The People of the River | Page 4

and promptly sacrificed.
The dance followed.
The next morning M'laka and his relative went out against the Ochori, capturing on their way a man whom M'laka denounced as a spy of Sandi's. Him they did to death in a conventional fashion, and he died uncomplainingly. Then they rested three days.
M'laka and his men came to the Ochori city at daybreak, and held a brief palaver in the forest.
"Now news of this will come to Sandi," he said; "and Sandi, who is a white devil, will come with his soldiers, and we will say that we were driven to do this because Bosambo invited us to a dance, and then endeavoured to destroy us."
"Bosambo would have destroyed us," chanted the assembly faithfully.
"Further, if we kill all the Ochori, we will say that it was not our people who did the killing, but the Akasava."
"Lord, the killing was done by the Akasava," they chanted again.
Having thus arranged both an excuse and an alibi, M'laka led his men to their quarry.
In the grey light of dawn the Ochori village lay defenceless. No fires spluttered in the long village street, no curl of smoke uprose to indicate activity.
M'laka's army in one long, irregular line went swiftly across the clearing which separated the city from the forest.
"Kill!" breathed M'laka; and along the ranks the order was taken up and repeated.
Nearer and nearer crept the attackers; then from a hut on the outskirts of the town stepped Bosambo, alone.
He walked slowly to the centre of the street, and M'laka saw, in a thin-legged tripod, something straight and shining and ominous.
Something that caught the first rays of the sun as they topped the trees of the forest, and sent them flashing and gleaming back again.
Six hundred fighting men of the N'Gombi checked and halted dead at the sight of it. Bosambo touched the big brass cylinder with his hand and turned it carelessly on its swivel until it pointed in the direction of M'laka, who was ahead of the others, and no more than thirty paces distant.
As if to make assurance doubly sure, he stooped and glanced along the polished surface, and M'laka dropped his short spear at his feet and raised his hands.
"Lord Bosambo," he said mildly, "we come in peace."
"In peace you shall go," said Bosambo, and whistled.
The city was suddenly alive with armed men. From every hut they came into the open.
"I love you as a man loves his goats," said M'laka fervently; "I saw you in a dream, and my heart led me to you."
"I, too, saw you in a dream," said Bosambo; "therefore I arose to meet you, for M'laka, the king of the Lesser Isisi, is like a brother to me."
M'laka, who never took his eyes from the brass-coated cylinder, had an inspiration.
"This much I beg of you, master and lord," he said; "this I ask, my brother, that my men may be allowed to come into your city and make joyful sacrifices, for that is the custom."
Bosambo scratched his chin reflectively.
"This I grant," he said; "yet every man shall leave his spear, stuck head downwards into earth--which is our custom before sacrifice."
M'laka shifted his feet awkwardly. He made the two little double-shuffle steps which native men make when they are embarrassed.
Bosambo's hand went slowly to the tripod.
"It shall be as you command," said M'laka hastily; and gave the order.
Six hundred dejected men, unarmed, filed through the village street, and on either side of them marched a line of Ochori warriors--who were not without weapons. Before Bosambo's hut M'laka, his brother-in-law, Kulala, his headmen, and the headmen of the Ochori, sat to conference which was half meal and half palaver.
"Tell me. Lord Bosambo," asked M'laka, "how does it come about that Sandi gives you the gun that says 'Ha-ha-ha'? For it is forbidden that the chiefs and people of this land should be armed with guns."
Bosambo nodded.
"Sandi loves me," he said simply, "for reasons which I should be a dog to speak of, for does not the same blood run in his veins that runs in mine?"
"That is foolish talk," said Kulala, the brother-in-law; "for he is white and you are black."
"None the less it is true," said the calm Bosambo; "for he is my cousin, his brother having married my mother, who was a chief's daughter. Sandi wished to marry her," he went on reminiscently; "but there are matters which it is shame to talk about. Also he gave me these."
From beneath the blanket which enveloped his shoulders he produced a leather wallet. From this he took a little package. It looked like a short, stumpy bato. Slowly he removed its wrapping of fine native cloth, till there were revealed three small cups of wood. In shape they favoured the tumbler of commerce, in size they were like very large thimbles.
Each had