Читать книгу Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace - Страница 3

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“LOOK after the chickens,” said Hamilton sardonically, “put the cat out, and don’t forget to wind up the clock,”

Lieutenant Tibbetts inclined his head with, as he believed, a certain quiet dignity.

“And take something for that stiff neck of yours,” added Hamilton.

Mr. Commissioner Sanders came back from the deck of the Zaire to the little concrete quay that jutted out from the residency grounds.

He was leaving on a short tour of inspection, and with him went Captain Hamilton and half a company of Houssas. Mr. Tibbetts, whose more familiar name was Bones, was staying behind in charge, and would be for seven days Deputy Commissioner, Deputy Commander of the troops, Deputy Paymaster-General, and Chief of Staff. He was also temporarily in control of twenty-five Orpington hens, three cockerels and a new fowl-house, the property of his superior officer. The cat and the clock were figments of Captain Hamilton’s imagination.

“And by the way”—Hamilton, one foot on the deck of the little steamer and one on the quay, turned—“cut out the fairy tales, Bones.”

Mr. Tibbetts raised his eyebrows patiently and looked resigned.

“If you have to entertain callers, tell ’em something useful such as: A squared plus B squared equals C squared—a little algebra would improve the moral status of the wandering Isisi.”

Once before, whilst Bones had been in charge of the station, there had come a canoe from the Isisi country, carrying a small chief with a grievance to lay before the Commissioner. And Bones, being unable to settle their problem, had improved the shining hour by giving them a rough-and-ready translation from Grimm. It was not a happy experiment, for when the little chief had gone back to his village he had practised the new magic, with disastrous results, for, failing to turn his nagging wife into a tree, he had, in his annoyance, beaten her so severely that she had died.

“Lord, the magic was as the lord Tibbetts told me, for I sprinkled her with water and said ‘Be thou a tree,’ but because the woman has an evil mind she would not obey the lord’s magic.”

Bones sniffed.

“Sarcasm, my dear old commander, is wasted on me. I shall simply shut myself up with my jolly old studies and refuse to see anybody. As to your indecent old cocks and hens, I refuse absolutely to have anything to do with ’em. There’s nothing in King’s Regulations about looking after chickens—I hate to remind you, but you really ought to know, dear old officer, that it’s not my duty to give them their milk or whatever nourishment the unfortunate animals want...”

“Good-bye, Bones,” called Sanders from the bridge. “O boy, let go the big rope!”

The hawser splashed into the water, and her stern wheel moving briskly, the Zaire slipped to midstream and set her nose to the tawny current.

“Teach ’em the new two-step!” shouted Hamilton derisively.

“Teach your own chickens!” screeched Bones.

Lieutenant Tibbetts had three day-dreams. In point of fact, he had near three hundred, but there were three favourites. The first of these had to do with the rescue of beautiful females from various dangers. Bones possessed (in his dream) a dark girl with big, luminous eyes and slim, svelte figure. And a fair girl with a complexion like milk and a figure that was not so slim; and a dashing and rather a fastish kind of girl, who got into scrapes against his earnest advice, defied him and went her own wilful way, leaving a stern young lover behind whose grief and anguish none would guess from a glance at his pale, set face. And when he rescued her, she used either to fall weeping into his arms, or fall weeping to her knees, or fall prostrate at his feet. She invariably fell one way or another, and was forgiven, or wasn’t forgiven, according to the mood in which Bones happened to be.

His second dream was of digging up enormous sums of money and buying a wonderful yacht, which would be manned by silent, saturnine and mysterious men. He would sail to unknown seas and reappear unexpectedly at Cowes. It wasn’t always at Cowes—but was invariably before a large, fashionable and appreciative audience. And beautiful girls would see the yacht come sailing majestically to its anchorage, and would say to one another or anybody who happened to be round:

“It is the The Yellow Vampire returned from one of its strange voyages. Look! That is Captain Tibbetts, the millionaire, on the bridge. They say he hates women. How I should like to know him!”

He had a third, and this was the dearest of all. It involved the discovery by the higher authorities of his extraordinary powers of organisation, his amazing knowledge of criminology, and the fear that his name inspired in the breasts of evildoers. Delicate and refined young women riding in the park would turn and gaze after his sombre figure and glance significantly at one another.

