Bones, Edgar Wallace [top ten ebook reader txt] 📗

or recommend you for the Victoria Cross or something?"

Bones carefully speared a section of tongue from the open tin before he replied.

"I had not thought about the Victoria Cross, to tell you the truth," he admitted; "but if you feel that you ought to recommend me for something or other for conspicuous courage in the face of the enemy, do not let your friendship stand in the way."

"I will not," said Hamilton.

There was a little pause, then without raising his eyes from the task in hand which was at that precise moment the covering of a biscuit with a large and generous layer of marmalade, Bones went on.

"I practically saved the life of one of Bosambo's headmen. He was on the ground and three fellows were jabbing at him. The moment they saw me they dropped their spears and fled."

"I expect it was your funny nose that did the trick," said Hamilton unimpressed.

"I stood there," Bones went on loftily ignoring the gratuitous insult, "waiting for anything that might turn up; exposed, dear old fellow, to every death-dealing missile, but calmly directing, if you will allow me to say so, the tide of battle. It was," he added modestly, "one of the bravest deeds I ever saw."

He waited, but Hamilton had his mouth full of tongue sandwich.

"If you mention me in dispatches," Bones went on suggestively.

"Don't worry--I shan't," said Hamilton.

"But if you did," persisted Lieutenant Tibbetts, poising his sticky biscuit, "I can only say----"

"The marmalade is running down your sleeve," said Hamilton; "shut up, Bones, like a good chap."

Bones sighed.

"The fact of it is, Hamilton," he was frank enough to say, "I have been serving so far without hope of reward and scornful of honour, but now I have reached the age and the position in life where I feel I am entitled to some slight recognition to solace my declining years."

"How long have you been in the army?" asked Hamilton, curiously.

"Eighteen months," replied Bones; "nineteen months next week, and it's a jolly long time, I can tell you, sir."

Leaving his dissatisfied subordinate, Hamilton made the round of the camp. The red field, as he called it, was in reality a low-lying meadow, which rose steeply to the bank of the river on the one side and more steeply--since it first sloped downward in that direction--to the Ochori forest, two miles away. He made this discovery with a little feeling of alarm. He knew something of native tactics, and though his scouts had reported that the enemy was effectually routed, and that the nearest body was five miles away, he put a strong advance picquet on the other side of the river, and threw a wide cordon of sentries about the camp. Especially he apportioned Abiboo, his own sergeant, the task of watching the little river which flowed swiftly between its orderly banks past the sunken camp. For two days Abiboo watched and found nothing to report.

Not so the spies who were keeping watch upon the moving remnants of Bizaro's army.

They came with the news that the main body had mysteriously disappeared. To add to Hamilton's anxiety he received a message by way of headquarters and the Ochori city from the Administrator.

"Be prepared at the first urgent message from myself to fall back
on the Ochori city. German Government claim that whole of country
for two miles north of river N'glili is their territory. Most
delicate situation. International complications feared. Rely on
your discretion, but move swiftly if you receive orders."

"Leave this to me," said Bones when Hamilton read the message out; "did I ever tell you, sir, that I was intended for the diplomatic service----"

* * * * *

The truth about the Ochori border has never been thoroughly exposed. If you get into your mind the fact that the Imperialists of four nations were dreaming dreams of a trans-African railway which was to tap the resources of the interior, and if you remember that each patriotic dreamer conceived a different kind of railway according to his nationality and that they only agreed upon one point, namely, that the line must point contiguous with the Ochori border, you may understand dimly some reason for the frantic claim that that little belt of territory, two miles wide, was part of the domain of each and every one of the contestants.

When the news was flashed to Europe that a party of British Houssas were holding the banks of the N'glili river, and had inflicted a loss upon a force of criminals, the approval which civilization should rightly have bestowed upon Captain Hamilton and his heroic lieutenant was tempered largely by the question as to whether Captain Hamilton and his Houssas had any right whatever to be upon "the red field." And in consequence the telegraph lines between Berlin and Paris and Paris and London and London and Brussels were kept fairly busy with passionate statements of claims couched in the stilted terminology of diplomacy.

England could not recede from the position she had taken. This she said in French and in German, and in her own perfidious tongue. She stated this uncompromisingly, but at the same time sent secret orders to withdraw the force that was the bone of contention. This order she soon countermanded. A certain speech delivered by a too voluble Belgian minister was responsible for the stiffening of her back, and His Excellency the Administrator of the territory received official instructions in the middle of the night: "Tell Hamilton to stay where he is and hold border against all comers."

