Bones of the River (24 page)

His daughter did not quail. “The birds speak, and it is,” she said simply. “Now, I tell you this, that if, in two moons, I do not marry a white man, I will go to the hut of D’lama, though he is a man of no people and is a killer of the weak. For the birds told me that he chopped an old woman for the ring she wore about her neck.”

The agitated father carried the news to D’lama, who was sufficiently uncultured to show his relief.

“Who knows,” he said, “that such a wonder may not happen? For this woman of yours is very cunning and understands magic, and by her cleverness she may grow a white man out of the ground.”

The old fisherman blinked. “That is true, D’lama,” he said, “for Kobali speaks with the birds and learns strange mysteries. This day she told me that once upon a time you killed an old woman in the bush because of the brass ring she wore upon her neck.”

Being a native, D’lama did not faint, but he was silent for a very long time.

“If such things come to the ears of Sandi,” he said a little huskily, “there will be a hanging palaver. Get this woman married, and I will give you more than two bags of salt.”

The old man went back to his daughter and wrangled and argued with her throughout the night, without shaking her from her determination. The next morning he took his canoe and paddled three hours in the slack shore water to the juncture of the Isisi River, where a white paddle-wheel gunboat was moored while Sanders held palaver.

He sat alone in judgment, for Bones had been sent up the Isisi River to arrest a certain petty chief who had sanctioned witchcraft in his territory. Under the striped awning on the after-deck of the
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Sanders listened to complaints, tried matrimonial suits, offered advice and admonition briefly and, at times, a little brutally. To him came the fisherman with his story of woe. Sanders listened without interruption until, in the way of litigants, the old man began his recital over again.

“Go back to your daughter, fisherman,” said Sanders, “and tell her that white men do not marry black women – in my territory. And if she be, as you say, a witch, then there is punishment for that, as all the lands and people know.”

“Lord,” said the fisherman, “she speaks with the birds, and they tell her she will come to no harm.”

“She has not spoken with the right bird,” said Sanders grimly, and dismissed him.

It was the end of the palaver, and he rose a little stiffly, and walked forward, leaning over the rail and watching incuriously the broad river flowing to the sea. As he looked, there came into his zone of vision a long canoe, which he recognised, by its shape and the rhythmical action of the paddlers, as from headquarters. He lifted a pair of binoculars and scanned the oncoming craft, expecting to find Hamilton in the little leaf-roofed cabin at the stern.

“Jumping Moses!” said Sanders, and, putting down the glasses, he waited until the canoe drew alongside and Mr Pinto Fernandez, complete in grey top hat and somewhat soiled white spats, stepped on board.

“Mr Tibbetts, I presume?” said Pinto sternly.

Sanders smiled. “No, I am not Mr Tibbetts,” he said. “I am the Commissioner in these parts. What can I do for you, my man?”

“I wish to see Mr Tibbetts on a matter of delicacy and honour,” said Pinto glibly, and Sanders’ eyes narrowed.

“Take off your hat,” he said curtly; “you needn’t fear sunstroke. You are a coloured man, I see.”

“I am a Portuguese subject,” said Pinto with dignity, but obeyed.

Sanders looked at him for a very long time, “Now, will you please tell me the object of your visit?” he said softly.

“It is a matter for Mr Tibbetts’ ears alone.”

“It is nothing to do, by any chance, with a correspondence in which Mr Tibbetts has been engaged?” asked Sanders, and did not fail to observe the start of surprise. “Because there was a gentleman, if I remember rightly, in Nigeria, who had an indiscreet correspondence with a lady in Funchal, and was induced to part with a considerable sum of money,” said Sanders. “That fact came to me through official correspondence. What is your name?”

“Gonsalez,” said Pinto,

Sanders rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That isn’t the name – but I seem to remember your face,” he said. “I have seen a photograph somewhere – oh yes, your name is Pinto Fernandez, and you are wanted by the Nigerian police for embezzlement. Curiously enough” – he was speaking as though to himself – “I never connected you with the ingenious blackmailer, and I don’t suppose anybody else has.”

“I want to say, Mr Sanders,” said Pinto loudly, and slightly flustered, “that your Tibbetts has been corresponding with my foolish wife–”

Sanders stopped him with a gesture. “According to the police report I have had from Nigeria, that was the basis of your argument with another gentleman.”

