Bones - Edgar Wallace (free ebooks romance novels .TXT) 📗

and a crashing of thunders, and the blue-white lightning snicked in and out of the forest or tore sprawling cracks in the sky. In the Ochori city they heard the storm grumbling across the river and were awakened by the incessant lightning--so incessant that the weaver birds who lived in palms that fringed the Ochori streets came chattering to life.

It was too loud a noise, that M'shimba M'shamba made for the _lokali_ man of the Ochori to hear the message that N'gori sent--the panic-message designed to lure Bosambo to the newly-purchased spears.

Bones heard it--Bones, standing on the bridge of the _Zaire_ pounding away upstream, steaming past the Akasava city in a sheet of rain.

"Wonder what the jolly old row is?" he muttered to himself, and summoned his sergeant. "Ali," said he, in faultless Arabic, "what beating of drums are these?"

"Lord," said the sergeant, uneasily, "I do not know, unless they be to warn us not to travel at night. I am your man, Master," said he in a fret, "yet never have I travelled with so great a fear: even our Lord Sandi does not move by night, though the river is his own child."

"It is written," said Bones, cheerfully, and as the sergeant saluted and turned away, the reckless Houssa made a face at the darkness. "If old man Ham would give me a month or two on the river," he mused, "I'd set 'em alight, by Jove!"

By the miraculous interposition of Providence Bones reached the Ochori village in the grey clouded dawn, and Bosambo, early astir, met the lank figure of the youth, his slick sword dangling, his long revolver holster strapped to his side, and his helmet on the back of his head, an eager warrior looking for trouble.

"Lord, of you I have heard," said Bosambo, politely; "here in the Ochori country we talk of no other thing than the new, thin Lord whose beautiful nose is like the red flowers of the forest."

"Leave my nose alone," said Bones, unpleasantly, "and tell me, Chief, what killing palaver is this I hear? I come from Government to right all wrongs--this is evidently his nibs, Bosambo." The last passage was in his own native tongue and Bosambo beamed.

"Yes, sah!" said he in the English of the Coast. "I be Bosambo, good chap, fine chap; you, sah, you look um--you see um--Bosambo!"

He slapped his chest and Bones unbent.

"Look here, old sport," he said affably: "what the dooce is all this shindy about--hey?"

"No shindy, sah!" said Bosambo--being sure that all people of his city were standing about at a respectful distance, awe-stricken by the sight of their chief on equal terms with this new white lord.

"Dem feller he lib for Akasava, sah--he be bad feller: I be good feller, sah--C'istian, sah! Matt'ew, Marki, Luki, Johni--I savvy dem fine."

Happily, Bones continued the conversation in the tongue of the land. Then he learned of the dance which Bosambo had frustrated, of the spears taken, and these he saw stacked in three huts.

Bones, despite the character he gave himself, was no fool, and, moreover, he had the advantage of knowing of the new N'gombi spears that were going out to the Akasava day by day; and when Bosambo told of the midnight summons that had come to him, Bones did the rapid exercise of mental figuring which is known as putting two and two together.

He wagged his head when Bosambo had finished his recital, did this general of twenty-one. "You're a jolly old sportsman, Bosambo," he said very seriously, "and you're in the dooce of a hole, if you only knew it. But you trust old Bones--he'll see you through. By Gad!"

Bosambo, bewildered but resourceful, hearing, without understanding, replied: "I be fine feller, sah!"

"You bet your life you are, old funnyface," agreed Bones, and screwed his eyeglass in the better to survey his protege.


IV

Chief N'gori organized a surprise party for Bosambo, and took so much trouble with the details, that, because of his sheer thoroughness, he deserved to have succeeded. _Lokali_ men concealed in the bush were waiting to announce the coming of the rescue party, when N'gori sent his cry for help crashing across the world. Six hundred spearmen stood ready to embark in fifty canoes, and five hundred more waited on either bank ready to settle with any survivors of the Ochori who found their way to land.

The best of plans are subject to the banal reservation, "weather permitting," and the signal intended to bring Bosambo to his destruction was swallowed up in the bellowings of the storm.

"This night being fine," said N'gori, showing his teeth, "Bosambo will surely come."

