And when my lord Bim-bi has bitten once at the third moon I will come back and I will visit your father. But because the roads are bad,” he went on, “and the floods come even in this dry season,” he said significantly, “and the forest is so entangled that he cannot bring his presents, sending only the son of his wife to me, he shall make against my coming such a road as shall be in width, the distance between the King’s hut and the hut of the King’s wife; and he shall clear from this road all there are of trees, and he shall bridge the strong stream and dig pits for the floods. And to this end he shall take every man of his kingdom and set them to labour, and as they work they shall sing a song which goes:

 

We are doing Notiki’s work,

The work Notiki set us to do,

Rather than send to the lord his King

The presents which Bosambo demanded.

The palaver is finished.”

 

This is the history, or the beginning of the history, of the straight road which cuts through the heart of the Ochori country from the edge of the river by the cataracts, even to the mountains of the great King, a road famous throughout Africa and imperishably associated with Bosambo’s name – this by the way.

On the first day following the tax palaver Bosambo went down the river with four canoes, each canoe painted beautifully with camwood and gum, and with twenty-four paddlers.

It was by a fluke that he missed Sanders. As it happened, the Commissioner had come back to the big river to collect the evidence of the murdered woman’s brother who was a petty headman of an Isisi fishing village. The Zaire came into the river almost as the last of Bosambo’s canoes went round the bend out of sight, and since a legend existed on the river, a legend for the inception of which Bosambo himself was mainly responsible, that he was in some way related to Mr Commissioner Sanders, no man spoke of Bosambo’s passing.

The chief came to headquarters on the third day after his departure from his city. His subsequent movements are somewhat obscure, even to Sanders, who has been at some pains to trace them.

It is known that he drew a hundred and fifty pounds in English gold from Sanders’ storekeeper – he had piled up a fairly extensive credit during the years of his office – that he embarked with one headman and his wife on a coasting boat due for Sierra Leone, and that from that city came a long-winded demand in Arabic by a ragged messenger for a further instalment of one hundred pounds. Sanders heard the news on his return to headquarters and was a little worried.

“I wonder if the devil is going to desert his people?” he said.

Hamilton the Houssa laughed.

“He is more likely to desert his people than to desert a balance of four hundred pounds which now stands to his credit here,” he said. “Bosambo has felt the call of civilisation. I suppose he ought to have secured your permission to leave his territory?”

“He has given his people work to keep them busy,” Sanders said a little gravely. “I have had a passionate protest from Notiki, one of his chiefs in the north. Bosambo has set him to build a road through the forest, and Notiki objects.”

The two men were walking across the yellow parade ground past the Houssas hut in the direction of headquarters’ bungalow.

“What about your murderer?” asked Hamilton, after a while, as they mounted the broad wooden steps which led to the bungalow stoep.

Sanders shook his head.

“Everybody lied,” he said briefly. “I can do no less than send the man to the Village. I could have hung him on clear evidence, but the lady seemed to have been rather unpopular and the murderer quite a person to be commended in the eyes of the public. The devil of it is,” he said as he sank into his big chair with a sigh, “that had I hanged him it would not have been necessary to write three foolscap sheets of report. I dislike these domestic murderers intensely – give me a ravaging brigand with the hands of all people against him.”

“You’ll have one if you don’t touch wood,” said Hamilton seriously.

Hamilton came of Scottish stock – and the Scots are notorious prophets.

II

Now the truth may be told of Bosambo, and all his movements may be explained by this revelation of his benevolence. In the silence of his hut had he planned his schemes. In the dark aisles of the forests, under starless skies when his fellow-huntsmen lay deep in the sleep which the innocent and the barbarian alone enjoy; in drowsy moments when he sat dispensing justice, what time litigants had droned monotonously he had perfected his scheme.

Imagination is the first fruit of civilisation and when the reverend fathers of the coast taught Bosambo certain magics, they were also implanting in him the ability to picture possibilities, and shape from his knowledge of human affairs the eventual consequences of his actions. This is imagination somewhat elaborately and clumsily defined.

To one person only had Bosambo unburdened himself of his schemes.

In the privacy of his great hut he had sat with his wife, a steaming dish of fish between them, for however lax Bosambo might be, his wife was an earnest follower of the Prophet and would tolerate no such abomination as the flesh of the cloven-hoofed goat.

He had told her many things.

“Light of my heart,” said he, “our lord Sandi is my father and my mother, a giver of riches, and a plentiful provider of pence. Now it seems to me, that though he is a just man and great, having neither fear of his enemies nor soft words for his friends, yet the lords of his land who live so very far away do him no honour.”

“Master,” said the woman quietly, “is it no honour that he should be placed as a king over us?”

Bosambo beamed approvingly.

“Thou hast spoken the truth, oh my beloved!” said he, in the extravagance of his admiration. “Yet I know much of the white folk, for I have lived along this coast from Dacca to Mossomedes. Also I have sailed to a far place called Madagascar, which is on the other side of the world, and I know the way of white folk. Even in Benguella there is a governor who is not so great as Sandi, and about his breast are all manner of shining stars that glitter most beautifully in the sun, and he wears ribbons about him and bright-coloured sashes and swords.” He wagged his finger impressively. “Have I not said that he is not so great as Sandi. When saw you my lord with stars or cross or sash or a sword?”

“Also at Decca, where the Frenchy live. At certain places in the Togo, which is Allamandi,[1] I have seen men with this same style of ornaments, for thus it is that the white folk do honour to their kind.”

He was silent a long time and his brown-eyed wife looked at him curiously.

“Yet what can you do, my lord?” she asked. “Although you are very powerful, and Sandi loves you, this is certain, that none will listen to you and do honour to Sandi at your word – though I do not know the ways of the white people, yet of this I am sure.”

Again Bosambo’s large mouth stretched from ear to ear, and his two rows of white teeth gleamed pleasantly.

“You are as the voice of wisdom and the very soul of cleverness,” he said, “for you speak that which is true. Yet I know ways, for I am very cunning and wise, being a holy man and acquainted with blessed apostles such as Paul and the blessed Peter, who had his ear cut off because a certain dancing woman desired it. Also by magic it was put on again because he could not hear the cocks crow. All this and similar things I have here.” He touched his forehead.

Wise woman that she was, she had made no attempt to pry into her husband’s business, but spent the days preparing for the journey, she and the nut-brown sprawling child of immense girth, who was the apple of Bosambo’s eye.

So Bosambo had passed down the river as has been described, and four days after he left there disappeared from the Ochori village ten brothers in blood of his, young hunting men who had faced all forms of death for the very love of it, and these vanished from the land and none knew where they went save that they did not follow on their master’s trail.

Tukili, the chief of the powerful eastern island Isisi, or, as it is contemptuously called, the N’gombi-Isisi, by the riverain folk, went hunting one day, and ill-fortune led him to the border of the Ochori country. Ill-fortune was it for one Fimili, a straight maid of fourteen, beautiful by native standard, who was in the forest searching for roots which were notorious as a cure for “boils” which distressed her unamiable father.

Tukili saw the girl and desired her, and that which Tukili desired he took.