Chapter III: The Maker of Storms

Everybody knows that water drawn from rivers is very bad water, for the rivers are the Roads of the Dead, and in the middle of those nights when the merest rind of a moon shows, and this slither of light and two watchful stars form a triangle pointing to the earth, the spirits rise from their graves and walk, “singing deadly songs,” towards the lower star which is the source of all rivers. If you should be--which God forbid--on one of those lonely island graveyards on such nights you will see strange sights.

The broken cooking-pots which rest on the mounds and the rent linen which flutters from little sticks stuck about the graves, grow whole and new again. The pots are red and hot as they come from the fire, and the pitiful cloths take on the sheen of youth and fold themselves about invisible forms. None may see the dead, though it is said that you may see the babies.

These the wise men have watched playing at the water’s edge, crowing and chuckling in the universal language of their kind, staggering groggily along the shelving beach with outspread arms balancing their uncertain steps. On such nights when M’sa beckons the dead world to the source of all rivers, the middle islands are crowded with babies--the dead babies of a thousand years. Their spirits come up from the unfathomed deeps of the great river and call their mortality from graves.

“How may the waters of the river be acceptable?” asks the shuddering N’gombi mother.

Therefore the N’gombi gather their water from the skies in strange cisterns of wicker, lined with the leaf of a certain plant which is impervious, and even carry their drinking supplies with them when they visit the river itself.

There was a certain month in the year, which will be remembered by all who attempted the crossing of the Kasai Forest to the south of the N’gombi country, when pools and rivulets suddenly dried--so suddenly, indeed, that even the crocodiles, who have an instinct for coming drought, were left high and dry, in some cases miles from the nearest water, and when the sun rose in a sky unflecked by cloud and gave place at nights to a sky so brilliant and so menacing in their fierce and fiery nearness that men went mad.

Toward the end of this month, when an exasperating full moon advertised a continuance of the dry spell by its very whiteness, the Chief Koosoogolaba-Muchini, or, as he was called, Muchini, summoned a council of his elder men, and they came with parched throats and fear of death.

“All men know,” said Muchini, “what sorrow has come to us, for there is a more powerful ju-ju in the land than I remember. He has made M’shimba M’shamba afraid so that he has gone away and walks no more in the forest with his terrible lightning. Also K’li, the father of pools, has gone into the earth and all his little children, and I think we shall die, every one of us.”

There was a skinny old man, with a frame like a dried goatskin, who made a snuffling noise when he spoke.

“O Muchini,” he said, “when I was a young man there was a way to bring M’shimba M’shamba which was most wonderful. In those days we took a young maiden and hung her upon a tree----”

“Those old ways were good,” interrupted Muchini; “but I tell you, M’bonia, that we can follow no more the old ways since Sandi came to the land, for he is a cruel man and hanged my own mother’s brother for that fine way of yours. Yet we cannot sit and die because of certain magic which the Stone Breaker is practising.”

Now Bula Matadi (“The Stone Breaker”) was in those days the mortal enemy of the N’gombi people, who were wont to ascribe all their misfortunes to his machinations. To Bula Matadi (which was the generic name by which the Government of the Congo Free State was known) was traceable the malign perversity of game, the blight of crops, the depredations of weaver birds. Bula Matadi encouraged leopards to attack isolated travellers, and would on great occasions change the seasons of the year that the N’gombi’s gardens might come to ruin.

“It is known from one end of the earth to the other that I am a most cunning man,” Muchini went on, stroking his muscular arm, a trick of self-satisfied men in their moments of complacence; “and whilst even the old men slept, I, Koosoogolaba-Muchini, the son of the terrible and crafty G’sombo, the brother of Eleni-N’gombi, I went abroad with my wise men and my spies and sought out devils and ghosts in places where even the bravest have never been,” he lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper, “to the Ewa-Ewa Mongo, the Very Place of Death.”

The gasp of horror from his audience was very satisfying to this little chief of the Inner N’gombi, and here was a moment suitable for his climax.

“And behold!” he cried.

By his side was something covered with a piece of native cloth. This covering he removed with a flourish and revealed a small yellow box.

