With a stroke he severed the native rope which moored the craft to the shore, and paddled frantically to midstream.

Three times Jordon fired at him. At the third shot he slid overboard like a man suddenly tired.

“Swim out and bring the canoe,” ordered Jordon and turned his attention to M’Karoka. The man was dying; it was not necessary to have an extensive knowledge of surgery to see that he was wounded beyond recovery.

Jordon attempted to plug the more terrible of the chest wounds and to arrest the bleeding. The Zulu opened his eyes.

“Baas,” he said faintly, “what came of Vellim?”*

[* This man’s name was probably Wilhelm or William.]

“I think he is dead,” said Jordon.

M’Karoka closed his eyes.

“Listen, baas,” he said after a while, “you will tell Sandi that I lied when I said Vellim was dead, though all else was true–we each took our share of the stones–then we went back because they were no use to us in this far land–and some we changed for money–then we had to fly–and Vellim tried to kill us so that he might have all–and we beat him, taking from him his stones, and he ran into the forest–“

He paused, for he found difficulty in speaking.

When he spoke again it was in a language which Jordon could not understand–the language the men had spoken when they quarrelled. He spoke vehemently, then seemed to realise that he was not understood, for he changed his speech to the Ochori dialect.

“Under the fire in my hut,” he gasped, “are many stones, master–they are for you, because you killed Vellim–“

He died soon afterwards.

In the morning Jordon cleared away the ashes of the fire, and dug through the baked earth. Two feet below the surface he came upon a parcel wrapped in innumerable coverings of native cloth. He opened it eagerly, his hands shaking. There were twenty or thirty pebbles varying in size from a marble to a pea. They were of irregular size and mouse-coloured. Jordon found his training as secretary to a South African millionaire helpful, for he knew these to be uncut diamonds.

Sanders listened to the story incoherently told.

Jordon was beside himself with joy.

“Think of it, Mr. Sanders,” he said, “think of that dear little wife of mine and that dear kiddie. They’re nearly starving, I know it–I can read between the lines of her letter. And at a moment when everything seems to be going wrong, this great fortune comes–“

Sanders let him rave on, not attempting to check him. The homeward-bound steamer lay in the roadstead, her launch bobbed and swayed in the swell by the beach.

“You arrived in time,” said Sanders grimly; “if I were you I should forget that you ever told me anything about this affair–and I shouldn’t talk about it when you get home if I were you. Good-bye.”

He held out his hand and Jordon gripped.

“You’ve been kindness itself,” he began.

“Good-bye,” said the Commissioner; “you’d better run or the launch will go without you.”

He did not wait to see the last of the trader, but turned abruptly and went back to the residency.

He opened his desk and took out a printed document.

“To all Commissioners, Magistrates, Chiefs of Police, and Deputy Commissioners:

“Wanted on a warrant issued by the Chief Magistrate of Kimberley, Villim Dobomo, Joseph M’Karoka, Joseph Kama, Zulus, charged with illicit diamond buying, and believed to be making their way northward through Baroskeland, Angola and the Congo. Accused men disappeared from Kimberley two years ago, but have been seen recently in the neighbourhood of that town. It is now known that they have returned north.”

At the foot of the communication was a written note from Sanders’ chief:

“Please state if anything is known of these men.”

Sanders sat staring at the document for a long time. It was of course his duty to report the matter and confiscate the diamonds in the possession of Jordon.

“A young wife and a baby,” said Sanders thoughtfully; “how infernally improvident these people are!”

He took up his pen and wrote:

“Unknown: Sanders.”

The People of the River

17. SPRING OF THE YEAR

THE life of one of His Britannic Majesty’s Commissioners of Native Territories is necessarily a lonely one. He is shut off from communion with those things which men hold most dear. He is bound as by a steel wall to a life which has no part and no harmony with the life to which his instincts call him, and for which his early training, no less than the hereditary forces within him, have made no preparation. He lives and thinks with black people, who are children of thought, memory and action.

