He smoothed it out.

Written in copying pencil were a few words in Arabic: “From Abiboo, the servant of God, to Sandi, the ever-wakeful father of his people.

“Peace be to you and on your house. Declaring that there is but one God, the true and indivisible, I send you news that the woman you gave to Bosambo is causing great trouble. This has come to me by messengers, Bosambo having fled with twenty men to the edge of the Isisi country.

“Written at a place on the Isisi River, where there are three crocodile creeks meeting in the form of an arrow.”

Now Abiboo had been left in the village from which M’fashimbi had been ejected. He had been left to clear up the mystery of Otapo’s death and he was not a man easily alarmed.

Pulling on his mosquito boots, Sanders walked over to the house occupied by the officer of Houssa.

He found that gentleman sipping tea in solitary state.

“I shall want you,” said Sanders; “there’s a dust-up in the Ochori country.”

The officer raised his eyebrows. He was a young man on the cynical side of twenty-five.

“Not the gentle Bosambo,” he protested ironically; “not that mirror of chivalry?”

“Don’t be comic, my man,” snarled Sanders. “The Ochori are up, and there is a lady missionary somewhere on the border.”

The Houssa captain sprang to his feet.

“Bless the woman, I forgot her!” he said in a worried tone. He took a whistle from his breast pocket and blew it, and a bare-legged bugler raced across the little parade ground from the guard hut.

“Ta-ta-ta!” said the Houssa captain, and the quavering note of the assembly sounded.

“What is the palaver?” demanded the officer, and briefly Sanders related the circumstances.

With a full head of steam the little Zaire pushed her way up-stream. Day and night she steamed till she came to the place “where three crocodile creeks meet in the form of an arrow,” and here Sanders stopped to relieve Abiboo and his handful of Houssas.

Sanders learnt with relief that the fighting had not threatened the mission stations.

“What of Bosambo?” he asked.

“Living or dead, I do not know,” said Abiboo philosophically; “and if he is dead he died a believer, for the Kano woman he took to wife is a believer in the one Allah and of Mahmut, his prophet.”

“All this may be true,” said Sanders patiently, “yet I am less concerned by his prospects of immortality than the present disposition of his body.”

About this Abiboo could tell him nothing, save that ten miles farther on Bosambo had held an island in the middle of the river, and that up to two days before he was still holding it.

Hereabouts the river twists and turns, and there was no sight of the middle island till the Zaire came curving round a sharp bend. “Stand by those maxims!” said Sanders sharply.

The Houssa captain sank on the saddle seat of one little brass-coated gun, and Abiboo took the other.

The water was alive with canoes.

The Ochori were attacking the island; the thunder of the Zaire’s wheel drowned all sound.

“They’re fighting all right,” said the captain. “What do you say, Sanders?”

Sanders, with his hands on the wheel, waited, his eyes fixed ahead.

Now he saw clearly. A party had landed, and there was fierce hand-to-hand fighting.

“Let ‘em go,” he said, and two trembling pencils of flame leapt from the guns.

For answer the canoes formed like magic into first two, then three, then four lines, and down-stream they came at a furious rate.

Then one of the maxims jammed and as it did there came a shower of spears, one of which just missed Sanders.

In an instant the little boat was surrounded–the magic of the maxim had failed for the first time on the big river. It was so unexpected, so inexplicable, that a man might be excused if he lost his head; but Sanders’ hand did not tremble as he swung the wheel over, and the steamer turned in a full circle.

The Houssas were shooting point-blank with their carbines; the Houssa captain, bleeding from the head, was re-adjusting the breech-lock of the maxim without concern.

Down-stream at full speed went the Zaire. The canoes could not keep up with it save one that had fastened itself to the side; the Houssas bayoneted the occupants without asking or accepting explanation.

“I’ve got the gun fixed,” said the Houssa officer as he slipped in a fresh belt of cartridges.

Sanders nodded. A word to the steersman and the Zaire turned. She came back towards the lines of canoes, her maxim firing steadily.

The second line wavered and broke; the third never formed. In the centre of the fleeing canoes was one larger than another. At the stern stood a woman, waving her arms and talking.

“Abiboo,” said Sanders, and the Houssa turned his gun over to a comrade and came to his master. “Do you see that woman in the canoe?”

“Lord, I see her,” said Abiboo.

“It seems to me,” said Sanders gravely, “that this woman would be better dead.”

He rang the telegraph to stop, and the grind of the engines ceased. The Zaire moved slowly forward without a tremble, and Abiboo, lying on the deck with the butt of his rifle pressed to his cheek, took careful aim.

They found Bosambo conscious beneath a heap of dead. He lay across the Kano woman, who was also alive, for Bosambo had taken the spear-thrusts meant for her.

He had, as Sanders counted, twenty-five wounds.

“Lord,” he whispered as Sanders stood by his side, “did I not tell you the Ochoris could fight?”

“They have fought to some purpose, my child,” said Sanders grimly.

Bosambo grinned faintly.

“Lord,” he said softly, “when I go back to them they will be sorry.”

And sorry indeed they were, as I will tell you.

The People of the River

3. THE AFFAIR OF THE LADY MISSIONARY

THE house of De Silva, Mackiney and Company is not so well known as, say, the Rockefeller or the house of Marshall Field; nor does it inspire the same confidence in circles of world-finance as, say, the house of Rothschild or Pierpont Morgan. Yet on the coast De Silva and Mackiney (where they dug up the last ethnological abomination, I know not) held a position analogous to all the houses I have named in combination. They were the Rothschilds, the Marshall Fields, the Pierpont Morgans, of that particular coast. It is said that they put up a proposition that they should coin their own money, but a conservative government–with a small “c”–politely declined to sanction the suggestion.

They had a finger in all the pies that were baked in that part of the world. They had interests in steamship companies, controlled banks, financed exploration and exploitation companies, helped in the creation of railways, floated gold mines, but before and above all, they sold things to the natives and received in exchange other things of infinitely greater value than they gave. The trading store and the trading caravan were the foundation of the house of De Silva and Mackiney–De Silva had long since retired from the business, and was the Marquis de Something-or-other of the Kingdom of Portugal–and even in the days of its greater prosperity native truck was its long suit.

A little steamer would come slowly to a sandy beach, where the only sign of civilisation was a tin-roofed shanty and a flagstaff. Great hogsheads bound together by rope would be cast overboard, and a steam pinnace would haul the consignment to land.

Then would follow lighter after lighter loaded with straw-packed cases, and these a solitary white man, sweating under a huge sun-helmet, would receive on behalf of Messrs. De Silva and Mackiney and carefully remove to the store of De Silva and Mackiney till the caravans which had been despatched by the same reputable firm had returned from the dark interior. Then would the carriers be paid their wages–in gin. Some there were who preferred rum, and for these the big hogsheads would be tapped; but in the main the favourite form of recompense was to be found in the lightly packed cases, where between straw lay the square-faced bottles of German spirit.

Emanuel Mackiney was worth, if rumour be true, something over a million and, like John Bright’s visitor, that was all he was worth.