This message was re-transmitted.

Now there is in existence in the British Colonial Service, and in all branches which affect the agents and the servants of the Colonial Office, an emergency code which is based upon certain characters in Shakespearean plays.

I say "there is"; perhaps it would be better and more to the point if I said "there was," since the code has been considerably amended.

Thus, be he sub-inspector or commissioner, or chief of local native police who receives the word "Ophelia," he knows without consulting any book that "Ophelia" means "unrest of natives reported in your district, please report"; or if it be "Polonius" it signifies to him--and this he knows without confirming his knowledge--that he must move steadily forward. Or if it be "Banquo" he reads into it, "Hold your position till further orders." And "Banquo" was the word that the Administrator telegraphed.

* * * * *

Sergeant Abiboo had sat by the flowing N'glili river without noticing any slackening of its strength or challenging of its depth.

There was reason for this.

Bizaro, who was in the forest ten miles to the westward, and working moreover upon a piece of native strategy which natives the world over had found successful, saw that it was unnecessary to dam the river and divert the stream.

Nature had assisted him to a marvellous degree. He had followed the stream through the forest until he reached a place where it was a quarter of a mile wide, so wide and so newly spread that the water reached half-way up the trunks of the sodden and dying trees.

Moreover, there was a bank through which a hundred men might cut a breach in a day or so, even though they went about their work most leisurely, being constitutionally averse to manual labour.

Bizaro was no engineer, but he had all the forest man's instincts of water-levels. There was a clear run down to the meadows beyond that, as he said, he "smelt."

"We will drown these dogs," he said to his headman, "and afterwards we will walk into the country and take it for our own."

Hamilton had been alive to the danger of such an attack. He saw by certain indications of the soil that this great shallow valley had been inundated more than once, though probably many years had passed since the last overflow of water. Yet he could not move from where he had planted himself without risking the displeasure of his chief and without also risking very serious consequences in other directions.

Bosambo, frankly bored, was all for retiring his men to the comforts of the Ochori city.

"Lord, why do we sit here?" he asked, "looking at this little stream which has no fish and at this great ugly country, when I have my beautiful city for your lordship's reception, and dancing folk and great feasts?"

"A doocid sensible idea," murmured Bones.

"I wait for a book," answered Hamilton shortly. "If you wish to go, you may take your soldiers and leave me."

"Lord," said Bosambo, "you put shame on me," and he looked his reproach.

"I am really surprised at you, Hamilton," murmured Bones.

"Keep your infernal comments to yourself," snapped his superior. "I tell you I must wait for my instructions."

He was a silent man for the rest of the evening, and had settled himself down in his canvas chair to doze away the night, when a travel-stained messenger came from the Ochori and he brought a telegram of one word.

Hamilton looked at it, he looked too with a frown at the figures that preceded it.

"And what you mean," he muttered, "the Lord knows!"

The word, however, was sufficiently explicit. A bugle call brought the Houssas into line and the tapping of Bosambo's drums assembled his warriors.

Within half an hour of the receipt of the message Hamilton's force was on the move.

They crossed the great stretch of meadow in the darkness and were climbing up towards the forest when a noise like thunder broke upon their ears.

Such a roaring, crashing, hissing of sound came nearer and nearer, increasing in volume every second. The sky was clear, and one swift glance told Hamilton that it was not a storm he had to fear. And then it came upon him, and he realized what this commotion meant.

"Run!" he cried, and with one accord naked warriors and uniformed Houssas fled through the darkness to the higher ground. The water came rushing about Hamilton's ankles, one man slipped back again into the flood and was hauled out again by Bones, exclaiming loudly his own act lest it should have escaped the attention of his superior, and the party reached safety without the loss of a man.

"Just in time," said Hamilton grimly. "I wonder if the Administrator knew this was going to happen?"

They came to the Ochori by easy marches, and Hamilton wrote a long wire to headquarters sending it on ahead by a swift messenger.

It was a dispatch which cleared away many difficulties, for the disputed territory was for everlasting under water, and where the "red field" had blazed brilliantly was a calm stretch of river two miles wide filled with strange silent brown objects that floated and bobbed to the movement of the tide. These were the men who in their folly had loosened the waters and died of their rashness. Most notable of these was Bizaro.