Bosambo of the River

CHAPTER V

THE KILLING OF OLANDI

Chief of Sanders's spies in the wild country was Kambara, the N'gombi man, resolute, fearless, and very zealous for his lord. He lived in the deep of the N'gombi forest, in one of those unexpected towns perched upon a little hill with a meandering tributary to the great river, half ringing its base.

His people knew him for a wise and silent chief, who dispensed justice evenhandedly, and wore about his neck the chain and medal of his office (a wonder-working medal with a bearded face in relief and certain devil marks).

He made long journeys, leaving his village without warning and returning without notice. At night he would be sitting before his fire, brooding and voiceless; in the morning he would be missing. Some of his people said that he was a witch-doctor, practising his magic in hidden places of the forest; others that he changed himself into a leopard by his magic and went hunting men. Figuratively speaking, the latter was near the truth, for Kambara was a great tracker of criminals, and there was none so wily as could escape his relentless search.

Thus, when Bolobo, the chief, plotted a rising, it was Kambara's word which brought Sanders and his soldiers, to the unbounded dismay of Bolobo, who thought his secret known only to himself and his two brothers.

It was Kambara who accomplished the undoing of Sesikmi, the great king; it was Kambara who held the vaguely-defined border line of the N'gombi country more effectively than a brigade of infantry against the raider and the Arab trader.

Sanders left him to his devices, sending such rewards as his services merited, and receiving in exchange information of a particularly valuable character.

Kambara was a man of discretion. When Olandi of the Akasava came into the N'gombi forest, Kambara lodged him regally, although Olandi was breaking the law in crossing the border. But Olandi was a powerful chief and, ordinarily, a law-abiding man, and there are crimes which Kambara preferred to shut his eyes upon.

So he entertained Olandi for two days – not knowing that somewhere down the little river, in Olandi's camp, was a stolen woman who moaned and wrung her hands and greatly desired death.

For Olandi's benefit the little village made merry, and Tisini, the wife of Kambara, danced the dance of the two buffaloes – an exhibition which would have been sufficient to close the doors of any London music-hall and send its manager to hard labour.

At the same time that Olandi departed, Kambara disappeared; for there were rumours of raiding on the frontier, and he was curious in the interests of government.

Three weeks afterwards a man whose face none saw came swiftly and secretly to the frontiers of the Akasava country, and with him came such of his kindred as were closely enough related to feel the shame which Olandi had put upon them.

For Olandi of the Akasava had carried off the favourite wife of the man, though not against her will.

This Olandi was a fine animal, tall and broad of shoulder, muscled like an ox, arrogant and pitiless. They called him the native name for leopard because he wore robes of that beast's skin, two so cunningly joined that a grinning head lay over each broad shoulder.

He was a hunter and a fighting man. His shield was of wicker, delicately patterned and polished with copal; his spears were made by the greatest of the N'gombi craftsmen, and were burnished till they shone like silver; and about his head he wore a ring of silver. A fine man in every way.

Some say that he aspired to the kingship of the Akasava, and that Tombili's death might with justice be laid at his door; but as to that we have no means of knowing the truth, for Tombili was dead when they found him in the forest.

Men might tolerate his tyrannies, sit meekly under his drastic judgments, might uncomplainingly accept death at his hands; but no man is so weak that he would take the loss of his favourite wife without fighting, and thus it came about that these men came paddling furiously through the black night.

Save for the "flip-flap" of the paddles, as they struck the water, and the little groan which accompanied each stroke, there was no sound.

They came to the village where Olandi lorded it just as the moon cleared the feathery tops of the N'gombi woods.

Bondondo lay white and silent under the moon, two rows of roofs yellow thatched, and in the centre the big rambling hut of the chief, with its verandah propped with twisted saplings.

The secret man and his brothers made fast their two canoes and leapt lightly to land. They made no sound, and their leader guiding them, they went through the street like ghostly shadows.

Before the chief's hut the embers of a dull fire glowed. He hesitated before the doors. Three huts built to form a triangle composed the chief's habitation. To the right and left was an entrance with a hanging curtain of skins.

Likely as not Olandi slept in the third hut, which opened from either of these.

He hesitated a moment, then he drew aside the curtains of the right-hand door and went in, his brother, his uncle, and his two cousins following.

A sleepy voice asked who was there.

"I come to see the lord Olandi," said the intruder.

He heard a rustle at the farthermost end of the room and the creaking of a skin bed.

"What seek you?" said a voice, and it was that of a man used to command.

"Is that my lord?" demanded the visitor.

He had a broad-bladed elephant sword gripped fast, so keen of edge that a man might shave the hair from the back of his hand therewith.

"I am Olandi," said the man in the darkness, and came forward.

