III
On a certain night in September Mr. Commissioner Sanders was the guest of the Colonial Secretary at his country seat in Berkshire.
Sanders, who was no society man, either by training or by inclination, would have preferred wandering aimlessly about the brilliantly lighted streets of London, but the engagement was a long-standing one. In a sense he was a lion against his will. His name was known, people had written of his character and his sayings; he had even, to his own amazement, delivered a lecture before the members of the Ethnological Society on "Native Folk-lore," and had emerged from the ordeal triumphantly. The guests of Lord Castleberry found Sanders a shy, silent man who could not be induced to talk of the land he loved so dearly. They might have voted him a bore, but for the fact that he so completely effaced himself they had little opportunity for forming so definite a judgment.
It was on the second night of his visit to Newbury Grange that they had cornered him in the billiard-room. It was the beautiful daughter of Lord Castleberry who, with the audacity of youth, forced him, metaphorically speaking, into a corner, from whence there was no escape.
"We've been very patient, Mr. Sanders," she pouted; "we are all dying to hear of your wonderful country, and Bosambo, and fetishes and things, and you haven't said a word."
"There is little to say," he smiled; "perhaps if I told you—something about fetishes...?"
There was a chorus of approval.
Sanders had gained enough courage from his experience before the Ethnological Society, and began to talk.
"Wait," said Lady Betty; "let's have all these glaring lights out—they limit our imagination."
There was a click, and, save for one bracket light behind Sanders, the room was in darkness. He was grateful to the girl, and well rewarded her and the party that sat round on chairs, on benches around the edge of the billiard-table, listening. He told them stories ... curious, unbelievable; of ghost palavers, of strange rites, of mysterious messages carried across the great space of forests.
"Tell us about fetishes," said the girl's voice.
Sanders smiled. There rose to his eyes the spectacle of a hot and weary people bringing in a giant tree through the forest, inch by inch.
And he told the story of the fetish of the Akasava.
"And I said," he concluded, "that I would come from the end of the world——"
He stopped suddenly and stared straight ahead. In the faint light they saw him stiffen like a setter.
"What is wrong?"
Lord Castleberry was on his feet, and somebody clicked on the lights.
But Sanders did not notice.
He was looking towards the end of the room, and his face was set and hard.
"O, M'fosa," he snarled, "O, dog!"
They heard the strange staccato of the Bomongo tongue and wondered.
Lieutenant Tibbetts, helmetless, his coat torn, his lip bleeding, offered no resistance when they strapped him to the smooth high pole. Almost at his feet lay the dead Houssa orderly whom M'fosa had struck down from behind.
In a wide circle, their faces half revealed by the crackling fire which burnt in the centre, the people of the Akasava city looked on impressively.
N'gori, the chief, his brows all wrinkled in terror, his shaking hands at his mouth in a gesture of fear, was no more than a spectator, for his masterful son limped from side to side, consulting his counsellors.
Presently the men who had bound Bones stepped aside, their work completed, and M'fosa came limping across to his prisoners.
"Now," he mocked. "Is it hard for you this fetish stick which Sandi has placed?"
"You're a low cad," said Bones, dropping into English in his wrath. "You're a low, beastly bounder, an' I'm simply disgusted with you."
"What does he say?" they asked M'fosa.
"He speaks to his gods in his own tongue," answered the limper; "for he is greatly afraid."
Lieutenant Tibbetts went on:
"Hear," said he in fluent and vitriolic Bomongo—for he was using that fisher dialect which he knew so much better than the more sonorous tongue of the Upper River—"O hear, eater of fish, O lame dog, O nameless child of a monkey!"
M'fosa's lips went up one-sidedly.
"Lord," said he softly, "presently you shall say no more, for I will cut your tongue out that you shall be lame of speech ... afterwards I will burn you and the fetish stick, so that you all tumble together."
"Be sure you will tumble into hell," said Bones cheerfully, "and that quickly, for you have offended Sandi's Ju-ju, which is powerful and terrible."
If he could gain time—time for some miraculous news to come to Hamilton, who, blissfully unconscious of the treachery to his second-in-command, was sleeping twenty miles downstream—unconscious, too, of the Akasava fleet of canoes which was streaming towards his little steamer.
Perhaps M'fosa guessed his thoughts.
"You die alone, Tibbetti," he said, "though I planned a great death for you, with Bosambo at your side; and in the matter of ju-jus, behold! you shall call for Sandi—whilst you have a tongue."
He took from the raw-hide sheath that was strapped to the calf of his bare leg, a short N'gombi knife, and drew it along the palm of his hand.
"Call now, O Moon-in-the-Eye!" he scoffed.
Bones saw the horror and braced himself to meet it.
"O Sandi!" cried M'fosa, "O planter of ju-ju, come quickly!"
"Dog!"
M'fosa whipped round, the knife dropping from his hand.
He knew the voice, was paralysed by the concentrated malignity in the voice.
There stood Sandi—not half a dozen paces from him.
A Sandi in strange black clothing with a big white-breasted shirt ... but Sandi, hard-eyed and threatening.
"Lord, lord!" he stammered, and put up his hands to his eyes.
He looked again—the figure had vanished.
"Magic!" he mumbled, and lurched forward in terror and hate to finish his work.
Then through the crowd stalked a tall man.
A rope of monkeys' tails covers one broad shoulder; his left arm and hand were hidden by an oblong shield of hide.
In one hand he held a slim throwing spear and this he balanced delicately.
"I am Bosambo of the Ochori," he said magnificently and unnecessarily; "you sent for me and I have come—bringing a thousand spears."
M'fosa blinked, but said nothing.
"On the river," Bosambo went on, "I met many canoes that went to a killing—behold!"
It was the head of M'fosa's lieutenant, who had charge of the surprise party.
For a moment M'fosa looked, then turned to leap, and Bosambo's spear caught him in mid-air.
"Jolly old Bosambo!" muttered Bones, and fainted.
Four thousand miles away Sanders was offering his apologies to a startled company.
"I could have sworn I saw—something," he said, and he told no more stories that night.
CHAPTER V
A FRONTIER AND A CODE
To understand this story you must know that at one point of Ochori borderline, the German, French, and Belgian territories shoot three narrow tongues that form, roughly, the segments of a half-circle. Whether the German tongue is split in the middle by N'glili River, so that it forms a flattened broad arrow, with the central prong the river is a moot point. We, in Downing Street, claim that the lower angle of this arrow is wholly ours, and that all the flat basin of the Field of Blood (as they call it) is entitled to receive the shadow which a flapping Union Jack may cast.
If Downing Street were to send that frantic code-wire to "Polonius" to Hamilton in these days he could not obey the instructions, for reasons which I will give. As a matter of fact the code has now been changed, Lieutenant Tibbetts being mainly responsible for the alteration.
Hamilton, in his severest mood, wrote a letter to Bones, and it is worth reproducing.
