Bosambo of the River

Then he walked slowly to meet the girl.

She was small and pretty in a way, rather flushed by the exertion of walking from the beach to the house.

Her features were regular, her mouth was small, her chin a little weak. She seemed ill at ease.

"How do you do?" said Sanders, bewildered by the unexpectedness of the vision. He drew a chair for her, and she sank into it with a grateful little smile, which she instantly checked, as though she had set herself an unpleasant task and was not to be conciliated or turned aside by any act of courtesy on his part.

"And exactly what brings you to this unlikely place?" he asked.

"I'm Millie Tavish," she said. "I suppose you've heard about me?"

She spoke with a curious accent. When she told him her name he recognised it as Scottish, on which American was imposed.

"I haven't heard about you," he said. "I presume you are going up-country to a missionary station. I'm sorry – I do not like lady missionaries in the country."

She laughed a shrill, not unmusical laugh.

"Oh, I guess I'm not a missionary," she said complacently. "I'm the queen."

Sanders looked at her anxiously. To women in his country he had conscientious objections; mad women he barred.

"I'm the queen," she repeated, evidently pleased with the sensation she had created. "My! I never thought I should be a queen. My grandfather used to be a gardener of Queen Victoria's before he came to N'York – "

"But – " said the staggered Commissioner.

"It was like this," she rattled on. "When Toby was in Philadelphia at the theological seminary I was a help at Miss Van Houten's – that's the boarding house – an' Toby paid a lot of attention to me. I thought he was joshin' when he told me he was going to be a king, but he's made good all right. And I've written to him every week, and he's sent me the money to come along – "

"Toby?" said Sanders slowly. "Who is Toby?"

"Mr. Tobolaka – King Tobolaka," she said.

A look of horror, which he did not attempt to disguise, swept over the face of the Commissioner.

"You've come out to marry him – a black man?" he gasped.

The girl flushed a deep red.

"That's my business," she said stiffly. "I'm not asking advice from you. Say, I've heard about you – your name's mud along this old coast, but I'm not afraid of you. I've got a permit to go up the Isisi, and I'm goin'."

She was on her feet, her arms akimbo, her eyes blazing with anger, for, womanlike, she felt the man's unspoken antagonism.

"My name may be mud," said Sanders quietly, "and what people say about me doesn't disturb my sleep. What they would say about me if I'd allowed you to go up-country and marry a black man would give me bad nights. Miss Tavish, the mail-boat leaves in an hour for Sierra Leone. There you will find a steamer to take you to England. I will arrange for your passage and see that you are met at Southampton and your passage provided for New York."

"I'll not go," she stormed; "you don't put that kind of bluff on me. I'm an American citizeness and no dud British official is going to boss me – so there!"

Sanders smiled.

He was prepared to precipitate matters now to violate treaties, to create crises, but he was not prepared to permit what he regarded as an outrage. In turn she bullied and pleaded; she even wept, and Sanders's hair stood on end from sheer fright. To make the situation more difficult, a luxurious Isisi canoe with twenty paddlers had arrived to carry her to the city, and the headman in charge had brought a letter from her future lord welcoming her in copper-plate English. This letter Sanders allowed the man to deliver.

In the end, after a hasty arrangement, concluded by letter with the captain of the boat, he escorted Millie Tavish to the beach.

She called down on his head all the unhappiness her vocabulary could verbalise; she threw with charming impartiality the battle of Bannockburn and Bunker's Hill at his stolid British head. She invoked the shades of Washington and William Wallace.

"You shall hear of this," she said as she stepped into the surf-boat. "I'm going to tell the story to every paper."

"Thank you!" said Sanders, his helmet in his hand. "I feel I deserve it."

He watched the boat making a slow progress to the ship and returned to his bungalow.

CHAPTER IV

THE FALL OF THE EMPEROR

"My poor soul!" said the Houssa captain.

He looked down into the long-seated chair where Sanders sprawled limply.

"And is the owdacious female gone?" asked the soldier.

"She's gone," said Sanders.

The Houssa clapped his hands, not in applause, but to summon his orderly.

"Ahmet," he said gravely, speaking in Arabic, "mix for the lord Sandi the juice of lemons with certain cunning ingredients such as you know well; let it be as cool as the hand of Azrael, as sweet as the waters of Nir, and as refreshing as the kisses of houris – go with God."

"I wish you wouldn't fool," said Sanders, irritated.

"This is a crisis of our affairs," said Hamilton the Houssa. "You need a tonic. As for myself, if this had happened to me, I should have been in bed with a temperature. Was she very angry?"

Sanders nodded.

"She called me a British loafer and a Jew in the same breath. She flung in my face every British aristocrat who had ever married an American heiress; she talked like the New York correspondent of an Irish paper for five minutes. She threatened me with the whole diplomatic armoury of America and the entire strength of Scottish opinion; if she could have made up her mind whether she was Scot or just Philadelphia I could have answered her, but when she goaded me into a retort about American institutions she opened her kailyard batteries and silenced me."

The Houssa walked up and down the long bungalow.

"It was impossible, of course," he said seriously. "absolutely impossible. She'll land at Sierra Leone and interview Tullerton – he's the U.S. Consul. I think she'll be surprised when she hears Tullerton's point of view."

Sanders stayed to tiffin, and the discussion of Millie Tavish continued intermittently throughout the meal.

"If I hadn't given Yoka permission to overhaul the engines of the Zaire" said Sanders, "I'd start right away for the Isisi and interview Tobolaka. But by this time he'll have her cylinders open. By the way, I've remembered something," he said, suddenly.

He clapped his hands, and Hamilton's orderly came.

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1

Colloquial: "Make you look foolish."

2

The native equivalent for "opportunity knocks," etc.

3

Steamer.