Sanders of the River, Edgar Wallace [best thriller novels of all time .TXT] 📗
- Author: Edgar Wallace
Book online «Sanders of the River, Edgar Wallace [best thriller novels of all time .TXT] 📗». Author Edgar Wallace
Then he stepped boldly along the lane. He had changed his white ducks for a dark blue uniform suit, and he was not observed by the majority until he came with his Houssas to the box. The heat from the fire was terrific, overpowering. Close at hand he saw that the fierceness of the blaze had warped the rough-hewn boards of the box, and through the opening he saw in the light a slab of stone.
"Take up the box quickly," he commanded, and the Houssas lifted the poles to their shoulders. Until then the great assembly had sat in silent wonder, but as the soldiers lifted their burden, a yell of rage burst from five thousand throats, and men leapt to their feet.
Sanders stood before the fire, one hand raised, and silence fell, curiosity dominating resentment.
"People of the Isisi," said Sanders, "let no man move until the god-stone has passed, for death comes quickly to those who cross the path of gods."
He had an automatic pistol in each hand, and the particular deity he was thinking of at the moment was not the one in the box.
The people hesitated, surging and swaying, as a mob will sway in its uncertainty.
With quick steps the bearers carried their burden through the lane; they had almost passed unmolested when an old woman shuffled forward and clutched at Sanders' arm.
"Lord, lord!" she quavered, "what will you do with our god?"
"Take him to the proper place," said Sanders, "being by Government appointed his keeper."
"Give me a sign," she croaked, and the people in her vicinity repeated, "A sign, master!"
"This is a sign," said Sanders, remembering the woman in labour. "By the god's favour there shall be born to Ifabi, wife of Adako, a male child."
He heard the babble of talk; he heard his message repeated over the heads of the crowd; he saw a party of women go scurrying back to the village; then he gave the order to march. There were murmurings, and once he heard a deep-voiced man begin the war-chant, but nobody joined him. Somebody—probably the same man—clashed his spear against his wicker shield, but his warlike example was not followed. Sanders gained the village street. Around him was such a press of people that he followed the swaying box with difficulty. The river was in sight; the moon, rising a dull, golden ball over the trees, laced the water with silver, and then there came a scream of rage.
"He lies! He lies! Ifabi, the wife of Adako, has a female child."
Sanders turned swiftly like a dog at bay; his lips upcurled in a snarl, his white, regular teeth showing.
"Now," said Sanders, speaking very quickly, "let any man raise his spear, and he dies."
Again they stood irresolute, and Sanders, over his shoulder, gave an order.
For a moment only the people hesitated; then, as the soldiers gripped the poles of the god-box, with one fierce yell they sprang forward.
A voice screamed something; and, as if by magic, the tumult ceased, and the crowd darted backward and outward, falling over one another in their frantic desire to escape.
Sanders, his pistol still loaded, stood in open-mouthed astonishment at the stampede.
Save for his men he was alone; and then he saw.
Along the centre of the street two men were walking. They were clad alike in short crimson kilts that left their knees bare; great brass helmets topped their heads, and brass cuirasses covered their breasts.
Sanders watched them as they came nearer, then: "If this is not fever, it is madness," he muttered, for what he saw were two Roman centurions, their heavy swords girt about their waists.
He stood still, and they passed him, so close that he saw on the boss of one shield the rough-moulded letters:—
"AUGUSTUS CAE.""Fever" said Sanders emphatically, and followed the box to the ship.
When the steamer reached Lukati, Sanders was still in a condition of doubt, for his temperature was normal, and neither fever nor sun could be held accountable for the vision. Added to which, his men had seen the same thing.
He found the reinforcements his pigeon had brought, but they were unnecessary now.
"It beats me," he confessed to Carter, telling the story; "but we'll get out the stone; it might furnish an explanation. Centurions—bah!"
The stone, exposed in the light of day, was of greyish granite, such as Sanders did not remember having seen before.
"Here are the 'devil marks,'" he said, as he turned it over. "Possibly—whew!"
No wonder he whistled, for closely set were a number of printed characters; and Carter, blowing the dust, saw—
"MARIUS ET AUGUSTUSCENT . . . . . . . . . NERO
IMPERAT . . . . . IN DEUS
. . . . . DULCE."
That night, with great labour, Sanders, furbishing his rusty Latin, and filling in gaps, made a translation:
Centurions of Nero, Cæsar and
Emperor,
Sleep sweetly with the gods."
"We are they who came beyond the wild lands which Hanno, the Carthaginian, found . . .
"Marcus Septimus went up into Egypt, and with him Decimus Superbus, but by the will of Cæsar, and the favour of the gods, we sailed to the black seas beyond. . . . . Here we lived, our ships suffering wreck, being worshipped by the barbarians, teaching them warlike practices.
. . . "You who come after . . . bear greetings to Rome to Cato Hippocritus, who dwells by the gate . . ."
Sanders shook his head when he had finished reading, and said it was "rum."
CHAPTER III. BOSAMBO OF MONROVIA.
For many years have the Ochori people formed a sort of grim comic relief to the tragedy of African colonisation. Now it may well be that we shall laugh at the Ochori no more. Nor, in the small hours of the night, when conversation flags in the little circle about the fires in fishing camps, shall the sleepy-eyed be roused to merriment by stories of Ochori meekness. All this has come about by favour of the Liberian Government, though at present the Liberian Government is not aware of the fact.