That Bones was living a dozen yards from Captain Hamilton, and that they shared a common mess-table, adds rather than distracts from the seriousness of the correspondence. The letter ran:
"The Residency,
"September 24th.
"From Officer commanding Houssas detachment Headquarters, to Officer commanding "B" company of Houssas.
"Sir,—
"I have the honour to direct your attention to that paragraph of King's regulations which directs that an officer's sole attention should be concentrated upon executing the lawful commands of his superior.
"I have had occasion recently to correct a certain tendency on your part to employing War Department property and the servants of the Crown for your own special use. I need hardly point out to you that such conduct on your part is subversive to discipline and directly contrary to the spirit and letter of regulations. More especially would I urge the impropriety of utilizing government telegraph lines for the purpose of securing information regarding your gambling transactions. Matters have now reached a very serious crisis, and I feel sure that you will see the necessity for refraining from these breaches of discipline.
"I have the honour to be, sir,
"Your obedient servant,
"P. G. Hamilton, 'Captain.'"
When two white men, the only specimen of their race and class within a radius of hundreds of miles, are living together in an isolated post, they either hate or tolerate one another. The exception must always be found in two men of a similar service having similar objects to gain, and infused with a common spirit of endeavour.
Fortunately neither Lieutenant Tibbetts nor his superior were long enough associated to get upon one another's nerves.
Lieutenant Tibbetts received this letter while he was shaving, and came across the parade ground outrageously attired in his pyjamas and his helmet. Clambering up the wooden stairs, his slippers flap-flapping across the broad verandah, he burst into the chief's bedroom, interrupting a stern and frigid Captain Hamilton in the midst of his early morning coffee and roll.
"Look here, old sport," said Bones, indignantly waving a frothy shaving brush at the other, "what the dooce is all this about?"
He displayed a crumpled letter.
"Lieutenant Tibbetts," said Hamilton of the Houssas severely, "have you no sense of decency?"
"Sense of decency, my dear old thing!" repeated Bones. "I am simply full of it. That is why I have come."
A terrible sight was Bones at that early hour with the open pyjama jacket showing his scraggy neck, with his fish mouth drooping dismally, his round, staring eyes and his hair rumpled up, one frantic tuft at the back standing up in isolation.
Hamilton stared at him, and it was the stern stare of a disciplinarian. But Bones was not to be put out of countenance by so small a thing as an icy glance.
"There is no sense in getting peevish with me, old Ham," he said, squatting down on the nearest chair; "this is what I call a stupid, officious, unnecessary letter. Why this haughtiness? Why these crushing inferences? Why this unkindness to poor old Bones?"
"The fact of it is, Bones," said Hamilton, accepting the situation, "you are spending too much of your time in the telegraph station."
Bones got up slowly.
"Captain Hamilton, sir!" he said reproachfully, "after all I have done for you."
"Beyond selling me one of your beastly sweepstake tickets for five shillings," said Hamilton, unpleasantly; "a ticket which I dare say you have taken jolly good care will not win a prize, I fail to see in what manner you have helped me. Now, Bones, you will have to pay more attention to your work. There is no sense in slacking; we will have Sanders back here before we know where we are, and when he starts nosing round there will be a lot of trouble. Besides, you are shirking."
"Me!" gasped Bones, outraged. "Me—shirking? You forget yourself, sir!"
Even Bones could not be dignified with a lather brush in one hand and a half-shaven cheek, testifying to the hastiness of his departure from his quarters.
"I only wish to say, sir," said Bones, "that during the period I have had the honour to serve under your command I have settled possibly more palavers of a distressingly ominous character than the average Commissioner is called upon to settle in the course of a year."
"As you have created most of the palavers yourself," said Hamilton unkindly, "I do not deny this. In other words, you have got yourself into more tangles, and you've had to crawl out more often."
"It is useless appealing to your better nature, sir," said Bones.
He saluted with the hand that held the lather brush, turned about like an automaton, tripped over the mat, recovered himself with an effort, and preserving what dignity a man can preserve in pink-striped pyjamas and a sun helmet, stalked majestically back to his quarters. Half-way across he remembered something and came doubling back, clattering into Hamilton's room unceremoniously.
"There is one thing I forgot to say," he said, "about those sweepstake tickets. If I happen to be killed on any future expedition that you may send me, you will understand that the whole of my moveable property is yours, absolutely. And I may add, sir," he said at the doorway with one hand on the lintel ready to execute a strategic flank movement out of range, "that with this legacy I offer you my forgiveness for the perfectly beastly time you have given me. Good morning, sir."
There was a commanding officer's parade of Houssas at noon. It was not until he stalked across the square and clicked his heels together as he reported the full strength of his company present that Hamilton saw his subordinate again.
The parade over, Bones went huffily to his quarters.
He was hurt. To be told he had been shirking his duty touched a very tender and sensitive spot of his.
In preparation for the movement which he had expected to make he had kept his company on the move for a fortnight. For fourteen terrible days in all kinds of weather, he had worked like a native in the forest; with sham fights and blank cartridge attacks upon imaginary positions, with scaling of stockades and building of bridges—all work at which his soul revolted—to be told at the end he had shirked his work!
Certainly he had come down to headquarters more often perhaps than was necessary, but then he was properly interested in the draw of a continental sweepstake which might, with any kind of luck, place him in the possession of a considerable fortune. Hamilton was amiable at lunch, even communicative at dinner, and for him rather serious.
For if the truth be told he was desperately worried. The cause was, as it had often been with Sanders, that French-German-Belgian territory which adjoins the Ochori country. All the bad characters, not only the French of the Belgian Congo, but of the badly-governed German lands—all the tax resisters, the murderers, and the criminals of every kind, but the lawless contingents of every nation, formed a floating nomadic population in the tree-covered hills which lay beyond the country governed by Bosambo.
Of late there had been a larger break-away than usual. A strong force of rebellious natives was reported to be within a day's march of the Ochori boundary. This much Hamilton knew. But he had known of such occurrences before; not once, but a score of times had alarming news come from the French border.
He had indeed made many futile trips into the heart of the Ochori country.
Forced marches through little known territory, and long and tiring waits for the invader that never came, had dulled his senses of apprehension. He had to take a chance. The Administrator's office would warn him from time to time, and ask him conventionally to make his arrangements to meet all contingencies and Sanders would as conventionally reply that the condition of affairs on the Ochori border was engaging his most earnest attention.
"What is the use of worrying about it now?" asked Bones at dinner.
Hamilton shook his head.
"There was a certain magic in old Sanders' name," he said.
Bones' lips pursed.
"My dear old chap," he said, "there is a bit of magic in mine."
"I have not noticed it," said Hamilton.
"I am getting awfully popular as a matter of fact," said Bones complacently. "The last time I was up the river, Bosambo came ten miles down stream to meet me and spend the day."
"Did you lose anything?" asked Hamilton ungraciously.
