Chapter II: Keepers of the Stone

There is a people who live at Ochori in the big African forest on the Ikeli River, who are called in the native tongue “The Keepers of the Stone.”

There is a legend that years and years ago, cala-cala, there was a strange, flat stone, “inscribed with the marks of the devils” (so the grave native story-teller puts it), which was greatly worshipped and prized, partly for its magic powers, and partly because of the two ghosts who guarded it.

It was a fetish of peculiar value to the mild people who lived in the big forest, but the Akasava, who are neither mild nor reverential, and being, moreover, in need of gods, swooped down upon the Ochori one red morning and came away with this wonderful stone and other movables. Presumably, the “ghosts of brass” went also. It was a great business, securing the stone, for it was set in a grey slab in the solid rock, and many spear-heads were broken before it could be wrenched from its place. But in the end it was taken away, and for several years it was the boast of the Akasava that they derived much benefit from this sacred possession. Then of a sudden the stone disappeared, and with it all the good fortune of its owners. For the vanishing of the stone coincided with the arrival of British rule, and it was a bad thing for the Akasava.

There came in these far-off days (‘95?) a ridiculous person in white with an escort of six soldiers. He brought a message of peace and good fellowship, and talked of a new king and a new law. The Akasava listened in dazed wonderment, but when they recovered they cut off his head, also the heads of the escort. It seemed to be the only thing to do under the circumstances.

Then one morning the Akasava people woke to find the city full of strange white folk, who had come swiftly up the river in steamboats. There were too many to quarrel with, so the people sat quiet, a little frightened and very curious, whilst two black soldiers strapped the hands and feet of the Akasava chief prior to hanging him by the neck till he was dead.

Nor did the bad luck of the people end here; there came a lean year, when the manioc[1] root was bad and full of death-water, when goats died, and crops were spoilt by an unexpected hurricane. There was always a remedy at hand for a setback of this kind. If you have not the thing you require, go and take it. So, following precedents innumerable, the Akasava visited the Ochori, taking away much grain, and leaving behind dead men and men who prayed for death. In the course of time the white men came with their steamboats, their little brass guns, and the identical block and tackle, which they fastened to the identical tree and utilised in the inevitable manner.

“It appears,” said the new chief--who was afterwards hanged for the killing of the king of the Isisi--”that the white man’s law is made to allow weak men to triumph at the expense of the strong. This seems foolish, but it will be well to humour them.”

His first act was to cut down the hanging-tree--it was too conspicuous and too significant. Then he set himself to discover the cause of all the trouble which had come upon the Akasava. The cause required little appreciation. The great stone had been stolen, as he well knew, and the remedy resolved itself into a question of discovering the thief. The wretched Ochori were suspect.

“If we go to them,” said the chief of the Akasava thoughtfully, “killing them very little, but rather burning them, so that they told where this godstone was hidden, perhaps the Great Ones would forgive us.”

“In my young days,” said an aged councillor, “when evil men would not tell where stolen things were buried, we put hot embers in their hands and bound them tightly.”

“That is a good way,” approved another old man, wagging his head applaudingly; “also to tie men in the path of the soldier-ants has been known to make them talkative.”

“Yet we may not go up against the Ochori for many reasons,” said the chief; “the principal of which is that if the stone be with them we shall not overcome them owing to the two ghosts--though I do not remember that the ghosts were very potent in the days when the stone was with us,” he added, not without hope.

The little raid which followed and the search for the stone are told briefly in official records. The search was fruitless, and the Akasava folk must needs content themselves with such picking as came to hand.

Of how Mr. Niceman, the deputy commissioner, and then Sanders himself, came up, I have already told. That was long ago, as the natives say, cala-cala, and many things happened subsequently that put from the minds of the people all thought of the stone.

In course of time the chief of the Akasava died the death for various misdoings, and peace came to the land that fringes Togo.

Sanders has been surprised twice in his life. Once was at Ikeli, which in the native tongue means “little river.” It is not a little river at all, but, on the contrary, a broad, strong, sullen stream that swirls and eddies and foams as it swings the corner of its tortuous course seaward. Sanders sat on a deck-chair placed under the awning of his tiny steamer, and watched the river go rushing past. He was a contented man, for the land was quiet and the crops were good. Nor was there any crime.

There was sleeping sickness at Bofabi, and beri-beri at Akasava, and in the Isisi country somebody had discovered a new god, and, by all accounts that came down river, they worshipped him night and day.

He was not bothering about new gods, because gods of any kind were a beneficent asset. Milini, the new king of the Isisi, had sent him word:

“Master,” said his mouthpiece, the messenger, “this new god lives in a box which is borne upon the shoulders of priests. It is so long and so wide, and there are four sockets in which the poles fit, and the god inside is a very strong one, and full of pride.”

