Bones Part 37

"Lord Iberi," said Bosambo, loftily, "I bring no food, for that would have been shameful, and men would have said: 'Iberi is a mean man who starves the guests of his house.' But only one half of my wise people shall sit in your huts, Iberi, and the other half will rest with T'lingi of the Akasava, and feed according to law. And behold, chiefs and headmen, I am a very just man not to be turned this way or that by the giving of gifts or by kindness shown to my people. Yet my heart is so human and so filled with tenderness for my people, that I ask you not to feed them too richly or give them presents of beauty, lest my n.o.ble mind be influenced."

Whereupon his forces were divided, and each chief ransacked his land for delicacies to feed them.

It was a long palaver--too long for the chiefs.

Was the island Akasava or Isisi? Old men of either nation testified with oaths and swearings of death and other high matters that it was both.

From dawn to sunset Bosambo sat in the thatched palaver house, and on either side of him was a bra.s.s pot into which he tossed from time to time a grain of corn.

And every grain stood for a successful argument in favour of one or the other of the contestants--the pot to the right being for the Akasava, and that to the left for the Isisi.

And the night was given up to festivity, to the dancing of girls and the telling of stories and other n.o.ble exercises.

On the tenth day Iberi met T'lingi secretly.

"T'lingi," said Iberi, "it seems to me that this island is not worth the keeping if we have to feast this thief Bosambo and search our lands for his pleasure."

"Lord Iberi," agreed his rival, "that is also in my mind--let us go to this robber of our food and say the palaver shall finish to-morrow, for I do not care whether the island is yours or mine if we can send Bosambo back to his land."

"You speak my mind," said Iberi, and on the morrow they were blunt to the point of rudeness.

Whereupon Bosambo delivered judgment.

"Many stories have been told," said he, "also many lies, and in my wisdom I cannot tell which is lie and which is truth. Moreover, the grains of corn are equal in each pot. Now, this I say, in the name of my uncle Sandi, and my brother Tibbetti (who is secretly married to my sister's cousin), that neither Akasava nor Isisi shall sit in this island for a hundred years."

"Lord, you are wise," said the Akasava chief, well satisfied, and Iberi was no less cheered, but asked: "Who shall keep this island free from Akasava or Isisi? For men may come and there will be other palavers and perhaps fighting?"

"That I have thought of," said Bosambo, "and so I will raise a village of my own people on this island, and put a guard of a hundred men--all this I will do because I love you both--the palaver is finished."

He rose in his stately way, and with his drums beating and the bright spearheads of his young men a-glitter in the evening sunlight, embarked in his ten canoes, having expanded his territory without loss to himself like the Imperialist he was.

For two days the chiefs of the Akasava and the Isisi were satisfied with the justice of an award which robbed them both without giving an advantage to either. Then an uneasy realization of their loss dawned upon them. Then followed a swift exchange of messages and Bosambo's colonization scheme was unpleasantly checked.

Hamilton was on the little lake which is at the end of the N'gini River when he heard of the trouble, and from the high hills at the far end of the lake sent a helio message staring and blinking across the waste.

Bones, fishing in the river below Ikan, picked up the instructions, and went flying up the river as fast as the new naphtha launch could carry him.

He arrived in time to cover the shattered remnants of Bosambo's fleet as they were being swept northward from whence they came.

Bones went insh.o.r.e to the island, the water jacket of a Maxim gun exposed over the bow, but there was no opposition.

"What the dooce is all this about--hey?" demanded Lieutenant Tibbetts fiercely, and Iberi, doubly uneasy at the sound of an unaccustomed language, stood on one leg in his embarra.s.sment.

"Lord, the thief Bosambo----" he began, and told the story.

"Lord," he concluded humbly, "I say all this though Bosambo is your relation since you have secretly married his sister's cousin."

Whereupon Bones went very red and stammered and spluttered in such a way that the chief knew for sure that Bosambo had spoken the truth.

Bones, as I have said before, was no fool. He confirmed Bosambo's order for the evacuation of the island, but left a Houssa guard to hold it.

Then he hurried north to the Ochori.

Bosambo formed his royal procession, but there was no occasion for it, for Bones was in no processional mood.

"What the dooce do you mean, sir?" demanded a glaring and threatening Bones, his helmet over his neck, his arms akimbo. "What do you mean, sir, by saying I'm married to your infernal aunt?"

"Sah," said Bosambo, virtuous and innocent, "I no savvy you--I no compreney, sah! You lib for my house--I give you fine t'ings. I make um moosic, sah----"

"You're a jolly old rotter, Bosambo!" said Bones, shaking his finger in the chief's face. "I could punish you awfully for telling wicked stories, Bosambo. I'm disgusted with you, I am indeed."

"Lord who never sleeps," began Bosambo, humbly.

"Hey?"

Bones stared at the other in amazement, suspicion, hope, and gratification in his face.

"O, Bosambo," said he mildly, and speaking in the native tongue, "why do you call me by that name?"

Now, Bosambo in his innocence had used a phrase (_M'wani-m'wani_) which signifies "the sleepless one," and also stands in the vernacular for "busy-body," or one who is eternally concerned with other people's business.

"Lord," said Bosambo, hastily, "by this name are you known from the mountains to the sea. Thus all men speak of you, saying: 'This is he who does not sleep but watches all the time.'"

Bones was impressed, he was flattered, and he ran his finger between the collar of his uniform jacket and his scraggy neck as one will do who is embarra.s.sed by praise and would appear unconcerned under the ordeal.

"So men call me, Bosambo," said he carelessly "though my lord M'ilitani does not know this--therefore in the day when M'ilitani comes, speak of me as _M'wani-m'wani_ that he may know of whom men speak when they say 'the sleepless one.'"

Everybody knows that _Cala cala_ great chiefs had stored against the hour of their need certain stocks of ivory.

Dead ivory it is called because it had been so long cut, but good cow ivory, closer in grain than the bull elephant brought to the hunter, more turnable, and of greater value.

There is no middle island on the river about which some legend or buried treasure does not float.

Hamilton, hurrying forward to the support of his second-in-command, stopped long enough to interview two sulky chiefs.

"What palaver is this?" he demanded of Iberi, "that you carry your spears to a killing? For is not the river big enough for all, and are there no burying-places for your old men that you should fight so fiercely?"

"Lord," confessed Iberi, "upon that island is a treasure which has been hidden from the beginning of time, and that is the truth--N'Yango!"

Now, no man swears by his mother unless he is speaking straightly, and Hamilton understood.

"Never have I spoken of this to the Chief of the Isisi," Iberi went on, "nor he to me, yet we know because of certain wise sayings that the treasure stays and young men of our houses have searched very diligently though secretly. Also Bosambo knows, for he is a cunning man, and when we found he had put his warriors to the seeking we fought him, lord, for though the treasure may be Isisi or Akasava, of this I am sure it is not of the Ochori."

Hamilton came to the Ochori city to find a red-eyed Bones stalking majestically up and down the beach.

"What is the matter with you?" demanded Hamilton. "Fever?"

"Not at all," replied Bones, huskily; but with a fine carelessness.