Bones thought.
"Now you come to mention it," he said slowly, "I did lose quite a lot of things, but dear old Bosambo wouldn't play a dirty trick on a pal. I know Bosambo."
"If there is one thing more evident than another," said Hamilton, "it is that you do not know Bosambo."
Hamilton was wakened at three in the next morning by the telegraph operator. It was a "clear the line" message, coded from headquarters, and half awake he went into Sanders' study and put it into plain English.
"Hope you are watching the Ochori border," it ran, "representations from French Government to the effect that a crossing is imminent."
He pulled his mosquito boots on over his pyjamas, struggled into a coat and crossed to Lieutenant Tibbetts' quarters.
Bones occupied a big hut at the end of the Houssa lines, and Hamilton woke him by the simple expedient of flashing his electric hand lamp in his face.
"I have had a telegram," he said, and Bones leapt out of bed wide awake in an instant.
"I knew jolly well I would draw a horse," he said exultantly. "I had a dream——"
"Be serious, you feather-minded devil."
With that Hamilton handed him the telegram.
Bones read it carefully, and interpreted any meanings into its construction which it could not possibly bear.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"There is only one thing to do," said Hamilton. "We shall have to take all the men we can possibly muster, and go north at daybreak."
"Spoken like a jolly old Hannibal," said Bones heartily, and smacked his superior on the back. A shrill bugle call aroused the sleeping lines, and Hamilton went back to his quarters to make preparations for the journey. In the first grey light of dawn he flew three pigeons to Bosambo, and the message they carried about their red legs was brief.
"Take your fighting regiments to the edge of Frenchi land; presently I will come with my soldiers and support you. Let no foreigner pass on your life and on your head."
When the rising sun tipped the tops of the palms with gold, and the wild world was filled with the sound of the birds, the Zaire, her decks alive with soldiers, began her long journey northward.
Just before the boat left, Hamilton received a further message from the Administrator. It was in plain English, some evidence of Sir Robert Sanleigh's haste.
"Confidential: This matter on the Ochori border extremely delicate. Complete adequate arrangements to keep in touch with me."
For one moment Hamilton conceived the idea of leaving Bones behind to deal with the telegram and come along. A little thought, however, convinced him of the futility of this method. For one thing he would want every bit of assistance he could get, and although Bones had his disadvantages he was an excellent soldier, and a loyal and gallant comrade.
It might be necessary for Hamilton to divide up his forces; in which case he could hardly dispense with Lieutenant Tibbetts, and he explained unnecessarily to Bones:
"I think you are much better under my eye where I can see what you're doing."
"Sir," said Bones very seriously, "it is not what I do, it is what I think. If you could only see my brain at work——"
"Ha, ha!" said Hamilton rudely.
For at least three days relations were strained between the two officers. Bones was a man who admitted at regular intervals that he was unduly sensitive. He had explained this disadvantage to Hamilton at various times, but the Houssa stolidly refused to remember the fact.
Most of the way up the river Hamilton attended to his business navigation—he knew the stream very well—whilst Bones, in a cabin which had been rigged up for him in the after part of the ship, played Patience, and by a systematic course of cheating himself was able to accomplish marvels. They found the Ochori city deserted save for a strong guard, for Bosambo had marched the day previous; sending a war call through the country.
He had started with a thousand spears, and his force was growing in snowball fashion as he progressed through the land. The great road which Notiki, the northern chief, had started by way of punishment was beginning to take shape. Bosambo had moved with incredible swiftness.
Too swift, indeed, for a certain Angolian-Congo robber who had headed a villainous pilgrimage to a land which, as he had predicted, flowed with milk and honey; was guarded by timorous men and mainly populated by slim and beautiful maidens. The Blue Books on this migration gave this man's name as Kisini, but he was in fact an Angolian named Bizaro—a composite name which smacks suspiciously of Portuguese influence.
Many times had the unruly people and the lawless bands which occupied the forest beyond the Ochori threatened to cross into British territory. But the dangers of the unknown, the awful stories of a certain white lord who was swift to avenge and monstrously inquisitive had held them. Year after year there had grown up tribes within tribes, tiny armed camps that had only this in common, that they were outside the laws from which they had fled, and that somewhere to the southward and the eastward were strong forces flying the tricolour of France or the yellow star of the Belgian Congo, ready to belch fire at them, if they so much as showed their flat noses.
It would have needed a Napoleon to have combined all the conflicting forces, to have lulled all the mutual suspicions, and to have moulded these incompatible particles into a whole; but, Bizaro, like many another vain and ambitious man, had sought by means of a great palaver to produce a feeling of security sufficiently soothing to the nerves and susceptibilities of all elements, to create something like a nationality of these scattered remnants of the nations.
And though he failed, he did succeed in bringing together four or five of the camps, and it was this news carried to the French Governor by spies, transmitted to Downing Street, and flashed back again to the Coast, which set Hamilton and his Houssas moving; which brought a regiment of the King's African Rifles to the Coast ready to reinforce the earlier expedition, and which (more to the point) had put Bosambo's war drums rumbling from one end of the Ochori to the other.
Bizaro, mustering his force, came gaily through the sun-splashed aisles of the forest, his face streaked hideously with camwood, his big elephant spear twirled between his fingers, and behind him straggled his cosmopolitan force.
There were men from the Congo and the French Congo; men from German lands; from Angola; wanderers from far-off Barotseland, who had drifted on to the Congo by the swift and yellow Kasai. There were hunters from the forests of far-off Bongindanga where the okapi roams. For each man's presence in that force there was good and sinister reason, for these were no mere tax-evaders, poor, starved wretches fleeing from the rule which Bula Matadi[4] imposed. There was a blood price on almost every head, and in a dozen prisons at Boma, at Brazaville, and Equatorville, and as far south as St. Paul de Loduda, there were leg-irons which had at some time or other fitted their scarred ankles.
Now there are four distinct physical features which mark the border line between the border land and the foreign territory. Mainly the line is a purely imaginary one, not traceable save by the most delicate instruments—a line which runs through a tangle of forest.
But the most noticeable crossing place is N'glili.[5]
Here a little river, easily fordable, and not more than a dozen spear lengths across flows from one wood into another. Between the two woods is a clear space of thick grass and shrub. In the spring of the year the banks of the stream are white with arum-lilies, and the field beyond, at a later period, is red with wild anemone.
The dour fugitives on the other side of the stream have a legend that those who safely cross the "Field of Blood"—so they call the anemone-sprinkled land beyond—without so much as crushing a flower may claim sanctuary under the British flag.
So that when Bizaro sighted the stream, and the two tall trees that flanked the ford, from afar off and said: "To-day we will walk between the flowers," he was signifying the definite character of his plans.
"Master," said one of the more timid of his muster, when they had halted for a rest in sight of the promised land, "what shall we do when we come to these strange places?"
