Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [65]
When, later in the evening, tidings came to Bones that the Wiggle had assumed an even more alarming angle, he ordered all men ashore, and Saka was placed under guard in a hut at the end of the village.
Now, Saka’s fame was not limited to his own country. He enjoyed, in the regions beyond the frontier of Lujamalababa (or Lugala as it was sometimes called), a reputation which was the envy of many local medicine men, who very properly depreciated his powers. For that is the way of the world, black or white, that small men enhance their reputations by depreciating their betters. And from Bones, the centre of interest, as the night wore on, became, not the hut in which he was lodged and sleeping, noisily, but the larger hut where the philosopher of a foreign people spoke wisdom and initiated the village of Lugala into the mysteries and eccentricities of M’lo, the invisible.
And nobody was more interested than the Houssa sentry who was placed over him, for he was of the Kano people, who believe that his family was under the especial care of a red and green snake, the red half of which was male and the blue half female, and he never went to bed at night without placing a bowl of water near his head, that this especial demon should not grow thirsty.
“Bring to me,” boasted Saka, “those who are dead, and I will make them alive, through the wonder of M’lo, who is so small that his village is beneath the foot of an ant! And none can see him save only Saka, who has eyes more wonderful than crocodiles and brighter than leopards. And this little devil of mine is in this village. He sits on the leaf of a tree to make your head ache, O man-with-the-wire-about-your-head; and he sits on the top of a cooking-pot and whispers evil words into the ears of your wives as they boil the fish. But most terrible is he when he dwells in the clothes of white men.”
“My daughter has pains in her stomach, Saka,” said a man, edging forward. “Also, my garden grows no corn; and monkeys have eaten my wonderful long yellow fruit.”
“It is M’lo who has done this,” said the other complacently, and screwed up his eyes. “I see him! He is in the white man’s clothes. Now, tomorrow morning Tibbetti will go down to the river and wash himself all over, in the manner of these people. Take, then, all of his clothing, also the little silk shirt with hollow legs that he wears in his sleep – these you will find by the shore; and put wood under them and burn them, and I will send M’lo to another village.”
“But, Saka, if you do this,” said a troubled patient, “he will whip us, being a cruel man. Also, Sandi is within a day’s march, and he will come with his soldiers and chastise us, as he did in the days of the war, when he hanged my own father.”
“Who shall chastise you most?” demanded Saka, oracularly. “This Sandi, who is only a man, or M’lo, who is a god and a devil and a ju-ju and a ghost, all in one? Who shall save your village from burning, and your young maidens from serious trouble, and your wives from fickleness? Only M’lo, who is so small that he may cook his dinner in the eye of a mosquito, and that terrible bird shall not feel!”
“Lord,” said an aged man, shaking his head in fear, “we were a happy people till you came, for we knew nothing of M’lo, having our own devils, as our fathers had.”
“To know is to suffer,” said Saka, truly and cryptically. “If you will not do these things for me, then you must pass, as many villages have passed. For what did I see on the other bank of the river but a village that was not? And the elephant grass is growing amidst the roof trees, and the graves of the dead – where are they?”
Ten miles up the river was a village in which beri-beri had appeared, wiping out such of the population as would not flee before the scourge.
“Who broke down the walls and rotted the roofs? – M’lo,” chanted Saka. “And now he has come here, and I fear you will all die…”
Bones gave an order that he was to be called early. He had hailed with joy the excuse for breaking the journey, for he was most anxious to meet the Hon. Muriel Witherspan