Bones Part 29

"A tremendous chap, sir," said the enthusiastic Bones, "some fifty feet long, and as green as----"

"As green!" repeated Hamilton quickly, "where are we?"

He looked with a swift glance along the sh.o.r.e for landmarks.

"I hope to goodness you have not shot old M'zooba," he said.

"I don't know your friend by name," said Bones, "but why shouldn't I shoot him?"

"Because, you silly a.s.s," said Hamilton, "she is a sort of sacred crocodile."

"She was never so sacred as she is now, sir, for:

"She's flapping her wings in the crocodile heaven," said Bones, flippantly; "for I'm one of those dead shots--once I draw a bead on an animal----"

"Get out a canoe and set the woodmen to dive for the Green One," said Hamilton to his orderly, for a shot crocodile invariably sinks to the bottom and can only be recovered by diving.

They brought it to the surface, and Hamilton groaned.

"It is M'zooba," he said in resigned exasperation. "Oh, Bones, what an a.s.s you are!"

Bones said nothing, but walked to the stern of the s.h.i.+p and lowered the blue ensign to half-mast--a piece of impertinence which Hamilton did not discover till a long time afterwards.

Now whatever might be the desire or wish of Hamilton, and however much he might on ordinary occasions depend upon the loyalty of his warders and his men, in this matter of the green crocodile he was entirely at their mercy, for he could not call them together asking them to speak no death of the Green One without magnifying the importance of Lieutenant Tibbetts' rash act. The only att.i.tude he could adopt was to treat the Green One and her untimely end as something which was in the day's work neither to be lamented nor acclaimed, and when, at the first village, a doleful deputation, comprising a worried chief and a sulky witch doctor, called upon him to bemoan the tragedy, he treated the matter with great joviality.

"For what is a crocodile more or less in this river?" he asked.

"Lord, this was no crocodile," said the witch doctor, "but a very reverend ghost, and it has been our Ju-ju for many years, bringing us good crops and fair weather for our goodness, and has eaten up all the devils and sickness which came to our villages. Now it is gone nothing but ill fortune can come to us."

"Bugobo," said Hamilton, "you talk like a foolish one, for how may a crocodile who does not leave the water, and moreover is evil and old, a stealer of women and children and dangerous to your goats, how can this thing bring good fortune to any people?"

"How can the river run, lord?" replied the man, "and yet it does."

Hamilton thought for a moment.

"Now I tell you this, and you shall say to all people who ask you, that by my magic I will bring another green one to this stream, greater and larger than the one who has gone, and she shall be ju-ju for all men."

"And now," he said to Bones, when the deputation had left, "it is up to you to go out and find a nice, respectable crocodile to take the place of the lady you have so light-heartedly destroyed."

Bones gasped.

"Dear old feller," he said feebly, "the habits and customs of fauna of this land are entirely beyond me. I will fetch you a crocodile, sir, with the greatest of pleasure, although as far as I know there is nothing laid down in the King's regulations of the warrants for pay and promotion defining the catching of crocodiles as part of an officer's duty."

Hamilton made no further move towards replacing the lost Spirit of the Pool until he learnt that his offer had been taken very seriously, and that the coming of the great new Green One to the pool, was a subject of discussion up and down the river.

Now here is a fact which official records go to substantiate. Although the "Reports of the Territories" take no cognizance of ghosts and spirits and other occult influence, dealing rather with such mundane facts as the condition of crops and the discipline of the races, yet the reports of that particular year in this one district made gloomy reading both for Hamilton and for the Administrator in his far-off stone house.

Though the crops throughout the whole of the country were good that Hamilton was apprehensive about the consequences--for men fight better with a full larder behind them--yet in this immediate neighbourhood of the pool, within its sphere of influence, so to speak, the crops failed miserably, and the fish which haunt the shallow stream beneath the big stream near the channel took it into their silly heads to migrate to other distant waters. Here, then, was the consequence of Bones' murder demonstrated to a most alarming extent. There was a blight in the potatoes; the maize crop, for some unaccountable reason, was a meagre one; there were three unexpected cases of sleeping sickness followed by madness in an interior village, and, crowning disaster of all, one of those sudden storms which sweep across the river came upon the village, and lightning struck the huts.

