Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [16]
He spent an exhilarating three days in the village, indulging in an orgy of condemnation which would have reduced the little township to about three huts, had his instructions been taken literally. Then, one morning, came the chief, M’kema.
“Lord,” he said, “there is a devil in my arm, and your magic is burning terribly. Now, I have thought that I will not have your magic, for I was more comfortable as a plain man. Also my wives are crying with pain, and the little children are making sad noises.”
Walking down the village street, Bones was greeted with scowling faces, and from every hut, it seemed, issued moans of distress. In his wisdom Bones called a palaver, and his four soldiers stood behind him, their magazines charged, their rifles lying handily in the crooks of their unvaccinated arms.
As a palaver, it was not a success. He had hardly begun to speak before there arose a wail from his miserable audience, and the malcontents found a spokesman in one Busubu, a petty chief.
“Lord, before you came we were happy, and now you have put fiery snakes in our arms, so that they are swollen. Now by your magic make us well again.”
And the clamour that followed the words drowned anything that Bones had to say. That night he decided to make his way back to the river.
He came from his hut and found Ahmet waiting for him.
“Lord, there is trouble here,” said the Kano boy in a low voice, “and the young men have taken their spears to the forest path.”
This was serious news, and a glance showed Bones that the village was very much awake. To force his way through the forest path was suicidal; to remain was asking for a six-line obituary notice in the Guildford Herald. Bones brought his party to the little river, and half the ground had not been covered before he was fighting a rear-guard action. With some difficulty they found a canoe, and paddled into midstream, followed by a shower of spears, which wounded one of his escort. In a quarter of an hour Bones stepped ashore at the Frenchi village, which turned out even at that late hour to witness such an unusual spectacle as the arrival of a British officer on alien soil.
He slept in the open that night, and in the morning the chief of the Frenchi village came to him with a complaint.
“Lord, when three of my men went over the M’taki, you whipped them so that they stand or sleep on their bellies. And this you did because of our famous sickness. Now, tell me why you sit down here with us, for my young men are very hot for chopping you.”
“Man,” said Bones loftily, “I came with magic for the people of the Lower Isisi.”
“So it seems,” said the French chief significantly, “and their magic is so great that they will give me ten goats for your head; yet because I fear Saudi I will not do this thing,” he added hastily, seeing the Browning in Lieutenant Tibbetts’ hand.
Briefly but lucidly, Bones explained the object of his visit, and the chief listened, unconvinced.
“Lord,” he said at last, “there are two ways by which sickness may be cured. The one is death, for all dead men are well, and the other is by chopping a young virgin when the moon is in a certain quarter and the river is high. Now, my people fear that you have come to cure them by making their arms swell, and I cannot hold them.”
Bones took the hint, and, re-embarking, moved along the little river till he came to another Isisi village. But the lokali had rapped out the story of his mission, and locked shields opposed his landing.
The chief of this village condescended to come to the water’s edge.
“Here you cannot land, Tibbetti,” he said, “for this is the order of Saudi to M’kema, that no man must come to us from the Frenchi land because of the sickness that is there.”