"Bones": Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country by Wallace (ink ebook reader .txt) 📗

with a conscious authority, and such men, who were within earshot of her vitriolic comments, squirmed uncomfortably, and called her a woman of shame.

So matters stood when the Zaire came flashing to the Ochori city and the heart of Bones filled with pleasant anticipation.

Who was so competent to inform him on the matter of the souls of native women as Bosambo of the Ochori, already a crony of Bones, and admirable, if for no other reason, because he professed an open reverence for his new master? At any rate, after the haggle of tax collection was finished, Bones set about his task.

"Bosambo," said he, "men say you are very wise. Now tell me something about the women of the Ochori."

Bosambo looked at Bones a little startled.

"Lord," said he, "who knows about women? For is it not written in the blessed Sura of the Djin [Pg 159]that women and death are beyond understanding?"

"That may be true," said Bones, "yet, behold, I make a book full of wise and wonderful things and it would be neither wise nor wonderful if there was no word of women."

And he explained very seriously indeed that he desired to know of the soul of native womanhood, of her thoughts and her dreams and her high desires.

"Lord," said Bosambo, after a long thought, "go to your ship: presently I will send to you a girl who thinks and speaks with great wisdom—and if she talks with you, you shall learn more things than I can tell you."

To the Zaire at sundown came D'riti, a girl of proper height, hollow backed, bare to the waist, with a thin skirting of fine silk cloth which her father had brought from the Coast, wound tightly about her, yet not so tightly that it hampered her swaying, lazy walk. She stood before a disconcerted Bones, one small hand resting on her hip, her chin (as usual) tilted down at him from under lashes uncommonly long for a native.

Also, this Bones saw, she was gifted with more delicate features than the native woman can boast as a rule. The nose was straight and narrow, the lips full, yet not of the negroid type. She was in fact a pure Ochori woman, and the Ochori are related dimly to the Arabi tribes.

"Lord, Bosambo the King has sent me to speak about women," she said simply.

[Pg 160]

"Doocidly awkward," said Bones to himself, and blushed.

"O, D'riti," he stammered, "it is true I wish to speak of women, for I make a book that all white lords will read."

"Therefore have I come," she said. "Now listen, O my lord, whilst I tell you of women, and of all they think, of their love for men and of the strange way they show it. Also of children——"

"Look here," said Bones, loudly. "I don't want any—any—private information, my child——"

Then realizing from her frown that she did not understand him, he returned to Bomongo.

"Lord, I will say what is to be said," she remarked, meekly, "for you have a gentle face and I see that your heart is very pure."

Then she began, and Bones listened with open mouth ... later he was to feel his hair rise and was to utter gurgling protests, for she spoke with primitive simplicity about things that are never spoken about at all. He tried to check her, but she was not to be checked.

"Goodness, gracious heavens!" gasped Bones.

She told him of what women think of men, and of what men think women think of them, and there was a remarkable discrepancy if she spoke the truth. He asked her if she was married.

"Lord," she said at last, eyeing him thoughtfully, "it is written that I shall marry one who is greater than chiefs."

"I'll bet you will, too," thought Bones, sweating.

[Pg 161]

At parting she took his hand and pressed it to her cheek.

"Lord," she said, softly, "to-morrow when the sun is nearly down, I will come again and tell you more...."

Bones left before daybreak, having all the material he wanted for his book and more.

He took his time descending the river, calling at sundry places.

At Ikan he tied up the Zaire for the night, and whilst his men were carrying the wood aboard, he settled himself to put down the gist of his discoveries. In the midst of his labours came Abiboo.

"Lord," said he, "there has just come by a fast canoe the woman who spoke with you last night."

"Jumping Moses!" said Bones, turning pale, "say to this woman that I am gone——"

But the woman came round the corner of the deck-house, shyly, yet with a certain confidence.

"Lord," she said, "behold I am here, your poor slave; there are wonderful things about women which I have not told you——"

"O, D'riti!" said Bones in despair, "I know all things, and it is not lawful that you should follow me so far from your home lest evil be said of you."

He sent her to the hut of the chief's wife—M'lini-fo-bini of Ikan—with instructions that she was to be returned to her home on the following morning. Then he went back to his work, but found it strangely distasteful. He left nothing to chance the next day.

[Pg 162]

With the dawn he slipped down the river at full speed, never so much as halting till day began to fail, and he was a short day's journey from headquarters.

"Anyhow, the poor dear won't overtake me to-day," he said—only to find the "poor dear" had stowed herself away on the steamer in the night behind a pile of wood.