“That is Commissioner Tibbetts of the C.I.D. Never a day passes but his ruthless hand drags a murderer to the gallows. How black and sinister his life must be! I wish I could get an introduction to him.”

Bones had made many incursions into the realms of crime investigation. They had not been very successful. He had read books on criminology, and had studied learned text-books in which scientific men with foreign names tabulated the size of criminals’ ears and drew remarkable conclusions from the shapes of their noses. This branch of the study became unpopular when he found, in the shape of Captain Hamilton’s eyebrow, proof positive of homicidal tendencies.

Bones lay stretched in the shade of a little matted verandah before his hut It was a roasting hot day, with not so much as a breeze from the sea to temper the furnace-like atmosphere of headquarters.

Bones was not asleep. It was equally true that he was not awake. He was arresting a man whose crimes had baffled the police of the world until, misguidedly, he came into the orbit of that lynx-eyed sleuth, “Trailer” Tibbetts of Scotland Yard.

Suddenly the patter of bare feet, and Bones blinked and was awake. It was a lanky, barefooted corporal of Houssas, and he brought his hand stiffly to his scarlet tarbosh.

“There is a canoe from the upper country. I have told the men that they must wait until you have spoken.”

“Eh?” said Bones huskily. “What’s this nonsense? Arrest the man and bring him before me!”

He might have been reciting the Iliad for all the corporal understood, for he was speaking in English.

“Bring them,” he said at last. “And, Mahmet, have you given food to the cluck-cluck?”

“Lord, you said that you yourself would carry food to the cluck-cluck Water I gave them because they made fearful noises.”

Bones screwed in his eyeglass and glared.

“Bring the men: then take food to the birds which are as the apple of Militini’s eye, being his own aunts turned by enchantment—” He stopped, remembering Hamilton’s warning. Bones loved fairy stories.

So there came to him M’gula of the Upper Ochori, an old man of forty, with a big head and a wrinkled face.

“I see you, Tibbetti” he boomed, as he squatted in the hot sunlight.

“I see you, man,” said Bones. “Now, tell me why you have come in your big canoe. Sandi is not with me, having gone to the Isisi country, but I sit in his place and give justice.” This Bones magnificently.

“Lord, I have heard of you and your wise words. From the river-with-one-bank to the mountains of the old king, people speak of you clapping their hands. It is said that you are greater than Sandi, being a magician. For you take things in your hand and they disappear. Also from the air you take silver dollars. Also it is said that from an empty pot you have drawn beautiful things, such as birds and pieces of cloth and small animals.”

Bones coughed a little self-consciously. He had once performed a few conjuring tricks before an awestricken audience. Happily Hamilton knew nothing of this.

“So, lord, I came, knowing that the lord Sandi was going to the Isisi, because I have many thoughts that trouble my mind.” In a country where men have been known to travel a thousand miles to seek the answer to a riddle, it was not remarkable that one should make the long journey from the Ochori to find relief even from a trivial worry, and Bones waited.

“Lord, I am a man who has lived many years thinking greatly, but doing little-little. My own brother is chief of K’mana and has a medal about his neck, and men say ‘kwas’ to his judgments. Now I, who am greater than he because of my thoughts, am only a common man. Tell me, Tibbetti, must all men be as they were born?”

Bones began to take an interest.

“Man, what is your name?” And when his visitor had told him: “M’gula, many men have been born common, but have come to greatness. That is well known.”

Warming to his subject, and conscious of the improving character of his lecture, Bones became very voluble. He cited the story of a certain young Corsican officer of artillery who had reached for a throne; he told of a poverty-stricken boy in a rolling-mill ("a wonder of iron” he called him) who had acquired riches; he ransacked and misquoted history to preach the doctrine of opportunism, and M’gula of the Upper Ochori sat motionless, entranced.

“Now I see that you are wiser than M’Shimba, and greater than ghosts,” he said, when Bones had talked himself out. “And I have a warm feeling in my stomach because I know that men become great from their thoughts.”

He came again the next morning, and Bones, who in the meantime had raked up a few more historical instances, continued his discourse on Self-Help.

“The leopard comes once to the net” (thus he paraphrased the proverb of opportunity knocking at the door), “and if the net is fast, behold, he is your meat! But if the net is old and the pit is shallow, he goes and comes no more.”