He beckoned the watchful Abiboo. “Put this man in irons,” he said.

Pinto Fernandez had been in many tight corners, and he was a man of considerable initiative. Before the sergeant’s hand fell on his arm, he jumped to the taffrail and leapt the four or five feet which separated the
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from the bank. Before the Houssa could raise his rifle, he had plunged into the bush, leaving behind, as a souvenir of his presence, a grey topper and the nearly gold-headed walking-stick, which he carried as part of the insignia of his respectability.

He heard the sound of a shot and the whine and patter of a bullet as it flicked through the leaves of the trees, and sprinted along the narrow native track into the forest. He was no stranger to the wild lands, and had the bush instinct which led him unerringly to the broader native road that ran parallel with the river bank. In the early hours of the morning he came to a little clearing, and D’lama-m’popo, coming out of his hut, stood stock still at the startling apparition.

“Oh master, I see you,” said D’lama respectfully.

Pinto, who knew most of the dialects of the rivers, answered readily.

“Give me food, man,” he said. “I am going on a long journey for Sandi. Also I want sleep, for I have walked through the forest, battling with wild beasts, all this night. And if any ask you about me you shall be silent, for it is Sandi’s desire that no man should know that I am hereabouts.”

D’lama prepared a meal, brought water from the forest spring, and left his guest to sleep. That evening, Pinto was wakened by the entry of his host.

“Man, Sandi wants you,” said D’lama, “for this is the talk amongst all the villagers, that a certain one was taken prisoner by Sandi and escaped, and the master has sent word that you must be taken.”

“That is fool’s talk,” said Pinto. “You see I am a white man, wearing trousers.”

D’lama surveyed him critically. “That is true, for you are not quite black,” he said. “Now, if you are a white man, then I have a wonderful thought in my head. For hereabouts lives a witch who talks with birds, and the birds told her that she should marry a white man, and after that the land should prosper.”

“I am already married,” said Pinto hastily.

“Who is not?” asked the crude D’lama. “Yet you shall marry her, and I will be silent. And no people live in this forest who talk – except the birds. If you say no; then I will take you to Sandi, and there is an end. But if you say you will marry, then I will bring this girl to you.”

“Bring the woman,” said Pinto after a moment’s thought; but whatever plans he had formed were purposeless.

“First I will tie you by the hands and feet,” said D’lama calmly, “lest when I am gone, an evil spirit comes into your heart and you run away.”

And Pinto, protesting, allowed himself to be trussed, for D’lama-m’popo was a man of inches and terribly strong.

The woman who talked with birds was in her old place beneath the nests of the weaver birds when D’lama arrived.

“You are D’lama, the killer of old women,” she said, not looking round, “and a bird has told me that you have found a white man.”

“That is true, Kobali,” said D’lama, in a sweat, “and as to the old woman, a tree fell upon her –”

Kobali rose silently and led the way into the forest, D’lama following. After a while they came to the hut where Pinto lay, in some pain, and together they brought him out into the light of the moon, and the girl examined him critically whilst the bonds were being removed.

“He is a white that is not black, and a black that is not white,” she said. “I think this man will do for me, for he seems very pretty.”

Pinto’s hand rose mechanically to twirl his sparse moustache.

*  *  *

“I can’t really understand what happened to that fellow,” said Sanders. “He must have got in the track of a leopard.”

“Or the leopard must have got on his,” suggested Hamilton. “By the way, what did he want with Bones?”

But Sanders shook his head. He was a model of discretion, and Bones, in his many journeys up and down the river, never guessed that from behind the bush that fringed the river near the Isisi, dwelt one who, in happier circumstances, had described himself as Dom Gonsalez, and who possessed a very charming wife in the town of Funchal – or did possess her until she got tired of waiting, and contracted a morganatic marriage with the second officer of a banana boat out of Cadiz.

M’suru, an Akasava chief of some importance, was hunting one day on the wrong side of the Ochori frontier when there appeared, at a most unpropitious moment, a man called Mabidini, who was something that was neither ranger nor hunter, yet was a little of each, for he watched the frontiers for his lord Bosambo, and poached skins secretly in the Akasava country.

