What though Cape M'Gooboori was the village of that name and the "calm sea" was no more than the placid bosom of the Great River? What though Bones's "hostile craft" was a dilapidated canoe, manned by one aged and bewildered man of the Isisi engaged in spearing fish? Bones saw all things through the rosy spectacles of adventurous youth denied its proper share of experience.
At sunset the Zaire came gingerly through the shoals that run out from the Isongo beach, and Bones went ashore to conduct his investigations. It chanced that the evening had been chosen by M'lama, the witch, for certain wonderful manifestations, and the village was almost deserted.
In a wood and in a place of green trees M'lama sat tossing her sheep shanks, and a dense throng of solemn men and women squatted or sat or tiptoed about herleaving her a respectable space for her operations. A bright fire crackled and glowed at her side, and into this, from time to time, she thrust little sticks of plaited straw and drew them forth blazing and spluttering until with a quick breath she extinguished the flame and examined the grey ash.
"Listen, all people," she said, "and be silent, lest my great ju-ju strike you dead. What man gave me this?"
"It was I, M'lama," said an eager woman, her face wrinkled with apprehension as she held up her brown palm.
The witch peered forward at the speaker.
"O F'sela!" she chanted, "there is a man-child for thee who shall be greater than chiefs; also you will suffer from a sickness which shall make you mad."
"O ko!"
Half dismayed by the promise of her own fate; half exalted by the career the witch had sketched for her unborn son, the woman stared incredulously, fearfully at the swaying figure by the fire.
Again a plaited stick went into the fire, was withdrawn and blown out, and the woman again prophesied.
And sometimes it was of honours and riches she spoke, and sometimesand more oftenof death and disaster. Into this shuddering group strode Bones, very finely clad in white raiment yet limp withal, for the night was close and the way had been long and rough.
The sitters scrambled to their feet, their knuckles at their teeth, for this was a moment of great embarrassment.
"Oh, M'lama," said Bones agreeably, and spoke in the soft dialect of the Isisi by-the-River, "prophesy for me!"
She looked up sullenly, divining trouble for herself.
"Lord," she said, with a certain smooth venom, "there is a great sickness for youand behold you will go far away and die, and none shall miss you."
Bones went very red, and shook an indignant forefinger at the offending prophetess.
"You're a wicked old storyteller!" he stammered. "You're depressin' the peopleyou naughty girl! I hate youI simply loathe you!"
As he spoke in English she was not impressed.
"Goin' about the country puttin' people off their grub, by Jove!" he stormed; "tellin' stories oh, dash it, I shall have to be awfully severe with you!"
Severe he was, for he arrested her, to the relief of her audience, who waited long enough to discover whether or not her ju-ju would strike him dead, and being obviously disappointed by her failure to provide this spectacle, melted away.
Close to the gangway of the Zaire she persuaded one of her Houssa guard to release his hold. She persuaded him by the simple expedient of burying her sharp white teeth in the fleshy part of his armand bolted. They captured her half mad with panic and fear of her unknown fate, and brought her to the boat.
Bones, fussing about the struggling group, dancing with excitement, was honourably wounded by the chance contact of his nose with a wild and whirling fist.
"Put her in the store cabin!" he commanded breathlessly. "Oh, what a wicked woman!"
In the morning as the boat got under way Ali came to him with a distressing story.
"Your Excellency will be pained to hear," he said, "that the female prisoner has eradicated her costume."
"Eradicated?" repeated the puzzled Bones, gently touching the patch of sticking-plaster on his nose.
"In the night," explained this former slave of science, "the subject has developed symptoms of mania, and has entirely dispensed with her clothesto wit, by destruction."
"She's torn up her clothes?" gasped Bones, his hair rising and Ali nodded.
Now, the dress of a native woman varies according to the degree in which she falls under missionary influence. Isongo was well within the sphere of the River Mission, and so M'lama's costume consisted of a tight-fitting piece of print which wound round and round the body in the manner of a kilt, covering the figure from armpit to feet.
Bones went to the open window of the prison cabin, and steadfastly averting his gaze, called
"M'lama!"
No reply came, and he called again.
"M'lama," he said gently, in the river dialect, "what shall Sandi say to this evil that you do?"
There was no reply, only a snuffling sound of woe.
"Oh, ai!" sobbed the voice.
