Chapter IX: The Mercenaries

There was a large brown desk in Sanders’s study, a desk the edges of which had been worn yellow with constant rubbing. It was a very tidy desk, with two rows of books neatly grouped on the left and on the right, and held in place by brass rails. There were three tiers of wire baskets, a great white blotting-pad, a silver inkstand and four clean-looking pens.

Lately, there had appeared a glass vase filled with flowers which were daily renewed. Except on certain solemn occasions, none intruded into this holy of holies. It is true that a change had been brought about by the arrival of Patricia Hamilton, for she had been accorded permission to use the study as she wished, and she it was who had introduced the floral decorations.

Yet, such was the tradition of sanctuary which enveloped the study, that neither Captain Hamilton, her brother, nor Bones, her slave, had ever ventured to intrude thither in search of her, and if by chance they came to the door to speak to her, they unaccountably lowered their voices.

On a certain summer morning, Hamilton sat at the desk, a stern and sober figure, and Bones, perspiring and rattled, sat on the edge of a chair facing him.

The occasion was a solemn one, for Bones was undergoing his examination in subjects “X” and “Y” for promotion to the rank of Captain. The particular subject under discussion was “Map Reading and Field Sketching,” and the inquisition was an oral one.

“Lieutenant Tibbetts,” said Hamilton gravely, “you will please define a Base Line.”

Bones pushed back the hair straggling over his forehead, and blinked rapidly in an effort of memory.

“A base line, dear old officer?” he repeated. “A base line, dear old Ham----”

“Restrain your endearing terms,” said Hamilton, “you won’t get any extra marks for ‘em.”

“A base line?” mused Bones; then, “Whoop! I’ve got it! God bless your jolly old soul! I thought I’d foozled it. A base line,” he said loudly, “is the difference of level between two adjacent contours. How’s that, umpire?”

“Wrong,” said Hamilton; “you’re describing a Vertical Interval.”

Bones glared at him.

“Are you sure, dear old chap?” he demanded truculently. “Have a look at the book, jolly old friend, your poor old eyes ain’t what they used to be----”

“Lieutenant Tibbetts,” said Hamilton in ponderous reproof, “you are behaving very strangely.”

“Look here, dear old Ham,” wheedled Bones “can’t you pretend you asked me what a Vertical Interval was?”

Hamilton reached round to find something to throw, but this was Sanders’s study.

“You have a criminal mind, Bones,” he said helplessly. “Now get on with it. What are ‘Hachures’?”

“Hachures?” said Bones, shutting his eye. “Hachures? Now I know what Hachures are. A lot of people would think they were chickens, but I know ... they’re a sort of line ... when you’re drawing a hill ... wiggly-waggly lines ... you know the funny things ... a sort of...” Bones made mysterious and erratic gestures in the air, “shading ... water, dear old friend.”

“Are you feeling faint?” asked Hamilton, jumping up in alarm.

“No, silly ass ... shadings ... direction of water--am I right, sir?”

“Not being a thought-reader I can’t visualize your disordered mind,” said Hamilton, “but Hachures are the conventional method of representing hill features by shading in short vertical lines to indicate the slope and the water flow. I gather that you have a hazy idea of what the answer should be.”

“I thank you, dear old sir, for that generous tribute to my grasp of military science,” said Bones. “An’ now proceed to the next torture--which will you have, sir, rack or thumbscrew?--oh, thank you, Horace, I’ll have a glass of boiling oil.”

“Shut up talking to yourself,” growled Hamilton, “and tell me what is meant by ‘Orienting a Map’?”

“Turning it to the east,” said Bones promptly. “Next, sir.”

“What is meant by ‘Orienting a Map’?” asked Hamilton patiently.

“I’ve told you once,” said Bones defiantly.

“Orienting a Map,” said Hamilton, “as I have explained to you a thousand times, means setting your map or plane-table so that the north line lies north.”

“In that case, sir,” said Bones firmly, “the east line would be east, and I claim to have answered the question to your entire satisfaction.”

“Continue to claim,” snarled Hamilton. “I shall mark you zero for that answer.”

“Make it one,” pleaded Bones. “Be a sport, dear old Ham--I’ve found a new fishin’ pool.”

