Bosambo of the River

When the Liberian Government, in its munificence, offered an adequate reward for the arrest of this law-breaker, Mr. Siskolo, in the most public-spirited way, through the columns of the Press, offered to add a personal reward of his own.

Then the public attitude of Liberia changed towards Bosambo, and with this change Siskolo's views upon his brother also underwent a change. Then came a time when Bosambo was honoured in his own land, and men spoke of him proudly, and, as I have indicated, even the public Press wrote of him in terms of pride.

Now Mr. Siskolo, as is recounted, gathered around him all people who were nearly or distantly related to him, and they ranged from the pure aboriginal grandfather to the frock-coated son-in-law, who ran a boot factory in Liberia.

"My friends and my comrades," said Mr. Siskolo oracularly, "you all know that my dear brother Bosambo has now a large territory, and is honoured beyond any other coloured man upon this coast. Now I have loved Bosambo for many years, and often in the night I have wrestled in prayer for his safety. Also, I have spoken well about him to all the white men I have met, and I have on many occasions sent him large sums of money by messenger. If this money has not been received," continued Mr. Siskolo stoutly, "it is because the messengers were thieves, or robbers may have set upon them by the wayside. But all my clerks and the people who love me know that I sent this money, also I have sent him letters praising him, and giving him great riches."

He paused, did Mr. Siskolo, and thrust a bony hand into the pockets of the dress trousers he had acquired from the valet of the French Consul.

"I have called you together," he said slowly, "because I am going to make a journey into the country, and I am going to speak face to face with my beloved brother. For I hear that he has many treasures in his land, and it is not good that he should be so rich, and we, all of us who are related to him in blood, and have loved him and prayed for him for so many years, should be poor."

None of the relations who squatted or sat about the room denied this. Indeed, there was a murmur of applause, not unmixed, however, with suspicion, which was voiced by one Lakiro, popularly supposed to be learned in the law.

"All this is fine talk, Siskolo," he said; "yet how shall we know in what proportion our dear relation Bosambo will desire to distribute his wealth amongst those of us who love him?"

This time the applause was unmistakable.

Mr. Siskolo said haughtily: "After I have received treasure from my dear brother Bosambo – my own brother, related to me in blood, as you will all understand, and no cousin, as you are – after this brother of mine, whom I have loved so dearly and for so long, has given me of his treasure, I will take my half, and the other half I will distribute evenly among you."

Lakiro assumed his most judicial air.

"It seems to me," he said, "that as we are all blood relations, and have brought money for this journey which you make, Siskolo, and you yourself, so far as I know, are not finding so much as a dollar, our dear friend and relative Bosambo would be better pleased if his great gifts were distributed equally, though perhaps" – and he eyed the back-country brethren who had assembled, and who were listening uncomprehendingly to a conversation which was half in English and half in Monrovian – "it would be better to give less to those who have no need of money, or less need than we who have acquired by our high education, expensive and luxurious tastes, such as champagne, wine and other noble foods."

For two days and the greater part of two nights the relations of Bosambo argued over the distribution of the booty which they so confidently anticipated. At the end of a fortnight Siskolo departed from Liberia on a coasting steamer, and in the course of time he arrived at Sanders's headquarters.

Now it may be said that the civilised native – the native of the frock coat and the top hat – was Mr. Commissioner Sanders's pet abomination. He also loathed all native men who spoke English – however badly they spake it – with the sole exception of Bosambo himself, whose stock was exhausted within fifty words. Yet he listened patiently as Siskolo unfolded his plan, and with the development of the scheme something like a holy joy took its place in Sanders's soul.

He even smiled graciously upon this black man.

"Go you, Siskolo," he said gently. "I will send a canoe to carry you to your brother. It is true, as you say, that he is a great chief, though how rich he may be I have no means of knowing. I have not your wonderful eyes."

Siskolo passed over the insult without a word.