He was a young man, and, by the standards which are set by the women of the Upper River, handsome; and these qualities made his subsequent offence the more unforgivable, for M’suru was middle-aged and fat and past the attractive period of life, so that only the women he bought were his, and nobody did anything for love of him. Mabidini, on the contrary, crooked his finger, and where was the marriage bond?

Inauspicious the moment, for M’suru was skinning a great water buck, and his four huntsmen had the skin stretched for salting.

“O ko!” said Mabidini. “This is bad news for Boambo my chief! No man hunts in this wood but he.”

M’sura wiped the sweat out of his eyes with the back of the hand that held the skinning knife.

“Who sees, knows,” he said significantly. “You shall have the fore-part of this meat for your pot.”

But Mabidini desired neither flesh nor skin, and the word went to Bosambo, and eventually to Mr Commissioner Sanders, and M’suru paid ten bags of salt by way of fine. Worse than this, he became the mock of such as Mabidini, a man without a village, who dwelt in a hut in the very heart of the wood and had no people.

One night six strange warriors slipped into the forest, and, taking Mabidini from his hut, they flogged him with skin whips, and burnt his toes so that he hobbled for months. That his assailants were Akasava he did not doubt; he would sooner have believed that he was dead than that M’suru did not instigate the outrage.

One day Bosambo sent for him. “Mabidini, I have spoken with Sandi, who is my own brother, and he says there can be no palaver over this matter of your beating, because none knows, and M’suru, who knows, lies,” he said. “They say of M’suru that he has a magic spear and therefore is very powerful. Also he has a new wife whom he bought for ten thousand brass rods. You are a lonely man, and it seems that, if men attack you in the night, such a spear would save you from having your toes burnt. For your wife would alarm you, and the spear would be under your bed.”

“Lord, I have no wife,” said Mabidini, who was no more dense than any man of the Ochori.

“Nor spear,” said Bosambo.

So Mabidini took a canoe and drifted down to within a mile or two of the village where his enemy dwelt, and one day he saw, walking in the forest, a girl who cried and rubbed the weals on her shoulders. He knew her to be M’suru’s wife and spoke to her. At first she was frightened…

Night fell suddenly on the village of Kolobafa and was welcomed by the third wife of M’suru, for there was a deficiency in her household equipment which her lord, with his fox-eyes, would have seen instantly. As it was, he came home too tired and hungry to be suspicious, and, having had his fill sitting solitary before the little fire that smouldered in front of the hut, he nodded and dozed until the chill of the night sent him in a daze of sleep to find his skin bed. The third (and newest) wife, whose name was Kimi, sat aloof, watching in an agony of apprehension, and when he had gone into the hut clasped her bare sides with such force that she ached.

But no bull-roar of fury proclaimed the discovery of his loss, and, creeping to the side of the hut, she listened, heard his snores and crept back.

She enjoyed a hut of her own, and the jealous elder wife, brooding in the dark doorway of the hut she shared with the ousted second, saw Kimi steal away through the village street, and called shrilly to her companion, for, if she hated the second wife, she hated Kimi worst, and in such a crisis lesser enemies have the appearance of friends.

“Kimi has gone to the river to see her lover. Let us wake M’suru and tell him.”

The second wife thrust her blunt head over the stout shoulder that filled the doorway, and peered after the vanishing girl.

“M’suru sends his spears at night to the N’gombi man, who sharpens them on a stone. If we wake M’suru with a foolish story he will beat us.”

“She carried no spears,” said the first wife, contemptuously. “You are afraid.” Suddenly a thought struck her. “If she carries any spear, it will be the Spear of the Ghost!”

There was a shocked “huh!” from the second wife, for the Spear of the Ghost had come to M’suru from his father, and from his father’s father, and from countless generations of fathers. It was a short killing spear, endowed with magical qualities. By its potency M’suru could perform miracles. The broad blade dipped into the river brought back the fish which, for some reason, had deserted the known spearing places; carried into the forest, its magic peopled the woods with prey; but its greatest property was this: if a man were lost in the deep forest he had but to balance the spear on his fingertip and the blade pointed unerringly to safety.