Chapter IX: The Wood of Devils

Four days out of M’Sakidanga, if native report be true, there is a trickling stream that meanders down from N’Gombi country. Native report says that this is navigable even in the dry season.

The missionaries at Bonginda ridicule this report; and Arburt, the young chief of the station, with a gentle laugh in his blue eyes, listened one day to the report of Elebi about a fabulous land at the end of this river, and was kindly incredulous.

“If it be that ivory is stored in this place,” he said in the vernacular, “or great wealth lies for the lifting, go to Sandi, for this ivory belongs to the Government. But do you, Elebi, fix your heart more upon God’s treasures in heaven, and your thoughts upon your unworthiness to merit a place in His kingdom, and let the ivory go.”

Elebi was known to Sanders as a native evangelist of the tornado type, a thunderous, voluble sub-minister of the service; he had, in his ecstatic moments, made many converts. But there were days of reaction, when Elebi sulked in his mud hut, and reviewed Christianity calmly.

It was a service, this new religion. You could not work yourself to a frenzy in it, and then have done with the thing for a week. You must needs go on, on, never tiring, never departing from the straight path, exercising irksome self-restraint, leaving undone that which you would rather do.

“Religion is prison,” grumbled Elebi, after his interview, and shrugged his broad, black shoulders.

In his hut he was in the habit of discarding his European coat for the loin cloth and the blanket, for Elebi was a savage--an imitative savage--but still barbarian. Once, preaching on the River of Devils, he had worked himself up to such a pitch of enthusiastic fervour that he had smitten a scoffer, breaking his arm, and an outraged Sanders had him arrested, whipped, and fined a thousand rods. Hereafter Elebi had figured in certain English missionary circles as a Christian martyr, for he had lied magnificently, and his punishment had been represented as a form of savage persecution.

But the ivory lay buried three days’ march beyond the Secret River; thus Elebi brooded over the log that smouldered in his hut day and night. Three days beyond the river, branching off at a place where there were two graves, the country was reputably full of devils, and Elebi shuddered at the thought; but, being a missionary and a lay evangelist, and, moreover, the proud possessor of a copy of the Epistle to the Romans (laboriously rendered into the native tongue), he had little to fear. He had more to fear from a certain White Devil at a far-away headquarters, who might be expected to range the lands of the Secret River, when the rains had come and gone.

It was supposed that Elebi had one wife, conforming to the custom of the white man, but the girl who came into the hut with a steaming bowl of fish in her hands was not the wife that the missionaries recognised as such.

“Sikini,” he said, “I am going a journey by canoe.”

“In the blessed service?” asked Sikini, who had come under the influence of the man in his more elated periods.

“The crackling of a fire is like a woman’s tongue,” quoted Elebi; “and it is easier to keep the lid on a boiling pot than a secret in a woman’s heart.”

Elebi had the river proverbs at his finger-tips, and the girl laughed, for she was his favourite wife, and knew that in course of time the information would come to her.

“Sikini,” said the man suddenly, “you know that I have kept you when the Blood Taker would have me put you away.”

(Arburt had a microscope and spent his evenings searching the blood of his flock for signs of trynosomiasis.)

“You know that for your sake I lied to him who is my father and my protector, saying: ‘There shall be but one wife in my house, and that Tombolo, the coast woman.’”

The girl nodded, eyeing him stolidly.

“Therefore I tell you that I am going beyond the Secret River, three days’ march, leaving the canoe at a place where there are two graves.”

“What do you seek?” she asked.

“There are many teeth in that country,” he said; “dead ivory that the people brought with them from a distant country, and have hidden, fearing one who is a Breaker of Stones.[4] I shall come back rich, and buy many wives who shall wait upon you and serve you, and then I will no longer be Christian, but will worship the red fetish as my father did, and his father.”

“Go,” she said, nodding thoughtfully.

He told her many things that he had not revealed to Arburt--of how the ivory came, of the people who guarded it, of the means by which he intended to secure it.

Next morning before the mission lo-koli sounded, he had slipped away in his canoe; and Arburt, when the news came to him, sighed and called him a disappointing beggar--for Arburt was human. Sanders, who was also human, sent swift messengers to arrest Elebi, for it is not a good thing that treasure-hunting natives should go wandering through a strange country, such excursions meaning war, and war meaning, to Sanders at any rate, solemn official correspondence, which his soul loathed.

Who would follow the fortunes of Elebi must paddle in his wake as far as Okau, where the Barina meets the Lapoi, must take the left river path, past the silent pool of the White Devil, must follow the winding stream till the elephants’ playing ground be reached. Here the forest has been destroyed for the sport of the Great Ones; the shore is strewn with tree trunks, carelessly uprooted and as carelessly tossed aside by the gambolling mammoth. The ground is innocent of herbage or bush; it is a flat wallow of mud, with the marks of pads where the elephant has passed.