There was absolute stillness. They who waited could hear the steady breathing of the sleepers; they heard, too, a "whish!" such as a civilised man hears when his womenfolk thrust a hatpin through a soft straw shape.

Another tense silence, then:

"It is as it should be," said the murderer calmly, and softly called a name. Somebody came blundering from the inner room sobbing with chokes and gulps.

"Come," said the man, then: "Is the foreign woman there also? Let her also go with us."

The girl called another in a low voice, and a woman joined them. Olandi was catholic in his tastes and raided indiscriminately.

The first girl shrank back as her husband laid his hand on her arm.

"Where is my lord?" she whimpered.

"I am your lord," said the secret man dryly; "as for the other, he has no need of women, unless there be women in hell, which is very likely."

None attempted to stop the party as it went through the street and back to the canoes, though there were wails and moanings in Olandi's hut and uneasy stirrings in the villages.

Men hailed them sharply as they passed, saying, "Oilo?" which means, "Who walks?" But they made no reply.

Then with the river and safety before them, there arose the village watchman who challenged the party.

He had heard the faint death-cry from Olandi's hut, and advanced his terrible cutting-spear to emphasise his challenge.

The leader leapt at him, but the watchman parried the blow skilfully and brought the blade of his spear down as a man of olden times might sweep his battle-axe.

The other's sword had been struck from his hold, and he put up his defenceless arm to ward off the blow.

Twice the sharp edge of the spear slashed his hand, for in the uncertain light of the moon the watchman misjudged his distance.

Then, as he recovered for a decisive stroke, one of the kinsmen drove at his throat, and the watchman went down, his limbs jerking feebly.

The injured man stopped long enough roughly to dress his bleeding palm, then led his wife, shivering and talking to herself like a thing demented, to the canoe, the second wife following.

In the early hours before the dawn four swift paddlers brought the news to Sanders, who was sleeping aboard the Zaire, made fast to the beach of Akasava city.

Sanders sat on the edge of his tiny bed, dangling his pyjama'd legs over the side, and listened thoroughly – which is a kind of listening which absorbs not only the story, but takes into account the inflexion of the teller's voice, the sympathy – or lack of it – the rage, the despair, or the resignation of the story-teller.

"So I see," said Sanders when the man had finished, for all four were hot with the news and eager to supply the deficiencies of the others, "this Olandi was killed by one whose wife he had stolen, also the watchman was killed, but none other was injured."

"None, lord," said one of the men, "for we were greatly afraid because of the man's brethren. Yet if he had sought to stop him, many others would have been killed."

"'If the sun were to set in the river, the waters would boil fish,'" quoted Sanders. "I will find this man, whoever he be, and he shall answer for his crime."

He reached the scene of the killing and made prompt inquiry. None had seen the face of the secret man save the watchman – and he was dead. As for the women – the villagers flapped their arms hopelessly. Who could say from what nation, from what tribes, Olandi stole his women?

One, so other inmates of Olandi's house said, was undoubtedly Ochori; as to the other, none knew her, and she had not spoken, for, so they said, she loved the dead man and was a willing captive.

This Olandi had hunted far afield, and was a hurricane lover and a tamer of women; how perfect a tamer Sanders discovered, for, as the Isisi saying goes, "The man who can bribe a woman's tongue could teach a snake to grind corn."

In a civilised country he would have found written evidence in the chief's hut, but barbarous man establishes no clues for the prying detective, and he must needs match primitive cunning with such powers of reason and instinct as his civilisation had given to him.

A diligent search of the river revealed nothing. The river had washed away the marks where the canoes had been beached. Sanders saw the bodies of both men who had fallen without being very much the wiser. It was just before he left the village that Abiboo the sergeant made a discovery.

There is a certain tree on the river with leaves which are credited with extraordinary curative powers. A few paces from where the watchman fell such a tree grew.

Abiboo found beneath its low branches a number of leaves that had been newly plucked. Some were stained with blood, and one bore the clear impression of a palm.

Sanders examined it carefully. The lines of the hand were clearly to be seen on the glossy surface of the leaf, and in the centre of the palm was an irregular cut, shaped like a roughly-drawn St. Andrew's Cross.

He carefully put the leaf away in his safe and went on to pursue his inquiries.

Now, of all crimes difficult to detect, none offers such obstacles as the blood feud which is based on a woman palaver.

Men will speak openly of other crimes, tell all there is to be told, be willing – nay, eager – to put their sometime comrade's head in the noose, if the murder be murder according to accepted native standards. But when murder is justice, a man does not speak; for, in the near future, might not he stand in similar case, dependent upon the silence of his friends for very life?

Sanders searched diligently for the murderers, but none had seen them pass. What direction they took none knew. Indeed, as soon as the motive for the crime became evident, all the people of the river became blind. Then it was that Sanders thought of Kambara and sent for him, but Kambara was on the border, importantly engaged.

