Bosambo of the River. Wallace Edgar
was a tumultuous and stormy day when the wrathful benefactors of Arachi gathered in full strength and took from him all that was takable, and this in the face of the village, to Koran's great shame. Arachi, on the contrary, because of his high spirit, was neither ashamed nor distressed, even though many men spoke harshly.
"O thief and rat!" said the exasperated owner of a magnificent stool of ceremony, the base of which Arachi had contrived to burn. "Is it not enough that you should steal the wear of these things? Must you light your fires by my beautiful stool?"
Arachi replied philosophically and without passion: they might take his grand furnishings – which they did; they might revile him in tones and in language the most provocative – this also they did; but they could not take the noble hut which their labours had built, because that was against the law of the tribe; nor could they rob him of his faith in himself, because that was contrary to the laws of nature – Arachi's nature.
"My wife," he said to the weeping girl, "these things happen. Now I think I am the victim of Fate, therefore I propose changing all my gods. Such as I have do not serve me, and, if you remember, I spent many hours in the forest with my bete."
Arachi had thought of many possible contingencies – as, for instance:
Sandi might relent, and appoint him to a great chieftainship.
Or he might dig from the river-bed some such treasure as U'fabi, the N'gombi man, did once upon a time.
Arachi, entranced with this latter idea, went one morning before sunrise to a place by the shore and dug. He turned two spadefuls of earth before an infinite weariness fell upon him, and he gave up the search.
"For," he argued, "if treasure is buried in the river-bed, it might as well be there as elsewhere. And if it be not there, where may it be?"
Arachi bore his misfortune with philosophy. He sat in the bare and bleak interior of his hut, and explained to his wife that the men who had robbed him – as he said – hated him, and were jealous of him because of his great powers, and that one day, when he was a great chief, he would borrow an army from his friends the N'gombi, and put fire to their houses.
Yes, indeed, he said "borrow," because it was his nature to think in loans.
His father-in-law came on the day following the deporting, expecting to save something from the wreckage on account of Koran's dowry. But he was very late.
"O son of shame!" he said bitterly. "Is it thus you repay for my priceless daughter? By Death! but you are a wicked man."
"Have no fear, fisherman," said Arachi loftily, "for I am a friend of Sandi, and be sure that he will do that for me which will place me high above common men. Even now I go to make a long palaver with him, and, when I return, you shall hear news of strange happenings."
Arachi was a most convincing man, possessing the powers of all great borrowers, and he convinced his father-in-law – a relation who, from the beginning of time, has always been the least open to conviction.
He left his wife, and she, poor woman, glad to be relieved of the presence of her loquacious husband, probably went to sleep.
At any rate, Arachi came to headquarters at a propitious moment for him. Headquarters at that moment was an armed camp at the junction of the Isisi and Ikeli rivers.
On the top of all his other troubles, Sanders had the problem of a stranger who had arrived unbidden. His orderly came to him and told him that a man desired speech of him.
"What manner of man?" asked Sanders, wearily.
"Master," said the orderly, "I have not seen a man like him before."
Sanders went out to inspect his visitor. The stranger rose and saluted, raising both hands, and the Commissioner looked him over. He was not of any of the tribes he knew, being without the face-cuts laterally descending either cheek, which mark the Bomongo. Neither was he tattooed on the forehead, like the people of the Little River.
"Where do you come from?" asked Sanders, in Swaheli – which is the lingua franca of the continent – but the man shook his head.
So Sanders tried him again, this time in Bomongo, thinking, from his face-marks, that he must be a man of the Bokeri people. But he answered in a strange tongue.
"Quel nom avez vous?" Sanders asked, and repeated the question in Portuguese. To this latter he responded, saying that he was a small chief of the Congo Angola, and that he had left his land to avoid slavery.
"Take him to the men's camp and feed him," said Sanders, and dismissed him from his mind.
Sanders had little time to bother about stray natives who might wander into his camp. He was engaged in searching for a gentleman who was known as Abdul Hazim, a great rascal, trading guns and powder contrary to the law.
"And," said Sanders to the captain of the Houssas, "if I catch him he'll be sorry."
Abdul Hazim shared this view, so kept out of Sanders's way to such purpose that, after a week's further wanderings, Sanders returned to his headquarters.
Just about then he was dispirited, physically low from the after-effects of fever, and mentally disturbed.
Nothing went right with the Commissioner. There had been a begging letter from head-quarters concerning this same Abdul Hazim. He was in no need of Houssa palavers, yet there must needs come a free fight amongst these valiant soldier-men, and, to crown all, two hours afterwards, the Houssa skipper had gone to bed with a temperature of 104.6.
"Bring the swine here," said Sanders inelegantly, when the sergeant of Houssas reported the fight. And there were marched before him the strange man, who had come to him from the backlands, and a pugnacious soldier named Kano.
"Lord," said the Houssa, "by my god, who is, I submit, greater than most gods, I am not to blame. This Kaffir dog would not speak to me when I spoke; also, he put his hands to my meat, so I struck him."
"Is that all?" asked Sanders.
"That is all, lord."
"And did the stranger do no more than, in his ignorance, touch your meat, and keep silence when you spoke?"
"No more, lord."
Sanders leant back in his seat of justice and scowled horribly at the Houssa.
"If there is one thing more evident to me than another," he said slowly, "it is that a Houssa is a mighty person, a lord, a king. Now I sit here in justice, respecting neither kings, such as you be, nor slaves, such as this silent one. And I judge so, regarding the dignity of none, according to the law of the book. Is that so?"
"That is so, lord."
"And it would seem that it is against the law to raise hand against any man, however much he offends you, the proper course being to make complaint according to the regulations of the service. Is that so?"
"That is so, lord."
"Therefore you have broken the law. Is that truth?"
"That is truth, lord."
"Go back to your lines, admitting this truth to your comrades, and let the Kaffir rest. For on the next occasion, for him that breaks the law, there will be breaking of skin. The palaver is finished."
The Houssa retired.
"And," said Sanders, retailing the matter to the convalescent officer next morning, "I consider that I showed more than ordinary self-restraint in not kicking both of them to the devil."
"You're a great man," said the Houssa officer. "You'll become a colonial-made gentleman one of these days, unless you're jolly careful."
Sanders passed in silence the Houssa's gibe at the Companionship of St. Michael and St. George, and, moreover, C.M.G.'s were not likely to come his way whilst Abdul Hazim was still at large.
He was in an unpleasant frame of mind when Arachi came swiftly in a borrowed canoe, paddled by four men whom he had engaged at an Isisi village, on a promise of payment which it was very unlikely he would ever be able to fulfil.
"Master," said Arachi solemnly, "I come desiring to serve your lordship, for I am too