"Lord Sandi," he said, dropping into the vernacular, for he received little encouragement to proceed in the language which was Sanders's own. "Lord Sandi, I am glad in my heart that I go to see my brother Bosambo, that I may take him by the hand. As to his treasure, I do not doubt that he has more than most men, for Bosambo is a very cunning man, as I know. I am taking him rich presents, amongst them a clock, which goes by machinery, from my own store, which could not be bought at any Coast port under three dollars, and also lengths and pieces of cloth."

Mr. Siskolo was up early in a morning of July. Mr. Siskolo in a tall hat – his frock coat carefully folded and deposited in the little deckhouse on the canoe, and even his trousers protected against the elements by a piece of cardboard box – set out on the long journey which separated him from his beloved brother.

In a country where time does not count, and where imagination plays a very small part, travelling is a pleasant though lengthy business. It was a month and three days before Siskolo came to the border of his brother's territory. He was two miles from Ochori city when he arrayed himself in the hat, the frock coat, and the trousers of civilisation that he might make an entry in a manner befitting one who was of kin to a great and wealthy prince.

Bosambo received the news of his brother's arrival with something akin to perturbation.

"If this man is indeed my brother," he said, "I am a happy man, for he owes me four dollars he borrowed cala-cala and has never repaid."

Yet he was uneasy. Relations have a trick of producing curious disorder in their hosts. This is not peculiar to any race or colour, and it was with a feeling of apprehension that Bosambo in his state dress went solemnly in procession to meet his brother.

In his eagerness Siskolo stepped out of the canoe before it was grounded, and waded ashore to greet his brother.

"You are indeed my brother – my own brother Bosambo," he said, and embraced him tenderly. "This is a glorious day to me."

"To me," said Bosambo, "the sun shines twice as bright and the little birds sing very loudly, and I feel so glad, that I could dance. Now tell me, Siskolo," he went on, striking a more practical note, "why did you come all this way to see me? For I am a poor man, and have nothing to give you."

"Bosambo," said Siskolo reproachfully, "I bring you presents of great value. I do not desire so much as a dollar. All I wish is to see your beautiful face and to hear your wise words which men speak about from one end of the country to the other."

Siskolo took Bosambo's hands again.

There was a brief halt whilst Siskolo removed the soaked trousers – "for," he explained, "these cost me three dollars."

Thus they went into the city of the Ochori – arm in arm, in the white man's fashion – and all the city gazed spellbound at the spectacle of a tall, slim man in a frock coat and top hat with a wisp of white shirt fluttering about his legs walking in an attitude of such affectionate regard with Bosambo their chief.

Bosambo placed at the disposal of his brother his finest hut. For his amusement he brought along girls of six different tribes to dance before this interested member of the Ethiopian Church. Nothing that he could devise, nothing that the unrewarded labours of his people could perform, was left undone to make the stay of his brother a happy and a memorable time.

Yet Siskolo was not happy. Despite the enjoyment he had in all the happy days which Bosambo provided of evidence of his power, of his popularity, there still remained a very important proof which Siskolo required of Bosambo's wealth.

He broached the subject one night at a feast given in his honour by the chief, and furnished, it may be remarked in parenthesis, by those who sat about and watched the disposal of their most precious goods with some resentment.

"Bosambo, my brother," said Siskolo, "though I love you, I envy you. You are a rich man, and I am a very poor man and I know that you have many beautiful treasures hidden away from view."

"Do not envy me, Siskolo," said Bosambo sadly, "for though I am a chief and beloved by Sandi, I have no wealth. Yet you, my brother, and my friend, have more dollars than the grains of the sand. Now you know I love you," Bosambo went on breathlessly, for the protest was breaking from the other's lips, "and I do these things without desire of reward. I should feel great pain in my heart if I thought you should offer me little pieces of silver. Yet, if you do so desire, knowing how humble I am before your face, I would take what you gave me not because I wish for riches at your hands, but because I am a poor man."

Siskolo's face was lengthening.

"Bosambo," he said, and there was less geniality in his tone, "I am also a poor man, having a large family and many relations who are also your relations, and I think it would be a good thing if you would offer me some fine present that I might take back to the Coast, and, calling all the people together, say 'Behold, this was given to me in a far country by Bosambo, my brother, who is a great chief and very rich.'"

Bosambo's face showed no signs of enthusiasm.

