II
No doubt but Hamilton had a serious task before him, for although the grievance which he had to allay was limited to the restricted area over which the spirit of M'zooba brooded, yet the people of the crocodile had many sympathizers who resented as bitterly as the affected parties this interference with what Downing Street called "local religious customs."
A wholly unauthorized palaver was held in the forest which was attended by delegations from the Akasava and the N'gombi, and spies brought the news to Hamilton that the little witch doctors were going through the villages carrying stories of desolation which had come as the result of M'zooba's death.
The palaver Hamilton dispensed with some brusqueness. Twenty soldiers and a machine gun were uninvited guests to the gathering, and the meeting retired in disorder. Two of the witch doctors Hamilton's men caught. One he flogged with all the village looking on, and the other he sent to the Village of Irons for twelve months.
And all the time he spoke of the newer green one which was coming, which his magic would invoke, and which would surely appear "tied by one leg" to a stake near the pool, for all men to see.
He founded a sect of new-green-one worshippers (quite unwittingly). It needed only the corporeal presence of his novel deity to wipe out the feelings of distrust which violence had not wholly dispelled.
Day after day passed, but no word came from Bones, and Captain Hamilton cursed his subordinate, his subordinate's relations, and all the cruelty of fate which brought Bones into his command. Then, unexpectantly, the truant arrived, arrived proud and triumphant in the early morning before Hamilton was awake. He sneaked into the village so quietly that even the Houssa sentry who dozed across the threshold of Hamilton's hut was not aware of his return; and silently, with fiercely whispered injunctions, so that the surprise should be all the more complete, Bones landed his unruly cargo, its feet chained, his great muzzle lassoed and bound with raw hide, its powerful and damaging tail firmly fixed between two planks of wood (a special idea for which Bones was responsible). Then Lieutenant Tibbetts went to the hut of his chief and woke him.
"So here you are, are you?" said Hamilton.
"I am here," said Bones with trembling pride, so that Hamilton knew his subordinate had been successful; "according to your instructions, sir, I have captured the green crocodile. He is of monstrous size, and vastly superior to your partly-worn lady friend. Also," he said, "as per your instructions, conveyed to me in your letter dated the twenty-third instant, I have fastened same by right leg in the vicinity of the pool; at least," he corrected carefully, "he was fastened, but owing to certain technical difficulties he slipped cable, so to speak, and is wallowing in his native element."
"You are not rotting, Bones, are you?" asked Hamilton, busy with his toilet.
"Perfectly true and sound, sir, I never rot," said Bones stiffly; "give me a job of work to do, give me a task, put me upon my metal, sir, and with the assistance of jolly old Bosambo——"
"Is Bosambo in this?"
Bones hesitated.
"He assisted me very considerably, sir," he said; "but, so to speak, the main idea was mine."
The chief's drum summoned the villages to the palaver house, but the news had already filtered through the little township, and a crowd had gathered waiting eagerly to hear the message which Hamilton had to give them.
"O people," he said, addressing them from the hill of palaver, "all I have promised you I have performed. Behold now in the pool—and you shall come with me to see this wonder—is one greater than M'zooba, a vast and splendid spirit which shall protect your crops and be as M'zooba was, and better than was M'zooba. All this I have done for you."
"Lord Tibbetti has done for you," prompted Bones, in a hoarse whisper.
"All this have I done for you," repeated Hamilton firmly, "because I love you."
He led the way through the broad, straggling plantation to the great pool which begins in a narrow creek leading from the river and ends in a sprawl of water to the east of the village.
The whole countryside stood about watching the still water, but nothing happened.
"Can't you whistle him and make him come up or something?" asked Hamilton.
"Sir," said an indignant Bones, "I am no crocodile tamer; willing as I am to oblige you, and clever as I am with parlour tricks, I have not yet succeeded in inducing a crocodile to come to heel after a week's acquaintance."
But native people are very patient.
They stood or squatted, watching the unmoved surface of the water for half an hour, and then suddenly there was a stir and a little gasp of pleasurable apprehension ran through the assembly.
Then slowly the new one came up. He made for a sand-bank, which showed above the water in the centre of the pool; first his snout, then his long body emerged from the water, and Hamilton gasped.