His Chief Counsellor, an ancient man of the royal tribe,[2] had unexpected warnings to offer. A man had seen a man, who had caught a glimpse of the _Zaire_ butting her way upstream in the dead of night. Was it wise, when the devil Sandi waited to smite, and so close at hand, to engage in so high an adventure?

[Footnote 2: That which I call the Akasava proper is the very small, dominant clan of a tribe which is loosely called "Akasava," but is really Bowongo.]

"Old man, there is a hut in the forest for you," said N'gori, with significance, and the Counsellor wilted, because the huts in the forest are for the sick, the old, and the mad, and here they are left to starve and die; "for," N'gori went on, "all men know that Sandi has gone to his people across the black waters, and the M'ilitani rules. Also, in nights of storms there are men who see even devils."

With more than ordinary care he prepared for the final settling with Bosambo the Robber, and there is a suggestion that he was encouraged by the chiefs of other lands, who had grown jealous of the Ochori and their offensive rectitude. Be that as it may, all things were made ready, even to the knives of sacrifice and the young saplings which had not been employed by the Akasava for their grisly work since the Year of Hangings.

At an hour before midnight the tireless _lokali_ sent out its call:

"We of the Akasava" (four long rolls and a quick
succession of taps)

"Danger threatens" (a long roll, a short roll,
and a triple tap-tap)

"Isisi fighting" (rolls punctuated by shorter
tattoos)

"Come to me" (a long crescendo roll and
patter of taps)

"Ochori" (nine rolls, curiously like
the yelping of a dog)

So the message went out: every village heard and repeated. The Isisi threw the call northward; the N'gombi village, sent it westward, and presently first the Isisi, then the N'gombi, heard the faint answer: "Coming--the Breaker of Lives," and returned the message to N'gori.

"Now I shall also break lives," said N'gori, and sacrificed a goat to his success.

Sixteen hundred fighting men waited for the signal from the hidden _lokali_ player, on the far side of the river bend. At the first hollow rattle of his sticks, N'gori pushed off in his royal canoe.

"Kill!" he roared, and went out in the white light of dawn to greet ten Ochori canoes, riding in fanshape formation, having as their centre a white and speckless _Zaire_ alive with Houssas and overburdened with the slim muzzles of Hotchkiss guns.

"Oh, Ko!" said N'gori dismally, "this is a bad palaver!"

* * * * *

In the centre of his city, before a reproving squad of Houssas, a dumb man, taken in the act of armed aggression, N'gori stood.

"You're a naughty boy," said Bones, reproachfully, "and if jolly old Sanders were here--my word, you'd catch it!"

N'gori listened to the unknown tongue, worried by its mystery. "Lord, what happens to me?" he asked.

Bones looked very profound and scratched his head. He looked at the Chief, at Bosambo, at the river all aglow in the early morning sunlight, at the _Zaire_, with her sinister guns a-glitter, and then back at the Chief. He was not well versed in the dialect of the Akasava, and Bosambo must be his interpreter.

"Very serious offence, old friend," said Bones, solemnly; "awfully serious--muckin' about with spears and all that sort of thing. I'll have to make a dooce of an example of you--yes, by Heaven!"

Bosambo heard and imperfectly understood. He looked about for a likely tree where an unruly chief might sway with advantage to the community.

"You're a bad, bad boy," said Bones, shaking his head; "tell him."

"Yes, sah!" said Bosambo.

"Tell him he's fined ten dollars."

But Bosambo did not speak: there are moments too full for words and this was one of them.


CHAPTER II

THE DISCIPLINARIANS


Lieutenant Augustus Tibbetts of the Houssas stood at attention before his chief. He stood as straight as a ramrod, his hands to his sides, his eyeglass jammed in his eye, and Hamilton of the Houssas looked at him sorrowfully.

"Bones, you're an ass!" he said at last.

"Yes, sir," said Bones.

"I sent you to Ochori to prevent a massacre, you catch a chief in the act of ambushing an enemy and instead of chucking him straight into the Village of Iron you fine him ten dollars."

"Yes, sir," said Bones.

There was a painful pause.

"Well, you're an ass!" said Hamilton, who could