"That is true," he said softly, "it would be a beautiful thing to do, and I am sick in my heart that I cannot do this because I am so poor."

This was a type of the conversation which occupied the attention of the two brothers whenever the round of entertainments allowed talking space.

Bosambo was a weary man at the end of ten days, and cast forth hints which any but Bosambo's brother would have taken.

It was:

"Brother," he said, "I had a dream last night that your family were sick and that your business was ruined. Now I think that if you go swiftly to your home – "

Or:

"Brother, I am filled with sorrow, for the season approaches in our land when all strangers suffer from boils."

But Siskolo countered with neatness and resolution, for was he not Bosambo's brother?

The chief was filled with gloom and foreboding. As the weeks passed and his brother showed no signs of departing, Bosambo took his swiftest canoe and ten paddlers and made his way to the I'kan where Sanders was collecting taxes.

"Master," said Bosambo, squatting on the deck before the weary Commissioner, "I have a tale to tell you."

"Let it be such a tale," said Sanders, "as may be told between the settling of a mosquito and the sting of her."

"Lord, this is a short tale," said Bosambo sadly, "but it is a very bad tale – for me."

And he told the story of the unwelcome brother.

"Lord," he went on, "I have done all that a man can do, for I have given him food that was not quite good; and one night my young men played a game, pretending, in their love of me, that they were certain fierce men of the Isisi, though your lordship knows that they are not fierce, but – "

"Get on! Get on!" snarled Sanders, for the day had been hot, and the tax-payers more than a little trying.

"Now I come to you, my master and lord," said Bosambo, "knowing that you are very wise and cunning, and also that you have the powers of gods. Send my brother away from me, for I love him so much that I fear I will do him an injury."

Sanders was a man who counted nothing too small for his consideration – always excepting the quarrels of women. For he had seen the beginnings of wars in pin-point differences, and had watched an expedition of eight thousand men march into the bush to settle a palaver concerning a cooking-pot.

He thought deeply for a while, then:

"Two moons ago," he said, "there came to me a hunting man of the Akasava, who told me that in the forest of the Ochori, on the very border of the Isisi, was a place where five trees grew in the form of a crescent – "

"Praise be to God and to His prophet Mohammed," said the pious Bosambo, and crossed himself with some inconsequence.

"In the form of a crescent," Sanders went on, "and beneath the centre tree, so said this young man of the Akasava, is a great store of dead ivory" (i. e., old ivory which has been buried or stored).

He stopped and Bosambo looked at him.

"Such stories are often told," he said.

"Let it be told again," said Sanders significantly.

Intelligence dawned on Bosambo's eyes.

Two days later he was again in his own city, and at night he called his brother to a secret palaver.

"Brother," he said, "for many days have I thought about you and how I might serve you best. As you know, I am a poor man."

"'A king is a poor man and a beggar is poorer,'" quoted Siskolo, insolently incredulous.

Bosambo drew a long breath.

"Now I will tell you something," he said, lowering his voice. "Against my old age and the treachery of a disloyal people I have stored great stores of ivory. I have taken this ivory from my people. I have won it in bloody battles. I have hunted many elephants. Siskolo, my brother," he went on, speaking under stress of emotion, "all this I give you because I love you and my beautiful relations. Go now in peace, but do not return, for when my people learn that you are seeking the treasures of the nation they will not forgive you and, though I am their chief, I cannot hold them."

All through the night they sat, Bosambo mournful but informative, Siskolo a-quiver with excitement.

At dawn the brother left by water for the border-line of the Isisi, where five trees grew in the form of a crescent.

* * * * *

"Lord," said Bosambo, a bitter and an injured man, "I have been a Christian, a worshipper of devils, a fetish man, and now I am of the true faith – though as to whether it is true I have reason to doubt." He stood before Sanders at headquarters.

Away down by the little quay on the river his sweating paddlers were lying exhausted, for Bosambo had come by the river day and night.

Sanders did not speak. There was a twinkle in his eye, and a smile hovered at the corners of his mouth.

"And it seems to me," said Bosambo tragically, "that none of the gods loves me."