M’gula went back to the Ochori country an enlightened man.

A month after his return, his brother, the chief, was seized with a passionate desire to stand up before the people of his village and recite the poem called “M’sa.” It is a poem by all standards, native or white, for it deals with death in a picturesque and imaginative way. There was not a man or a man-child from one end of the territory to the other who could not recite “M’sa” had he been so terribly defiant of devils and ju-jus. But it is the law that “M’sa” must be taught in whispers and in secret places from whence all birds have been frightened, for birds are notoriously members of the spirit world that carry news and chatter in their strange ways about the souls of men.

In a whisper must the poem be taught; in a whisper recited, and then the last word, which is “M’sa,” must never be uttered. No man has ever explained what “M’sa” means. It is enough that it is so fearful a word that it sets men shivering even to think of it.

It is recorded that for a hundred years no man, sane or mad, had spoken “M’sa,” so that when Busubu, the little chief of the Ochori, stood up by the village fire and, with some dramatic ability, recited the great poem in a tremendous voice, his people first sat frozen with horror at the sacrilege and its terrible significance, then broke and fled to their huts, hands to ears. In the night, when Busubu was sleeping, his two sons and his brother came to his hut and wakened him softly.

He rose and went with them into the forest, and they walked all night until they came to a big swamp where crocodiles laid their eggs. The waters of the pool rippled arid swirled continuously in the grey light of dawn.

They rested by the side of a small lake, and the brother spoke.

“Busubu, you have brought upon the people the terrible Ghost who shall make us all slaves. This we know because our father told us. This ghost is chained by the leg at the bottom of this swamp, waiting for the words of ‘M’sa’ to reach him, when he shall be free. Now, I think, Busubu, you must speak to this spirit.”

“O man and brother,” whimpered Busubu the chief, “I would not have said the terrible words if you had not told me that it was the order of Sandi that I should do this. For did you not come secretly to my hut and say that Sandi had killed the ghost and that all men might say ‘M’sa’ without fear?”

“You are mad and a liar,” said M’gula calmly. “Let us finish.”

And because they would not have his blood on their hands, they roped him to a tree near by where the ripples ran most frequently, and they put out his eyes and left him, They rested awhile within earshot of the place, and when, in the afternoon, they heard certain sounds of pain, they knew that their work was consummated and went back to the village.

“Now, Sons of Busubu,” said the uncle of the young men, “if this matter goes to the ear of Sandi, he will come with his soldiers and we shall hang. Tomorrow let us call a full palaver of the people in this village, and all those countrymen who live in the forest, and tell them that Busubu was mad and fell into the river, and was drowned.”

“His leg being caught by the terrible ones,” suggested his nephew helpfully. “And, M’gula, I will sit in my father’s place and give justice. When Sandi comes, and hearing me speak cleverly, he shall say: ‘This son of Busubu is my chief.’”

His proposal aroused no enthusiasm.

“It is I who will sit in the place of my brother, for I am an old man, and old men are wise. And when Sandi comes I will speak for you both,” he added cunningly.

And so it was arranged. M’gula sat on the stool of office on the thatched palaver house, and gave judgment and made speeches. One day he invited his two nephews to a great feast of fish and maniac. After the feast the young men were taken ill. They were buried in a middle island the next morning, and M’gula took their wives into his house. Bosambo, Paramount Chief of the Ochori, heard rumours, and sent a pigeon to Sanders a month or so later.

“M’gula? Who the devil is M’gula?” demanded Hamilton.

They were at breakfast in the big, airy dining-room of the residency. Sanders had read aloud a message that had come by pigeon post that morning.

“My dear old Ham!” said Bones, who sat opposite to him, “my dear Captain and Honourable! Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know M’gula?”

Lieutenant Tibbets sat with coffee cup poised, an expression of incredulity and wonder on his pink face. He spoke a little thickly.

“I wish to heavens, Bones, you wouldn’t speak with your mouth full. Weren’t you taught manners as a boy?”

Bones swallowed something rapidly and painfully. “You’ve made me swallow a plum-stone, cruel old prefect,” he said reproachfully. “But don’t get off M’gula. I don’t profess to know every jolly old indigenous native by sight, but I know M’gula—he’s the fisherman johnny: quite a lad...Isisi river. Am I right, excellency?”

