His legions were closing steadily in upon the doomed city. By nightfall he was within reach, and at dawn the following morning Toloni carried the city by assault and it was a beastly business.

They carried the queen back to the king’s headquarters, and there was a great dance.

By the light of a dozen fires the king sat in judgment.

The girl–she was little more–stood up before him, stripped of her robes, and met the king’s eyes without fear.

“Woman,” he said, “this night you die!”

She made no answer.

“By fire and by torment I will kill you,” said Toloni, and told her the means of her death.

He sat on his carved stool of state beneath a tree. He was naked, save for the leopard robe that covered one shoulder, and his cruel eyes glittered in anticipation of the spectacle she would afford.

She spoke calmly enough.

“If I die to-night and you die to-morrow, O king, what is a day? For Sandi will come with his soldiers.”

“Sandi is dead,” said the king thickly. He had drunk heavily of the maize beer that natives prepare. “And if he lived–“

There came to his hearing a faint wail that grew in shrillness until it became a shriek. Shrieking it passed over his head and died away.

He struggled to his feet unsteadily.

“It was a spirit,” he muttered, then–

The wailing sound came again–a shriek this time of men. Something struck the tree, splintering the bark.

The faint and ghastly light of dawn was in the sky; in a second the world went pearl-grey and, plain to be seen, hugging the shore on the opposite bank, was the Zaire.

As the king looked he saw a pencil of fire leap from the little ship, heard the whine of the coming shell, and realised the danger.

He gave a hurried order, and a regiment ran to the river-bank where the canoes were beached. They were not there. The guards left to watch them lay stretched like men asleep on the beach, but the canoes were in mid-stream five miles away, carried down by the river.

In the night Bosambo’s men had crossed the river.

The story of the fall of Toloni is a brief one. Trapped on the middle island, at the mercy of the long-range guns of the Zaire, Toloni surrendered.

He was conducted to the Zaire.

Bosambo met him on the bridge.

“Ho, Bosambo!” said Toloni, “I have come to see Sandi.”

“You see me who am as our lord,” said Bosambo.

Toloni spat on the deck.

“When a slave sits in the king’s place only slaves obey him,” he quoted a river saying.

“Kings have only one head, and the slave’s blood is also red,” said Bosambo readily. “And it seems to me, Toloni, that you are too full of life for our lord’s happiness. But first you shall tell me what has come to the Queen of the N’Gombi.”

“She died,” said Toloni carelessly; “very quickly she died.”

Bosambo peered at him. It was a trick of Sandi’s this peering, and the Chief of the Ochori was nothing if not imitative.

“You shall tell me how she died,” said Bosambo.

The king’s face twitched.

“I took her by the throat,” he said sullenly.

“Thus?” said Bosambo, and his big hand closed on the king’s strong neck.

“Thus!” gasped the king, “and I struck her with my knife–ah!”

“Thus?” said Bosambo.

Twice his long, broad-bladed knife rose and fell, and the king went quivering to the deck.

* * *

Sandi was strong enough to walk to the beach to meet the Zaire on its return–strong enough, though somewhat dazzled by his splendour, to greet Bosambo, wearing a sky-blue robe laced with tinsel, and a tall and napless hat.

Bosambo came mincing down the gangway plank swinging a brass-headed stick and singing a low song such as Kroomen sing on the coast when they receive their pay and are dismissed their ships.

He was beautiful to behold–feathers were in his hair, rope after rope of gay beads about his neck.

“I have slain Toloni,” he said, “even as your lord would have done–he turned his face from me and said, ‘It is honourable to die at your hands, Bosambo,’ and he made little moaning noises thus–“

And Bosambo, with his heart in the task, made an admirable effort of mimicry.

“Go on,” said Sandi hastily.

“Also I have sent the Isisi and the Akasava to their homes to await your honour’s judgment, even as you would have done, master.”

Sandi nodded.

“And these?” he asked, indicating the chief’s finery.

“These I stole from the camp of Toloni,” said Bosambo. “These and other things, for I was working for government and lord,” he said with becoming simplicity. “It is according to the white man’s custom, as your lordship knows.”

The People of the River

12. THE MISSIONARY

THIS is a moral story. You may go to the black countries for your morals and take from cannibal peoples a most reliable code of ethics. For cannibal folk are fastidious to a degree, eminently modest–though a photograph of the average Bogra native would leave you in some doubt–clean of speech and thought and habit. If they chop men it is because they like food of that particular type. They are no better and no worse than vegetarians, who are also faddy in the matter of foodstuffs.

Native peoples have a code of their own, and take some account of family obligations.

There were two brothers who lived in the Isisi country in a small village, and when their father died they set forth to seek their fortune. The name of the one was M’Kamdina, and of the other M’Kairi. M’Kamdina being the more adventurous, crossed the border of the lawful land into the territory of the Great King, and there he sold himself into captivity.

In those days the Great King was very great and very ancient; so great that no British Administrator did more than reprove him mildly for his wanton cruelty.

This M’Kamdina was a clever youth, very cunning in council, very patient of abuse. He had all the qualities that go to the making of a courtier. It is not surprising, therefore, that he gained a place in the King’s household, sat at his right hand at meat, and married such of the King’s light fancies as His Majesty was pleased to discard.

He grew wealthy and powerful; was the King’s Prime Minister, with power of life and death in his master’s absence. He went afield for his lord’s dancing girls and, having nice taste in such matters, was considerably rewarded.

So he lived, happy and prosperous and content.

The other brother, M’Kairi, had no such enterprise. He settled in a small village near the Pool of Spirits, and with great labour, being a poor man and only affording one wife, he cleared a garden. Here he sowed industriously, and reaped with a full measure of success, selling his stock at a profit.

News came to him of his brother’s prosperity, and once, in contempt of all Sanders’ orders, the painted canoe of the Great King’s Premier came flashing down the river bearing gifts to the poor brother.

Sanders heard of this when he was on a tour of inspection and went out to see M’Kairi.

“Lord, it was so,” said the man sadly. “These rich gifts come from my brother, who is a slave. Salt and corn and cloth and spearheads he sent me.”

Sanders looked round at the poor field the man worked.

“And yet, M’Kairi,” he said, “this is not the garden of a rich man, nor do I see your fine cloth nor the wives that salt would bring you.”

“Lord,” said the man, “I sent them back, for my heart is very sore that my brother should be a slave and I a free man, toiling in the fields, but free; and I would give my life if I could pay the price of him.”

He told Sanders he had sent a message asking what that price was, and it happened that Sanders was close at hand when the Great King, for his own amusement, sent back word saying that the price of M’Kamdina was ten thousand matakos–a matako being a brass rod.

Now it is a fact that for seven years–long, patient, suffering, lean years–M’Kairi laboured in his garden, and sold and bought and reared and bargained until he had acquired ten thousand matakos. These he put into his canoe and paddled to the edge of the land where the Great King ruled, and so came to the presence of his brother and the master of his brother.

The Great King was amused; M’Kamdina was not so amused, being wrathful at his brother’s simplicity.

“Go back with your rods,” he said. He sat in his grand hut, and his smiling wives and his slaves sat about him. “Take your rods, M’Kairi my brother, and know that it is better to be a slave in the house of a king than a free man toiling in the fields.”

And M’Kairi went back to his tiny plantation sick at heart.

Three weeks later the Great King died.