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.