Sanders pursued a course to the Ochori country.

"One of these women was of your people," he said to Bosambo the chief. "Now I desire that you shall find her husband."

Bosambo shifted his feet uneasily.

"Lord," he said, "it was no man of my people who did this. As to the woman, many women are stolen from far-away villages, and I know nothing. And in all these women palavers my people are as dumb beasts."

Bosambo had a wife who ruled him absolutely, and when Sanders had departed, he writhed helplessly under her keen tongue.

"Lord and chief," she said, "why did you speak falsely to Sandi, for you know the woman of the Ochori who was stolen was the girl Michimi of Tasali by the river? And, behold, you yourself were in search of her when the news of Olandi's killing came."

"These things are not for women," said Bosambo: "therefore, joy of my life, let us talk of other things."

"Father of my child," persisted the girl, "has Michimi no lover who did this killing, nor a husband? Will you summon the headman of Tasali by the river and question him?"

She was interested – more interested than Bosambo.

"God is all-seeing and beneficent," he said devoutly. "Leave me now, for I have holy thoughts and certain magical ideas for finding this killer of Olandi, though I wish him no harm."

Sanders had a trick of accepting alarming statements with a disconcerting calm.

People who essayed the task of making his flesh creep had no reward for their labours; his politely incredulous "O, ko!" which, uttered in certain tones, means, "Oh, indeed!" made his informant curl up inwardly.

Komo, pompous to a degree, anxious to impress his lord with the fact that he, Komo, was no ordinary chief, but a watchful, zealous, and conscientious regent, came fussing down the river in a glad sweat to speak of happenings on the edge of his territory.

Sanders granted the man an immediate audience, though he arrived in the dark hours of the night.

If you will visualise the scene, you have Sanders sitting up in bed in his pyjamas, and two Houssas splashed with rain – for a thunderstorm was raging – one of whom holds a lantern, all the light necessary to reveal a reeking Komo, shiny and wet, who, squatting on the floor, is voluble and ominous.

"As is my practice, lord," said Komo, "I watch men and things for your honour's comfort, being filled with a desire to serve you. And thus it is that I have learnt of certain things, dances and spells of evil, which are practised by the Ochori."

"The Ochori?"

Sanders was puzzled.

"By the Ochori – the trusted."

There was no mistaking the arch turn to his speech; the two words were charged with gentle irony.

"Is Bosambo dead that these things should be?" asked Sanders dryly. "Or has he perchance joined with the dancers?"

"Lord," said Komo impressively, "Bosambo dances with his people. For, being chief, he is the first to stamp his foot and say 'Ho!' He, too, assists at sacrifices and is ripe for abominable treachery."

"Oh, indeed!" said Sanders, with an inward sigh of relief. "Now I tell you this, Komo; there was once a great lord who trusted no man, nor did he trust his household, his wives, nor his slaves, and he walked ever with his back to the sun so that his shadow should run before him, for he did not trust his shadow. And one day he came to a river in flood, and behold! his shadow lay before him. And because he feared to turn his back upon his shadow, he plunged in and was drowned."

"Lord, I have heard the story. He was a king, and a great one," said Komo. Sanders nodded.

"Therefore, Komo, heed this: I trust all men – a little. I trust Bosambo much, for he has been my man in fair weather and foul." He turned to the silent Houssas. "Let this man be lodged according to his dignity and give him a present of cloth. The palaver is finished."

And Sanders, drawing the bedclothes up to his neck, the night being cold, turned over and was asleep before the chief and his escort had cleared the verandah.

"A busybody," was Sanders's verdict on Komo; yet, since there is no smoke without fire, he deemed it advisable to investigate at first hand.

Two days after the crestfallen chief had started on his way home the Zaire passed his canoe in mid-stream, going the same way, and the sight of her white hull and twin smokestacks brought consolation to Komo.

"My lord has considered my words," said he to his headman; "for at his village they said that the puc-a-puc did not leave till the new moon came, and here he comes, though the old moon is still sowing his rind."

"Chief," said the headman, "you are great in council, and even Sandi hearkens and obeys. You are wiser than an owl, swift and terrible as a hawk, and your voice is like the winds of a storm."

"You speak truly," said Komo, who had no false sense of modesty. "I am also very cunning, as you shall see."

Sanders was indeed beating up to the Ochori country. He was perturbed, not by reason of Komo's sinister suggestion, but because his spies had been silent. If there were dances in the Ochori country he should have been told, however innocent those dances were.

Pigeons had gone ahead of him to tell of his journey, and he found the first of his agents awaiting him at the junction of the Ikeli with the Isisi.

"Lord, it is true that the Ochori dance," said the man, "yet, knowing your lordship trusted Bosambo, I did not make report."

