The Keepers of the King's Peace, Edgar Wallace [affordable ebook reader .txt] 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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Instead there came to the king's kraal a small but formidable party under a white man, and they arrived at a propitious moment, for the ground before the king's great hut was covered with square bottles, and the space in front of the palace was crowded with wretched men chained neck to neck and waiting to march to the coast and slavery.
The white man pushed back his helmet.
"Goodness gracious Heavens!" he exclaimed, "how perfectly horrid! Bosambo, this is immensely illegal an' terrificly disgustin'."
The Chief of the Ochori looked round.
"Dis feller be dam' bad," was his effort.
Bones walked leisurely to the shady canopy under which the king sat, and King Karata stared stupidly at the unexpected vision.
"O King," said Bones in the Akasavian vernacular which runs from Dacca to the Congo, "this is an evil thing that you do—against all law."
Open-mouthed Karata continued to stare.
To the crowded kraal, on prisoner and warrior, councillor and dancing woman alike, came a silence deep and unbroken.
They heard the words spoken in a familiar tongue, and marvelled that a white man should speak it. Bones was carrying a stick and taking deliberate aim, and after two trial strokes he brought the nobbly end round with a "swish!"
[Pg 247]A bottle of square-face smashed into a thousand pieces, and there arose on the hot air the sickly scent of crude spirits. Fascinated, silent, motionless, King Karata, named not without reason "The Terrible," watched the destruction as bottle followed bottle.
Then as a dim realization of the infamy filtered through his thick brain, he rose with a growl like a savage animal, and Bones turned quickly. But Bosambo was quicker. One stride brought him to the king's side.
"Down, dog!" he said. "O Karata, you are very near the painted hut where dead kings lie."
The king sank back and glared to and fro.
All that was animal in him told of his danger; he smelt death in the mirthless grin of the white man; he smelt it as strongly under the hand of the tall native wearing the monkey-tails of chieftainship. If they would only stand away from him they would die quickly enough. Let them get out of reach, and a shout, an order, would send them bloodily to the ground with little kicks and twitches as the life ran out of them.
But they stood too close, and that order of his meant his death.
"O white man," he began.
"Listen, black man," said Bosambo, and lapsed into his English; "hark um, you dam' black nigger—what for you speak um so?"
"You shall say 'master' to me, Karata," said [Pg 248]Bones easily, "for in my land 'white man' is evil talk."[8]
"Master," said the king sullenly, "this is a strange thing—for I see that you are English and we be servants of another king. Also it is forbidden that any white—that any master should stand in my kraal without my word, and I have driven even Igselensi from my face."
"That is all foolish talk, Karata," said Bones. "This is good talk: shall Karata live or shall he die? This you shall say. If you send away this palaver and say to your people that we are folk whom you desire shall live in the shadow of the king's hut, then you live. Let him say less than this, Bosambo, and you strike quickly."
The king looked from face to face. Bones had his hand in the uniform jacket pocket. Bosambo balanced his killing-spear on the palm of his hand, the chief saw with the eye of an expert that the edge was razor sharp.
Then he turned to the group whom Bones had motioned away when he started to speak to the king.
"This palaver is finished," he said, "and the white lord stays in my hut for a night."
"Good egg," said Bones as the crowd streamed from the kraal.
Senhor Bonaventura heard of the arrival of a [Pg 249]white man at the chief's great kraal and was not perturbed, because there were certain favourite traders who came to the king from time to time. He was more concerned by the fact that a labour draft of eight hundred men who had been promised by Karata had not yet reached Moanda, but frantic panic came from the remarkable information of Karata's eccentricities which had reached him from his lieutenant.
The duc's letter may be reproduced.
"Illustrious and Excellent Senhor,
"It is with joy that I announce to you the most remarkable reformation of King Karata. The news was brought to me that the king had received a number of visitors of an unauthorized character, and though I had, as I have reported to you, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, the most unpleasant experience at the hands of the king, I deemed it advisable to go to the city of the Greater M'fusi and conduct an inquiry.
"I learnt that the king had indeed received the visitors, and that they had departed on the morning of my arrival carrying with them one of their number who was sick. With this party was a white man. But the most remarkable circumstance, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, was that the king had called a midnight palaver of his councillors and high people of state and had told them that the [Pg 250]strangers had brought news of such sorrowful character that for four moons it would be forbidden to look upon his face. At the end of that period he would disappear from the earth and become a god amongst the stars.
"At these words, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, the king with some reluctance took from one of the strangers a bag in which two eyes had been cut, and pulled it over his head and went back into his hut.
"Since then he has done many remarkable things. He has forbidden the importation of drink, and has freed all labour men to their homes. He has nominated Zifingini, the elder chief of the M'fusi, to be king after his departure, and has added another fighting regiment to his army.
"He is quite changed, and though they cannot see his face and he has banished all his wives, relatives and councillors to a distant village, he is more popular than ever.
"Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, I feel that at last I am seeing the end of the old régime and that we may look forward to a period of sobriety and prosperity in the M'fusi.
"Receive the assurance, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, of my distinguished consideration."
His Excellency went purple and white.
[Pg 251]"Holy mother!" he spluttered apoplectically, "this is ruin!"
With trembling hands he wrote a telegram. Translated in its sense it was to this effect—
"Recall de Sagosta without fail or there will be nothing doing on pay day."
He saw this dispatched on its way, and returned to his bureau. He picked up the duc's letter and read it again: then he saw there was a postscript.
"P.S.—In regard to the strangers who visited the king, the man they carried away on a closed litter was very sick indeed, according to the accounts of woodmen who met the party. He was raving at the top of his voice, but the white man was singing very loudly.
"P.SS.—I have just heard, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, that the Hooded King (as his people call him) has sent off all his richest treasures and many others which he has taken from the huts of his deported relatives to one Bosambo, who is a chief of the Ochori in British Territory, and is distantly related to Senhor Sanders, the Commissioner of that Territory."
THE END FOOTNOTES:[1]This was evidently the Sanga River.
[2]The native equivalent for "Good morning."
[3]A book = written permission, any kind of document or writing.
[4]Both anise and star anise (Illicium anisatum) are to be found in the Territories, as also is a small plant which has all the properties (and more) of Pimpinella anisum. This was probably the plant.—Author.
[5]It is as curious a fact that amongst the majority of cannibal people there is no equivalent for "thank you."—E. W.
[6]A written promise.
[7]I came when I could.
[8]In most native countries "white man" is seldom employed save as a piece of insolence. It is equivalent to the practice of referring to the natives as niggers.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:Minor changes have been made to correct typesetter's errors; in all other respects, every effort has been made to be true to the author's words and intent.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Keepers of the King's Peace, by Edgar Wallace
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