All night long the steamer went on, tacking from bank to bank to avoid the shoals.
Dawn found her at a wooding, where her men, working at fever speed, piled logs on her deck until she had the appearance of a timber-boat.
Then off again, stopping only to secure news of the coming sacrifice from the spies who were scattered up and down the river.
Sanders reached the edge of the Dream Forest at midnight and tied up. He had ten Houssa policemen with him, and at the head of these he stepped ash.o.r.e into the blackness of the forest. One of the soldiers went ahead to find the path and keep it, and in single file the little force began its two-hour march. Once they came upon two leopards fighting; once they stumbled over a buffalo sleeping in their path. Twice they disturbed strange beasts that slunk into the shadows as they pa.s.sed, and came snuffling after them, till Sanders flashed a white beam from his electric lamp in their direction. Eventually they came stealthily to the place of sacrifice.
There were at least six hundred people squatting in a semi-circle before a rough altar built of logs. Two huge fires blazed and crackled on either side of the altar; but Sanders" eyes were for the Devil Man, who leant over the body of a young girl, apparently asleep, stretched upon the logs.
Once the Devil Man had worn the garb of civilisation; now he was clothed in rags. He stood in his grimy shirt-sleeves, his white beard wild and uncombed, his pale face tense, and a curious light in his eyes. In his hand was a bright scalpel, and he was speaking-and, curiously enough, in English.
"This, gentlemen," said he, leaning easily against the rude altar, and speaking with the a.s.surance of one who had delivered many such lectures, "is a bad case of trynosomiasis. You will observe the discoloration of skin, the opalescent pupils, and now that I have placed the patient under anaesthetics you will remark the misplacement of the cervical glands, which is an invariable symptom."
He paused and looked benignly around.
"I may say that I have lived for a great time amongst native people. I occupied the honourable position of witch-doctor in Central Africa--"
He stopped and pa.s.sed his hand across his brow, striving to recall something; then he picked up the thread of his discourse.
All the time he spoke the half-naked a.s.sembly sat silent and awe-stricken, comprehending nothing save that the witch-doctor with the white face, who had come from nowhere and had done many wonderful things-his magic box proved to be a galvanic battery-was about to perform strange rites.
"Gentlemen," the old man went on, tapping the breast of his victim with the handle of his scalpel, "I shall make an incision--"
Sanders came from his place of concealment, and walked steadily towards the extemporised operating-table.
"Professor," he said gently, and the madman looked at him with a puzzled frown.
"You are interrupting the clinic," he said testily; "I am demonstrating--"
"I know, sir."
Sanders took his arm, and Sir George Carsley, a great scientist, consulting surgeon to St. Mark"s Hospital, London, and the author of many books on tropical diseases, went with him like a child.
CHAPTER XII.
THE LONELY ONE.
Mr. Commissioner Sanders had lived so long with native people that he had absorbed not a little of their simplicity. More than this, he had acquired the uncanny power of knowing things which he would not and could not have known unless he were gifted with the prescience which is every aboriginal"s birthright.
He had sent three spies into the Isisi country-which lies a long way from headquarters and is difficult of access-and after two months of waiting they came to him in a body, bearing good news.
This irritated Sanders to an unjustifiable degree.
"Master, I say to you that the Isisi are quiet," protested one of the spies; "and there is no talk of war."
"H"m!" said Sanders, ungraciously. "And you?"
He addressed the second spy.
"Lord," said the man, "I went into the forest, to the border of the land, and there is no talk of war. Chiefs and headmen told me this."
"Truly you are a great spy," scoffed Sanders; "and how came you to the chiefs and headmen? And how did they greet you? "Hail! secret spy of Sandi"? Huh!"
He dismissed the men with a wave of his hand, and putting on his helmet went down to the Houssa lines, where the blue-coated soldiers gambled in the shade of their neat white barracks.
The Houssa captain was making palatable medicine with the aid of a book of cigarette papers and a six-ounce bottle of quinine sulphide.
Sanders observed his shaking hand, and talked irritably.
"There"s trouble in the Isisi," he said, "I can smell it. I don"t know what it is-but there"s devilry of sorts."
"Secret societies?" suggested the Houssa.
"Secret grandmothers," snarled Sanders. "How many men have you got?"
"Sixty, including the lame "uns," said the Houssa officer, and swallowed a paperful of quinine with a grimace.
Sanders tapped the toe of his boot with his thin ebony stick, and was thoughtful.
"I may want "em," he said. "I"m going to find out what"s wrong with these Isisi people."
By the little river that turns abruptly from the River of Spirits, Imgani, the Lonely One, built a house. He built it in proper fashion, stealing the wood from a village five miles away. In this village there had been many deaths, owing to The Sickness; and it is the custom on the Upper River that whenever a person dies, the house wherein he died shall die also.
No man takes shelter under the accursed roof whereunder the Spirit sits brooding; the arms of the dead man are broken and scattered on his shallow grave, and the cooking-pots of his wives are there likewise.
By and by, under the combined influences of wind and rain, the reed roof sags and sinks, the doorposts rot; elephant-gra.s.s, coa.r.s.e and strong, shoots up between crevices in wall and roof; then come a heavier rain and a heavier wind, and the forest has wiped the foul spot clean.
Imgani, who said he was of the N"Gombi people, and was afraid of no devils-at any rate, no Isisi devil-stole doorposts and native rope fearlessly. He stole them by night, when the moon was behind the trees, and mocked the dead spirits, calling them by evil and tantalising names.
Yet he went cautiously to work; for whilst he did not hold spirits in account, he was wholesomely respectful of the live Isisi, who would have put him to death had his sacrilege been detected, though, strangely enough, death was the thing he feared least.
So he stole the accursed supports and accursed roof-props, and would have stolen the roofs as well, but for the fact that they were very old and full of spiders.
All these things he came and took, carrying them five miles to the turn of the river, and there, at his leisure, he built a little house. In the daytime he slept, in the night he trapped beasts and caught fish, but he made no attempt to catch the big bats that come over from the middle island of the river, though these are very edible, and regarded as a delicacy.
One day, just before the sun went down, he went into the forest on the track of zebra. He carried two big hunting-spears, such as the N"Gombi make best; a wickerwork shield, and on his back, slung by a strip of hide, a bunch of dried fish he had caught in the river.
A man of middle height was Imgani, spare of build, but broad of shoulder. His skin shone healthily, and his step was light. As he walked, you saw the muscles of his back ripple and weave like the muscles of a well-trained thoroughbred.
He was half an hour"s journey within the forest, when he came upon a girl. She was carrying a bundle of manioc root on her head, and walked gracefully.
When she saw Imgani she stopped dead, and the fear of death and worse came in her eyes, for she knew him to be an outcast man, with no tribe and no people. Such men are more dreadful than the ingali, who rears up from the gra.s.s and plunges his poison-fangs in your leg.
They stood watching one another, the man leaning with both hands on the spears, his cheek against them; the girl trembled.
"Woman, where do you go?" said Imgani.