Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [71]
“Lord, he is of the forest,” she said without hesitation, “for when he spoke of the secret palaver he made the word ‘Likambo.’ Now, we folks of the river say ‘Jikambo.’”
The man clicked his lips to denote satisfaction, and, putting his hand within the cloth, pulled out a thin, long chain of brass studded with glittering stones.
“This from Sandi,” he said, and dropped it into her hand. “Also, if any man or woman speaks evilly of you, you shall say that Sandi breaks men easily.”
And he strode away from the ecstatic girl, leaving her open-mouthed and open-eyed at the treasure in her two hands.
A canoe was waiting for the Arab at the water’s edge, and four paddlers took him swiftly with the stream. They rounded the bend of the river and set the canoe’s nose toward what appeared to be an impenetrable barrier of tall elephant grass.
There was a passage, however, wide enough for their ingress, and even wider, for on the far side of the screening grass was the Zaire, on the bow of which Sanders sat smoking.
He turned his head as the Arab came aboard. “Hullo, Bones!” he greeted the “Arab” in English. “Has the woman gone with Lolango?”
“No, but he has taken the jolly old beans.”
Sanders nodded and frowned. “Bones, I don’t like things,” he said. “I have never known the people to be so uncommunicative. Usually, even over a ju-ju palaver you could find a fellow who was willing to open his mouth. But these devils are dumb.”
He stood up suddenly as the “toot-toot” of a steamer siren came from the river. It was the little flat-bottomed French coasting steamer that occasionally penetrated the river as far as the rapids. Standing on the whale deck of the boat so that he could see across the tops of the grasses, he focused a pair of prismatics to his eyes.
“That’s the French steamer, and unless I am greatly mistaken, that is our friend Garfield and the lady etymologist on the after deck.”
“What is she doing in this country?” asked Bones, puzzled.
“What are women doing anywhere?” demanded Sanders savagely. Then he turned to the pipe-smoking Arab. “So Lolanga has gone?” he said. “And the woman – ?”
Bones spread out his hands.
“It is an unwholesome business,” said Sanders, with a grimace of disgust.
Bones puffed noisily. “My dear old excellency,” he said, “she’s a wicked lady, and she’s got millions of naughty old boys anyway.”
“I suppose it is all right,” said Sanders, “but I hate the thought of women being employed to trap men.”
“It isn’t an employment, dear old sir,” said the cynical Bones, “it is a recreation.”
And then, raising his eyes, he saw a pigeon circling and heard the excited calls of the grey birds housed in the coop above the deck cabin.
“Your bird, I think, sir,” he said, and whistled the pigeon down.
* * *
The steamer which carried Miss Honor Brent and her companion stopped at the village of Bofuru, which is not a regular landing-place.
Mr Garfield was a man of fifty. He had a square, white face, and stiff, upstanding hair, and it was he who had suggested the landing. The girl who landed with him was past her first youth, but pretty, and there was in her voice and movement a suggestion of capability which had puzzled her companion, for they had been fellow-passengers from London to Sierra Leone. Bofuru might be an interesting centre, for her object in coming to the Congo (she had said) was to add to her collection of butterflies. Curiously enough, Garfield had anticipated her acquiescence.
“It is a wonderful part of the river for butterflies,” he said. “I’ve seen them ten inches across from wing to wing.”
“You know the country, then?”
“I’ve been here three or four times,” he said, carelessly. “I am interested in the palm-oil industry.”
They landed on the slip of beach at a time when the village of Bofuru was all agog with awful wonder.
For days strange men had come down the river in their canoes, had landed here, leaving their craft high and dry on the beach, and the villagers had watched them in awestricken silence. For was not “Ta” abroad?