Cupid in Africa Part 30

"Because he has been made prisoner for doing so, oh, _Bwana Macouba Kabeesa Sana_ (Very Greatest Master)."

"Do you know anything about him?"

"He is the man who stole the tobacco which my little boy took."

All being translated and laid before the Court, it was decided that, so far, prisoner was scarcely proven guilty.

"Let's ask him whether he would like to say anything as to the evidence of the last two witnesses," suggested Bertram.

"He doesn't understand Swahili," objected Berners.

"I feel sure he does," replied Bertram. "I have been watching his face.

He half grinned when they talked about tobacco, and looked venomous when they talked about him."

"Do you understand Swahili?" asked Wavell, suddenly, of the prisoner.

"No, not a word," replied that individual in the same tongue.

"Can you speak it?"

"No, not a word," he reaffirmed in Swahili.

"Well-did the last two witnesses tell the truth about you?"

"They did not. I have never seen them before. They have never seen me before. I do not know where Pongwa is. I think this is a very fine trial. I like it."

Other witnesses swore that the accused had indeed done the treacherous deed. One swore with such emphasis and certainty that he carried conviction to the minds of the Court-until it was discovered that witness was swearing that prisoner had stolen a bundle of leaf-tobacco from the son of the woman who was an orphan. . . .

The Court soon found that it could tell when a point was scored against the defendant, without waiting for translation, inasmuch as he always seized his stomach with both hands, groaned, rolled his eyes, and cried that he was suffering horribly from _tumbo_, when evidence was going unfavourably.

At length all witnesses had been examined, even unto the last, who swore he was the prisoner's brother, and that he saw the prisoner leading the _Germanis_ and, lo, it wasn't his brother at all, and concluded with: "Yes-this is true evidence. I have spoken well. I can prove it, for I can produce the _sufuria_ {184} which prisoner gave me to say that I am his brother, and to speak these truths. He is my innocent brother, and was elsewhere when he led the _Germanis_ to Pongwa."

"Let's give him something out of the poor-box," suggested Augustus when this speech was interpreted, and then marred this intimation of kindly feelings by adding: "and then hang the lot of them."

"Has the prisoner anything to say?" asked the President.

The prisoner had.

"This is a good trial," quoth he, in Swahili. "I am now an important man. All the witnesses are liars. I have never seen any of them before.

I do not a.s.sociate with such. I have never seen Pongwa, and I have never seen a _Germani_. I will tell . . ."

Wavell looked at him suddenly, but made no movement.

"_Noch nichte_!" said he in German, very quietly.

The man stopped talking at once.

"You understand German. You speak German!" said Wavell, in that language, and pointing at him accusingly. "Answer quickly. You speak German."

"_Ganz klein wenig_-just a very little," replied the prisoner, adding in English: "I am a very clever man"-and then, in German: "_Ich hab kein Englisch_."

"Prisoner has never seen a _Germani_-but he understands German!" wrote Bertram in his notes of the trial. "Also Swahili and English."

"Please ask him if he hasn't had enough trial now, and wouldn't he like to be hanged to save further trouble," said Augustus.

"_Tiffin tyar hai_, {185} _Sahib_," said the Mess butler, approaching the President, and the Court adjourned.

The afternoon session of the Court proved dull up to the moment when the lady who was an orphan and the mother of the ninety-year-old, bounded into Court with a scream of:

"Ask him where he got his petticoat!"

Apparently this was very distressful to the defendant, for he was instantly seized with violent stomachic pains.

"Poignant! . . . Searching! . . ." murmured Augustus.

"Where did you get that _'Mericani_?" asked Wavell of the prisoner, pointing to his only garment.

"He got it from the _Germanis_. It was part of his share of the loot,"

screamed the old lady. "It is from my own shop. I know it by that mark," and she pointed to a trade-mark and number stencilled in white paint upon the selvedge of the loin-cloth.

Terrible agonies racked the prisoner as he replied: "She is a liar."

"Trade-mark don't prove much," remarked the President. "My pants and vest might have same trade-mark as the Kaiser's-but that wouldn't prove he stole them from me."

The sense of this remark was conveyed to the witness.

"Then see if a mark like _this_ is not in the corner of that piece of _'Mericani_," said the old lady, and plucking up her own wardrobe, showed where a small design was crudely st.i.tched.

The _askaris_ in charge of the prisoner quickly demonstrated that an identical "laundry-mark" ornamented his also. Presumably the worthy woman's secret price-mark, or else her monogram.

Terrific agonies seized the prisoner, and with a groan of "_Tumbo_," he sank to the ground.

A kick from each of the _askaris_ revived him, and he arose promptly and took a bright interest in the subsequent proceedings, which consisted largely in the swearing by several of the villagers that they had seen the _Germanis_ loot the old lady's store and throw some pieces of the _'Mericani_ to the accused. Two of the witnesses were wearing petticoats which they had bought from the female witness, and which bore her private mark. . . .

"Gentlemen," said the President at length, "I should like your written findings by six o'clock this evening, together with the sentence you would impose if you were sole judge in this case. The Court is deeply indebted to Captain Wavell for his courteous and most valuable a.s.sistance as interpreter. The witnesses may be discharged, and the prisoner removed to custody. . . . Clear the blasted Court, in fact, and come to the Bristol Bar. . . ."

"Oh, hang it all, Berners," objected Augustus, "let's hang him _now_. We can watch him dangle while we have tea. . . ." But the Court had risen, and the President was asking where the devil some bally, fat-headed fool had put his helmet, eh? . . .

For an hour Bertram sat in his _banda_ with throbbing, aching head, considering his verdict. He believed the man to be a spy and a treacherous, murderous scoundrel-but what was really _proven_, save that he knew German and wore a garment marked similarly to those of three inhabitants of Pongwa? Were these facts sufficient to warrant the pa.s.sing of the death sentence and to justify Bertram Greene, who, till a few days ago, was the mildest of lay civilians, to take the responsibility of a hanging judge and imbrue his hands with the blood of this man? If all that was suspected of him were true, what, after all, was he but a savage, a barbarous product of barbaric uncivilisation? . .

. What right had anyone to apply the standards of a cultured white man from London to a savage black man from Pongwa? . . . A savage who had been degraded and contaminated by contact with Germans moreover. . . .

After many unsatisfactory efforts, he finally wrote out his judgment on leaves torn from his military pocket-book, and proposed, as verdict, that the prisoner be confined for the duration of the war as a spy, and receive twenty-five strokes of the _kiboko_ for perjury. . . .

On repairing to Berners' hut at the appointed time, he found that Clarence had written a longer and better judgment than his own, and had proposed as sentence that the accused be detained during the King's pleasure at Mombasa Gaol, since it was evident that he had dealings with Germans and had recently been in German East Africa. He found the charge of leading a German raiding-party Not Proven.

The sentence of the President was that prisoner should receive twenty lashes and two years' imprisonment, for receiving stolen goods, well knowing them to be stolen, and for committing perjury.

"And that ought to dish the lad till the end of the war," observed he, "whereafter he'll have precious small use for his German linguistic lore-unless he goes to Berlin for the Iron Cross or a Commission in the Potsdammer Poison-Gas Guards, or somethin', what?"