filled with the problem of M’Lino, when suddenly in the bush that fringes the Isisi river, something went “woof,” and the air was filled with flying potlegs. One struck his cabin, and splintered a panel to shreds, many fell upon the water, one missed Sergeant Abiboo’s head and sent his tarbosh flying.
Sanders rang his engines astern, being curious to discover what induced the would-be assassin to fire a blunderbuss in his direction, and Abiboo, bareheaded, went pattering forward and slipped the canvas cover from the gleaming little Maxim.
Then four Houssa soldiers jumped into the water and waded ashore, holding their rifles above their heads with the one hand and their ammunition in the other, and Sanders stood by the rail of the boat, balancing a sporting Lee-Enfield in the crook of his arm.
Whoever fired the shot had chosen the place of killing very well. The bush was very thick, the approach to land lay through coarse grass that sprang from the swamp, vegetation ran rank, and a tangle of creeper formed a screen that would have been impenetrable to a white man.
But the Houssas had a way — they found the man with his smoking gun, waiting calmly.
He was of the Isisi people — a nation of philosophers — and he surrendered his weapon without embarrassment.
“I think,” he said to Sergeant Abiboo, as they hurried down the bank to the riverside, “this means death.”
“Death and the torments of hell to follow,” said Abiboo, who was embittered by the loss of his tarbosh, which had cost him five francs in the French territory.
Sanders put up his rifle when he saw the prisoner. He held an informal court in the shattered deck cabin.
“Did you shoot at me?” he asked.
“I did, master,” said the man.
“Why?”
“Because,” the prisoner replied, “you are a devil and exercise witchcraft.”
Sanders was puzzled a little. “In what particular section of the devil department have I been busy?” he asked in the vernacular.
The prisoner was gazing at him steadily. “Master,” he replied, “it is not my business to understand these things. It is said to me, ‘kill’ — and I kill.”
Sanders wasted no more time in vain questions. The man was put in irons, the nose of the steamer turned again down stream, and the Commissioner resumed his vigil.
Midway between B’Fani and Lakaloli he came to a tying-up place. Here there were dead trees for the chopping, and he put his men to replenish his stock of fuel.
He was annoyed, not because a man had attempted to take his life, nor even because his neat little cabin forward was a litter of splinters and broken glass where the potleg had struck, but because he nosed trouble where he thought all was peace and harmony.
He had control of some sixteen distinct and separate nations, each isolated and separated from the other by custom and language. They were distinct, not as the French are from the Italian, but as the Slav is from the Turk.
In the good old times before the English came there were many wars, tribe against tribe, people against people. There were battles, murders, raidings, and wholesale crucifixions, but the British changed all that. There was peace in the land.
Sanders selected with care a long, thin cigar from his case, nibbled at the end and lit it.
The prisoner sat on the steel deck of the Zaire near the men’s quarters. He was chained by the legiron to a staple, and did not seem depressed to any extent. When Sanders made his appearance, a camp stool in his hand, the Commissioner seated himself, and began his inquisition.
“How do they call you, my man?”
“Bofabi of Isisi.”
“Who told you to kill me?”
“Lord, I forget.”
“A man or a woman?”
“Lord, it may have been either.”
More than that Sanders could not learn, and the subsequent examination at Isisi taught Sanders nothing, for, when confronted with M’Lino, the man said that he did not know her.
Sanders went back to his base in a puzzled frame of mind, and Bofabi of Isisi was sent to the convict establishment at the river’s mouth. There matters stood for three months, and all that Sanders learnt of the girl was that she had a new lover whose name was Tebeki, and who was chief of the Akasava.
There were three months of peace and calm, and then Tebeki, coveting his neighbour’s wife, took three hundred spears down into the Isisi country, burnt the village that sheltered her, crucified her husband, and carried her back with him.
In honour of this achievement Tebeki gave a feast and a beer dance. There were great and shameless orgies that lasted five days, and the strip of forest that fringes the river between the Isisi and the lower river became a little inferno.
At the end of the five days Tebeki sat down to consider his position. He was in the act of inventing justification for his crime, when Sanders came on the scene.
More ominous were the ten Houssas and the Maxim which accompanied the brown faced little man.
Sanders walked to Tebeki’s hut and called him out, and Tebeki, blear-eyed and shaky, stepped forth into the hot sunshine, blinking.
“Tebeki,” said Sanders, “what of O’Sako and his village?”
“Master,” said Tebeki, slowly, “he put shame upon me—”
“Spare me your lies,” said Sanders coldly, and signed to the Houssas.
Then he looked round for a suitable tree. There was one behind the hut — a great copal-gum.
“In half an hour I shall hang you,” said Sanders, looking at his watch.
Tebeki said nothing; only his bare feet fidgeted in the dust.
There came out of the hut a tall girl, who stood eyeing the group with curiosity; then she came forward, and laid her hand on Tebeki’s bare shoulder.
“What will you do with my man?” she asked. “I am M’Lino, the wife of O’Sako.”
Sanders was not horrified, he showed his teeth in a mirthless grin and looked at her.
“You will find another man, M’Lino,” he said, “as readily as you found this one.” Then he turned away to give directions for the hanging. But the woma, followed him, and boldly laid her hand on his arm.
“Master,” she said, “if any was wronged by O’Sako’s death, was it not I, his wife? Yet I say let Tebeki go free, for I love him.”
“You may go to the devil,” said Sanders politely; “I am getting tired of you and your lovers.” He hanged Tebeki, expeditiously and with science, and the man died immediately, because Sanders was very thorough in this sort of business. Then he and the Houssa corps marched away, and the death song of the woman sounded fainter and fainter as the forest enveloped him. He camped that night on the Hill of Trees, overlooking the sweeping bend of the river, and in the morning his orderly came to tell him that the wife of O’Sako desired to see him.
Sanders cursed the wife of O’Sako, but saw her.
She opened her mission without preliminary.
“Because of the death I brought to O’Sako, my husband, and Tebeki, my lover, the people have cast me forth,” she said. “Every hand is against me, and if I stay in this country I shall die.”
“Well?” said Sanders.
“So I will go with you, until you reach the Sangar River, which leads to the Congo. I have brothers there.”
“All this may be true,” said Sanders dispassionately;