"Good heavens, Bones!" he said in a startled whisper, and his astonishment was echoed from a thousand throats.
And well might he be amazed at the spectacle which the complacent Bones had secured for him.
For this great reptile was more than green, he was a green so vivid that it put the colours of the forest to shame. A bright, glittering green and along the centre of his broad back one zig-zag splash of orange.
"Phew," whistled Hamilton, "this is something like."
The roar of approval from the people was unmistakable. The crocodile turned his evil head and for a moment, as it seemed to Bones, his eyes glinted viciously in the direction of the young and enterprising officer. And Bones admitted after to a feeling of panic.
Then with a malignant "woof!" like the hoarse, growling bark of a dog, magnified a hundred times, he slid back into the water, a great living streak of vivid green and disappeared to the cool retreat at the bottom of the pool.
"You have done splendidly, Bones, splendidly!" said Hamilton, and clapped him on the back; "really you are a most enterprising devil."
"Not at all, sir," said Bones.
He ate his dinner on the Zaire, answering with monosyllables the questions which Hamilton put to him regarding the quest and the place of the origin of this wonderful beast. It was after dinner when they were smoking their cigars in the gloom as the Zaire was steaming across its way to the shore where a wooding offered an excuse for a night's stay, and Bones gave voice to his thoughts.
And curiously enough his conversation did not deal directly or indirectly with his discovery.
"When was this boat decorated last, sir?" he asked.
"About six months before Sanders left," replied Hamilton in surprise; "just why do you ask?"
"Nothing, sir," said Bones, and whistled light-heartedly. Then he returned to the subject.
"I only asked you because I thought the enamel work in the cabin and all that sort of thing has worn very well."
"Yes, it is good wearing stuff," said Hamilton.
"That green paint in the bathroom is rather chic, isn't it? Is that good wearing stuff?"
"The enamel?" smiled Hamilton. "Yes, I believe that is very good wearing. I am not a whale on domestic matters, Bones, but I should imagine that it would last for another year without showing any sign of wear."
"Is it waterproof at all?" asked Bones, after another pause.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean would it wash off if a lot of water were applied to it?"
"No, I should not imagine it would," said Hamilton, "what makes you ask?"
"Oh, nothing!" said Bones carelessly and whistled, looking up to the stars that were peeping from the sky; and the inside of Lieutenant Tibbetts was one large expansive grin.
CHAPTER X
HENRY HAMILTON BONES
Lieutenant Francis Augustus Tibbetts of the Houssas was at some disadvantage with his chief and friend. Lieutenant F. A. Tibbetts might take a perfectly correct attitude, might salute on every possible occasion that a man could salute, might click his heels together in the German fashion (he had spent a year at Heidelberg), might be stiffly formal and so greet his superior that he contrived to combine a dutiful recognition with the cut direct, but never could he overcome one fatal obstacle to marked avoidance—he had to grub with Hamilton.
Bones was hurt. Hamilton had behaved to him as no brother officer should behave. Hamilton had spoken harshly and cruelly in the matter of a commission with which he had entrusted his subordinate, and with which the aforesaid subordinate had lamentably failed to cope.
Up in the Akasava country a certain wise man named M'bisibi had predicted the coming of a devil-child who should be born on a night when the moon lay so on the river and certain rains had fallen in the forest.
And this child should be called "Ewa," which is death; and first his mother would die and then his father; and he would grow up to be a scourge to his people and a pestilence to his nation, and crops would wither when he walked past them, and the fish in the river would float belly up in stinking death, and until Ewa M'faba himself went out, nothing but ill-fortune should come to the N'gombi-Isisi.
Thus M'bisibi predicted, and the word went up and down the river, for the prophet was old and accounted wise even by Bosambo of the Ochori.
It came to Hamilton quickly enough, and he had sent Bones post-haste to await the advent of any unfortunate youngster who was tactless enough to put in an appearance at such an inauspicious moment as would fulfil the prediction of M'bisibi.
And Bones had gone to the wrong village, and that in the face of his steersman's and his sergeant's protest that he was going wrong. Fortunately, by reliable account, no child had been born in the village, and the prediction was unfulfilled.
"Otherwise," said Hamilton, "its young life would have been on your head."
"Yes, sir," said Bones.