Sanders, lighting a black cheroot, shook his head. “You’re wrong. He’s a man of the Northern Ochori.”

“When I said Isisi,” said Bones shamelessly, “I naturally meant the Ochori. I know his father. Jolly nice, amiable old rascal...”

“I hanged his father ten years ago,” said the patient Sanders, “and I think that hanging runs in the family.”

“It does,” murmured Bones, unabashed. “Now that you come to mention him, sir, I remember him. M’gula, of course. Dear old Ham, I’m really surprised at your forgetting a fellow like M’gula!”

“What has he been doing, sir?” asked Hamilton.

“Poison—that is certain; probably a more picturesque murder, though I think that is going to be difficult to prove. Busubu, the little chief in that part of the country, has disappeared. I think he was a little mad. The last time I was through the country he was developing sleep sickness—the neck glands were typical, but I thought he’d last longer before the mad stage was reached.”

He tapped his white teeth with the tip of his of his fingers—evidence of his uneasiness.

“I’ve half a mind to send you up to the country, Bones—you could take the Wiggle and call in Bosambo en route.”

“Surely it is rather a simple matter to bring M’gula to trial?” asked Hamilton. “It isn’t unusual. A chief mysteriously disappears, a relative jumps into the vacant place...?”

Sanders shook his head. “There is a curious feature about this crime—if it is a crime. Nobody can be found who can or will give evidence. Usually, even in a small village, you can collect a dozen stories that fit together. Bosambo says that two months ago M’gula made a journey to headquarters—I don’t remember his coming.”

Something in Bones’ face attracted his superior’s attention.

“Bones! You saw him?”

“Did I, dear old Ham? I’m blessed if I remember. What with sitting up all night with your jolly old hens—”

“You saw him, and I’ll bet your infernal passion for educating the unfortunate native is responsible. What branch of study did you take?”

Bones rose from the table and folded his serviette deliberately.

“If every time a naughty old chief disappears you’re going to lay it at my door, sir,” he said bitterly, “and if every—” Suddenly he stopped and his tone changed. “What about sending me up to nose around, excellency? I don’t want to praise myself but I’ve got a gift for that sort of work. Things you wouldn’t notice, dear old bat-eyed superior, I should spot in a minute. You know me, excellency—when you lost your cigarette holder, who found it?”

“I did,” said Hamilton.

“But who put you on the track, dear old Ham? Who was it said, ’Did you look in your pocket?’ Me! I bet I’d unearth this mystery in two twinks! It’s observation that does it. A little bit of cigar ash, a torn-up letter. Things an ordinary Johnny wouldn’t think of looking for...”

“I don’t think you’ll find either cigar ash or letters in the Ochori forest,” said Sanders drily, “but I do feel that this matter should be inquired into. Take the Wiggle, Bones, and go to the village. You might pick up Bosambo on your way. Leave the appointment of a new chief to him. And be careful! These folk of the north are queer and clannish. Even Bosambo has never quite mastered them. You may be successful.”

Bones smiled indulgently at the word “may.”

Bosambo, Paramount Chief of the Ochori, held a palaver of all his fifty chiefs, for there was trouble in the land. The crops had unexpectedly failed, goat sickness had made a mysterious and devastating appearance, and three considerable tribes had refused tribute, and had sent defiant messages to their lord. There was talk of a confederation between these, and that could only mean war. Moreover, a collector of taxes had been beaten to death, and another, Bosambo suspected, had been drowned. Bosambo, wearing his cloak of monkey tails and in his hand his three short killing spears, listened hour after hour as speaker after speaker arose and addressed him. Then at last spoke M’febi, a chief and suspected witch-doctor. All the day he had been waiting for this man, the most powerful of his subjects and the most antagonistic.

“Lord Bosambo, you have heard,” said M’febi, in a deathly silence, “from one end of the land to the other there is sickness, and none who lie down at night know what the sun will show. Now I know, being a wise man and acquainted with mysteries, that there is a reason, and this I tell you. The Fearful Word has been spoken, and the Swamp Ghost is abroad.”

A murmur of horror ran through the assembly. Men rubbed their hands in the dust and smeared their arms hurriedly.

