The Keepers of the King's Peace

The sun was casting long shadows eastward when they returned. They had not far to come, for the place they had chosen for their picnic was well within the Residency reservation, but Bones had been describing on his way back one of the remarkable powers he possessed, namely, his ability to drag the truth from reluctant and culpable natives. And every time he desired to emphasize the point he would stop, lower all his impedimenta to the ground, cluttering up the landscape with picnic-box, drawing-board, sketching-blocks and the numerous bunches of wild flowers he had culled at her request, and press his argument with much palm-punching.

He stopped for the last time on the very edge of the barrack square, put down his cargo and proceeded to demolish the doubt she had unwarily expressed.

"That's where you've got an altogether erroneous view of me, dear old sister," he said triumphantly. "I'm known up an' down the river as the one man that you can't deceive. Go up and ask the Bomongo, drop in on the Isisi, speak to the Akasava, an' what will they say? They'll say, 'No, ma'am, there's no flies on jolly old Bones—not on your life, Harriet!'"

"Then they would be very impertinent," smiled Pat.

"Ask Sanders (God bless him!). Ask Ham. Ask–" he was going on enthusiastically.

"Are you going to camp here, or are you coming in?" she challenged.

Bones gathered up his belongings, never ceasing to talk.

"Fellers like me, dear young friend, make the Empire—paint the whole bally thing red, white an' blue—'unhonoured an' unsung, until the curtain's rung, the boys that made the Empire and the Navy.'"

"Bones, you promised you wouldn't sing," she said reproachfully; "and, besides, you're not in the navy."

"That doesn't affect the argument," protested Bones, and was rapidly shedding his equipment in preparation for another discourse, when she walked on towards Sanders who had come across the square to meet them.

Bones made a dive at the articles he had dropped, and came prancing (no other word describes his erratic run) up to Sanders.

"I've just been telling Miss Hamilton, sir and Excellency, that nobody can find things that old Bones—you'll remember, sir, the episode of your lost pyjama legs. Who found 'em?"

"You did," said Sanders; "they were sent home in your washing. Talking about finding things, read this."

He handed a telegraph form to the young man, and Bones, peering into the message until his nose almost touched the paper, read—

"Very urgent. Clear the line. Administration.

"To Sanders, Commission River Territories. Message begins. Belgian Congo Government reports from Leopoldville, Bacteriological Expedition carriers raided on edge of your territory by Inner N'gombi people, all stores looted including case of 20 culture tubes. Stop. As all these cultures are of virulent diseases, inoculate Inner N'gombi until intact tubes recovered. Message ends."

Bones read it twice, and his face took on an appearance which indicated something between great pain and intense vacancy. It was intended to convey to the observer the fact that Bones was thinking deeply and rapidly, and that he had banished from his mind all the frivolities of life.

"I understand, sir—you wish me to go to the dear old Congo Government and apologize—I shall be ready in ten minutes."

"What I really want you to do," said Sanders patiently, "is to take the Wiggle up stream and get that box."

"I quite understand, sir," said Bones, nodding his head. "To-day is the 8th, to-morrow is the 9th—the box shall be in your hands on the 15th by half-past seven in the evening, dear old sir."

He saluted and turned a baleful glare upon the girl, the import of which she was to learn at first hand.

"Duty, Miss Patricia Hamilton! Forgive poor old Bones if he suddenly drops the mask of dolce far niente—I go!"

He saluted again and went marching stiffly to his quarters, with all the dignity which an empty lunch-box and a dangling water-bottle would allow him.

The next morning Bones went forth importantly for the Ochori city, being entrusted with the task of holding, so to speak, the right flank of the N'gombi country.

"You will use your discretion," Sanders said at parting, "and, of course, you must keep your eyes open; if you hear the merest hint that the box is in your neighbourhood, get it."

"I think, your Excellency," said Bones, with heavy carelessness, "that I have fulfilled missions quite as delicate as this, and as for observation, why, the gift runs in my family."

"And runs so fast that you've never caught up with it," growled Hamilton.

Bones turned haughtily and saluted. It was a salute full of subdued offence.