They love and hate like children; they are without the finesse and subtlety which is the possession of their civilised brethren, and in their elementary passions rather retrograde toward the common animal stock from whence we have all sprung, than progress to the nicenesses of refinement.

And white men who live with them and enter into their lives whole-heartedly become one of two things, clever children or clever beasts. I make this bald statement; the reader must figure out the wherefore.

Sanders came down the river in the spring of the year, in a thoughtful mood. Under the striped awning which covered the bridge of his stern-wheeler he sat in a deep-seated lounge chair, his book on his knees, but he read little.

His eyes wandered idly over the broad, smooth surface of the big river: they followed the line of the dark N’Gombi forest to the left, and the flat rolling land of the Isisi to the right. They were attracted by the blue-grey smoke which arose from this village and that. The little fishing canoes, anchored in likely places, the raucous call of the parrots overhead, the peering faces of the little monkeys of which he caught glimpses, when the Zaire moved to deep water in shore, all these things interested him and held him as they had not interested him since–oh, since quite a long time ago.

As he came abreast of a village he pulled the cord which controlled the siren, and the little steamer hooted a welcome to the waving figures on the beach.

With his fly whisk in his hand, and his unread book on his knee, he gazed by turns absently and interestedly at the landscape.

Bogindi, the steersman, who stood in the shadow of the awning with his hand on the wheel, called him by name.

“Lord, there is a man in a canoe ahead who desires to speak with your lordship.”

Sanders shaded his eyes. Directly in the course of the steamer a canoe lay broadside on, and standing upright was a man whose outstretched arms spoke of desire for an urgent palaver.

Now only matters of great moment, such as rebellion and the like, justify holding up the King’s ship on the river.

Sanders leapt forward in his chair and pulled over the handle of the telegraph to “Stop,” then to “Astern Easy.”

He rose and took a survey of the man through his glasses.

“This is a young man, Abiboo,” he said, “and I think of the Isisi people; certainly he is no chief to bid me halt.”

“He may be mad, lord,” said Abiboo; “in the spring of the year the Isisi do strange things, as all men know.”

The Zaire came slowly to the canoe, and its occupant, wielding his paddles scientifically, brought his little craft alongside and stepped aboard.

“Who are you?” asked Abiboo, “and what great matter have you in hand that you stop our lord on his splendid way?”

“I am Kobolo of the Isisi, of the village of Togo-bonobo,” said the young man, “and I love a chief’s daughter.”

“May God send you to the bottom of the waters,” swore the wrathful Abiboo, “that you bring your vile body to this ship; that you disturb our lord in his high meditations. Come thou, Kaffir, and whilst you speak with Sandi, I go to find the whip he will surely order for you.”

Thus Kobolo came before Sanders and Abiboo introduced him in words which were not flattering.

“This is a strange palaver,” said Sanders not unkindly, “for it is not the practice for young men to stop the ship of the King’s Commissioner because they love maidens.”

The young man was tall, straight of back, and well made of shoulder, and he showed no remorse for his outrageous conduct. Rather there was an air about him of desperate earnestness.

“Lord,” he said, “I love Nimimi, who is the daughter of my chief, the chief of the village of Togo-bonobo. And because she is a beautiful dancer, and men come from afar to see her, her father demands two thousand rods for her, and I am a poor man.”

“‘The father is always right,’” quoted Sanders, “for it is said on the river, ‘A thing is worth its price and that which you give away is worth nothing.’”

“This woman loves me,” said the youth, “and because of her I have saved a thousand matakos, which, as your lordship knows, is a great fortune.”

“What can I do?” asked Sanders, with one of his rare smiles.

“Lord, you are all-powerful,” said the agitated young man, “and if you say to the chief her father–“

Sanders shook his head.

“That may not be,” he said.

There was something in the spring air, something responsive in his blood, that inclined him to act as he did, for after a moment’s thought he turned to Abiboo.

“Take this man,” he said, “and give him–“

“Lord, I have the whip ready,” said Abiboo complacently.