“Because of this,” M’febi went on, gratified by the sensation he had caused, “our crops are rotting and our goats lie down and die, making noises in their throats. Now you, Bosambo, who are so clever and are loved by Sandi, you shall show us a magic that will make the corn rise up and the goats become lively.”

Bosambo raised his hand to check further eloquence.

“M’febi,” he said, “am I a magician? Can I make the dead live? Say this.”

M’febi hesitated, sensing danger. “Lord, you are not,” he admitted.

“It was good you said that,” said Bosambo ominously, “for if I were such a magician I should have speared you where you stand, knowing that I could bring you to life again. As for the Fearful Word, that is your story. And, I tell you, M’febi, that I have a quick way with men and chiefs who bring me ghosts when I ask for rubber. They also make noises in their throats and sleep on their faces. I will have tribute, for that is my due and the due of Sandi and his king. As for these northern men who conspire against me, I will take fire and spears to them, and they shall give blood for tribute. The palaver is finished.”

That day he summoned his fighting regiments, young men who sneered at spirits and laughed in the face of M’shimba M’shamba Himself, and they came to the call of his lokali, in tens and tens from every village within sound of his drum, and made spear play on the plain beyond the city.

Bones arrived to find the capital an armed camp, and Bosambo, meeting him on the beach, thought it prudent to say nothing of the unrest in his land. It was when Bones put forward the suggestion that the chief should accompany him to the northern territory that his face fell, and he found some difficulty in explaining his unwillingness.

“Lord Tibbetti, I would go to the end of the world for Sandi, but for you I would go up into hell. But now is a bad time, for I have many palavers to hold, and it is the month of taxing. Therefore, Tibbetti, go alone, and I will come after you before the full moon.”

A plan which suited the amateur detective, who wanted the full credit for the discoveries he was confident of making.

“This Busubu was mad,” said Bosambo at parting. “As to M’gula, I know nothing of him because he is a common man. I think if you would burn his feet a little he would tell you Tibbetti for the soles of old men are very tender.”

Bones knew a better way.

On the morning of the day that Bones arrived in the village, M’gula held a secret conference with the chiefs of the three revolting tribes, whose territories adjoined his own.

“My spies have brought me word that Tibbetti is coming with soldiers in his little ship to hear the manner of Busubu’s death. Now, Tibbetti is my friend, for he has shown me the way to power And because he is my friend, I will send him to you to make a palaver.”

“But if he comes, he will bring his soldiers,” demurred one of the rebel chiefs, “and that would he a bad palaver. How do we know, M’gula, that you will not speak evilly of us to Tibbetti, who is the son of Sandi? For it is clear that you have now become a man too great for your village, and they say that you desire to rule the three northern tribes in the manner of Gubala,”

He named an ancient chief who had been dead 800 years, but to the native 800 years is yesterday, and yesterday is centuries past.

M’gula was nonplussed by the crude expression of his own secret thoughts and ambitions.

“After Tibbetti has gone, we will speak again,” he said, “You shall come to my fine house and we will have a feast.”

“Better you came to my fine house and had a feast,” said the spokesman of the northern tribes, significantly, “for I do not wish to have a pain in my belly, and lie in the middle island, M’gula.”

It seemed that the death of M’gula’s nephews had not passed unnoticed. However, he appeased his guests, sent them back to their territories satisfied with his bona fides, and prepared for the coming of Bones.

Lieutenant Tibbetts had not arrived in the village more than half an hour before, with a large pipe in his mouth and a ferocious frown on his face, he began his investigations. Willing but untruthful men and women showed him the exact spot on the beach where Busubu had been standing when the crocodile seized him. In corroboration they pointed to the identical silurian, basking at that moment on a low sandbank in the middle of the river, open-mouthed. Bones had a momentary impulse to shoot the crocodile and make a thorough investigation of his interior, but thought perhaps that too long a time had passed for such clues to be of any value. With the assistance of a tape-measure and a piece of pencil he made an exact plan of the village, showing the distance from Busubu’s house to the river. Then he interviewed Busubu’s late wives, sullen, stupid women, wholly absorbed in their domestic occupations. They could tell him nothing except that Busubu had gone out of the hut and had not come back. They conveniently forgot the circumstances of his leaving. They only knew he did not return, and that they had gone into the house of M’gula.

