Sanders of the River Part 18

The rainy season came round and the springtime, before Sanders again stood in the presence of the Great King. All around him was desolation and death. The plain was strewn with the bodies of men, and the big city was a smoking ruin. To the left, three regiments of Houssas were encamped; to the right, two battalions of African Rifles sat at "chop," and the snappy notes of their bugles came sharply through the still air.

"I am an old man," mumbled the king; but the girl who crouched at his side said nothing. Only her eyes never left the brick-red face of Sanders.

"Old you are," he said, "yet not too old to die."

"I am a great king," whined the other, "and it is not proper that a great king should hang."

"Yet if you live," said Sanders, "many other great kings will say, 'We may commit these abominations, and because of our greatness we shall live.'"

"And what of me, lord?" said the girl in a low voice.

"You!" Sanders looked at her. "Ho, hi," he said, as though he had just remembered her. "You are the dancing girl? Now we shall do nothing with you, Daihili-because you are nothing."

He saw her shrink as one under a lash.

After the execution, the Colonel of the Houssas and Sanders were talking together.

"What I can't understand," said the Colonel, "is why we suddenly decided upon this expedition. It has been necessary for years-but why this sudden activity?"

Sanders grinned mysteriously.

"A wonderful people, the English," he said airily. "Old Man Limbili steals British subjects, and I report it. 'Very sad,' says England. He wipes out a nation. 'Deplorable!' says England. He makes me dance on the original good-intention stones of Hades. 'Treat it as a joke,' says England; but when I point out that these stones a.s.say one ounce ten penny-weights of refined gold, and that we've happed upon the richest reef in Central Africa, there's an army here in six months!"

I personally think that Sanders may have been a little unjust in his point of view. After all, wars cost money, and wars of vengeance are notoriously unprofitable.

CHAPTER VII.

THE FOREST OF HAPPY DREAMS.

Sanders was tied up at a "wooding," being on his way to collect taxes and administer justice to the folk who dwell on the lower Isisi River.

By the river-side the little steamer was moored. There was a tiny bay here, and the swift currents of the river were broken to a gentle flow; none the less, he inspected the sh.o.r.e-ends of the wire hawsers before he crossed the narrow plank that led to the deck of the Zaire. The wood was stacked on the deck, ready for to-morrow's run. The new water-gauge had been put in by Yoka, the engineer, as he had ordered; the engines had been cleaned; and Sanders nodded approvingly. He stepped lightly over two or three sleeping forms curled up on the deck, and gained the sh.o.r.e. "Now I think I'll turn in," he muttered, and looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock. He stood for a moment on the crest of the steep bank, and stared back across the river. The night was black, but he saw the outlines of the forest on the other side. He saw the jewelled sky, and the pale reflection of stars in the water. Then he went to his tent, and leisurely got into his pyjamas. He jerked two tabloids from a tiny bottle, swallowed them, drank a gla.s.s of water, and thrust his head through the tent opening. "Ho, Sokani!" he called, speaking in the vernacular, "let the lo-koli sound!"

He went to bed.

He heard the rustle of men moving, the gurgles of laughter as his subtle joke was repeated, for the Cambul people have a keen sense of humour, and then the penetrating rattle of sticks on the native drum-a hollow tree-trunk. Fiercely it beat-furiously, breathlessly, with now and then a deeper note as the drummer, using all his art, sent the message of sleep to the camp.

In one wild crescendo, the lo-koli ceased, and Sanders turned with a sigh of content and closed his eyes-he sat up suddenly. He must have dozed; but he was wide awake now.

He listened, then slipped out of bed, pulling on his mosquito boots. Into the darkness of the night he stepped, and found N'Kema, the engineer, waiting.

"You heard, master?" said the native.

"I heard," said Sanders, with a puzzled face, "yet we are nowhere near a village."

He listened.

From the night came a hundred whispering noises, but above all these, unmistakable, the faint clatter of an answering drum. The white man frowned in his perplexity. "No village is nearer than the Bongindanga," he muttered, "not even a fis.h.i.+ng village; the woods are deserted--"

The native held up a warning finger, and bent his head, listening. He was reading the message that the drum sent. Sanders waited; he knew the wonderful fact of this native telegraph, how it sent news through the trackless wilds. He could not understand it, no European could; but he had respect for its mystery.

