IV
"Now this is very wonderful," said Lamalana, "and it seems, O my father, no matter for a small killing, but for a sacrifice such as all men may see."
It was the hour following the dawn when the world was at its sweetest, when the chattering weaver birds went in and out of their hanging nests gossiping loudly, and faint perfumes from little morning flowers gave the air an unusual delicacy.
All the Lombobo people, the warriors and the hunters, the wives and the maidens, and even the children of tender years, lined the steep slopes of the Cup of Sacrifice. For Lamalana, deaf and blind to reason, knew that her hour was short, and that with the sun would come a man terrible in his anger ... and the soldiers who eat up opposition with fire.
"O people!" she cried.
She was stripped to the waist, stood behind the Stone of Death as though it were a counter, and the two squirming infants under her hands were so much saleable stock: "Here we bring terror to all who hate us, for one of these is the heart of Bosambo and the other is more than the heart of the-man-who-stands-for-Sandi----"
"O woman!"
The intruder had pa.s.sed unnoticed, almost it seemed by magic, through the throng, and now he stood in the clear s.p.a.ce of sacrifice. And there was not one in the throng who had not heard of him with his leopard skin and his belt of bra.s.s.
He was as black as the strange Ethiopians who came sometimes to the land with the Arabi traders, his muscular arms and legs were dull in their blackness.
There was a whisper of terror--"The Walker of the Night!--" and the people fell back ... a woman screamed and fell into a fit.
"O woman," said M"gani, "deliver to me these little children who have done no evil."
Open-mouthed the half-demented daughter of B"limi Saka stared at him.
He walked forward, lifted the children in his two arms and went slowly through the people, who parted in terror at his coming.
He turned at the top of the basin to speak.
"Do no wickedness," said he; then he gently stooped to put the children on the ground, for mouthing and bellowing senseless sounds Lamalana came furiously after him, her long, crooked knife in her hand. He thrust his hand into the leopard skin as for a weapon, but before he could withdraw it, a man of Lombobo, half in terror, fell upon and threw his arms about M"gani.
"Bo"ma!" boomed the woman, and drew back her knife for the stroke....
Bones, from the edge of the clearing, jerked up the rifle he carried and fired.
"What man is this?" asked Bones.
Bosambo looked at the stranger.
"This is M"gani," he said, "he who walks in the night."
"The dooce it is!" said Bones, and fixing his monocle glared at the stranger.
"From whence do you come?" he asked.
"Lord, I come from the Coast," said the man, "by many strange ways, desiring to arrive at this land secretly that I might learn the heart of these people and understand." Then, in perfect English, "I don"t think we"ve ever met before, Mr. Tibbetts--my name is Sanders."
CHAPTER VIII
A RIGHT OF WAY
The Borders of Territories may be fixed by treaty, by certain mathematical calculations, or by arbitrary proclamation. In the territories over which Sanders ruled they were governed as between tribe and tribe by custom and such natural lines of demarkation as a river or a creek supplied.
In forest land this was not possible, and there had ever been between the Ochori and the Lombobo a feud and a grievance, touched-up border fights, for hereabouts there is good hunting. Sanders had tried many methods and had hit upon the red gum border as a solution to a great difficulty. For some curious reason there were no red gum trees in the northern fringe of the forest for five miles on the Ochori side of the great wood; it was innocent of this beautiful tree and Sanders" fiat had gone forth that there should be no Ochori hunting in the red gum lands, and that settled the matter and Sanders hoped for good.
But Bosambo set himself to enlarge his borders by a single expedient.
Wherever his hunters came upon a red gum tree they cut it down. B"limi Saka, the chief of the sullen Lombobo, retaliated by planting red gum saplings on the country between the forest and the river--a fact of which Bosambo was not aware until he suddenly discovered a huge wedge of red gum driven into his lawful territory. A wedge so definite as to cut off nearly a thousand square miles of his territory, for beyond this border lay the lower Ochori country.
"How may I reach my proper villages?" he asked Sanders, who had known something of the comedy which was being enacted.
"You shall have canoes at the place of the young gum trees and shall row to a place beyond them," Sanders had said. "I have given my word that the red gum lands are the territory of B"limi Saka, and since you have only your cunning to thank--Oh, cutter of trees--I cannot help you!"
Bosambo would have made short work of the young saplings, but B"limisaka established a guard not to be forced without bloodshed, and Bosambo could do no more in that way of reprisal than instruct his people to hurl insulting references to B"limisaka"s as they pa.s.sed the forbidden ground.
For the maddening thing was that the slip of filched territory was less than a hundred yards wide and men of the Lombobo, who went out by night to widen it, never came out alive--for Bosambo also had a guard.
Sometimes the minion spies of Government would come to headquarters with a twist of rice paper stuck in a quill, the quill inserted in the lobes of the ear in very much the same place as the ladies wore their earrings in the barbarous mid-Victorian period, and on the rice paper with the briefest introduction would be inserted, in perfect Arabic, sc.r.a.ps of domestic news for the information of the Government.
Sometimes news would carry from mouth to mouth and a weary man would squat before Hamilton and recite his lesson.
"Efobi of the Isisi has stolen goats, and because he is the brother of the chief"s wife goes unpunished; T"mara of the Akasava has put a curse upon the wife of O"femo the headman, and she has burnt his hut; N"kema of the Ochori will not pay his tax, saying that he is no Ochori man, but a true N"gombi; Bosambo"s men have beaten a woodman of B"limi Saka, because he planted trees on Ochori land; the well folk are on the edge of the N"gomb forest, building huts and singing----"
"How long do they stay?" interrupted Hamilton.
"Lord, who knows?" said the man.
"Ogibo of the Akasava has spoken evilly of his king and mightily of himself----"
"Make a note of that, Bones."
"Make a note of which, sir?"
"Ogibo--he looked like a case of sleep-sickness the last time I was in his village--go on."
"Ogibo also says that the father of his father was a great chief and was lord of all the Akasava----"
"That"s sleeping sickness all right," said Hamilton bitterly. "Why the devil doesn"t he wait till Sanders is back before he goes mad?"
"Drop him a line, sir," suggested Bones, "he"s a remarkable feller--dash it all, sir, what the dooce is the good of bein" in charge of the district if you can"t put a stop to that sort of thing?"
"What talk is there of spears in this?" asked Hamilton of the spy.
"Lord, much talk--as I know, for I serve in this district."