It was most certainly no native manufacture, for its angles were clamped with neat brass corner-pieces set flush in the polished wood.

The squatting councillors watched their lord as with easy familiarity he opened the lid.

There were twenty tiny compartments, and in each was a slender glass tube, corked and heavily sealed, whilst about the neck of each tube was a small white label covered with certain devil marks.

Muchini waited until the sensation he had prepared had had its full effect.

“By the Great River which runs to the Allamdani,”[1] he said slowly and impressively, “were white men who had been sent by Bula Matadi to catch ghosts. For I saw them, I and my wise men, when the moon was calling all spirits. They were gathered by the river with little nets and little gourds and they caught the waters. Also they caught little flies and other foolish things and took them to their tent. Then my young men and I waited, and when all were gone away we went to their tents and found his magic box--which is full of devils of great power--Ro!”

[Footnote 1: This was evidently the Sanga River.]

He leapt to his feet, his eye gleaming. Across the starry dome of the sky there had flicked a quick flare of light.

There came a sudden uneasy stirring of leaves, a hushed whisper of things as though the forest had been suddenly awakened from sleep.

Then an icy cold breeze smote his cheek, and staring upward, he saw the western stars disappearing in swathes behind the tumbling clouds.

“M’shimba M’shamba--he lives!” he roared, and the crash of thunder in the forest answered him.

Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori, was on the furthermost edge of the forest, for he was following the impulse of his simple nature and was hunting in a country where he had no right to be. The storm (which he cursed, having no scruples about river and water, and being wholly sceptical as to ghosts) broke with all its fury over his camp and passed. Two nights later, he sat before the rough hut his men had built, discussing the strange ways of the antelope, when he suddenly stopped and listened, lowering his head till it almost touched the ground.

Clear to his keen ears came the rattle of the distant lokali--the drum that sends messages from village to village and from nation to nation.

“O Secundi,” said Bosambo, with a note of seriousness in his voice, “I have not heard that call for many moons--for it is the war call of the N’gombi.”

“Lord, it is no war call,” said the old man, shifting his feet for greater comfort, “yet it is a call which may mean war, for it calls spears to a dance, and it is strange, for the N’gombi have no enemies.”

“All men are the enemies of the N’gombi,” Bosambo quoted a river saying as old as the sun.

He listened again, then rose.

“You shall go back and gather me a village of spears, and bring them to the borderland near the road that crosses the river,” he said.

“On my life,” said the other.

Muchini, Chief of the Inner N’gombi, a most inflated man and a familiar of magical spirits, gathered his spears to some purpose, for two days later Bosambo met him by his border and the chiefs greeted one another between two small armies.

“Which way do you go, Muchini?” asked Bosambo.

Now, between Muchini and the Chief of the Ochori was a grievance dating back to the big war, when Bosambo had slain the N’gombi chief of the time with his own hands.

“I go to the river to call a palaver of all free men,” said Muchini; “for I tell you this, Bosambo, that I have found a great magic which will make us greater than Sandi, and it has been prophesied that I shall be a king over a thousand times a thousand spears. For I have a small box which brings even M’shimba to my call.”

Bosambo, a head and shoulders taller than the other, waved his hand towards the forest path which leads eventually to the Ochori city.

“Here is a fine moment for you, Muchini,” he said, “and you shall try your great magic on me and upon my young men. For I say that you do not go by this way, neither you nor your warriors, since I am the servant of Sandi and of his King, and he has sent me here to keep his peace; go back to your village, for this is the way to Death.”

Muchini glared at his enemy.

“Yet this way I go, Bosambo,” he said huskily, and looked over his shoulder towards his followers.

Bosambo swung round on one heel, an arm and a leg outstretched in the attitude of an athlete who is putting the shot. Muchini threw up his wicker shield and pulled back his stabbing-spear, but he was a dead man before the weapon was poised.

Thus ended the war, and the N’gombi folk went home, never so much as striking a blow for the yellow box which Bosambo claimed for himself as his own personal loot.

At the time, Mr. Commissioner Sanders, C.M.G., was blissfully ignorant of the miraculous happenings which have been recorded. He was wholly preoccupied by the novelty which the presence of Patricia Hamilton offered. Never before had a white woman made her home at the Residency, and it changed things a little.