"A white man is here," read the native; "he has the sickness."

"A white man!"

In the darkness Sanders' eyebrows rose incredulously.

"He is a foolish one," N'Kema read; "he sits in the Forest of Happy Thoughts, and will not move."

Sanders clicked his lips impatiently. "No white man would sit in the Forest of Happy Thoughts," he said, half to himself, "unless he were mad."

But the distant drum monotonously repeated the outrageous news. Here, indeed, in the heart of the loveliest glade in all Africa, encamped in the very centre of the Green Path of Death, was a white man, a sick white man-in the Forest of Happy Thoughts-a sick white man.

So the drum went on and on, till Sanders, rousing his own lo-koli man, sent an answer cras.h.i.+ng along the river, and began to dress hurriedly.

In the forest lay a very sick man. He had chosen the site for the camp himself. It was in a clearing, near a little creek that wound between high elephant-gra.s.s to the river. Mainward chose it, just before the sickness came, because it was pretty. This was altogether an inadequate reason; but Mainward was a sentimentalist, and his life was a long record of choosing pretty camping places, irrespective of danger. "He was," said a newspaper, commenting on the crowning disaster which sent him a fugitive from justice to the wild lands of Africa, "over-burdened with imagination." Mainward was cursed with ill-timed confidence; this was one of the reasons he chose to linger in that deadly strip of land of the Ituri, which is clumsily named by the natives "The Lands-where-all-bad-thoughts-become-good-thoughts" and poetically adapted by explorers and daring traders as "The Forest of Happy Dreams." Over-confidence had generally been Mainward's undoing-over-confidence in the ability of his horses to win races; over-confidence in his own ability to secure money to hide his defalcations-he was a director in the Wels.h.i.+re County Bank once-over-confidence in securing the love of a woman, who, when the crash came, looked at him blankly and said she was sorry, but she had no idea he felt towards her like that--

Now Mainward lifted his aching head from the pillow and cursed aloud at the din. He was endowed with the smattering of pigeon-English which a man may acquire from a three months' sojourn divided between Sierra Leone and Grand Ba.s.sam.

"Why for they make 'em cursed noise, eh?" he fretted. "You plenty fool-man, Abiboo."

"Si, senor," agreed the Kano boy, calmly.

"Stop it, d'ye hear? stop it!" raved the man on the tumbled bed; "this noise is driving me mad-tell them to stop the drum."

The lo-koli stopped of its own accord, for the listeners in the sick man's camp had heard the faint answer from Sanders.

"Come here, Abiboo-I want some milk; open a fresh tin; and tell the cook I want some soup, too."

The servant left him muttering and tossing from side to side on the creaking camp bedstead. Mainward had many strange things to think about. It was strange how they all clamoured for immediate attention; strange how they elbowed and fought one another in their noisy claims to his notice. Of course, there was the bankruptcy and the discovery at the bank-it was very decent of that inspector fellow to clear out-and Ethel, and the horses, and-and--

The Valley of Happy Dreams! That would make a good story if Mainward could write; only, unfortunately, he could not write. He could sign things, sign his name "three months after date pay to the order of--" He could sign other people's names; he groaned, and winced at the thought.

But here was a forest where bad thoughts became good, and, G.o.d knows, his mind was ill-furnished. He wanted peace and sleep and happiness-he greatly desired happiness. Now suppose "Fairy Lane" had won the Wokingham Stakes? It had not, of course (he winced again at the bad memory), but suppose it had? Suppose he could have found a friend who would have lent him 16,000, or even if Ethel--

"Master," said Abiboo's voice, "dem puck-a-puck, him lib for come."

"Eh, what's that?"

Mainward turned almost savagely on the man.

"Puck-a-puck-you hear'um?"

But the sick man could not hear the smack of the Zaire's stern wheel, as the little boat breasted the downward rush of the river-he was surprised to see that it was dawn, and grudgingly admitted to himself that he had slept. He closed his eyes again and had a strange dream. The princ.i.p.al figure was a small, tanned, clean-shaven man in a white helmet, who wore a dingy yellow overcoat over his pyjamas.

"How are you feeling?" said the stranger.