“Very baffling,” said Bones, shaking his head seriously.

He slept at night on the little steamer, which was moored close to the bank. His days were occupied in his search, his evenings in the acquirement of knowledge. If he could inspire M’gula, M’gula would tell him much that would fascinate him. Bones had a passion for native folk-lore, and learnt three new stories about snakes, a brand new legend concerning M’shimba M’shamba, and a mystery poem.

“Lord, this is the great secret of our people,” said M’gula in a hushed voice; “for any man who knows this poem has power over all the world. And if it were known that I had taught you, I think my people would kill me. If a white lord speaks this wonder, all men will worship him, and he shall be as great as M’shimba. Because I love you, Tibbetti, and because you have told me so many beautiful things, I have taught you this. Now say with me again the words ‘Talaka m’sidi lulanga...’”

So Bones became word perfect. He had been a week conducting his investigations, without discovering anything more than he knew when he arrived; on the seventh day came an invitation from Lusingi.

“Lord, these people are in revolt against Bosambo, who has treated them cruelly. I think it would please Sandi if you spoke to them in your loving way, for they are very simple. Also, lord, if you spoke to them the poem which I have told you, they would be very worshipful, giving you the tribute which they deny to Bosambo.”

It was an opportunity at which Bones jumped. To go back and confess his failure as a detective was one thing; to carry in his hands the pacification of a revolting tribe was another. Sanders would value the latter achievement even more than the unravelling of the mystery of Busubu’s death.

The city of Lusingi lay five miles from the river and Bones went gaily, unattended. M’gula walked with him to the end of the village street, and then returned with his counsellors.

“I think the people of Lusingi will kill Tibbetti,” he said cheerfully, “and then I will send word to Sandi, and he will know I am his true friend, and give me the four tribes. In this way do men become great, Osuru, even as the lord Tibbetti said.”

The innocent Bones reached the town and was met by the chief and escorted to the palaver house. Looking down on the mass of unfriendly faces that were turned up to him, Bones smirked inwardly.

Their grievances he knew. The uneasy chief, not knowing what military forces might be behind Tibbetti, had stated them concisely. There was a devil in the land, and goats were dying; and on the top of this, Bosambo had sent for his tribute—a familiar plaint.

“O people,” said Bones, “I see you.”

He spoke fluently in the soft and silky tongue of the Northern Ochori, which differs slightly from the Bomongo tongue used from one end of the river to the other.

“Sandi has sent me here to look into your hearts...”

His address mainly dealt with native economics. Here Bones was speaking as an expert, because he was well grounded in the problems which confronted these peasant farmers. Presently he came to his peroration.

“O people, hear me! I speak for Sandi, and for the Government. When the crops are good and your goats are many, and the little trees in the forest give you rubber in plenty, do you not make a store of corn and rubber, so that when the bad days come, you shall neither starve nor come empty-handed to your Paramount Chief? Now, these days have come, and your stores must be opened, and that which is buried must be dug up. This is the way of all the world, that bad days and good days follow one another.”

His audience stared at him stonily. The miserly traits of the Northern Ochori are notorious.

“And now I will say to you a poem of great power and magic,” said Bones, smacking his lips in anticipation. “Let all men listen...”

A silence as of the grave fell upon his audience with the first words of his great effort. Bones closed his eyes and started. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. He heard a rustle of movement, and drew an altogether wrong conclusion as to its cause. When he opened his eyes he was alone. The little hill, which had been covered thickly with the people of the town, was deserted. Men and women were flying to the shelter of their own homes, that their ears should not be shocked by the Fearful Word.

“Good Lord!” gasped Bones, and looked round.

The chief and his counsellors had already disappeared. He was entirely alone. In a few moments there was nothing human in sight, and the hair at the back of his neck lifted. Bones had smelt the danger instantly.

He drew his long-barrelled Browning from the holster at his side, felt for the spare magazine he always carried, and, pulling back the jacket of the pistol, pushed a cartridge into the chamber, Then he walked slowly down the hill. His way back to the river lay through the interminable main street of the town. Keeping to the centre of the broad road, he walked without haste, and from the dark interiors savage eyes followed him. And still there was no movement. Looking round, he glimpsed one head thrust out from an open doorway, but it was instantly withdrawn.