"M'lama, presently we shall come to the Mission house where the God-men are, and I will bring you clothingthese you will put on you," said Bones, still staring blankly over the side of the ship at the waters which foamed past her low hull; "for if my lord Sandi see you as I see youI mean as I wouldn't for the world see you, you improper person," he corrected himself hastily in English"if my lord Sandi saw you, he would feel great shame. Also," he added, as a horrible thought made him go cold all over, "also the lady who comes to my lord Militinioh, lor!"
These last two words were in English.
Fortunately there was a Jesuit settlement near by, and here Bones stopped and interviewed the stout and genial priest in charge.
"It's curious how they all do it," reflected the priest, as he led the way to his storehouse. "I've known 'em to tear up their clothes in an East End police cellwhite folk, the same as you and I."
He rummaged in a big box and produced certain garments.
"My last consignment from a well-meaning London congregation," he smiled, and flung out a heap of dresses, hats, stockings and shoes. "If they'd sent a roll or two of print I might have used thembut strong religious convictions do not entirely harmonize with a last year's Paris model."
Bones, flushed and unhappy, grabbed an armful of clothing, and showering the chuckling priest with an incoherent medley of apology and thanks, hurried back to the Zaire.
"Behold, M'lama," he said, as he thrust his loot through the window of the little deck-house, "there are many grand things such as great ladies wearnow you shall appear before Sandi beautiful to see."
He logged the happening in characteristic language, and was in the midst of this literary exercise when the tiny steamer charged a sandbank, and before her engines could slow or reverse she had slid to the top and rested in two feet of water.
A rueful Bones surveyed the situation and returned to his cabin to conclude his diary with
"12.19 struck a reef off B'lidi Bay. Fear vessel total wreck. Boats all ready for lowering."
As a matter of fact there were neither boats to lower nor need to lower them, because the crew were already standing in the river (up to their hips) and were endeavouring to push the Zaire to deep water.
In this they were unsuccessful, and it was not for thirty-six hours until the river, swollen by heavy rains in the Ochori region, lifted the Zaire clear of the obstruction, that Bones might record the story of his salvage.
He had released a reformed M'lama to the greater freedom of the deck, and save for a shrill passage at arms between that lady and the corporal she had bitten, there was no sign of a return to her evil ways. She wore a white pique skirt and a white blouse, and on her head she balanced deftly, without the aid of pins, a yellow straw hat with long trailing ribbons of heliotrope. Alternately they trailed behind and before.
"A horrible sight," said Bones, shuddering at his first glimpse of her.
The rest of the journey was uneventful until the Zaire had reached the northernmost limits of the Residency reserve. Sanders had partly cleared and wholly drained four square miles of the little peninsula on which the Residency stood, and by barbed wire and deep cutting had isolated the Government estate from the wild forest land to the north.
Here, the river shoals in the centre, cutting a passage to the sea through two almost unfathomable channels close to the eastern and western banks. Bones had locked away his journal and was standing on the bridge rehearsing the narrative which was to impress his superiors with a sense of his resourcefulnessand incidentally present himself in the most favourable light to the new factor which was coming into his daily life.
He had thought of Hamilton's sister at odd intervals and now....
The Zaire was hugging the western bank so closely that a bold and agile person might have stepped ashore.
M'lama, the witch, was both bold and agile.
He turned with open mouth to see something white and feminine leap the space between deck and shore, two heliotrope ribbons streaming wildly in such breeze as there was.
"Hi! Don't do that naughty, naughty!" yelled the agonized Bones, but she had disappeared into the undergrowth before the big paddle-wheel of the Zaire began to thresh madly astern.
Never was the resourcefulness of Bones more strikingly exemplified. An ordinary man would have leapt overboard in pursuit, but Bones was no ordinary man. He remembered in that moment of crisis, the distressing propensity of his prisoner to the "eradication of garments." With one stride he was in his cabin and had snatched a counterpane from his bed, in two bounds he was over the rail on the bank and running swiftly in the direction the fugitive had taken.
For a little time he did not see her, then he glimpsed the white of a pique dress, and with a yell of admonition started in pursuit.
She stood hesitating a moment, then fled, but he was on her before she had gone a dozen yards; the counterpane was flung over her head, and though she kicked and struggled and indulged in muffled squeaks, he lifted her up in his arms and staggered back to the boat.
They ran out a gangway plank and across this he passed with his burden, declining all offers of assistance.
"Close the window," he gasped; "open the doornow, you naughty old lady!"
He bundled her in, counterpane enmeshed and reduced to helpless silence, slammed the door and leant panting against the cabin, mopping his brow.
"Phew!" said Bones, and repeated the inelegant remark many times. All this happened almost within sight of the quay on which Sanders and Hamilton were waiting. It was a very important young man who saluted them.