"We shall defeat all manner of men," said Bizaro optimistically. "Afterwards they shall come and sue for peace, and they shall give us a wide land where we may build us huts and sow our corn. And they also will give us women, and we shall settle in comfort, and I will be chief over you. And, growing with the moons, in time I shall make you a great nation."
They might have crossed the stream that evening and committed themselves irrevocably to their invasion. Bizaro was a criminal, and a lazy man, and he decided to sleep where he was—an act fatal to the smooth performance of his enterprise, for when in the early hours of the morning he marched his horde to the N'glili river he found two thousand spears lining the opposite bank, and they were under a chief who was at once insolent and unmoved by argument.
"O chief," said Bosambo pleasantly, "you do not cross my beautiful flowers to-day."
"Lord," said Bizaro humbly, "we are poor men who desire a new land."
"That you shall have," said Bosambo grimly, "for I have sent my warriors to dig big holes wherein you may take your rest in this land you desire."
An unhappy Bizaro carried his six hundred spears slowly back to the land from whence he had come and found on return to the mixed tribes that he had unconsciously achieved a miracle. For the news of armed men by the N'glili river carried terror to these evil men—they found themselves between two enemies and chose the force which they feared least.
On the fourth day following his interview with Bosambo, Bizaro led five thousand desperate men to the ford and there was a sanguinary battle which lasted for the greater part of the morning and was repeated at sundown.
Hamilton brought his Houssas up in the nick of time, when one wing of Bosambo's force was being thrust back and when Bizaro's desperate adventurers had gained the Ochori bank. Hamilton came through the clearing, and formed his men rapidly.
Sword in hand, in advance of the glittering bayonets, Bones raced across the red field, and after one brief and glorious mêlée the invader was driven back, and a dropping fire from the left, as the Houssas shot steadily at the flying enemy, completed the disaster to Bizaro's force.
"That settles that!" said Hamilton.
He had pitched his camp on the scene of his exploit, the bivouac fires of the Houssas gleamed redly amongst the anemones.
"Did you see me in action?" asked Bones, a little self-consciously.
"No, I didn't notice anything particularly striking about the fight in your side of the world," said Hamilton.
"I suppose you did not see me bowl over a big Congo chap?" asked Bones, carelessly, as he opened a tin of preserved tongue. "Two at once I bowled over," he repeated.
"What do you expect me to do?" asked Hamilton unpleasantly. "Get up and cheer, or recommend you for the Victoria Cross or something?"
Bones carefully speared a section of tongue from the open tin before he replied.
"I had not thought about the Victoria Cross, to tell you the truth," he admitted; "but if you feel that you ought to recommend me for something or other for conspicuous courage in the face of the enemy, do not let your friendship stand in the way."
"I will not," said Hamilton.
There was a little pause, then without raising his eyes from the task in hand which was at that precise moment the covering of a biscuit with a large and generous layer of marmalade, Bones went on.
"I practically saved the life of one of Bosambo's headmen. He was on the ground and three fellows were jabbing at him. The moment they saw me they dropped their spears and fled."
"I expect it was your funny nose that did the trick," said Hamilton unimpressed.
"I stood there," Bones went on loftily ignoring the gratuitous insult, "waiting for anything that might turn up; exposed, dear old fellow, to every death-dealing missile, but calmly directing, if you will allow me to say so, the tide of battle. It was," he added modestly, "one of the bravest deeds I ever saw."
He waited, but Hamilton had his mouth full of tongue sandwich.
"If you mention me in dispatches," Bones went on suggestively.
"Don't worry—I shan't," said Hamilton.
"But if you did," persisted Lieutenant Tibbetts, poising his sticky biscuit, "I can only say——"
"The marmalade is running down your sleeve," said Hamilton; "shut up, Bones, like a good chap."
Bones sighed.
"The fact of it is, Hamilton," he was frank enough to say, "I have been serving so far without hope of reward and scornful of honour, but now I have reached the age and the position in life where I feel I am entitled to some slight recognition to solace my declining years."
"How long have you been in the army?" asked Hamilton, curiously.
"Eighteen months," replied Bones; "nineteen months next week, and it's a jolly long time, I can tell you, sir."
Leaving his dissatisfied subordinate, Hamilton made the round of the camp. The red field, as he called it, was in reality a low-lying meadow, which rose steeply to the bank of the river on the one side and more steeply—since it first sloped downward in that direction—to the Ochori forest, two miles away. He made this discovery with a little feeling of alarm. He knew something of native tactics, and though his scouts had reported that the enemy was effectually routed, and that the nearest body was five miles away, he put a strong advance picquet on the other side of the river, and threw a wide cordon of sentries about the camp. Especially he apportioned Abiboo, his own sergeant, the task of watching the little river which flowed swiftly between its orderly banks past the sunken camp. For two days Abiboo watched and found nothing to report.
Not so the spies who were keeping watch upon the moving remnants of Bizaro's army.
They came with the news that the main body had mysteriously disappeared. To add to Hamilton's anxiety he received a message by way of headquarters and the Ochori city from the Administrator.
"Be prepared at the first urgent message from myself to fall back on the Ochori city. German Government claim that whole of country for two miles north of river N'glili is their territory. Most delicate situation. International complications feared. Rely on your discretion, but move swiftly if you receive orders."
"Leave this to me," said Bones when Hamilton read the message out; "did I ever tell you, sir, that I was intended for the diplomatic service——"
The truth about the Ochori border has never been thoroughly exposed. If you get into your mind the fact that the Imperialists of four nations were dreaming dreams of a trans-African railway which was to tap the resources of the interior, and if you remember that each patriotic dreamer conceived a different kind of railway according to his nationality and that they only agreed upon one point, namely, that the line must point contiguous with the Ochori border, you may understand dimly some reason for the frantic claim that that little belt of territory, two miles wide, was part of the domain of each and every one of the contestants.
When the news was flashed to Europe that a party of British Houssas were holding the banks of the N'glili river, and had inflicted a loss upon a force of criminals, the approval which civilization should rightly have bestowed upon Captain Hamilton and his heroic lieutenant was tempered largely by the question as to whether Captain Hamilton and his Houssas had any right whatever to be upon "the red field." And in consequence the telegraph lines between Berlin and Paris and Paris and London and London and Brussels were kept fairly busy with passionate statements of claims couched in the stilted terminology of diplomacy.
England could not recede from the position she had taken. This she said in French and in German, and in her own perfidious tongue. She stated this uncompromisingly, but at the same time sent secret orders to withdraw the force that was the bone of contention. This order she soon countermanded. A certain speech delivered by a too voluble Belgian minister was responsible for the stiffening of her back, and His Excellency the Administrator of the territory received official instructions in the middle of the night: "Tell Hamilton to stay where he is and hold border against all comers."
This message was re-transmitted.
Now there is in existence in the British Colonial Service, and in all branches which affect the agents and the servants of the Colonial Office, an emergency code which is based upon certain characters in Shakespearean plays.
