Bosambo of the River

by Edgar Wallace

Now the Wet Lands are many miles from the city of the king, and the raid that Culuka planned injured none, for the raided territories were poor and stony.

But N'raki, the killer, was hurt in his tenderest spot, and he led his thousands across the swamps to the city of Culuka, and he fought him up to the stockades and beyond. The city he burnt. The men and children he slew out of hand. Culuka he crucified before his flaming hut, and, thereafter, the borders of the killer were immune from attack.

This was a lesson peculiarly poignant, and when the French Government—for Culuka dwelt in a territory which was nominally under the tricolour—sent a mission to inquire into the wherefores of the happening, N'raki cut off the head of the leader, and sent it back with unprintable messages intended primarily for the governor of French West Africa, and eventually for the Quai d'Orsay.

N'raki lived, therefore, undisturbed, for the outrage coincided with the findings of the Demarcation Commission which had been sitting for two years to settle certain border-line questions. By the finding of the Commission all the Akarti country became, in the twinkling of an eye, British territory, and N'raki a vassal of the King of England—though he was sublimely unconscious of the honour.

N'raki was an autocrat of autocrats, and of his many battalions of skilled fighting men, all very young and strong, with shining limbs and feathered heads, he was proudest of his first regiment.

These were the tallest, the strongest, the fleetest, and the fiercest of fighters, and he forbade them to marry, for all men know that women have an evil effect upon warriors; and no married man is brave until he has children to defend, and by that time he is fat also.

So this austere regiment knew none of the comforts or languor of love, and they were proud that their lord, the king, had set them apart from all other men, and had so distinguished them.

At the games they excelled, because they were stronger and faster, knowing nothing of women's influence; and the old king saw their excellence, and said "Wa!"

There was a man of the regiment whose name was Taga'ka, who was a fine man of twenty. There was also in the king's city a woman of fifteen, named Lapai, who was a straight, comely girl, and a great dancer.

She was a haughty woman, because her uncle was the chief witch-doctor, and such was her power that she had put away two husbands.