"All correct, sir," said Bones, stiff as a ramrod; "no casualtiesexcept as per my nose which will be noted in the margin of my reportone female prisoner secured after heroic chase, which, I trust, sir, you will duly report to my jolly old superiors"
"Don't gas so much, Bones," said Hamilton. "Come along and meet my sisterhullo, what the devil's that?"
They turned with one accord to the forest path.
Two native policemen were coming towards them, and between them a bedraggled M'lama, her skirt all awry, her fine hat at a rakish angle, stepped defiantly.
"Heavens!" said Bones, "she's got away again.... That's my prisoner, dear old officer!"
Hamilton frowned.
"I hope she hasn't frightened Pat she was walking in the reservation."
Bones did not faint, his knees went from under him, but he recovered by clutching the arm of his faithful Ali.
"Dear old friend," he murmured brokenly, "accidents error of judgment the greatest tragedy of my life...."
"What's the matter with you?" demanded Sanders in alarm, for the face of Bones was ghastly.
Lieutenant Tibbetts made no reply, but walked with unsteady steps to the lock-up, fumbled with the key and opened the door.
There stepped forth a dishevelled and wrathful girl (she was a little scared, too, I suspect), the most radiant and lovely figure that had ever dawned upon the horizon of Bones.
She looked from her staggered brother to Sanders, from Sanders to her miserable custodian.
"What on earth" began Hamilton.
Then her lips twitched and she fell into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
"If," said Bones huskily, "if in an excess of zeal I mistook in the gloamin', madame white dress...."
He spread out his arms in a gesture of extravagant despair.
"I can do no more than a gentleman.... I have a loaded revolver in my cabin farewell!"
He bowed deeply to the girl, saluted his dumbfounded chief, tripped up over a bucket and would have fallen but for Hamilton's hand.
"You're an ass," said Hamilton, struggling to preserve his sense of annoyance. "Patthis is Lieutenant Tibbetts, of whom I have often written."
The girl looked at Bones, her eyes moist with laughter.
"I guessed it from the first," she said, and Bones writhed.
CHAPTER II
BONES CHANGES HIS RELIGION
Captain Hamilton of the King's Houssas had two responsibilities in life, a sister and a subaltern.
The sister's name was Patricia Agatha, the subaltern had been born Tibbetts, christened Augustus, and named by Hamilton in his arbitrary way, "Bones."
Whilst sister and subaltern were separated from one another by some three thousand miles of oceanas far, in fact, as the Coast is from Bradlesham Thorpe in the County of HampshireCaptain Hamilton bore his responsibilities without displaying a sense of the burden.
When Patricia Hamilton decided on paying a visit to her brother she did so with his heartiest approval, for he did not realize that in bringing his two responsibilities face to face he was not only laying the foundation of serious trouble, but was actually engaged in erecting the fabric.
Pat Hamilton had come and had been boisterously welcomed by her brother one white-hot morning, Houssas in undress uniform lining the beach and gazing solemnly upon Militini's riotous joy. Mr. Commissioner Sanders, C.M.G., had given her a more formal welcome, for he was a little scared of women. Bones, as we know, had not been presentwhich was unfortunate in more ways than one.
It made matters no easier for the wretched Bones that Miss Hamilton was an exceedingly lovely lady. Men who live for a long time in native lands and see little save beautiful figures displayed without art and with very little adornment, are apt to regard any white woman with regular features as pretty, when the vision comes to them after a long interval spent amidst native people. But it needed neither contrast nor comparison to induce an admiration for Captain Hamilton's sister.
She was of a certain Celtic type, above the medium height, with the freedom of carriage and gait which is the peculiar possession of her country-women. Her face was a true oval, and her complexion of that kind which tans readily but does not freckle.
Eyes and mouth were firm and steadfast; she was made for ready laughter, yet she was deep enough, and in eyes and mouth alike you read a tenderness beyond disguise. She had a trinity of admirers: her brother's admiration was natural and critical; Sanders admired and feared; Lieutenant Tibbetts admired and resented.
From the moment when Bones strode off after the painful discovery, had slammed the door of his hut and had steadfastly declined all manner of food and sustenance, he had voluntarily cut himself off from his kind.
He met Hamilton on parade the following morning, hollow-eyed (as he hoped) after a sleepless night, and there was nothing in his attitude suggestive of the deepest respect and the profoundest regard for that paragraph of King's Regulations which imposes upon the junior officer a becoming attitude of humility in the presence of his superior officer.