THE RADIO BOYS IN DARKEST AFRICA.
CHAPTER I.
WIMBA’S TRIAL
“Look here, Jack, we ought to do something to help Wimba. I don’t believe he’s getting a square deal.”
“Nor I, Frank. But what can we do? Chief Ruku-Ru is supreme here. And if he decides against Wimba—”
Jack Hampton’s tone was as near hopeless as one could ever expect to hear from the lips of that optimistic young adventurer.
Nor is that to be wondered at. The predicament of their head man, Wimba, a Kikuyu of superior parts whose services they had been fortunate enough to obtain at Nairobi, administrative capital of British East Africa or Kenya Colony, was serious.
Here on the far fringe of the Kikuyu country, several hundred miles from Nairobi, the nearest outpost of white civilization in Central Africa, Wimba was being tried on a charge of murder. Chief Ruku-Ru, head of the local tribesmen, presiding as judge, gave every indication of being about to sentence Wimba to death.
And the two boys knew Wimba was innocent. They believed the latter’s story. Wimba said he had come upon two local tribesmen stealing from the effects of his employers and that, when discovered, they had attacked him. Fighting in self-defense he had been unfortunate enough to kill one, whereupon the other had run to Chief Ruku-Ru with the tale that Wimba had murdered his comrade.
During the course of the trial, which was being held beneath a great thorn tree, Jack Hampton and Frank Merrick had been breathless spectators. Their companion. Bob Temple, lay weak from fever in his tent, and could not be present.
In an old armchair which had been brought by a trader years before to this remote village, sat Chief Ruku-Ru, as if in a throne. His hair was drawn to a knob on the very top of his round head. His black face was preternaturally grave as became an administrator of justice. Around his neck were a half dozen strands of copper wire. His arms were covered from wrist to elbow with bracelets of similar material. Thrown across his right shoulder and drawn together beneath his left armpit was the single cotton garment which constituted his only clothing. And in his right hand he held a number of small sticks. These were important. If the prosecution scored a point in the testimony, he planted a stick in the ground on the right. If Wimba’s defense scored a point, he planted a stick on his left. At the end of the trial, he would count the number of sticks in each row and that side having the greater number would win.