Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [66]
He imagined the picture of the year at the Royal Academy: a stern, handsome young officer, his sword girt to his waist, his sun helmet pushed back to show the almost Grecian nose and the perfect chin of a born commander. He was standing in the white African sunlight, his hands resting lightly on the barrel of a Hotchkiss gun; in the background, an infuriated mob of indigenous natives, whose bloody spears and blood-curdling yells failed to shake the courage of this cynically smiling young man. (Bones had practised the cynical smile for days.) And the picture would be called, simply: “An Empire Builder,” or “The Iron Hand and the Velvet Glove,” or something similarly appropriate.
He had neither the time nor the necessary apparatus to do his hair as he would like it to be done, but that was a pleasure in store; Abiboo had brought him the intelligence that the Wiggle was free from the sand shoal, and was riding at anchor in the clear waters beyond.
“Take the men on board,” said Bones briskly. “We will not sail for an hour or two. I must overhaul the machinery, Abiboo.”
Abiboo went and collected his prisoner and men, shipped them on board and sat down to wait. Bones shaved with the greatest care with a safety razor, and, slipping a dressing-gown over his pyjamas, he shuffled down to a secluded cove in the river for his morning bath.
The idea of being depicted in the Academy was an enthralling one. The fact that Miss Muriel Witherspan did not exhibit in the Academy, or anywhere else that made superlative merit a test for exhibition, did not occur to Bones. He saw himself walking before the picture of the year, viewing it with a quiet, quizzical, self-deprecatory smile, and stroll away, followed by turning heads which whispered “That is he! Tibbetts, the Empire Builder.”
He was so absorbed with this picture that he stood for some time breast-high in the water, staring solemnly at the Wiggle in midstream.
The picture of the year! And why shouldn’t she paint it? She seemed a very intelligent young woman, her paint-box was almost new, and must have cost a lot of money. And, anyway, painting was only a question of putting the right colours in the right places.
With a long and ecstatic sigh he turned and swam through the shallow water, and came, pink and dripping, to a patch of grass where he had left his clothing and a towel. But even the towel was gone. His pyjamas, jacket, and trousers had vanished. His slippers, however, he found.
“Hi!” yelled Bones, wrathfully, and the echoed “Hi!” that came back to him from the wood had the quality of derision.
“Goodness gracious heavens alive!” said Bones aghast. He was not three minutes’ walk from his hut, but there was no way of reaching that shelter without passing through the village street.
Bones looked round helplessly for leaves, having a vague recollection that somewhere or other he had read of somebody who had formed an extemporised costume from this flimsy material. But the only leaves in view were the smallest leaves of a gum-tree; and Bones remembered he had neither needle nor thread.
“Hi!” he yelled again, purple in the face, but there was no answer.
He turned and looked at the boat. The current was running swiftly, but he was a good swimmer, and –
He saw a swirl of water, the comb of a rugged back, as a crocodile swam down river. It passed, only to turn in a wide circle and swim up again.
“Oh, confound and dash it!” wailed Bones. “Go away, you naughty old crustacean!”
He meant “silurian,” but it did not matter.
There was nothing to do but to make a dive for his hut, and he edged cautiously forward down the little path to the village, and presently came within a stone’s throw of the nearest