Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [32]
Sitting in the Village of Irons, in that portion reserved for the women who had worked evilly against the Government, M’mina often said to her fellows in durance: “Sandi has taken my man, but my soul and spirit and ghost is with him always, and my devil shall whisper in his ear: ‘M’mina waits for you in the Forest of Dreams.’”
Which in a sense was perfectly true, though Terence Doughty would have been shocked if he could have identified the woman who flitted through his thoughts and was the foundation of many dreams…
Once he woke with a cry, and his wife asked him if he was ill.
“No, no… I was thinking…a nice gel… I wonder who she was?”
His wife smiled. She was wise enough never to probe into the past, but sometimes she wondered who that nice gel was.
THE BRASS BEDSTEAD
There is no tribe on the river that has not its most secret mystery. In the course of the years, Mr Commissioner Sanders had acquired a working knowledge of hundreds, yet was well aware that he had but touched the fringe of multitudes. For within every mystery is yet another. He knew that within the pods of a specie of wild pea there dwelt a beneficent spirit called “Cha”, that brought luck and prosperity, but that if the pea was split into four and given to four people, one would die within a moon, but he did not learn for years that if one of the four quarters remained green, there would be no fish in the river for the space of nine moons.
Every plant and flowering tree had its peculiar familiar, good or bad, and once he had been brought a hundred and fifty miles to a great palaver, and all because a mealy stalk had produced only one cob – which was a sign of coming pestilence. Sometimes a peculiar potent would not appear at all and a hundred thousand men and women would sit and shiver their apprehension, whilst search parties would go forth and seek it.
In the end Sanders evolved a formula. At headquarters was a squat concrete house, built at the time of a serious war to store ammunition. The magazine was still employed for that purpose, but Sanders found it a new use. It became a repository of ju-jus. When M’shimba M’shamba (which is another name for a small typhoon) did not put in an appearance, and the Isisi and N’gombi people met in solemn conclave to discuss what evil had been done that the great green spirit did not walk abroad, Sanders came.
“Have no fear, for M’shimba stays with me in my Ghost House, being very weary.”
When the famous Tree of the World was uprooted in a storm and swept out of sight down the river, Sanders could reassure a trembling people.
“This great tree Is. It lives in my strange House of Ghosts, and none other shall see it. There it sits making good magic for the Isisi.”
Bones came to be custodian of the Ghost House by natural processes. Finding that certain credit attached to the position, he claimed it for his own, and when the lower river folk lost their ju-ju (maliciously conveyed on to the Zaire by a native workman and concealed in the engine furnace) Bones assumed responsibility.
“This fine ju-ju came to my Ghost House, and there he lives, and every morning I speak to him and he speaks to me.”
“Lord, we should like to see our beautiful ju-ju, for he was made wonderfully out of a magic tree by our fathers,” said one of the troubled elders.
“Him you may see,” said Bones significantly, “but if you look upon the other ghosts who live with him, your eyes will fall out.”
They decided to leave the ju-ju to his tender care.
The plan worked exceedingly well until Bosambo fell out with the Akasava.