"I didn't tell you there were two villages called Inkau," Hamilton confessed, "because I didn't realize you were chump enough to go to the wrong one."
"No, sir," agreed Bones, patiently.
"Naturally," said Hamilton, "I thought the idea of saving the lives of innocent babes would have been sufficient incentive."
"Naturally, sir," said Bones, with forced geniality.
"I've come to one conclusion about you, Bones," said Hamilton.
"Yes, sir," said Bones, "that I'm an ass, sir, I think?"
Hamilton nodded—it was too hot to speak.
"It was an interestin' conclusion," said Bones, thoughtfully, "not without originality—when it first occurred to you, but as a conclusion, if you will pardon my criticism, sir, if you will forgive me for suggestin' as much—in callin' me an ass, sir: apart from its bein' contrary to the spirit an' letter of the Army Act—God Save the King!—it's a bit low, sir." And he left his superior officer without another word. For three days they sat at breakfast, tiffin and dinner, and neither said more than:
"May I pass you the bread, sir?"
"Thank you, sir; have you the salt, sir?"
Hamilton was so busy a man that he might have forgotten the feud, but for the insistence of Bones, who never lost an opportunity of reminding his No. 1 that he was mortally hurt.
One night, dinner had reached the stage where two young officers of Houssas sat primly side by side on the verandah sipping their coffee. Neither spoke, and the séance might have ended with the conventional "Good night" and that punctilious salute which Bones invariably gave, and which Hamilton as punctiliously returned, but for the apparition of a dark figure which crossed the broad space of parade ground hesitatingly as though not certain of his way, and finally came with dragging feet through Sanders' garden to the edge of the verandah.
It was the figure of a small boy, very thin; Hamilton could see this through the half-darkness.
The boy was as naked as when he was born, and he carried in his hand a single paddle.
"O boy," said Hamilton, "I see you."
"Wanda!" said the boy in a frightened tone, and hesitated, as though he were deciding whether it would be better to bolt, or to conclude his desperate enterprise.
"Come up to me," said Hamilton, kindly.
He recognized by the dialect that the visitor had come a long way, as indeed he had, for his old canoe was pushed up amongst the elephant grass a mile away from headquarters, and he had spent three days and nights upon the river. He came up, an embarrassed and a frightened lad, and stood twiddling his toes on the unaccustomed smoothness of the big stoep.
"Where do you come from, and why have you come?" asked Hamilton.
"Lord, I have come from the village of M'bisibi," said the boy; "my mother has sent me because she fears for her life, my father being away on a great hunt. As for me," he went on, "my name is Tilimi-N'kema."
"Speak on, Tilimi the Monkey," said Hamilton, "tell me why the woman your mother fears for her life."
The boy was silent for a spell; evidently he was trying to recall the exact formula which had been dinned into his unreceptive brain, and to repeat word for word the lesson which he had learned parrotwise.
"Thus says the woman my mother," he said at last, with the blank, monotonous delivery peculiar to all small boys who have been rehearsed in speech, "on a certain day when the moon was at full and the rain was in the forest so that we all heard it in the village, my mother bore a child who is my own brother, and, lord, because she feared things which the old man M'bisibi had spoken she went into the forest to a certain witch doctor, and there the child was born. To my mind," said the lad, with a curious air of wisdom which is the property of the youthful native from whom none of the mysteries of life or death are hidden, "it is better she did this, for they would have made a sacrifice of her child. Now when she came back, and they spoke to her, she said that the boy was dead. But this is the truth, lord, that she had left this child with the witch doctor, and now——" he hesitated again.
"And now?" repeated Hamilton.
"Now, lord," said the boy, "this witch doctor, whose name is Bogolono, says she must bring him rich presents at the full of every moon, because her son and my brother is the devil-child whom M'bisibi has predicted. And if she brings no rich presents he will take the child to the village, and there will be an end."
Hamilton called his orderly.
"Give this boy some chop," he said; "to-morrow we will have a longer palaver."
He waited till the man and his charge were out of earshot, then he turned to Bones.
"Bones," he said, seriously, "I think you had better leave unobtrusively for M'bisibi's village, find the woman, and bring her to safety. You will know the village," he added, unnecessarily, "it is the one you didn't find last time."
Bones left insubordinately and made no response.