"It's very awkward," said Hamilton, and coughed.

Bones looked at his chief pathetically.

"It's doocid awkward, sir," he agreed dismally.

"You say she won't go back?"

Bones shook his head.

"She said I'm the moon and the sun an' all sorts of rotten things to her, sir," he groaned and wiped his forehead.

"Send her to me," said Hamilton.

"Be kind to her, sir," pleaded the miserable Bones. "After all, sir, the poor girl seems to be fond of me, sir—the human heart, sir—I don't know why she should take a fancy to me."

"That's what I want to know," said Hamilton, briefly; "if she is mad, I'll send her to the mission hospital along the Coast."

"You've a hard and bitter heart," said Bones, sadly.

D'riti came ready to flash her anger and eloquence at Hamilton; on the verge of defiance.

[Pg 163]

"D'riti," said Hamilton, "to-morrow I send you back to your people."

"Lord, I stay with Tibbetti who loves women and is happy to talk of them. Also some day I shall be his wife, for this is foretold." She shot a tender glance at poor Bones.

"That cannot be," said Hamilton calmly, "for Tibbetti has three wives, and they are old and fierce——"

"Oh, lord!" wailed Bones.

"And they would beat you and make you carry wood and water," Hamilton said; he saw the look of apprehension steal into the girl's face. "And more than this, D'riti, the Lord Tibbetti is mad when the moon is in full, he foams at the mouth and bites, uttering awful noises."

"Oh, dirty trick!" almost sobbed Bones.

"Go, therefore, D'riti," said Hamilton, "and I will give you a piece of fine cloth, and beads of many colours."

It is a matter of history that D'riti went.

"I don't know what you think of me, sir," said Bones, humbly, "of course I couldn't get rid of her——"

"You didn't try," said Hamilton, searching his pockets for his pipe. "You could have made her drop you like a shot."

"How, sir?"

"Stuck your finger in her eye," said Hamilton, and Bones swallowed hard.

[Pg 164]

CHAPTER VII THE STRANGER WHO WALKED BY NIGHT

Since the day when Lieutenant Francis Augustus Tibbetts rescued from the sacrificial trees the small brown baby whom he afterwards christened Henry Hamilton Bones, the interests of that young officer were to a very large extent extremely concentrated upon that absorbing problem which a famous journal once popularized, "What shall we do with our boys?"

As to the exact nature of the communications which Bones made to England upon the subject, what hairbreadth escapes and desperate adventure he detailed with that facile pen of his, who shall say?

It is unfortunate that Hamilton's sister—that innocent purveyor of home news—had no glimpse of the correspondence, and that other recipients of his confidence are not in touch with the writer of these chronicles. Whatever he wrote, with what fervour he described his wanderings in the forest no one knows, but certainly he wrote to some purpose.

"What the dickens are all these parcels that have come for you for?" demanded his superior [Pg 165]officer, eyeing with disfavour a mountain of brown paper packages be-sealed, be-stringed, and be-stamped.

Bones, smoking his pipe, turned them over.

"I don't know for certain," he said, carefully; "but I shouldn't be surprised if they aren't clothes, dear old officer."

"Clothes?"

"For Henry," explained Bones, and cutting the string of one and tearing away its covering revealed a little mountain of snowy garments. Bones turned them over one by one.

"For Henry," he repeated; "could you tell me, sir, what these things are for?"

He held up a garment white and small and frilly.

"No, sir, I can't," said Hamilton stiffly, "unless like the ass that you are you have forgotten to mention to your friends that Henry is a gentleman child."

Bones looked up at the blue sky and scratched his chin.

"I may have called him 'her,'" he confessed.

There were, to be exact, sixteen parcels and each contained at least one such garment, and in addition a very warm shawl, "which," said Hamilton, "will be immensely useful when it snows."

With the aid of his orderly, Bones sorted out the wardrobe and the playthings (including many volumes of the Oh-look-at-the-rat-on-the-mat-where-is-the-cat? variety), and these he carried to his hut with such dignity as he could summon.

[Pg 166]

That evening, Hamilton paid his subordinate a visit. Henry, pleasingly arrayed in a pair of the misdirected garments with a large bonnet on his head, and seated on the floor of the quarters contentedly chewing Bones' watch, whilst Bones, accompanying himself with his banjo, was singing a song which was chiefly remarkable for the fact that he was ignorant of the tune and somewhat hazy concerning the words.