Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [82]
It had many other qualities, curious and awe-inspiring. Thus, all other spears leapt toward the king spear, and could not be drawn away except by great force.
Even the elder wife of M’suru could not screw her courage into waking her lord. It was not until the chief of Kolobafa came out blinking into the daylight and bellowed for his wife, that the loss was discovered. For lost indeed was the magic spear!
Mr Commissioner Sanders was holding a palaver by the Crocodile’s Pool over a matter of belated taxation, and M’suru, in full panoply, attended to lay before him his great complaint.
“Lord,” he said, “a terrible misfortune has come upon me and my people. My wife had a lover, whose name is Mabidini, a man of the Ochori tribe and well known to you because he swore falsely against me. Because this woman loved him, she went to him when I slept, taking the Spear of the Ghost, which, as your lordship knows, is the most holy spear in the world, and there is none other like it. Therefore I come to you for leave to carry my spears into the Ochori country.”
“O ko,” said Sanders sardonically, “what manner of man are you that you set yourself up to punish? For it seems that I am nothing in this land, and M’suru, a little chief of the Akasava, can take my place. As for your spear, it is made of a certain iron which I know well.”
He called for his orderly, gave an order in Arabic, and Abiboo went away, to return with a small steel magnet.
“Look well at this, M’suru; for if your spear is magic, so then is this little thing that is shaped like the bend of the lost river that runs to Bura-Ladi.”
Sanders took the spear from the chief’s hand and put the magnet against it.
“Now pull your spear,” he said, and it required a jerk to break the weapon from the magnet’s influence.
“There shall be no killing and no carrying of spears, M’suru,” he said. “It seems to me that already you know the Ochori country so well that your young warriors can find their paths in the dark! When I go back to my fine house by the sea I will have another spear made for you, and it will be called the Spear of Sanders, and you shall hold it for me and my king. As to the woman, if she has a lover, you may put her away according to the law. I shall return when the moon is new, and you shall bring the matter before me. The palaver is finished.”
M’suru, in no way satisfied, went back to his village and called together the elder men and such friends as he had – which were few, for he was a notoriously severe man and in no sense popular.
“In two days from now Sandi will go back to his fine house by the river, and his spies will go with him; for it is well known that in the days which follow the palavers the spies do not watch, for all people fear Sandi. Therefore, send your young spearmen to me in the first hour of the night, and I will lead you to the hut of Mabidini, and we will take the spear which belongs to me, and such goats and women as we may find.”
The way to the hut was a long one, for the Ochori territory throws into the Akasava a deep, knife-shaped peninsula, and a true peninsula in the sense that it is bordered by a river which has no appearance except in the wet season. And this has to be avoided. There is water enough at all times, but the rank grass grows quickly, and here all manner of strange, aqueous beasts have their dwellings. This river, F’giri, runs to that deep, still lake which is called Kafa-guri – literally, “the hole in the world.”
On the fourth day M’suru fetched up at the deserted hut of his enemy, and learnt by inquiry from a wandering bushman that Mabidini had gone eastward to the silent lake.
“This man is not afraid, because he has my spear, which is very powerful