I say "there is"; perhaps it would be better and more to the point if I said "there was," since the code has been considerably amended.
Thus, be he sub-inspector or commissioner, or chief of local native police who receives the word "Ophelia," he knows without consulting any book that "Ophelia" means "unrest of natives reported in your district, please report"; or if it be "Polonius" it signifies to him—and this he knows without confirming his knowledge—that he must move steadily forward. Or if it be "Banquo" he reads into it, "Hold your position till further orders." And "Banquo" was the word that the Administrator telegraphed.
Sergeant Abiboo had sat by the flowing N'glili river without noticing any slackening of its strength or challenging of its depth.
There was reason for this.
Bizaro, who was in the forest ten miles to the westward, and working moreover upon a piece of native strategy which natives the world over had found successful, saw that it was unnecessary to dam the river and divert the stream.
Nature had assisted him to a marvellous degree. He had followed the stream through the forest until he reached a place where it was a quarter of a mile wide, so wide and so newly spread that the water reached half-way up the trunks of the sodden and dying trees.
Moreover, there was a bank through which a hundred men might cut a breach in a day or so, even though they went about their work most leisurely, being constitutionally averse to manual labour.
Bizaro was no engineer, but he had all the forest man's instincts of water-levels. There was a clear run down to the meadows beyond that, as he said, he "smelt."
"We will drown these dogs," he said to his headman, "and afterwards we will walk into the country and take it for our own."
Hamilton had been alive to the danger of such an attack. He saw by certain indications of the soil that this great shallow valley had been inundated more than once, though probably many years had passed since the last overflow of water. Yet he could not move from where he had planted himself without risking the displeasure of his chief and without also risking very serious consequences in other directions.
Bosambo, frankly bored, was all for retiring his men to the comforts of the Ochori city.
"Lord, why do we sit here?" he asked, "looking at this little stream which has no fish and at this great ugly country, when I have my beautiful city for your lordship's reception, and dancing folk and great feasts?"
"A doocid sensible idea," murmured Bones.
"I wait for a book," answered Hamilton shortly. "If you wish to go, you may take your soldiers and leave me."
"Lord," said Bosambo, "you put shame on me," and he looked his reproach.
"I am really surprised at you, Hamilton," murmured Bones.
"Keep your infernal comments to yourself," snapped his superior. "I tell you I must wait for my instructions."
He was a silent man for the rest of the evening, and had settled himself down in his canvas chair to doze away the night, when a travel-stained messenger came from the Ochori and he brought a telegram of one word.
Hamilton looked at it, he looked too with a frown at the figures that preceded it.
"And what you mean," he muttered, "the Lord knows!"
The word, however, was sufficiently explicit. A bugle call brought the Houssas into line and the tapping of Bosambo's drums assembled his warriors.
Within half an hour of the receipt of the message Hamilton's force was on the move.
They crossed the great stretch of meadow in the darkness and were climbing up towards the forest when a noise like thunder broke upon their ears.
Such a roaring, crashing, hissing of sound came nearer and nearer, increasing in volume every second. The sky was clear, and one swift glance told Hamilton that it was not a storm he had to fear. And then it came upon him, and he realized what this commotion meant.
"Run!" he cried, and with one accord naked warriors and uniformed Houssas fled through the darkness to the higher ground. The water came rushing about Hamilton's ankles, one man slipped back again into the flood and was hauled out again by Bones, exclaiming loudly his own act lest it should have escaped the attention of his superior, and the party reached safety without the loss of a man.
"Just in time," said Hamilton grimly. "I wonder if the Administrator knew this was going to happen?"
They came to the Ochori by easy marches, and Hamilton wrote a long wire to headquarters sending it on ahead by a swift messenger.
It was a dispatch which cleared away many difficulties, for the disputed territory was for everlasting under water, and where the "red field" had blazed brilliantly was a calm stretch of river two miles wide filled with strange silent brown objects that floated and bobbed to the movement of the tide. These were the men who in their folly had loosened the waters and died of their rashness. Most notable of these was Bizaro.
There was a shock waiting for Hamilton when he reached the Ochori city. The wire from the Administrator was kindly enough and sufficiently approving to satisfy even an exigent Bones. "But," it ran, "why did you retire in face of stringent orders to remain? I wired you 'Banquo.'"
Hamilton afterwards learnt that the messenger carrying this important dispatch had passed his party in their retirement through the forest.
"Banquo," quoted Hamilton in amazement. "I received absolute instructions to retire."
"Hard cheese," said Bones, sympathetically. "His dear old Excellency wants a good talking to; but are you sure, dear old chap, that you haven't made a mistake."
"Here it is," he said, "but I must confess that I don't understand the numbers."
He handed it to Bones. It read:
"Mercutio 17178."
Bones looked at it a moment, then gasped. He reached out his hand solemnly and grasped that of the astounded Hamilton.
"Dear old fellow," he said in a broken voice, "Congratulate me, I have drawn a runner!"
"A runner?"
"A runner, dear old sport," chortled Bones, "in the Cambridgeshire! You see I've got a ticket number seventeen, seventeen eight in my pocket, dear old friend! If Mercutio wins," he repeated solemnly, "I will stand you the finest dinner that can be secured this side of Romano's."
CHAPTER VI
THE SOUL OF THE NATIVE WOMAN
Mail day is ever a day of supreme interest for the young and for the matter of that for the middle-aged, too. Sanders hated mail days because the bulk of his correspondence had to do with Government, and Government never sat down with a pen in its hand to wish Sanders many happy returns of the day or to tell him scandalous stories about mutual friends.
Rather the Government (by inference) told him scandalous stories about himself—of work not completed to the satisfaction of Downing Street—a thoroughfare given to expecting miracles.
Hamilton had a sister who wrote wittily and charmingly every week, and there was another girl ... Still, two letters and a bright pink paper or two made a modest postbag by the side of Lieutenant Tibbetts' mail.
There came to Bones every mail day a thick wad of letters and parcels innumerable, and he could sit at the big table for hours on end, whistling a little out of tune, mumbling incoherently. He had a trick of commenting upon his letters aloud, which was very disconcerting for Hamilton. Bones wouldn't open a letter and get half-way through it before he began his commenting.
"... poor soul ... dear! dear! ... what a silly old ass ... ah, would you ... don't do it, Billy...."
To Hamilton's eyes the bulk of correspondence rather increased than diminished.
"You must owe a lot of money," he said one day.
"Eh!"
"All these...!" Hamilton opened his hand to a floor littered with discarded envelopes. "I suppose they represent demands...."
"Dear lad," said Bones brightly, "they represent popularity—I'm immensely popular, sir," he gulped a little as he fished out two dainty envelopes from the pile before him; "you may not have experienced the sensation, but I assure you, sir, it's pleasing, it's doocidly pleasing!"
"Complacent ass," said Hamilton, and returned to his own correspondence.