He knew that nothing would happen to him while he was in the town; the danger lay in the thick woods beyond. He put up his hands and measured the distance of the sun from the horizon. He had three-quarters of an hour before night fell, and he was five and a half miles from the boat.

It was the poem, he thought; and somehow he connected the poem with the mysterious disappearance of Busubu. Reaching the end of the village street, he walked quickly through the rank grass which separated him from the forest path.

Whizz!

A spear flew past him, buried itself in a tree, quivering. Bones spun round, his gun outstretched. There was nobody in sight.

Then he broke into a run, and instantly the spears began to fall around him. He located the point of attack: it was the long grass to the left. Levelling his pistol, he fired twice, and a dark figure sprang up and fell again. This time Bones really ran.

The path twisted and turned, with never more that a dozen straight yards; and so long as he could keep ahead of his pursuers, he was safe, for the wood was too thick for spear work. He padded on swiftly, but the sound of feet behind him grew nearer and nearer, and he stopped and turned. As he did so, the sound of the running ceased.

Bones could not afford to wait, for he knew that the men who were following him were at that moment moving through the forest from trunk to trunk, in an attempt to outflank him. Again he ran, and this time the hunters came into view. A spear passed so close to him that it brushed his gaitered leg.

Subconsciously he wondered how they came to miss him, for the Ochori are famous spearmen, and it was only later he learnt that the swamp demanded a live sacrifice. He turned and fired three times into the thick of his hunters and checked them for a second; then, as he thought he had reached an elbow of the path, a spear fell between his legs. He stumbled and fell, and before he could rise, they were on him. Near by was a crazy death-hut, one of the places to which the people of the town take their aged relatives when they are past work and are becoming a burden to the community. Here they die, and the wild beasts carry them to their lairs.

“This is a bad thing you do, man,” said Bones when he recovered his breath; “for presently Sandi will come and then I think there will be many hangings.”

He addressed the chief of Lusingi who had welcomed him less than an hour before.

“Tibbetti, though we all hang, you must die, for you have spoken the Fearful Word that loosens the great Ghost of the Swamp, and now misfortune will come to this land, and our children will have sickness, and fire will fall on our huts. Because we are afraid, we shall take you to the swamp of the Ghost, and we shall blind you a little, and afterwards the fearful ones will have you. So sleep, Tibbetti, for when the moon comes up we must walk.”

They had taken away his arms, but they had not bound him, and Bones sat down on the floor of the hut, his head in his hands, considering the possibilities of escape. They were few, for it seemed that every man capable of carrying a spear had left the town and had come out to hunt him. From where he sat he could see that the wood was filled with men. The prospect was not cheerful.

Presently he saw the chief pass the entrance of the hut, and called him.

“Tell me,” he said, “did Busubu speak the Fearful Word?”

The chief shook his head affirmatively.

“And thus he died, by the pool of the swamp!”

“Lord, thus he died,” agreed the other.

“Mystery solved!” said Bones with melancholy satisfaction.

He had been up early that morning, and he had had an exhausting day. There was something in the suggestion which the chief had made. He was healthy and young and lived in the minute. He had hardly stretched himself upon the ground before he was asleep.

When Bones awoke it was daylight, and he sat up quickly. Through the opening of the hut there was nobody in sight. Something hanging on the thin roof-beam caught his eye and he gasped.

It was his belt and pistol.

“I’m dreaming,” said Bones.

He went blinking out into the light. At the edge of the forest path were two trees, and a man was sitting, his back to Bones, gazing interestedly at two uncomfortable figures tied very tightly to the trunks.

“Bosambo!” called Bones sharply, and the watcher rose.

“Lord, I came up in the night, I and my young men, and M’gula showed me the way you had gone and told me of the Fearful Word he had made you speak.”

“He told you...?”

Bosambo did not meet his eyes.

“Lord Tibbetti, you have the wisdom of a snake. This they told me in the village: that you measured many things with your fine ribbon and looked at many things through your glass-that-makes-little-things-into-big-things.”

Bones went pink.

“Also by looking at leaves and cooking-pots and digging in the sand, and other cunning methods, you sought to find which way Busubu went. All this is very wonderful, but I am a simple man. I burnt M’gula a little, and the soles of old men are very tender...and he told me.”