He went joyously to the northward, evolving cunning plans. He stopped at every village to make inquiries and to put the unoffending villagers to considerable trouble—for he insisted upon a house-to-house search—before, somewhat wearied by his own zeal, he came to the Ochori.

Chief Bosambo heard of his coming and summoned his councillors.

"Truly has Sandi a hundred ears," he said in dismay, "for it seems that he has heard of the slaying of Muchini. Now, all men who are true to me will swear to the lord Tibbetti that we know nothing of a killing palaver, and that we have not been beyond the trees to the land side of the city. This you will all say because you love me; and if any man says another thing I will beat him until he is sick."

Bones came and was greeted by the chief—and Bosambo was carried to the beach on a litter.

"Lord," said Bosambo weakly, "now the sight of your simple face will make me a well man again. For, lord, I have not left my bed since the coming of the rains, and there is strength neither in my hands and feet."

"Poor old bird," said Bones sympathetically, "you've been sittin' in a draught."

"This I tell you, Tibbetti," Bosambo went on, as yet uncertain of his ruler's attitude, since Bones must need, at this critical moment, employ English and idiomatic English, "that since the last moon was young I have lain in my hut never moving, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, being like a dead man—all this my headman will testify."

Bones's face dropped, for he had hoped to secure information here. Bosambo, watching his face through half-closed lids, saw the dismal droop of the other's mouth, and came to the conclusion that whatever might be the cause of the visit, it was not to hold the Ochori or their chief to account for known misdeeds.

"O Bosambo," said Bones, in the river dialect, "this is sad news, for I desire that you shall tell me certain things for which Sandi would have given you salt and rods."

The Chief of the Ochori sat up in his litter and went so far as to put one foot to the ground.

"Lord," said he heartily, "the sound of your lovely voice brings me from the grave and gives me strength. Ask, O Bonesi, for you are my father and my mother; and though I saw and heard nothing, yet in my sickness I had wonderful visions and all things were made visible—that I declare to you, Bonesi, before all men."

"Don't call me 'Bonesi,'" said Bones fiercely. "You're a jolly cheeky feller, Bosambo—you're very, very naughty, indeed!"

"Master," said Bosambo humbly, "though I rule these Ochori I am a foreigner in this land; in the tongue of my own people, Bonesi means 'he-who-is-noble-in-face-and-a-giver-of-justice.'"

"That's better," nodded the gratified Bones, and went on speaking in the dialect. "You shall help me in this—it touches the people of the Inner N'gombi–"

Bosambo fell back wearily on to the litter, and rolled his eyes as one in pain.

"This is a sorrow for me, Bo—Tibbetti," he said faintly, "but I am a sick man."

"Also," continued Bones, "of a certain box of wood, full of poisons–"

As well as he could Bones explained the peculiar properties of germ culture.

"Oh, ko!" said Bosambo, closing his eyes, and was to all appearances beyond human aid.

"Lord," said Bosambo, at parting, "you have brought me to life, and every man of every tribe shall know that you are a great healer. To all the far and quiet places of the forest I will send my young men who will cry you aloud as a most wonderful doctor."

"Not at all," murmured Bones modestly, "not at all."

"Master," said Bosambo, this time in English, for he was not to be outdone in the matter of languages, for had he not attended a great mission school in Monrovia? "Master, you dam' fine feller, you look 'um better feller, you no find um. You be same like Moses and Judi Escariot, big fine feller, by golly—yas."

All night long, between the visits which Bones had been making from the moored Wiggle to the village (feeling the patient's pulse with a profound and professional air and prescribing brandy and milk), Bosambo had been busy.

"Stand you at the door, Secundi," he said to his headman, "and let one of your men go to the shore to warn me of my lord Tibbetti's coming, for I have work to do. It seems this Maker of Storms were better with Sandi than with me."

"Tibbetti is a fool, I think," suggested Secundi.

Bosambo, kneeling on a rush mat, busy with a native chisel and a pot of clay paint, looked up.

"I have beaten older men than you with a stick until they have wept," he said, "and all for less than you say. For this is the truth, Secundi, that a child cannot be a fool, though an old man may be a shame. This is the word of the blessed prophet. As for Tibbetti, he has a clean and loving heart."

There was a rustle at the door and a whispered voice.

The box and the tools were thrust under a skin rug and Bosambo again became the interesting invalid.