"That is your palaver," said Sanders, "and remember your brother loves you more than ever."

"Master," said Bosambo, throwing out his arms in despair, "did I know that beneath the middle tree of five was buried ten tusks of ivory? Lord, am I mad that I should give this dog such blessed treasure? I thought – "

"I also thought it was an old man's story," said Sanders gently.

"Lord, may I look?"

Sanders nodded, and Bosambo walked to the end of the verandah and looked across the sea.

There was a smudge of smoke on the horizon. It was the smoke of the departing mail-boat which carried Siskolo and his wonderful ivory back to Monrovia.

Bosambo raised a solemn fist and cursed the disappearing vessel.

"O brother!" he wailed. "O devil! O snake! Nigger! Nigger! Dam' nigger!"

Bosambo wept.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CHAIR OF THE N'GOMBI

The N'gombi people prized a certain chair beyond all other treasures.

For it was made of ivory and native silver, in which the N'gombi are clever workers.

Upon this chair sat kings, great warriors, and chiefs of people; also favoured guests of the land.

Bosambo of the Ochori went to a friendly palaver with the king of the N'gombi, and sat upon the chair and admired it.

After he had gone away, four men came to the village by night and carried off the treasure, and though the King of N'gombi and his councillors searched the land from one end to the other the chair was never found.

It might never have been found but for a Mr. Wooling, a trader and man of parts.

He was known from one end of the coast to the other as a wonderful seller of things, and was by all accounts rich.

One day he decided to conquer new worlds and came into Sanders's territory with complete faith in his mission, a cargo of junk, and an intense curiosity.

Hitherto, his trading had been confined to the most civilized stretches of the country – to places where the educated aboriginal studied the rates of exchange and sold their crops forward.

He had long desired to tread a country where heathenism reigned and where white men were regarded as gods and were allowed to swindle on magnificent scale.

Wooling had many shocks, not the least of which was the discovery that gin, even when it was German gin in square bottles, gaudily labelled and enclosed in straw packets, was not regarded as a marketable commodity by Sanders.

"You can take anything you like," said Sanders, waving his fly-whisk lazily, "but the bar is up against alcohol and firearms, both of which, in the hands of an enthusiastic and experimental people, are peculiarly deadly."

"But, Mr. Sanders!" protested the woolgatherer, with the confident little smile which represented seventy-five per cent. of his stock-in-trade. "I am not one of these new chums straight out from home! Damn it! I know the people, I speak all their lingo, from Coast talk to Swaheli."

"You don't speak gin to them, anyway," said Sanders; "and the palaver may be regarded as finished."

And all the persuasive eloquence of Mr. Wooling did not shift the adamantine Commissioner; and the trader left with a polite reference to the weather, and an unspoken condemnation of an officious swine of a British jack-in-office which Sanders would have given money to have heard.

Wooling went up-country and traded to the best of his ability without the alluring stock, which had been the long suit in his campaign, and if the truth be told – and there is no pressing reason why it should not – he did very well till he tied up one morning at Ochori city and interviewed a chief whose name was Bosambo.

Wooling landed at midday, and in an hour he had arrayed his beautiful stores on the beach.

They included Manchester cotton goods from Belgium, genuine Indian junk from Birmingham, salt which contained a sensible proportion of good river sand, and similar attractive bargains.

His visit to the chief was something of an event. He found Bosambo sitting before his tent in a robe of leopard skins.

"Chief," he said in the flowery manner of his kind, "I have come many weary days through the forest and against the current of the river, that I may see the greatness of all kings, and I bring you a present from the King of England, who is my personal friend and is distantly related to me."

And with some ceremony he handed to his host a small ikon representing a yellow St. Sebastian perforated with purple arrows – such as may be purchased from any manufacturer on the Baltic for three cents wholesale.

Bosambo received the gift gravely.

"Lord," he said, "I will put this with other presents which the King has sent me, some of which are of great value, such as a fine bedstead of gold, a clock of silver, and a crown so full of diamonds that no man has ever counted them."

He said this easily; and the staggered Mr. Wooling caught his breath.

