girl's heart beat faster.

"Ho, Soka!"

Bosambo, standing in the stern of the canoe, spoke:

"Let no man touch his spear, or he dies!" said Bosambo.

"Lord, this is the king's canoe," spluttered Soka, wiping his streaming brow, "and you do a shameful thing, for there is peace in the land."

"So men say," said Bosambo evasively.

He brought his craft round so that it lay alongside the other.

"Lady," he said in his best coast-English, "you lib for go with me one time; I be good feller; I be big chap – no hurt 'um – no fight 'um."

The girl was sick with terror. For all she knew, and for all she could gather, this man was a cruel and wicked monster. She shrank back and screamed.

"I no hurt 'um," said Bosambo. "I be dam good chap; I be Christian, Marki, Luki, Johni; you savee dem fellers? I be same like."

She fainted, sinking in a heap to the bottom of the canoe. In an instant Bosambo's arm was around her. He lifted her into his canoe as lightly as though she was a child.

Then from the rushes came a third canoe with a full force of paddlers and, remarkable of a savage man's delicacy, two women of the Ochori.

She was in this canoe when she recovered consciousness, a woman bathing her forehead from the river. Bosambo, from another boat, watched the operation with interest.

"Go now," he said to the chief of the paddlers, "taking this woman to Sandi, and if ill comes to her, behold, I will take your wives and your children and burn them alive – go swiftly."

Swiftly enough they went, for the river was high, and at the river head the floods were out.

"As for you," said Bosambo to the king's headman, "you may carry word to your master, saying thus have I done because it was my pleasure."

"Lord," said the head of the paddlers, "we men have spoken together and fear for our lives; yet we will go to our king and tell him, and if he illtreats us we will come back to you."

Which arrangement Bosambo confirmed.

King Tobolaka had made preparations worthy of Independence Day to greet his bride. He had improvised flags at the expense of his people's scanty wardrobe. Strings of tattered garments crossed the streets, but beneath those same strings people stood in little groups, their arms folded, their faces lowering, and they said things behind their hands which Tobolaka did not hear.

For he had outraged their most sacred tradition – outraged it in the face of all protest. A rent garment, fluttering in the wind – that was the sign of death and of graves. Wherever a little graveyard lies, there will be found the poor wisps of cloth flapping sadly to keep away devils.

This Tobolaka did not know or, if he did know, scorned.

On another such occasion he had told his councillors that he had no respect for the "superstitions of the indigenous native," and had quoted a wise saying of Cicero, which was to the effect that precedents and traditions were made only to be broken.

Now he stood, ultra-magnificent, for a lokalisounding in the night had brought him news of his bride's progress.

It is true that there was a fly in the ointment of his self-esteem. His invitation, couched in the choicest American, to the missionaries had been rejected. Neither Baptist nor Church of England nor Jesuit would be party to what they, usually divergent in their views, were unanimous in regarding as a crime.

But the fact did not weigh heavily on Tobolaka. He was a resplendent figure in speckless white. Across his dress he wore the broad blue ribbon of an Order to which he was in no sense entitled.

In places of vantage, look-out men had been stationed, and Tobolaka waited with growing impatience for news of the canoe.

He sprang up from his throne as one of the watchers came pelting up the street.

"Lord," said the man, gasping for breath, "two war canoes have passed."

"Fool!" said Tobolaka. "What do I care for war canoes?

"But, lord," persisted the man, "they are of the Ochori and with them goes Bosambo, very terrible in his war dress; and the Ochori have reddened their shields."

"Which way did he come?" asked Tobolaka, impressed in spite of himself.

"Lord," said the man, "they came from below to above."

"And what of my canoe?" asked Tobolaka.

"That we have not seen," replied the man.

"Go and watch."

Tobolaka was not as perturbed as his councillors, for he had never looked upon reddened shields or their consequences. He waited for half an hour, and then the news came that the canoe was rounding the point, but no woman was there.

Half mad with rage and chagrin, Tobolaka struck down the man who brought the intelligence. He was at the beach to meet the crestfallen headman, and heard his story in silence.

"Take this man," said Tobolaka, "and all the men who were with him, and bind them with ropes. By Death! we will have a feast and a dance and some blood!"

That night the war drums of the Isisi beat from one end of the land to the other, and canoes filled with armed men shot out of little creeks and paddled to the city.

Tobolaka, naked save for his skin robe and his anklets of feathers, danced the dance of quick killing, and the paddlers of the royal canoe were publicly executed – with elaborate attention to detail.