With all due respect to the Republic of Liberia, I say that the Monrovians are naturally liars and thieves.
Once upon a time, that dignity might be added to the State, a warship was acquired—if I remember aright it was presented by a disinterested shipowner. The Government appointed three admirals, fourteen captains, and as many officers as the ship would hold, and they all wore gorgeous but ill-fitting uniforms. The Government would have appointed a crew also, but for the fact that the ship was not big enough to hold any larger number of people than its officers totalled.
This tiny man-of-war of the black republic went to sea once, the admirals and captains taking it in turn to stoke and steer—a very pleasing and novel sensation, this latter.
Coming back into the harbour, one of the admirals said—
"It is my turn to steer now," and took the wheel.
The ship struck a rock at the entrance of the harbour and went down. The officers escaped easily enough, for your Monrovian swims like a fish, but their uniforms were spoilt by the sea water. To the suggestion that salvage operations should be attempted to refloat the warship, the Government very wisely said no, they thought not.
"We know where she is," said the President—he was sitting on the edge of his desk at Government House, eating sardines with his fingers—"and if we ever want her, it will be comforting to know she is so close to us."
Nothing more would have been done in the matter but for the fact that the British Admiralty decided that the wreck was a danger to shipping, and issued orders forthwith for the place where it lay to be buoyed.
The Liberian Government demurred on account of expense, but on pressure being applied (I suspect the captain of H.M.S. Dwarf, who was a man with a bitter tongue) they agreed, and the bell-buoy was anchored to the submerged steamer.
It made a nice rowdy, clanging noise, did that bell, and the people of Monrovia felt they were getting their money's worth.
But all Monrovia is not made up of the freed American slaves who were settled there in 1821. There are people who are described in a lordly fashion by the true Monrovians as "indigenous natives," and the chief of these are the Kroomen, who pay no taxes, defy the Government, and at intervals tweak the official nose of the Republic.
The second day after the bell was in place, Monrovia awoke to find a complete silence reigning in the bay, and that in spite of a heavy swell. The bell was still, and two ex-admirals, who were selling fish on the foreshore, borrowed a boat and rowed out to investigate. The explanation was simple—the bell had been stolen.
"Now!" said the President of the Liberian Republic in despair, "may Beelzebub, who is the father and author of all sin, descend upon these thieving Kroomen!"
Another bell was attached. The same night it was stolen. Yet another bell was put to the buoy, and a boat-load of admirals kept watch. Throughout the night they sat, rising and falling with the swell, and the monotonous "clang-jangle-clong" was music in their ears. All night it sounded, but in the early morning, at the dark hour before the sun comes up, it seemed that the bell, still tolling, grew fainter and fainter.
"Brothers," said an admiral, "we are drifting away from the bell."
But the explanation was that the bell had drifted away from them, for, tired of half measures, the Kroomen had come and taken the buoy, bell and all, and to this day there is no mark to show where a sometime man-of-war rots in the harbour of Monrovia.
The ingenious soul who planned and carried out this theft was one Bosambo, who had three wives, one of whom, being by birth Congolaise, and untrustworthy, informed the police, and with some ceremony Bosambo was arrested and tried at the Supreme Court, where he was found guilty of "theft and high treason" and sentenced to ten years' penal servitude.
They took Bosambo back to prison, and Bosambo interviewed the black gaoler.
"My friend," he said, "I have a big ju-ju in the forest, and if you do not release me at once you and your wife shall die in great torment."
"Of your ju-ju I know nothing," said the gaoler philosophically, "but I receive two dollars a week for guarding prisoners, and if I let you escape I shall lose my job."
"I know a place where there is much silver hidden," said Bosambo with promptitude. "You and I will go to this place, and we shall be rich."
"If you knew where there was silver, why did you steal bells, which are of brass and of no particular value?" asked his unimaginative guard.
"I see that you have a heart of stone," said Bosambo, and went away to the forest settlement to chop down trees for the good of the State.
Four months after this, Sanders, Chief Commissioner for the Isisi, Ikeli, and Akasava countries, received, inter alia, a communication of a stereotyped description—
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.A description followed.
Sanders put the document away with other such notices—they were not infrequent in their occurrence—and gave his mind to the eternal problem of the Ochori.
Now, as ever, the Ochori people were in sad trouble. There is no other tribe in the whole of Africa that is as defenceless as the poor Ochori. The Fingoes, slaves as they are by name and tradition, were ferocious as the Masai, compared with the Ochori.
Sanders was a little impatient, and a deputation of three, who had journeyed down to headquarters to lay the grievances of the people before him, found him unsympathetic.
He interviewed them on his verandah.
"Master, no man leaves us in peace," said one. "Isisi folk, N'Gombi people from far-away countries, they come to us demanding this and that, and we give, being afraid."
"Afraid of what?" asked Sanders wearily.
"We fear death and pain, also burning and the taking of our women," said the other.
"Who is chief of you?" asked Sanders, wilfully ignorant.
"I am chief lord," said an elderly man, clad in a leopard skin.
"Go back to your people, chief, if indeed chief you are, and not some old woman without shame; go back and bear with you a fetish—a most powerful fetish—which shall be, as me, watching your interest and protecting you. This fetish you shall plant on the edge of your village that faces the sun at noon. You shall mark the place where it shall be planted, and at midnight,
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