“That may be,” said Sanders; “but it their chattering attracts bigger
game to stalk the hunter, then they are dangerous beasts. You shall tell
me later about the poisoning of M’laka’s brother; but first you shall
say why you desire to stand well with me. You need not lie, for we are
men talking together.”
Bosambo met his master’s eye fearlessly.
“Lord,” he said, “I am a little chief of a little people. They are not
of my race, yet I govern them wisely. I have made them a nation of
fighters where they were a nation of women.”
Sanders nodded.
“All this is true; if it were not so, I should have removed you long
since. This you know. Also that I have reason to be grateful to you for
certain happenings.”
“Lord,” said Bosambo, earnestly, “I am no beggar for favours, for I am,
as you know, a Christian, being acquainted with the blessed Peter and
the blessed Paul and other holy saints which I have forgotten. But I am
a better man than all these chiefs and I desire to be a king.”
“How much?” asked the astonished Sanders.
“A king, lord,” said Bosambo, unashamed; “for I am fitted for kingship,
and a witch-doctor in the Kroo country, to whom I dashed a bottle of
gin, predicted I should rule vast lands.”
“Not this side of heaven,” said Sanders decisively. He did not say
“heaven,” but let that pass.
Bosambo hesitated.
“Ochori is a little place and a little people,” he said, half to
himself; “and by my borders sits M’laka, who rules a large country three
times as large and very rich——”
Sanders clicked his lips impatiently, then the humour of the thing took
possession of him.
“Go you to M’laka,” he said, with a little inward grin, “say to him all
that you have said to me. If M’laka will deliver his kingdom into your
hands I shall be content.”
“Lord,” said Bosambo, “this I will do, for I am a man of great
attainments and have a winning way.”
With the dignity of an emperor’s son he stalked through the garden and
disappeared.
The next morning Sanders said good-bye to Mr. Franks—a coasting steamer
gave the Commissioner an excuse for hurrying him off. The chiefs had
departed at sunrise, and by the evening life had resumed its normal
course for Sanders.
It ran smoothly for two months, at the end of which time M’laka paid a
visit to his brother-in-law, Kulala, a chief of N’Gombi, and a man of
some importance, since he was lord of five hundred spears, and famous
hunters.
They held a palaver which lasted the greater part of a week, and at the
end there was a big dance.
It was more than a coincidence that on the last day of the palaver two
shivering men of the Ochori were led into the village by their captors
and promptly sacrificed.
The dance followed.
The next morning M’laka and his relative went out against the Ochori,
capturing on their way a man whom M’laka denounced as a spy of Sandi’s.
Him they did to death in a conventional fashion, and he died
uncomplainingly. Then they rested three days.
M’laka and his men came to the Ochori city at daybreak, and held a brief
palaver in the forest.
“Now news of this will come to Sandi,” he said; “and Sandi, who is a
white devil, will come with his soldiers, and we will say that we were
driven to do this because Bosambo invited us to a dance, and then
endeavoured to destroy us.”
“Bosambo would have destroyed us,” chanted the assembly faithfully.
“Further, if we kill all the Ochori, we will say that it was not our
people who did the killing, but the Akasava.”
“Lord, the killing was done by the Akasava,” they chanted again.
Having thus arranged both an excuse and an alibi, M’laka led his men to
their quarry.
In the grey light of dawn the Ochori village lay defenceless. No fires
spluttered in the long village street, no curl of smoke uprose to
indicate activity.
M’laka’s army in one long, irregular line went swiftly across the
clearing which separated the city from the forest.
“Kill!” breathed M’laka; and along the ranks the order was taken up and
repeated.
Nearer and nearer crept the attackers; then from a hut on the outskirts
of the town stepped Bosambo, alone.
He walked slowly to the centre of the street, and M’laka saw:
In a thin-legged tripod something straight and shining and ominous.
Something that caught the first rays of the sun as they topped the trees
of the forest, and sent them flashing and gleaming back again.
Six hundred fighting men of the N’Gombi checked and halted dead at the
sight of it. Bosambo touched the big brass cylinder with his hand and
turned it carelessly on its swivel until it pointed in the direction of
M’laka, who was ahead of the others, and no more than thirty paces
distant.
As if to make assurance doubly sure, he stooped and glanced along the
polished surface, and M’laka dropped his short spear at his feet and
raised his hands.
“Lord Bosambo,” he said mildly, “we come in peace.”
“In peace you shall go,” said Bosambo, and whistled.
The city was suddenly alive with armed men. From every hut they came
into the open.
“I love you as a man loves his goats,” said M’laka fervently; “I saw you
in a dream, and my heart led me to you.”
“I, too, saw you in a dream,” said Bosambo; “therefore I arose to meet
you, for M’laka, the king of the Lesser Isisi, is like a brother to me.”
M’laka, who never took his eyes from the brass-coated cylinder, had an
inspiration.
“This much I beg of you, master and lord,” he said; “this I ask, my
brother, that my men may be allowed to come into your city and make
joyful sacrifices, for that is the custom.”
Bosambo scratched his chin reflectively.
“This I grant,” he said; “yet every man shall leave his spear, stuck
head downwards into earth—which is our custom before sacrifice.”
M’laka shifted his feet awkwardly. He made the two little double-shuffle
steps which native men make when they are embarrassed.
Bosambo’s hand went slowly to the tripod.
“It shall be as you command,” said M’laka hastily; and gave the order.
Six hundred dejected men, unarmed, filed through the village street, and
on either side of them marched a line of Ochori warriors—who were not
without weapons. Before Bosambo’s hut M’laka, his brother-in-law,
Kulala, his headmen, and the headmen of the Ochori, sat to conference
which was half meal and half palaver.
“Tell me, Lord Bosambo,” asked M’laka, “how does it come about that
Sandi gives you the gun that says ‘Ha-ha-ha’? For it is forbidden that
the chiefs and people of this land should be armed with guns.”
Bosambo nodded.
“Sandi loves me,” he said simply, “for reasons which I should be a dog
to speak of, for does not the same blood run in his veins that runs in
mine?”
“That is foolish talk,” said Kulala, the brother-in-law; “for he is
white and you are black.”
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