“Ko, ko!” said Sanders, with polite interest, “tell the lord king, your master, that so long as this god obeys the law, he may live in the Isisi country, paying no tax. But if he tells the young men to go fighting, I shall come with a much stronger god, who will eat your god up. The palaver is finished.”

Sanders, with his feet stretched out on the rail of the boat, thought of the new god idly. When was it that the last had come? There was one in the N’Gombi country years ago, a sad god who lived in a hut which no man dare approach; there was another god who came with thunder demanding sacrifice--human sacrifice. This was an exceptionally bad god, and had cost the British Government six hundred thousand pounds, because there was fighting in the bush and a country unsettled. But, in the main, the gods were good, doing harm to none, for it is customary for new gods to make their appearance after the crops are gathered, and before the rainy season sets in.

So Sanders thought, sitting in the shade of a striped awning on the foredeck of the little Zaire.

The next day, before the sun came up, he turned the nose of the steamer up-stream, being curious as to the welfare of the shy Ochori folk, who lived too near the Akasava for comfort, and, moreover, needed nursing. Very slow was the tiny steamer’s progress, for the current was strong against her. After two days’ travel Sanders got into Lukati, where young Carter had a station.

The deputy commissioner came down to the beach in his pyjamas, with a big pith helmet on the back of his head, and greeted his chief boisterously.

“Well?” said Sanders; and Carter told him all the news. There was a land palaver at Ebibi; Otabo, of Bofabi, had died of the sickness; there were two leopards worrying the outlying villages, and----

“Heard about the Isisi god?” he asked suddenly; and Sanders said that he had.

“It’s an old friend of yours,” said Carter. “My people tell me that this old god-box contains the stone of the Ochori.”

“Oh!” said Sanders, with sudden interest.

He breakfasted with his subordinate, inspected his little garrison of thirty, visited his farm, admired his sweet potatoes, and patronised his tomatoes.

Then he went back to the boat and wrote a short dispatch in the tiniest of handwriting on the flimsiest of paper slips. “In case!” said Sanders.

“Bring me 14,” he said to his servant, and Abiboo came back to him soon with a pigeon in his hand.

“Now, little bird,” said Sanders, carefully rolling his letter round the red leg of the tiny courier and fastening it with a rubber band, “you’ve got two hundred miles to fly before sunrise to-morrow--and ‘ware hawks!”

Then he gathered the pigeon in his hand, walked with it to the stern of the boat, and threw it into the air.

His crew of twelve men were sitting about their cooking-pot--that pot which everlastingly boils.

“Yoka!” he called, and his half-naked engineer came bounding down the slope.

“Steam,” said Sanders; “get your wood aboard; I am for Isisi.”

There was no doubt at all that this new god was an extremely powerful one. Three hours from the city the Zaire came up to a long canoe with four men standing at their paddles singing dolefully. Sanders remembered that he had passed a village where women, their bodies decked with green leaves, wailed by the river’s edge.

He slowed down till he came abreast of the canoe, and saw a dead man lying stark in the bottom.

“Where go you with this body?” he asked.

“To Isisi, lord,” was the answer.

“The middle river and the little islands are places for the dead,” said Sanders brusquely. “It is folly to take the dead to the living.”

“Lord,” said the man who spoke, “at Isisi lives a god who breathes life; this man”--he pointed downwards--”is my brother, and he died very suddenly because of a leopard. So quickly he died that he could not tell us where he had hidden his rods and his salt. Therefore we take him to Isisi, that the new god may give him just enough life to make his relations comfortable.”

“The middle river,” said Sanders quietly, and pointed to such a lone island, all green with tangled vegetation, as might make a burying ground. “What is your name?”

“Master, my name is N’Kema,” said the man sullenly.

“Go, then, N’Kema,” he said, and kept the steamer slow ahead whilst he watched the canoe turn its blunt nose to the island and disembark its cargo.

Then he rang the engines full ahead, steered clear of a sandbank, and regained the fairway.

He was genuinely concerned.

The stone was something exceptional in fetishes, needing delicate handling. That the stone existed, he knew. There were legends innumerable about it; and an explorer had, in the early days, seen it through his glasses. Also the “ghosts clad in brass” he had heard about--these fantastic and warlike shades who made peaceable men go out to battle--all except the Ochori, who were never warlike, and whom no number of ghosts could incite to deeds of violence.

You will have remarked that Sanders took native people seriously, and that, I remark in passing, is the secret of good government. To him, ghosts were factors, and fetishes potent possibilities. A man who knew less would have been amused, but Sanders was not amused, because he had a great responsibility. He arrived at the city of Isisi in the afternoon, and observed, even at a distance, that something unusual was occurring. The crowd of women and children that the arrival of the Commissioner usually attracted did not gather as he swung in from mid-stream and followed the water-path that leads to shoal.