Systematically Bones went through his letters, now and again consulting a neat little morocco-covered note-book. (It would appear he kept a very careful record of every letter he wrote home, its contents, the date of its dispatch, and the reply thereto.) He had reduced letter writing to a passion, spent most of his evenings writing long epistles to his friends—mostly ladies of a tender age—and had incidentally acquired a reputation in the Old Country for his brilliant powers of narrative.
This, Hamilton discovered quite by accident. It would appear that Hamilton's sister had been on a visit—was in fact on the visit when she wrote one letter which so opened Hamilton's eyes—and mentioned that she was staying with some great friends of Bones'. She did not, of course, call him "Bones," but "Mr. Tibbetts."
"I should awfully like to meet him," she wrote, "he must be a very interesting man. Aggie Vernon had a letter from him yesterday wherein he described his awful experience lion-hunting.
"To be chased by a lion and caught and then carried to the beast's lair must have been awful!
"Mr. Tibbetts is very modest about it in his letter, and beyond telling Aggie that he escaped by sticking his finger in the lion's eye he says little of his subsequent adventure. By the way, Pat, Aggie tells me that you had a bad bout of fever and that Mr. Tibbetts carried you for some miles to the nearest doctor. I wish you wouldn't keep these things so secret, it worries me dreadfully unless you tell me—even the worst about yourself. I hope your interesting friend returned safely from his dangerous expedition into the interior—he was on the point of leaving when his letter was dispatched and was quite gloomy about his prospects...."
Hamilton read this epistle over and over again, then he sent for Bones.
That gentleman came most cheerfully, full of fine animal spirits, and——
"Just had a letter about you, Bones," said Hamilton carelessly.
"About me, sir!" said Bones; "from the War Office—I'm not being decorated or anything!" he asked anxiously.
"No—nothing so tragic; it was a letter from my sister, who is staying with the Vernons."
"Oh!" said Bones going suddenly red.
"What a modest devil you are," said the admiring Hamilton, "having a lion hunt all to yourself and not saying a word about it to anybody."
Bones made curious apologetic noises.
"I didn't know there were any lions in the country," pursued Hamilton remorselessly. "Liars, yes! But lions, no! I suppose you brought them with you—and I suppose you know also, Bones, that it is considered in lion-hunting circles awfully rude to stick your finger into a lion's eye? It is bad sportsmanship to say the least, and frightfully painful for the lion."
Bones was making distressful grimaces.
"How would you like a lion to stick his finger in your eye?" asked Hamilton severely; "and, by the way, Bones, I have to thank you."
He rose solemnly, took the hand of his reluctant and embarrassed second and wrung.
"Thank you," said Hamilton, in a broken voice, "for saving my life."
"Oh, I say, sir," began Bones feebly.
"To carry a man eighty miles on your back is no mean accomplishment, Bones—especially when I was unconscious——"
"I don't say you were unconscious, sir. In fact, sir——" floundered Lieutenant Tibbetts as red as a peony.
"And yet I was unconscious," insisted Hamilton firmly. "I am still unconscious, even to this day. I have no recollection of your heroic effort, Bones, I thank you."
"Well, sir," said Bones, "to make a clean breast of the whole affair——"
"And this dangerous expedition of yours, Bones, an expedition from which you might never return—that," said Hamilton in a hushed voice, "is the best story I have heard for years."
"Sir," said Bones, speaking under the stress of considerable emotion, "I am clean bowled, sir. The light-hearted fairy stories which I wrote to cheer, so to speak, the sick-bed of an innocent child, sir, they have recoiled upon my own head. Peccavi, mea culpi, an' all those jolly old expressions that you'll find in the back pages of the dictionary."
"Oh, Bones, Bones!" chuckled Hamilton.
"You mustn't think I'm a perfect liar, sir," began Bones, earnestly.
"I don't think you're a perfect liar," answered Hamilton, "I think you're the most inefficient liar I've ever met."
"Not even a liar, I'm a romancist, sir," Bones stiffened with dignity and saluted, but whether he was saluting Hamilton, or the spirit of Romance, or in sheer admiration was saluting himself, Hamilton did not know.
"The fact is, sir," said Bones confidentially, "I'm writing a book!"
He stepped back as though to better observe the effect of his words.
"What about?" asked Hamilton, curiously.
"About things I've seen and things I know," said Bones, in his most impressive manner.
"Oh, I see!" said Hamilton, "one of those waistcoat pocket books."
Bones swallowed the insult with a gulp.
"I've been asked to write a book," he said; "my adventures an' all that sort of thing. Of course they needn't have happened, really——"
"In that case, Bones, I'm with you," said Hamilton; "if you're going to write a book about things that haven't happened to you, there's no limit to its size."
"You're bein' a jolly cruel old officer, sir," said Bones, pained by the cold cynicism of his chief. "But I'm very serious, sir. This country is full of material. And everybody says I ought to write a book about it—why, dash it, sir, I've been here nearly two months!"
"It seems years," said Hamilton.
Bones was perfectly serious, as he had said. He did intend preparing a book for publication, had dreams of a great literary career, and an ultimate membership of the Athenæum Club belike. It had come upon him like a revelation that such a career called him. The week after he had definitely made up his mind to utilize his gifts in this direction, his outgoing mail was heavier than ever. For to three and twenty English and American publishers, whose names he culled from a handy work of reference, he advanced a business-like offer to prepare for the press a volume "of 316 pages printed in type about the same size as enclosed," and to be entitled:
MY WILD LIFE AMONGST CANNIBALS.
BY
Augustus Tibbetts, Lieutenant of Houssas.
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; Fellow
of the Royal Asiatic Society; Member of the
Ethnological Society and Junior Army Service Club.
Bones had none of these qualifications, save the latter, but as he told himself he'd jolly soon be made a member if his book was a howling success.
No sooner had his letters been posted than he changed his mind, and he addressed three and twenty more letters to the publishers, altering the title to:
THE TYRANNY OF THE WILDS.
Being Some Observations on the Habits and Customs
of Savage Peoples.
BY
Augustus Tibbetts (Lt.).
With a Foreword by Captain Patrick Hamilton.
"You wouldn't mind writing a foreword, dear old fellow?" he asked.
"Charmed," said Hamilton. "Have you a particular preference for any form?"
"Just please yourself, sir," said a delighted Bones, so Hamilton covered two sheets of foolscap with an appreciation which began:
"The audacity of the author of this singularly uninformed work is to be admired without necessarily being imitated. Two months' residence in a land which offered many opportunities for acquiring inaccurate data, has resulted in a work which must stand for all time as a monument of murderous effort," etc.
Bones read the appreciation very carefully.
"Dear old sport," he said, a little troubled, as he reached the end; "this is almost uncomplimentary."