She was at times an embarrassment.

When Fubini, the witch-doctor of the Akasava, despatched five maidens to change Sandi’s wicked heart--Sanders had sent Fubini to the Village of Irons for six months for preaching unauthorized magic--they came, in the language of Bones, “doocedly undressed,” and Patricia had beaten a hurried retreat.

She was sometimes an anxiety, as I have already shown, but was never a nuisance. She brought to headquarters an aroma of English spring, a clean fragrance that refreshed the heat-jaded Commissioner and her brother, but which had no perceptible influence upon Bones.

That young officer called for her one hot morning, and Hamilton, sprawling on a big cane chair drawn to the shadiest and breeziest end of the verandah, observed that Bones carried a wooden box, a drawing-board, a pad of paper, two pencils imperfectly concealed behind his large ear, and a water-bottle.

“Shop!” said Hamilton lazily. “Forward, Mr. Bones--what can we do for you this morning?”

Bones shaded his eyes and peered into the cool corner.

“Talkin’ in your sleep, dear old Commander,” he said pleasantly, “dreamin’ of the dear old days beyond recall.”

He struck an attitude and lifted his unmusical voice--

“When life was gay, heigho!

Tum tum te tay, heigho!

Oh, tiddly umpty humpty umty do,

When life was gay--dear old officer--heigho!”

Patricia Hamilton stepped out to the verandah in alarm.

“Oh, please, don’t make that hooting noise,” she appealed to her brother. “I’m writing----”

“Don’t be afraid,” said Hamilton, “it was only Bones singing. Do it again, Bones, Pat didn’t hear you.”

Bones stood erect, his hand to his white helmet.

“Come aboard, my lady,” he said.

“I won’t keep you a minute, Bones,” said the girl, and disappeared into the house.

“What are you doing this morning?” asked Hamilton, gazing with pardonable curiosity at the box and drawing-board.

“Polishin’ up my military studies with Miss Hamilton’s kind assistance--botany and applied science, sir,” said Bones briskly. “Field fortifications, judgin’ distance, strategy, Bomongo grammar, field cookery an’ tropical medicines.”

“What has poor little making-up-company-accounts done?” asked Hamilton, and Bones blushed.

“Dear old officer,” he begged, “I’ll tackle that little job as soon as I get back. I tried to do ‘em this mornin’ an was four dollars out--it’s the regimental cash account that’s wrong. People come in and out helpin’ themselves, and I positively can’t keep track of the money.”

“As I’m the only person with the key of the regimental cash-box, I suppose you mean----?”

Bones raised his hand.

“I make no accusations, dear old feller--it’s a painful subject. We all have those jolly old moments of temptation. I tackle the accounts to-night, sir. You mustn’t forget that I’ve a temperament. I’m not like you dear old wooden-heads----”

“Oh, shut up,” said the weary Hamilton. “So long as you’re going to do a bit of study, it’s all right.”

“Now, Bones,” said Patricia, appearing on the scene, “have you got the sandwiches?”

Bones made terrifying and warning grimaces.

“Have you got the board to lay the cloth and the paper to cover it, and the chocolates and the cold tea?”

Bones frowned, and jerked his head in an agony of warning.

“Come on, then,” said the unconscious betrayer of Lieutenant Tibbetts. “Good-bye, dear.”

“Why ‘good-bye,’ dear old Hamilton’s sister?” asked Bones.

She looked at him scornfully and led the way.

“Don’t forget the field fortifications,” called Hamilton after them; “they eat nicely between slices of strategy.”

The sun was casting long shadows eastward when they returned. They had not far to come, for the place they had chosen for their picnic was well within the Residency reservation, but Bones had been describing on his way back one of the remarkable powers he possessed, namely, his ability to drag the truth from reluctant and culpable natives. And every time he desired to emphasize the point he would stop, lower all his impedimenta to the ground, cluttering up the landscape with picnic-box, drawing-board, sketching-blocks and the numerous bunches of wild flowers he had culled at her request, and press his argument with much palm-punching.