Bones Part 27

"Go swiftly to Ogibo, and summon him to me for a high _lakimbo_,[8]"

said Hamilton; "my soldiers shall carry you in my new little ship that burns water[9]--fly pigeons to me that I may know all that happens."

[Footnote 8: Palaver.]

[Footnote 9: The motor-launch.]

"On my life," said the spy, raised his hand in salute and departed.

"These well people you were talkin' about, sir," asked Bones, "who are they?"

But Hamilton could give no satisfactory answer to such a question, and, indeed, he would have been more than ordinarily clever had he been able to.

The wild territories are filled with stubborn facts, bewildering realities, and extraordinary inconsequences. Up by the N'gombi lands lived a tribe who, for the purposes of office cla.s.sification, were known as "N'gombi (Interior)," but who were neither N'gombi nor Isisi, nor of any known branch of the Bantu race, but known as "the people of the well." They had remarkable legends, sayings which they ascribed to a mythical Idoosi; also they have a song which runs:

O well in the forest!

Which chiefs have digged; No common men touched the earth, But chiefs' spears and the hands of kings.

Now there is no doubt that both the sayings of Idoosi and the song of the well have come down from days of antiquity, and that Idoosi is none other than the writer of the lost book of the Bible, of whom it is written:

"Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the history of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the vision of Idoo the seer?"[10]....

[Footnote 10: Chronicles II., ix. 29.]

And is not the Song of the Well identical with that brief extract from the Book of Wars of the Lord--lost to us for ever--which runs:

"Spring up, O well: sing ye unto it: The well, which the princes digged, Which the n.o.bles of the people delved, With the sceptre ...

with their staves."[11]

[Footnote 11: Numbers xxi. 17.]

Some men say that the People of the Well are one of the lost tribes, but that is an easy solution which suggests itself to the hasty-minded.

Others say that they are descendants of the Babylonian races, or that they came down from Egypt when Rameses II died, and there arose a new dynasty and a Pharaoh who did not know the wise Jewish Prime Minister who ruled so wisely, who worshipped in the little temple at Karnac, and whose statue you may see in Cairo with a strange Egyptian name. We know him better as "Joseph"--he who was sold into captivity.

Whatever they were, this much is known, to the discomfort of everybody, that they were great diggers of wells, and would, on the slightest excuse, spend whole months, choosing, for some mad reason, the top of hills for their operations, delving in the earth for water, though the river was less than a hundred yards away.

Of all the interesting solutions which have been offered with the object of identifying the People of the Well, none are so interesting as that which Bones put forward at the end of Hamilton's brief sketch.

"My idea, dear old officer," he said profoundly, "that all these Johnnies are artful old n.i.g.g.e.rs who've run away from their wives in Timbuctoo--and for this reason----"

"Oh, shut up!" said Hamilton.

Two nights later the bugles were ringing through the Houssa lines, and Bones, sleepy-eyed, with an armful of personal belongings, was racing for the _Zaire_, for Ogibo of the Akasava had secured a following.

II

The chief Ogibo who held the law and kept the peace for his master, the King of the Akasava, was bitten many times by the tsetse on a hunting trip into the bad lands near the Utur forest. Two years afterwards, of a sudden, he was seized with a sense of his own importance, and proclaimed himself paramount chief of the Akasava, and all the lands adjoining. And since it is against nature that any lunatic should be without his following, he had no difficulty in raising all the spears that were requisite for his immediate purpose, marched to Igili, the second most important town in the Akasava kingdom, overthrew the defensive force, destroyed the town, and leaving half his fighting regiment to hold the conquered city he moved through the forest toward the Akasava city proper. He camped in the forest, and his men spent an uncomfortable night, for a thunderstorm broke over the river, and the dark was filled with quick flashes and the heavens crashed noisily. There was still a rumbling and a growling above his head when he a.s.sembled his forces in the grey dawn, and continued his march. He had not gone half an hour before one of his headmen came racing up to where he led his force in majesty.

"Lord," said he, "do you hear no sound?"

"I hear the thunder," said Ogibo.

"Listen!" said the headman.

They halted, head bent.

"It is thunder," said Ogibo, as the rumble and moan of the distant storm came to him. Then above the grumble of the thunder came a sharper note, a sound to be expressed in the word "blong!"

"Lord," said the headman, "that is no thunder, rather is it the fire-thrower of M'ilitani."

So Ogibo in his wrath turned back to crush the insolent white men who had dared attack the garrison he had left behind to hold Igili.

Bones with a small force was pursuing him, totally unaware of the strength that Ogibo mustered. A spy brought to the chief news of the smallness of the following force.

"Now," said Ogibo, "I will show all the world how great a chief I am, for my bravery I will destroy all these soldiers that are sent against me."

He chose his ambush well--though he had need to send scampering with squeals of terror half a hundred humble aliens who were at the moment of interruption digging a foolish well on the top of the hill where Ogibo was concealing his shaking force.

Bones with his Houssas saw how the path led up a tolerably steep hill--one of the few in the country--and groaned aloud, for he hated hills.

He was half-way up at the head of his men, when Ogibo on the summit gave the order, "Boma!" said he, which means kill, and three abreast, shields locked and spears gripped stomach high, the rebels charged down the path. Bones saw them coming and slipped out his revolver. There was no room to manoeuvre his men, the path was fairly narrow, dense undergrowth masked each side.

He heard the yell, saw above the bush, which concealed the winding way, the dancing head-dresses of the attackers, and advanced his pistol arm.

The rustle of bare feet on the path, a louder roar than ever--then silence.

Bones waited, a Houssa squeezed on either side of him, but the onrushing enemy did not appear, and only a faint whimper of sound reached him.

"Lord! they go back!" gasped his sergeant; and Bones saw to his amazement a little knot of men making their frantic way up the hill.

At first he suspected an ambush within an ambush, but it was unlikely; he could never be more at Ogibo's mercy than he had been.

Cautiously he felt his way up the hill path, a revolver in each hand.

He rounded a sharp corner of the path and saw....

A great square chasm yawned in the very centre of the pathway, the bushes on either side were buried under the earth which the diggers of wells had flung up, and piled one on the other, a writhing, struggling confusion of shining bodies, were Ogibo's soldiers to the number of a hundred, with a silent Ogibo undermost, wholly indifferent to his embarra.s.sing position, for his neck was broken.

Hamilton came up in the afternoon and brought villagers to a.s.sist at the work of rescue and afterwards he interviewed the chief of the shy and timid Well-folk.

"O chief," said Hamilton, "it is an order of Sandi that you shall dig no wells near towns, and yet you have done this."

"Bless his old heart!" murmured Bones.

"Lord, I break the law," said the man, simply, "also I break all custom, for to-day, by your favour, I cross the river, I and my people. This we have never done since time was."

"Whither do you go?"

The chief of the wanderers, an old man remarkably gifted--for his beard was long and white, and reached to his waist--stuck his spear head down in the earth.