Hamilton hesitated.

“There never are any fish in the pools you find,” he said dubiously. “Anyway, I’ll reserve my decision until I’ve made a cast or two.”

They adjourned for tiffin soon after.

“How did you do, Bones?” asked Patricia Hamilton.

“Fine,” said Bones enthusiastically; “I simply bowled over every question that your dear old brother asked. In fact, Ham admitted that I knew much more about some things than he did.”

“What I said,” corrected Hamilton, “was that your information on certain subjects was so novel that I doubted whether even the staff college shared it.”

“It’s the same thing,” said Bones.

“You should try him on military history,” suggested Sanders dryly. “I’ve just been hearing from Bosambo----”

Bones coughed and blushed.

“The fact is, sir an’ Excellency,” he confessed, “I was practisin’ on Bosambo. You mightn’t be aware of the fact, but I like to hear myself speak----”

“No!” gasped Hamilton in amazement, “you’re wronging yourself, Bones!”

“What I mean, sir,” Bones went on with dignity, “is that if I lecture somebody on a subject I remember what I’ve said.”

“Always providing that you understand what you’re saying,” suggested Hamilton.

“Anyway,” said Sanders, with his quiet smile, “Bones has filled Bosambo with a passionate desire to emulate Napoleon, and Bosambo has been making tentative inquiries as to whether he can raise an Old Guard or enlist a mercenary army.”

“I flatter myself----” began Bones.

“Why not?” said Hamilton, rising. “It’s the only chance you’ll have of hearing something complimentary about yourself.”

“I believe in you, Bones,” said a smiling Patricia. “I think you’re really wonderful, and that Ham is a brute.”

“I’ll never, never contradict you, dear Miss Patricia,” said Bones; “an’ after the jolly old Commissioner has gone----”

“You’re not going away again, are you?” she asked, turning to Sanders. “Why, you have only just come back from the interior.”

There was genuine disappointment in her eyes, and Sanders experienced a strange thrill the like of which he had never known before.

“Yes,” he said with a nod. “There is a palaver of sorts in the Morjaba country--the most curious palaver I have ever been called upon to hold.”

And indeed he spoke the truth.

Beyond the frontiers of the Akasava, and separated from all the other Territories by a curious bush belt which ran almost in a straight line for seventy miles, were the people of Morjaba. They were a folk isolated from territorial life, and Sanders saw them once every year and no more frequently, for they were difficult to come by, regular payers of taxes and law-abiding, having quarrels with none. The bush (reputedly the abode of ghosts) was, save at one point, impenetrable. Nature had plaited a natural wall on one side, and had given the tribe the protection of high mountains to the north and a broad swamp to the west.

The fierce storms of passion and hate which burst upon the river at intervals and sent thousands of spears to a blooding, were scarcely echoed in this sanctuary-land. The marauders of the Great King’s country to the north never fetched across the smooth moraine of the mountains, and the evil people of The-Land-beyond-the-Swamp were held back by the treacherous bogland wherein, cala-cala, a whole army had been swallowed up.

Thus protected, the Morjabian folk grew fat and rich. The land was a veritable treasure of Nature, and it is a fact that in the dialect they speak, there is no word which means “hunger.”[5]

[Footnote 5: It is as curious a fact that amongst the majority of cannibal people there is no equivalent for “thank you.”--E. W.]

Yet the people of the Morjaba were not without their crises.

S’kobi, the stout chief, held a great court which was attended by ten thousand people, for at that court was to be concluded for ever the feud between the M’gimi and the M’joro--a feud which went back for the greater part of fifty years.

The M’gimi were the traditional warrior tribe, the bearers of arms, and, as their name (“The High Lookers”) implied, the proudest and most exclusive of the people. For every man was the descendant of a chief, and it was “easier for fish to walk,” as the saying goes, than for a man of the M’joro (“The Diggers”) to secure admission to the caste. Three lateral cuts on either cheek was the mark of the M’gimi--wounds made, upon the warrior’s initiation to the order, with the razor-edged blade of a killing-spear. They lived apart in three camps to the number of six thousand men, and for five years from the hour of their initiation they neither married nor courted. The M’gimi turned their backs to women, and did not suffer their presence in their camps. And if any man departed from this austere rule he was taken to the Breaking Tree, his four limbs were fractured, and he was hoisted to the lower branches, between which a litter was swung, and his regiment sat beneath the tree neither eating, drinking nor sleeping until he died. Sometimes this was a matter of days. As for the woman who had tempted his eye and his tongue, she was a witness.