Elebi drew his canoe up the bank, carefully lifted his cooking-pot, full of living fire, and emptied its contents, heaping thereon fresh twigs and scraps of dead wood. Then he made himself a feast, and went to sleep.

A wandering panther came snuffling and howling in the night, and Elebi rose and replenished the fire. In the morning he sought for the creek that led to the Secret River, and found it hidden by the hippo grass.

Elebi had many friends in the N’Gombi country. They were gathered in the village of Tambango--to the infinite embarrassment of the chief of that village--for Elebi’s friends laid hands upon whatsoever they desired, being strangers and well armed, and, moreover, outnumbering the men of the village three to one. One, O’Sako, did the chief hold in greatest dread, for he said little, but stalked tragically through the untidy street of Tambango, a bright, curved execution knife in the crook of his left arm. O’Sako was tall and handsome. One broad shoulder gleamed in its nakedness, and his muscular arms were devoid of ornamentation. His thick hair was plastered with clay till it was like a European woman’s, and his body was smeared with ingola dust.

Once only he condescended to address his host.

“You shall find me three young men against the Lord Elebi’s arrival, and they shall lead us to the land of the Secret River.”

“But, master,” pleaded the chief, “no man may go to the Secret River, because of the devils.”

“Three men,” said O’Sako softly; “three young men swift of foot, with eyes like the N’Gombi, and mouths silent as the dead.”

“---- the devils,” repeated the chief weakly, but O’Sako stared straight ahead and strode on.

When the sun blazed furiously on the rim of the world in a last expiring effort, and the broad river was a flood of fire, and long shadows ran through the clearings, Elebi came to the village. He came unattended from the south, and he brought with him no evidence of his temporary sojourn in the camps of civilisation. Save for his loin cloth, and his robe of panther skin thrown about his shoulders, he was naked.

There was a palaver house at the end of the village, a thatched little wattle hut perched on a tiny hill, and the Lord Elebi gathered there his captains and the chief of the village. He made a speech.

“Cala, cala,” he began--and it means “long ago,” and is a famous opening to speeches--”before the white man came, and when the Arabi came down from the northern countries to steal women and ivory, the people of the Secret River buried their ‘points’ in a Place of Devils. Their women they could not bury, so they lost them. Now all the people of the Secret River are dead. The Arabi killed some, Bula Matadi killed others, but the sickness killed most of all. Where their villages were the high grass has grown, and in their gardens only the weaver bird speaks. Yet I know of this place, for there came to me a vision and a voice that said----”

The rest of the speech from the European standpoint was pure blasphemy, because Elebi had had the training of a lay preacher, and had an easy delivery.

When he had finished, the chief of the village of Tambangu spoke. It was a serious discourse on devils. There was no doubt at all that in the forest where the cach was there was a veritable stronghold of devildom. Some had bad faces and were as tall as the gum-trees--taller, for they used whole trees for clubs; some were small, so small that they travelled on the wings of bees, but all were very potent, very terrible, and most effective guardians of buried treasure. Their greatest accomplishment lay in leading astray the traveller: men went into the forest in search of game or copal or rubber, and never came back, because there were a thousand ways in and no way out.

Elebi listened gravely.

“Devils of course there are,” he said, “including the Devil, the Old One, who is the enemy of God. I have had much to do with the casting out of devils--in my holy capacity as a servant of the Word. Of the lesser devils I know nothing, though I do not doubt they live. Therefore I think it would be better for all if we offered prayer.”

On his instruction the party knelt in full view of the village, and Elebi prayed conventionally but with great earnestness that the Powers of Darkness should not prevail, but that the Great Work should go on triumphantly.

After which, to make doubly sure, the party sacrificed two fowls before a squat bete that stood before the chief’s door, and a crazy witch-doctor anointed Elebi with human fat.

“We will go by way of Ochori,” said Elebi, who was something of a strategist. “These Ochori folk will give us food and guides, being a cowardly folk and very fearful.”

He took farewell of the old chief and continued his journey, with O’Sako and his warriors behind him. So two days passed. An hour’s distance from the city of the Ochori he called a conference.

“Knowing the world,” he said, “I am acquainted with the Ochori, who are slaves: you shall behold their chief embrace my feet. Since it is fitting that one, such as I, who know the ways of white men and their magic, should be received with honour; let us send forward a messenger to say that the Lord Elebi comes, and bid them kill so many goats against our coming.”

“That is good talk,” said O’Sako, his lieutenant, and a messenger was despatched.

Elebi with his caravan followed slowly.

It is said that Elebi’s message came to Bosambo of Monrovia, chief of the Ochori, when he was in the despondent mood peculiar to men of action who find life running too smoothly.

It was Bosambo’s practice--and one of which his people stood in some awe--to reflect aloud in English in all moments of crisis, or on any occasion when it was undesirable that his thoughts should be conveyed abroad.

He listened in silence, sitting before the door of his hut and smoking a short wooden pipe, whilst the messenger described the quality of the coming visitor, and the unparalleled honour which was to fall upon the Ochori.