In the morning Bosambo had said farewell, and a blushing Bones listened with unconcealed pleasure to the extravagant praise of his patient.

"And this I tell you, Tibbetti," said Bosambo, standing thigh-deep in the river by the launch's side, "that knowing you are wise man who gathers wisdom, I have sent to the end of my country for some rare and beautiful thing that you may carry it with you."

He signalled to a man on the bank, and his servant brought him a curious object.

It was, Bones noted, a square box apparently of native make, for it was fantastically carved and painted. There were crude heads and hideous forms which never were on land or sea. The paint was brilliant; red, yellow and green indiscriminately splashed.

"This is very ancient and was brought to my country by certain forest people. It is a Maker of Storms, and is a powerful ju-ju for good and evil."

Bones, already a collector of native work, was delighted. His delight soothed him for his failure in other respects.

He returned to headquarters empty-handed and sat the centre of a chilling group—if we except Patricia Hamilton—and endeavoured, as so many successful advocates have done, to hide his short-comings behind a screen of rhetoric.

He came to the part of his narrative where Bosambo was taken ill without creating any notable sensation, save that Sanders's grey eyes narrowed a little and he paid greater heed to the rest of the story.

"There was poor old Bosambo knocked out, sir—ab-so-lutely done for—fortunately I did not lose my nerve. You know what I am, dear old officer, in moments of crisis?"

"I know," said Hamilton grimly, "something between a Welsh revivalist and a dancing dervish."

"Please go on, Bones," begged the girl, not the least interested of the audience.

"I dashed straight back to the Wiggle," said Bones breathlessly, "searched for my medicine chest—it wasn't there! Not so much as a mustard plaster—what was I to do, dear old Miss Hamilton?" he appealed dramatically.

"Don't tell him, Pat," begged Hamilton, "he's sure to guess it."

"What was I to do? I seized a bottle of brandy," said Bones with relish, "I dashed back to where Bosambo was lyin'. I dashed into the village, into his hut and got a glass–"

"Well, well!" said Sanders impatiently, "what happened after all this dashing?"

Bones spread out his hands.

"Bosambo is alive to-day," he said simply, "praisin'—if I may be allowed to boast—the name of Bones the Medicine Man. Look here, sir."

He dragged towards him along the floor of the hut a package covered with a piece of native sacking. This he whisked away and revealed the hideous handiwork of an artist who had carved and painted as true to nature as a man may who is not quite certain whether the human eye is half-way down the nose or merely an appendage to his ear.

"That, sir," said Bones impressively, "is one of the most interestin' specimens of native work I have ever seen: a gift! From Bosambo to the jolly old doctor man who dragged him, if I might so express it, from the very maws of death."

He made his dramatic pause.

Sanders bent down, took a penknife from his pocket and scraped the paint from a flat oblong space on the top.

There for all men to see—save Bones who was now engaged in a relation of his further adventure to his one sympathizer—was a brass plate, and when the paint had been scraped away, an inscription—

Department du Médicins, Etat Congo Belge.

Sanders and Hamilton gazed, fascinated and paralysed to silence.

"I've always had a feelin' I'd like to be a medicine man." Bones prattled on. "You see–"

"One moment, Bones," interrupted Sanders quietly. "Did you open this box by any chance?"

"No, sir," said Bones.

"And did you see any of its contents?"

"No, sir," said Bones confidentially, "that's the most interestin' thing about the box. It contains magic—which, of course, honoured sir and Excellency, is all rubbish."

Sanders took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and after a few trials opened the case and scrutinized the contents, noting the comforting fact that all the tubes were sealed. He heaved a deep sigh of thankfulness.

"You didn't by chance discover anything about the missing cultures, Bones?" he asked mildly.

Bones shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and looked disconsolately at his chief.

"You think I've been feeble, but I haven't lost hope, sir," he said, with fine resolution. "I've got a feelin' that if I were allowed to go into the forest, disguised, sir, as a sort of half-witted native chap, sir–"

"Disguised!" said Hamilton. "Good Lord, what do you want a disguise for?"

CHAPTER IV

BONES AND THE WIRELESS

Ko-boru, the headman of Bingini, called his relations together for a solemn family conference.