"There you did wrong," said Sanders; "for I tell you that if a hawk kills a parrot, or the crocodiles find new breeding-places, I wish to know what there is to know."

He gleaned more of these mysterious revels which Bosambo held in the forest as he grew nearer to the Ochori country, and was more puzzled than ever.

"Master," said the chief of the N'gombi village, "many folk go to the Ochori dance, for Bosambo the chief has a great magic."

"What manner of magic?"

"Lord, it is a magic with whiteness," and he exhibited his hand proudly.

Straight across the reddish-brown palm was an irregular streak of white paint.

"This the lord Bosambo did," he said, "and, behold, every day this remains will be fortunate for me."

Sanders regarded the sign with every evidence of strong emotion.

Two months before Sanders had sent many tins of white paint with instructions to the Ochori chief that his men should seek out the boundary posts of his kingdom – and particularly those that impinged upon foreign territories – and restore them to startling freshness.

"Many people of the Isisi, N'gombi, and Akasava go to Bosambo," the little chief continued; "for, behold, this magic of Bosambo's wipes away all soil. And if a man has been guilty of wickedness he is released of punishment. I," he added proudly, "once killed my wife's father cala cala, and frequently I have sorrowed because of this and because my wife often reminds me. Now, lord, I am a clean man, so clean that when the woman spoke to me this morning about my faraway sin, I hit her with my spear, knowing that I am now innocent."

Sanders thought rapidly.

"And what do you pay Bosambo for this?" he asked.

"Nothing, lord," said the man.

"Nothing!" repeated Sanders incredulously.

"Lord, Bosambo gives his magic freely, saying he has made a vow to strange gods to do this; and because it is free, many men go to his dance for purification. The lord Kambara, the Silent One, he himself passed at sunrise to-day."

Sanders smiled to himself. Kambara would have an interest in stray confessions of guilt —

That was it! The meaning of Bosambo's practice came to him in a flash. The painting of hands – the lure of purification; Bosambo was waiting for the man with the scarred hand.

Sanders continued his journey, tied up five miles short of the Ochori city, and went on foot through the forest to the place of meeting.

It was dark by the time he had covered half the journey, but there was no need of compass to guide him, even had the path been more difficult to follow. Ahead was a dull red glow in the sky where Bosambo's fires burnt.

Four fires there were, set at the points of an imaginary square. In the centre a round circle of stones, and in the centre again three spears with red hafts.

Bosambo had evidently witnessed, or been participant in, an initiation ceremony of a Monrovian secret society.

Within the circle moved Bosambo, and without it, two or three deep, the moving figures of those who sought his merciful services.

Slowly he moved. In one hand a bright tin of Government paint, in the other a Government brush.

Sanders, from his place of observation, grinned approvingly at the solemnity in which Bosambo clothed the ceremony.

One by one he daubed the men – a flick of the brush, a muttered incantation, and the magic was performed.

Sanders saw Kambara in the front rank and was puzzled, for the man was in earnest. If he had come to scoff he remained to pray. Big beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead, the outstretched hands were shaking.

Bosambo approached him, lifted his brush, peered down, then with a sweep of his arm he drew the N'gombi chief to him.

"Brother," he said pleasantly, "I have need of you."

Sanders saw what it meant, and went crashing through the undergrowth to Bosambo's side, and the yelling throng that had closed round the struggling pair drew back.

"Lord, here is your man!" said Bosambo, and forcibly pulled forward Kambara's palm.

Sanders took his prisoner back to the Zaire, and from thenceforward, so far as the crime was concerned, there was no difficulty, for Kambara told the truth.

"Lord," he said, "my hand alone is in fault; for, though my people were with me, none struck Olandi but I. Now do with me what you will, for my wife hates me and I am sick for sleep."

"This is a bad palaver," said Sanders gravely, "for I trusted you."

"Lord, you may trust no man," said Kambara, "when his woman is the palaver. I shall be glad to die, for I was her dog. And Olandi came and stayed one night in my village, and all that I was to her and all that I have given her was as nothing. And now she weeps all day for him, as does the Ochori woman I took with her. And, lord, if women worship only the dead, make an end, for I am sick of her scorn."

Sanders, with his head sunk, his hands clasped behind, his eyes examining the floor of his cabin – they were on board the Zaire– whistled a tune, a trick of his when he was worried.

"Go back to your village," he said. "You shall pay the family of Olandi thirty goats and ten bags of salt for his blood."

"Master," said Bosambo. "I have great joy in my heart that you did not hang this man, for it seems that Olandi did not die too soon. As for the Ochori girl," he went on, "I would have killed Olandi on her account – only Kambara was there first. This," he added, "I tell you, lord, for your secret hearing, for I knew this girl."