You couldn't depress Bones or turn him from his set purpose. He scribed away, occupying his leisure moments with his great work. His normal correspondence suffered cruelly, but Bones was relentless. Hamilton sent him north to collect the hut tax, and at first Bones resented this order, believing that it was specially designed to hamper him.
"Of course, sir," he said, "I'll obey you, if you order me in accordance with regulations an' all that sort of rot, but believe me, sir, you're doin' an injury to literature. Unborn generations, sir, will demand an explanation——"
"Get out!" said Hamilton crossly.
Bones found his trip a blessing that had been well disguised. There were many points of interest on which he required first-hand information. He carried with him to the Zaire large exercise books on which he had pasted such pregnant labels as "Native Customs," "Dances," "Ju-jus," "Ancient Legends," "Folk-lore," etc. They were mostly blank, and represented projected chapters of his great work.
All might have been well with Bones. More virgin pages might easily have been covered with his sprawling writing and the book itself, converted into honest print, have found its way, in the course of time, into the tuppenny boxes of the Farringdon book-mart, sharing its soiled magnificence with the work of the best of us, but on his way Bones had a brilliant inspiration. There was a chapter he had not thought of, a chapter heading which had not been born to his mind until that flashing moment of genius.
Upon yet another exercise book, he pasted the label of a chapter which was to eclipse all others in interest. Behold then, this enticing announcement, boldly printed and ruled about with double lines:
"THE SOUL OF THE NATIVE WOMAN."
It was a fine chapter title. It was sonorous, it had dignity, it was full of possibilities. "The Soul of the Native Woman," repeated Bones, in an ecstasy of self-admiration, and having chosen his subject he proceeded to find out something about it.
Now, about this time, Bosambo of the Ochori might, had he wished and had he the literary quality, have written many books about women, if for no other reason than because of a certain girl named D'riti.
She was a woman of fifteen, grown to a splendid figure, with a proud head and a chin that tilted in contempt, for she was the daughter of Bosambo's chief counsellor, grand-daughter of an Ochori king, and ambitious to be wife of Bosambo himself.
"This is a mad thing," said Bosambo when her father offered the suggestion; "for, as you know, T'meli, I have one wife who is a thousand wives to me."
"Lord, I will be ten thousand," said D'riti, present at the interview and bold; "also, Lord, it was predicted at my birth that I should marry a king and the greater than a king."
"That is me," said Bosambo, who was without modesty; "yet, it cannot be."
So they married D'riti to a chief's son who beat her till one day she broke his thick head with an iron pot, whereupon he sent her back to her father demanding the return of his dowry and the value of his pot.
She had her following, for she was a dancer of fame and could twist her lithe body into enticing shapes. She might have married again, but she was so scornful of common men that none dare ask for her. Also the incident of the iron pot was not forgotten, and D'riti went swaying through the village—she walked from her hips, gracefully—a straight, brown, girl-woman desired and unasked.
For she knew men too well to inspire confidence in them. By some weird intuition which certain women of all races acquire, she had probed behind their minds and saw with their eyes, and when she spoke of men, she spoke with a conscious authority, and such men, who were within earshot of her vitriolic comments, squirmed uncomfortably, and called her a woman of shame.
So matters stood when the Zaire came flashing to the Ochori city and the heart of Bones filled with pleasant anticipation.
Who was so competent to inform him on the matter of the souls of native women as Bosambo of the Ochori, already a crony of Bones, and admirable, if for no other reason, because he professed an open reverence for his new master? At any rate, after the haggle of tax collection was finished, Bones set about his task.
"Bosambo," said he, "men say you are very wise. Now tell me something about the women of the Ochori."
Bosambo looked at Bones a little startled.
"Lord," said he, "who knows about women? For is it not written in the blessed Sura of the Djin that women and death are beyond understanding?"
"That may be true," said Bones, "yet, behold, I make a book full of wise and wonderful things and it would be neither wise nor wonderful if there was no word of women."
And he explained very seriously indeed that he desired to know of the soul of native womanhood, of her thoughts and her dreams and her high desires.
"Lord," said Bosambo, after a long thought, "go to your ship: presently I will send to you a girl who thinks and speaks with great wisdom—and if she talks with you, you shall learn more things than I can tell you."
To the Zaire at sundown came D'riti, a girl of proper height, hollow backed, bare to the waist, with a thin skirting of fine silk cloth which her father had brought from the Coast, wound tightly about her, yet not so tightly that it hampered her swaying, lazy walk. She stood before a disconcerted Bones, one small hand resting on her hip, her chin (as usual) tilted down at him from under lashes uncommonly long for a native.
Also, this Bones saw, she was gifted with more delicate features than the native woman can boast as a rule. The nose was straight and narrow, the lips full, yet not of the negroid type. She was in fact a pure Ochori woman, and the Ochori are related dimly to the Arabi tribes.
"Lord, Bosambo the King has sent me to speak about women," she said simply.
"Doocidly awkward," said Bones to himself, and blushed.
"O, D'riti," he stammered, "it is true I wish to speak of women, for I make a book that all white lords will read."
"Therefore have I come," she said. "Now listen, O my lord, whilst I tell you of women, and of all they think, of their love for men and of the strange way they show it. Also of children——"
"Look here," said Bones, loudly. "I don't want any—any—private information, my child——"
Then realizing from her frown that she did not understand him, he returned to Bomongo.
"Lord, I will say what is to be said," she remarked, meekly, "for you have a gentle face and I see that your heart is very pure."
Then she began, and Bones listened with open mouth ... later he was to feel his hair rise and was to utter gurgling protests, for she spoke with primitive simplicity about things that are never spoken about at all. He tried to check her, but she was not to be checked.
"Goodness, gracious heavens!" gasped Bones.
She told him of what women think of men, and of what men think women think of them, and there was a remarkable discrepancy if she spoke the truth. He asked her if she was married.
"Lord," she said at last, eyeing him thoughtfully, "it is written that I shall marry one who is greater than chiefs."
"I'll bet you will, too," thought Bones, sweating.
At parting she took his hand and pressed it to her cheek.
"Lord," she said, softly, "to-morrow when the sun is nearly down, I will come again and tell you more...."
Bones left before daybreak, having all the material he wanted for his book and more.
He took his time descending the river, calling at sundry places.
At Ikan he tied up the Zaire for the night, and whilst his men were carrying the wood aboard, he settled himself to put down the gist of his discoveries. In the midst of his labours came Abiboo.
"Lord," said he, "there has just come by a fast canoe the woman who spoke with you last night."
"Jumping Moses!" said Bones, turning pale, "say to this woman that I am gone——"
But the woman came round the corner of the deck-house, shyly, yet with a certain confidence.
"Lord," she said, "behold I am here, your poor slave; there are wonderful things about women which I have not told you——"
"O, D'riti!" said Bones in despair, "I know all things, and it is not lawful that you should follow me so far from your home lest evil be said of you."