The lower river folk play an inconsiderable rôle in the politics of the Territories, partly because they are so near to headquarters that there is no opportunity for any of those secret preparations which precede all native intrigues, great or small, and partly because the lower river people are so far removed from the turbulent elements of the upper river that they are not swayed by the cyclonic emotions of the Isisi, the cold and deliberate desire for slaughter which is characteristically Akasavian, or the electrical decisions of the Outer N'gombi.

But they had their crises.

To Bingini came all the notables of the district who claimed kinship with Ko-boru, and they sat in a great circle about the headman's hut, alternately eyeing the old headman and their stout relative, his daughter.

"All my relations shall know this," began Ko-boru, after Okmimi, the witch-doctor, had formally burnt away the devils and ghosts that fringe all large assemblies, "that a great shame has come to us, every one, because of Yoka-m'furi. For this Yoka is to Sandi as a brother, and guides his little ship up and down the river, and because of this splendid position I gave him my own daughter by the first of my wives."

"S'm-m!" murmured the council in agreement.

"Also I built him a hut and gave him a garden, where his wife might work, and he has sat at family palavers. Now, I tell you that Yoka-m'furi is an evil man, for he has left my daughter, and has found another wife in the upper river, and he comes no more to this village, and my daughter weeps all day.

"For three seasons he has not been to this village; when the moon comes again, it will be four." He said this with proper significance, and the flat face of the melancholy girl by his side puckered and creased miserably before she opened her large mouth to wail her woe.

For the man who deliberately separates himself from his wife for four seasons and does not spend twenty-four hours—"from sunrise to moonset" in her village is automatically divorced and freed from all responsibility. This is the custom of all people from the lands of the Great King to the sea.

"Now, I have had a dream," Ko-boru went on, "and in this dream it was told me that I should call you all together, and that I and the chief of my councillors and friends should go to Sandi and tell him what is true."

"Brother and uncle," said Bechimi of G'lara, "I will go with you, for once I spoke to Sandi and he spoke to me, and because of his cunning memory he will recall Bechimi, who picked up his little black stick, when it fell, and gave it to him."

Five were chosen to accompany Ko-boru, and they took canoe and travelled for less than five miles to the Residency.

Sanders was entertaining Patricia Hamilton with stories of native feuds, when the unexpected deputation squatted in the sun before the verandah.

"O Ko-boru," hailed Sanders, "why do you come?"

Ko-boru was all for a long and impressive palaver, but recognized a certain absence of encouragement in the Commissioner's tone. Therefore he came straight to the point.

"Now, you are our father and our mother, Sandi," he said, in conclusion, "and when you speak, all wonders happen. Also you have very beautiful friends, Militini, who speak a word and set his terrible soldiers moving like leopards towards a kill, and Tibbetti, the young one who is innocent and simple. So I say to you, Sandi, that if you speak one word to Yoka, he will come back to my daughter, his wife."

Sanders stood by the rail of the stoep and looked down upon the spokesman.

"I hear strange things, Ko-boru," he said quietly. "They tell me stories of a woman with many lovers and an evil tongue; and once there came to me Yoka with a wounded head, for this daughter of yours is very quick in her anger."

"Lord," said the flustered Ko-boru, "such things happen even in love."

"All things happen in love," said Sanders, with a little smile, "and, if it is to be, Yoka will return. Also, if it is to be, he will not go back to the woman, and she will be free. This palaver is finished."

"Lord," pleaded Ko-boru, "the woman will do no more angry things. Let him come back from sunrise to moonset–"

"This palaver is finished," repeated Sanders.

On their way back to Bingini the relatives of Ko-boru made a plot. It was the first plot that had been hatched in the shadow of headquarters for twenty years.

"Would it be indiscreet to ask what your visitors wanted?" asked the girl, as the crestfallen deputation was crossing the square to their canoe.

"It was a marriage palaver," replied Sanders, with a little grimace, "and I was being requested to restore a husband to a temperamental lady who has a passion for shying cook-pots at her husband when she is annoyed."

The girl's laughing eyes were fixed upon his.

"Poor Mr. Sanders!" she said, with mock seriousness.