"As to this beautiful present," said Bosambo, handling the ikon carelessly, and apparently repenting of his decision to add it to his collection, "behold, to show how much I love you – as I love all white lords – I give it to you, but since it is a bad palaver that a present should be returned, you shall give me ten silver dollars: in this way none of us shall meet with misfortune."

"Chief," said Mr. Wooling, recovering himself with a great effort, "that is a very beautiful present, and the King will be angry when he hears that you have returned it, for there is a saying, 'Give nothing which has been given,' and that is the picture of a very holy man."

Bosambo looked at the ikon.

"It is a very holy man," he agreed, "for I see that it is a picture of the blessed Judas – therefore you shall have this by my head and by my soul."

In the end Mr. Wooling compromised reluctantly on a five-dollar basis, throwing in the ikon as a sort of ecclesiastical makeweight.

More than this, Bosambo bought exactly ten dollars' worth of merchandise, including a length of chiffon, and paid for them with money. Mr. Wooling went away comforted.

It was many days before he discovered amongst his cash ten separate and distinct dollar pieces that were unmistakably bad and of the type which unscrupulous Coast houses sell at a dollar a dozen to the traders who deal with the unsophisticated heathen.

Wooling got back to the Coast with a profit which was fairly elusive unless it was possible to include experience on the credit side of the ledger. Six months later, he made another trip into the interior, carrying a special line of talking-machines, which were chiefly remarkable for the fact that the sample machine which he exhibited was a more effective instrument than the one he sold. Here again he found himself in Ochori city. He had, in his big trading canoe, one phonograph and twenty-four things that looked like phonographs, and were in point of fact phonographs with this difference, that they had no workable interiors, and phonographs without mechanism are a drug upon the African market.

Nevertheless, Bosambo purchased one at the ridiculously low price offered, and the chief viewed with a pained and reproachful mien the exhaustive tests which Mr. Wooling applied to the purchase money.

"Lord," said Bosambo, gently, "this money is good money, for it was sent to me by my half-brother Sandi."

"Blow your half-brother Sandi," said Wooling, in energetic English, and to his amazement the chief replied in the same language:

"You make um swear – you lib for hell one time – you say damn words you not fit for make angel."

Wooling, arriving at the next city – which was N'gombi – was certainly no angel, for he had discovered that in some mysterious fashion he had sold Bosambo the genuine phonograph, and had none wherewith to beguile his new client.

He made a forced journey back to Ochori city and discovered Bosambo entertaining a large audience with a throaty presentment of the "Holy City."

As the enraged trader stamped his way through the long, straggling street, there floated to him on the evening breeze the voice of the far-away tenor:

Jer-u-salem! Jer-u-salem!Sing for the night is o'er!

"Chief!" said Mr. Wooling hotly, "this is a bad palaver, for you have taken my best devil box, which I did not sell you."

Last night I lay a sleeping,There came a dream so fair.

sang the phonograph soulfully.

"Lord," said Bosambo, "this devil box I bought – paying you with dollars which your lordship ate fearing they were evil dollars."

"By your head, you thief!" swore Wooling. "I sold you this." And he produced from under his arm the excellent substitute.

"Lord," said Bosambo, humbly enough, "I am sorry."

He switched off the phonograph. He dismounted the tin horn with reluctant fingers; with his own hands he wrapped it in a piece of the native matting and handed it to the trader, and Wooling, who had expected trouble, "dashed" his courteous host a whole dollar.

"Thus I reward those who are honest," he said magnificently.

"Master," said Bosambo, "that we may remember one another kindly, you shall keep one half of this and I the other."

And with no effort he broke the coin in half, for it was made of metal considerably inferior to silver.

Wooling was a man not easily abashed, yet it is on record that in his agitation he handed over a genuine dollar and was half way back to Akasava city before he realised his folly. Then he laughed to himself, for the phonograph was worth all the trouble, and the money.

That night he assembled the Akasava to hear the "Holy City" – only to discover that he had again brought away from Ochori city the unsatisfactory instrument he had taken.

In the city of the Ochori all the night a wheezy voice acclaimed Jerusalem to the admiration and awe of the Ochori people.