Thus the M’gimi preserved their traditions of austerity. They were famous walkers and jumpers. They threw heavy spears and fought great sham-fights, and they did every violent exercise save till the ground.

This was the sum and substance of the complaint which had at last come to a head.

S’gono, the spokesman of The Diggers, was a headman of the inner lands, and spoke with bitter prejudice, since his own son had been rejected by the M’gimi captains as being unworthy.

“Shall we men dig and sow for such as these?” he asked. “Now give a judgment, King! Every moon we must take the best of our fruit and the finest of our fish. Also so many goats and so much salt, and it is swallowed up.”

“Yet if I send them away,” said the king, “how shall I protect this land against the warriors of the Akasava and the evil men of the swamp? Also of the Ochori, who are four days’ march across good ground?”

“Lord King,” said S’gono, “are there no M’gimi amongst us who have passed from the camp and have their women and their children? May not these take the spear again? And are not we M’joro folk men? By my life! I will raise as many spears from The Diggers and captain them with M’joro men--this I could do between the moons and none would say that you were not protected. For we are men as bold as they.”

The king saw that the M’gimi party was in the minority. Moreover, he had little sympathy with the warrior caste, for his beginnings were basely rooted in the soil, and two of his sons had no more than scraped into the M’gimi.

“This thing shall be done,” said the king, and the roar of approval which swept up the little hillock on which he sat was his reward.

Sanders, learning something of these doings, had come in haste, moving across the Lower Akasava by a short cut, risking the chagrin of certain chiefs and friends who would be shocked and mortified by his apparent lack of courtesy in missing the ceremonious call which was their due.

But his business was very urgent, otherwise he would not have travelled by Nobolama--The-River-that-comes-and-goes.

He was fortunate in that he found deep water for the Wiggle as far as the edge of this pleasant land. A two days’ trek through the forest brought him to the great city of Morjaba. In all the Territories there was no such city as this, for it stretched for miles on either hand, and indeed was one of the most densely populated towns within a radius of five hundred miles.

S’kobi came waddling to meet his governor with maize, plucked in haste from the gardens he passed, and salt, grabbed at the first news of Sanders’s arrival, in his big hands. These he extended as he puffed to where Sanders sat at the edge of the city.

“Lord,” he wheezed, “none came with news of this great honour, or my young men would have met you, and my maidens would have danced the road flat with their feet. Take!”

Sanders extended both palms and received the tribute of salt and corn, and solemnly handed the crushed mess to his orderly.

“O S’kobi,” he said, “I came swiftly to make a secret palaver with you, and my time is short.”

“Lord, I am your man,” said S’kobi, and signalled his councillors and elder men to a distance.

Sanders was in some difficulty to find a beginning.

“You know, S’kobi, that I love your people as my children,” he said, “for they are good folk who are faithful to government and do ill to none.”

“Wa!” said S’kobi.

“Also you know that spearmen and warriors I do not love, for spears are war and warriors are great lovers of fighting.”

“Lord, you speak the truth,” said the other, nodding, “therefore in this land I will have made a law that there shall be no spears, save those which sleep in the shadow of my hut. Now well I know why you have come to make this palaver, for you have heard with your beautiful long ears that I have sent away my fighting regiments.”

Sanders nodded.

“You speak truly, my friend,” he said, and S’kobi beamed.

“Six times a thousand spears I had--and, lord, spears grow no corn. Rather are they terrible eaters. And now I have sent them to their villages, and at the next moon they should have burnt their fine war-knives, but for a certain happening. We folk of Morjaba have no enemies, and we do good to all. Moreover, lord, as you know, we have amongst us many folk of the Isisi, of the Akasava and the N’gombi, also men from the Great King’s land beyond the High Rocks, and the little folk from The-Land-beyond-the-Swamp. Therefore, who shall attack us since we have kinsmen of all amongst us?”