"Don't be sorry for me," smiled Sanders. "I'm rather domestic, really, and I'm interested in this case because the man concerned is my steersman—the best on the river, and a capital all-round man. Besides that," he went on seriously, "I regard them all as children of mine. It is right that a man who shirks his individual responsibilities to the race should find a family to 'father.'"

"Why do you?" she asked, after a little pause.

"Why do I what?"

"Shirk your responsibilities," she said. "This is a healthy and a delightful spot: a woman might be very happy here."

There was an awkward silence.

"I'm afraid I've been awfully impertinent," said Patricia, hurriedly rising, "but to a woman there is a note of interrogation behind every bachelor—especially nice bachelors—and the more 'confirmed' he is, the bigger the question mark."

Sanders rose to her.

"One of these days I shall do something rash," he threatened, with that shy laugh of his. "Here is your little family coming."

Bones and Hamilton were discussing something heatedly, and justice was on the side of Lieutenant Tibbetts, if one could judge by the frequency with which he stopped and gesticulated.

"It really is too bad," said the annoyed Hamilton, as he mounted the steps to the stoep, followed by Bones, who, to do him justice, did not adopt the attitude of a delinquent, but was, on the contrary, injured virtue personified.

"What is too bad, dear?" asked the girl sympathetically.

"A fortnight ago," said Hamilton, "I told this silly ass–"

"Your jolly old brother is referrin' to me, dear lady," explained Bones.

"Who else could I be referring to?" demanded the other truculently. "I told him to have all the company accounts ready by to-morrow. You know, sir, that the paymaster is coming down from Administration to check 'em, and will you believe me, sir"—he glared at Bones, who immediately closed his eyes resignedly—"would you believe me that, when I went to examine those infernal accounts, they were all at sixes and sevens?"

"Threes an' nines, dear old officer," murmured Bones, waking up, "the matter in dispute being a trifle of thirty-nine dollars, which I've generously offered to make up out of my own pocket."

He beamed round as one who expected applause.

"And on the top of this," fumed Hamilton, "he talks of taking Pat for an early morning picnic to the village island!"

"Accompanied by the jolly old accounts," corrected Bones. "Do me justice, sir and brother-officer. I offered to take the books with me, an' render a lucid and convincin' account of my stewardship."

"Don't make me laugh," snarled Hamilton, stamping into the bungalow.

"Isn't he naughty?" said Bones admiringly.

"Now, Bones," warned the girl, "I shan't go unless you keep your word with Alec."

Bones drew himself up and saluted.

"Dear old friend," he said proudly, "put your faith in Bones."

"H.M. Launch No. 36 (Territories)," as it was officially described on the stores record, had another name, which she earned in her early days through certain eccentricities of construction. Though she might not in justice be called the Wiggle any longer, yet the Wiggle she was from one end of the river to the other, and even native men called her "Komfuru," which means "that which does not run straight."

It had come to be recognized that the Wiggle was the especial charge of Lieutenant Tibbetts. Bones himself was the first to recognize this right. There were moments when he inferred that the Wiggle's arrival on the station at the time he was making his own first appearance was something more than a coincidence.

She was not, in the strictest sense of the word, a launch, for she possessed a square, open dining saloon and two tiny cabins amidships. Her internal works were open to the light of day, and her engineer lived in the engine-room up to his waist and on deck from his waist up, thus demonstrating the possibility of being in two places at once.

The Wiggle, moreover, possessed many attributes which are denied to other small steamers. She had, for example, a Maxim gun on her tiny forecastle. She had a siren of unusual power and diabolical tone, she was also fitted with a big motor-horn, both of which appendages were Bones's gift to his flagship. The motor-horn may seem superfluous, but when the matter is properly explained, you will understand the necessity for some less drastic method of self-advertisement than the siren.

The first time the siren had been fitted Bones had taken the Wiggle through "the Channel." Here the river narrows and deepens, and the current runs at anything from five to seven knots an hour. Bones was going up stream, and met the Bolalo Mission steamer coming down. She had dipped her flag to the Wiggle's blue ensign, and Bones had replied with two terrific blasts on his siren.

After that the Wiggle went backwards, floating with the current all ways, from broadside on to stern first, for in those two blasts Bones had exhausted the whole of his steam reserve.