He sent her to the hut of the chief's wife—M'lini-fo-bini of Ikan—with instructions that she was to be returned to her home on the following morning. Then he went back to his work, but found it strangely distasteful. He left nothing to chance the next day.
With the dawn he slipped down the river at full speed, never so much as halting till day began to fail, and he was a short day's journey from headquarters.
"Anyhow, the poor dear won't overtake me to-day," he said—only to find the "poor dear" had stowed herself away on the steamer in the night behind a pile of wood.
"It's very awkward," said Hamilton, and coughed.
Bones looked at his chief pathetically.
"It's doocid awkward, sir," he agreed dismally.
"You say she won't go back?"
Bones shook his head.
"She said I'm the moon and the sun an' all sorts of rotten things to her, sir," he groaned and wiped his forehead.
"Send her to me," said Hamilton.
"Be kind to her, sir," pleaded the miserable Bones. "After all, sir, the poor girl seems to be fond of me, sir—the human heart, sir—I don't know why she should take a fancy to me."
"That's what I want to know," said Hamilton, briefly; "if she is mad, I'll send her to the mission hospital along the Coast."
"You've a hard and bitter heart," said Bones, sadly.
D'riti came ready to flash her anger and eloquence at Hamilton; on the verge of defiance.
"D'riti," said Hamilton, "to-morrow I send you back to your people."
"Lord, I stay with Tibbetti who loves women and is happy to talk of them. Also some day I shall be his wife, for this is foretold." She shot a tender glance at poor Bones.
"That cannot be," said Hamilton calmly, "for Tibbetti has three wives, and they are old and fierce——"
"Oh, lord!" wailed Bones.
"And they would beat you and make you carry wood and water," Hamilton said; he saw the look of apprehension steal into the girl's face. "And more than this, D'riti, the Lord Tibbetti is mad when the moon is in full, he foams at the mouth and bites, uttering awful noises."
"Oh, dirty trick!" almost sobbed Bones.
"Go, therefore, D'riti," said Hamilton, "and I will give you a piece of fine cloth, and beads of many colours."
It is a matter of history that D'riti went.
"I don't know what you think of me, sir," said Bones, humbly, "of course I couldn't get rid of her——"
"You didn't try," said Hamilton, searching his pockets for his pipe. "You could have made her drop you like a shot."
"How, sir?"
"Stuck your finger in her eye," said Hamilton, and Bones swallowed hard.
CHAPTER VII
THE STRANGER WHO WALKED BY NIGHT
Since the day when Lieutenant Francis Augustus Tibbetts rescued from the sacrificial trees the small brown baby whom he afterwards christened Henry Hamilton Bones, the interests of that young officer were to a very large extent extremely concentrated upon that absorbing problem which a famous journal once popularized, "What shall we do with our boys?"
As to the exact nature of the communications which Bones made to England upon the subject, what hairbreadth escapes and desperate adventure he detailed with that facile pen of his, who shall say?
It is unfortunate that Hamilton's sister—that innocent purveyor of home news—had no glimpse of the correspondence, and that other recipients of his confidence are not in touch with the writer of these chronicles. Whatever he wrote, with what fervour he described his wanderings in the forest no one knows, but certainly he wrote to some purpose.
"What the dickens are all these parcels that have come for you for?" demanded his superior officer, eyeing with disfavour a mountain of brown paper packages be-sealed, be-stringed, and be-stamped.
Bones, smoking his pipe, turned them over.
"I don't know for certain," he said, carefully; "but I shouldn't be surprised if they aren't clothes, dear old officer."
"Clothes?"
"For Henry," explained Bones, and cutting the string of one and tearing away its covering revealed a little mountain of snowy garments. Bones turned them over one by one.
"For Henry," he repeated; "could you tell me, sir, what these things are for?"
He held up a garment white and small and frilly.
"No, sir, I can't," said Hamilton stiffly, "unless like the ass that you are you have forgotten to mention to your friends that Henry is a gentleman child."
Bones looked up at the blue sky and scratched his chin.
"I may have called him 'her,'" he confessed.
There were, to be exact, sixteen parcels and each contained at least one such garment, and in addition a very warm shawl, "which," said Hamilton, "will be immensely useful when it snows."
With the aid of his orderly, Bones sorted out the wardrobe and the playthings (including many volumes of the Oh-look-at-the-rat-on-the-mat-where-is-the-cat? variety), and these he carried to his hut with such dignity as he could summon.
That evening, Hamilton paid his subordinate a visit. Henry, pleasingly arrayed in a pair of the misdirected garments with a large bonnet on his head, and seated on the floor of the quarters contentedly chewing Bones' watch, whilst Bones, accompanying himself with his banjo, was singing a song which was chiefly remarkable for the fact that he was ignorant of the tune and somewhat hazy concerning the words.
"Did you ever take a tum-ty up the Nile, Did you ever dumpty dupty in a camp, Or dumpty dumpty on m—m—— Or play it in a dumpty dumpty swamp."
He rose, and saluted his senior, as Hamilton came in.
"Exactly what is going to happen when Sanders comes back?" asked Hamilton, and the face of Bones fell.
"Happen, sir? I don't take you, sir—what could happen—to whom, sir?"
"To Henry," said Hamilton.
Henry looked up at that moment with a seraphic smile.
"Isn't he wonderful, sir?" asked Bones in hushed ecstasy; "you won't believe what I'm going to tell you, sir—you're such a jolly old sceptic, sir—but Henry knows me—positively recognizes me! And when you remember that he's only four months old—why, it's unbelievable."
"But what will you do when Sanders comes—really, Bones, I don't know whether I ought to allow this as it is."
"If exception is taken to Henry, sir," said Bones firmly, "I resign my commission; if a gentleman is allowed to keep a dog, sir, he is surely allowed to keep a baby. Between Henry and me, sir, there is a bond stronger than steel. I may be an ass, sir, I may even be a goop, but come between me an' my child an' all my motherly instincts—if you'll pardon the paradox—all my paternal—that's the word—instincts are aroused, and I will fight like a tiger, sir——"
"What a devil you are for jaw," said Hamilton; "anyway, I've warned you. Sanders is due in a month."
"Henry will be five," murmured Bones.
"Oh, blow Henry!" said Hamilton.
Bones rose and pointed to the door.
"May I ask you, sir," he said, "not to use that language before the child? I hate to speak to you like this, sir, but I have a responsible——"
He dodged out of the open door and the loaf of bread which Hamilton had thrown struck the lintel and rolled back to Henry's eager hands.
The two men walked up and down the parade ground whilst Fa'ma, the wife of Ahmet, carried the child to her quarters where he slept.
"I'm afraid I've got to separate you from your child," said Hamilton; "there is some curious business going on in the Lombobo, and a stranger who walks by night, of which Ahmet the Spy writes somewhat confusingly."
Bones glanced round in some apprehension.
"Oblige me, old friend," he entreated, "by never speakin' of such things before Henry—I wouldn't have him scared for the world."