"My son," said Hamilton, when they brought the news to him, "you have got to go out and find a green crocodile, quick."

So Bones went up the river with the naphtha launch, leaving to Hamilton the delicate task of finding a natural explanation for all the horrors which had come upon the unfortunate people.

Green crocodiles are rare even on the great river which had half a million other kinds of crocodiles to its credit, for green is both a sign of age, and by common report indicative of cannibalistic tendencies.

In whatever veneration the Green One of the Pool might be held, such respect did not extend to other parts of the river, where the green ones were sought out and slain in their early youth. Bones spent an exciting seven days chasing, la.s.soing and, at tunes in self-defence, shooting at great reptiles without getting any nearer to the object of his search.

"Ahmet," said he, in despair, "it seems that there are no green crocodiles on this river."

"Lord, there are very few," admitted the man; "for the people kill green crocodiles owing to their evil influence."

At every village there was news for Bones which lightened his heart.

Some one had seen such a monster, it lived in a pool or lorded some creek, generally only get-at-able in a canoe; and here Bones, with his Houssas, would wait smoking furiously, with baited lines cunningly laid from thick underbrush or some tethered goat, bleating invitingly on the banks. But never once did the hunter catch so much as a glimpse of green. There were yellow crocodiles, grey crocodiles, crocodiles the colour of the sand, or the dark brown bed of the river, but nothing which by any stretch of imagination could be called green.

And urgent messages came to Bones. The _Zaire_ itself, in charge of Abiboo, came steaming up carrying a letter filled with unnecessary abuse, for Hamilton was getting rattled by the extraordinary manifestations which he received every day of the potency of this slain monster. Bones sent the sergeant back in the launch with an insubordinate message, and commandeered the _Zaire_ with her superior accommodation for himself.

"There is only one thing to do," he said, "and that is to consult jolly old Bosambo."

So he put the head of the _Zaire_ to the Ochori country, and on the second day arrived at the city.

"Lord," said Bosambo, loftily, "crocodiles I have by thousands."

"Green ones?" asked Bones anxiously.

"Lord, of every colour," said Bosambo, "blue or green or red, even golden crocodiles have I in my splendid river. But they will cost great money because they are very cunning, and my hunters of crocodiles are independent men who do not care to work."

Bones dried up the flood of eloquence quickly.

"O Bosambo," said he, "there is no money for this palaver, but a green crocodile I must have because the evil people of the Lower Isisi say I have put a spell on their land because I slew the Green One, M'zooba, also this crocodile must I have before the moon is due. My Lord M'ilitani has sent me many powerful messages to this effect."

This was another matter, and Bosambo looked dubious.

"Lord," said he, "what manner of green was this crocodile, for I never saw it?"

Bones looked round.

Neither the green of the trees he saw, nor the green of the gra.s.s underfoot, nor the green of the elephant gra.s.s growing strongly on the river's edge, nor the tender green of the high trees above, nor the tender green of the young Isisi palms; and yet the exact shade of green it was necessary to secure. He ransacked all his books, turned over all his possessions and Hamilton's too, in an endeavour to match the crocodile. There was a suit of pyjamas of Hamilton's which had a stripe very near, but not quite.

"O Ahmet," said Bones at last in desperation, "go to the storeman, and let him bring all the paints he has so that I may show Bosambo a certain colour."

They found the exact shade at last on a ten-pound tin of Aspinall enamels, and Bosambo thought long.

"Lord," said he, "I think I know where I may find just such a crocodile as you want."

Late that night Bones met Bosambo before his hut in a long and earnest palaver, and an hour before dawn he went out with Bosambo and his huntsmen, and was pulled to a certain creek in the Ochori land which is notorious for the size and strength of its crocodiles.

II