Part 3 (1/2)
He held up a tube of lymph, and it glittered in the strong sunlight.
”This magic I found through my wonderful mind. It was brought to me by three birds from M's.h.i.+mba M'shamba because he loves me. Come you M'kema.”
He beckoned the chief, and the old man came forward fearfully.
”All ghosts hear me!” said Bones oracularly, and his singsong voice had the quality of a parrot's screech. ”M's.h.i.+mba M'shamba, hear me! Bugulu, eater of moons and swallower of rivers, hear me!”
The old man winced as the lancet sc.r.a.ped his arm.
”Abracadabra!” said Bones, and dropped the virus to the wound.
”Lord, that hurts,” said M'kema. ”It is like the fire of h.e.l.l!”
”So shall your heart be like fire, and your bones young, and you shall skip over high trees, and have many new wives,” promised Bones extravagantly.
One by one they filed past him, men, women and children, fear and hope puckered in their brows, and Bones recited his mystic formula.
They were finished at last, and Bones, weary but satisfied, went to the hut which had been prepared for him, and, furiously rejecting the conventional offer of the chief's youngest daughter for his wife Sanders had a polite and suave formula for this rejection, but Bones invariably blushed and spluttered went to sleep with a sense of having conferred a great blessing upon civilisation; for by this time Bones had forgotten that such a person as Dr Jenner had ever existed, and took to himself the credit for all his discoveries.
He spent an exhilarating three days in the village, indulging in an orgy of condemnation which would have reduced the little towns.h.i.+p to about three huts, had his instructions been taken literally. Then, one morning, came the chief, M'kema.
”Lord,” he said, ”there is a devil in my arm, and your magic is burning terribly. Now, I have thought that I will not have your magic, for I was more comfortable as a plain man. Also my wives are crying with pain, and the little children are making sad noises.”
Walking down the village street, Bones was greeted with scowling faces, and from every hut, it seemed, issued moans of distress. In his wisdom Bones called a palaver, and his four soldiers stood behind him, their magazines charged, their rifles lying handily in the crooks of their unvaccinated arms.
As a palaver, it was not a success. He had hardly begun to speak before there arose a wail from his miserable audience, and the malcontents found a spokesman in one Busubu, a petty chief.
”Lord, before you came we were happy, and now you have put fiery snakes in our arms, so that they are swollen. Now by your magic make us well again.”
And the clamour that followed the words drowned anything that Bones had to say. That night he decided to make his way back to the river.
He came from his hut and found Ahmet waiting for him.
”Lord, there is trouble here,” said the Kano boy in a low voice, ”and the young men have taken their spears to the forest path.”
This was serious news, and a glance showed Bones that the village was very much awake. To force his way through the forest path was suicidal; to remain was asking for a six-line obituary notice in the Guildford Herald Guildford Herald. Bones brought his party to the little river, and half the ground had not been covered before he was fighting a rear-guard action. With some difficulty they found a canoe, and paddled into midstream, followed by a shower of spears, which wounded one of his escort. In a quarter of an hour Bones stepped ash.o.r.e at the Frenchi village, which turned out even at that late hour to witness such an unusual spectacle as the arrival of a British officer on alien soil.
He slept in the open that night, and in the morning the chief of the Frenchi village came to him with a complaint.
”Lord, when three of my men went over the M'taki, you whipped them so that they stand or sleep on their bellies. And this you did because of our famous sickness. Now, tell me why you sit down here with us, for my young men are very hot for chopping you.”
”Man,” said Bones loftily, ”I came with magic for the people of the Lower Isisi.”
”So it seems,” said the French chief significantly, ”and their magic is so great that they will give me ten goats for your head; yet because I fear Saudi I will not do this thing,” he added hastily, seeing the Browning in Lieutenant Tibbetts' hand.
Briefly but lucidly, Bones explained the object of his visit, and the chief listened, unconvinced.
”Lord,” he said at last, ”there are two ways by which sickness may be cured. The one is death, for all dead men are well, and the other is by chopping a young virgin when the moon is in a certain quarter and the river is high. Now, my people fear that you have come to cure them by making their arms swell, and I cannot hold them.”
Bones took the hint, and, re-embarking, moved along the little river till he came to another Isisi village. But the lokali lokali had rapped out the story of his mission, and locked s.h.i.+elds opposed his landing. had rapped out the story of his mission, and locked s.h.i.+elds opposed his landing.
The chief of this village condescended to come to the water's edge.
”Here you cannot land, Tibbetti,” he said, ”for this is the order of Saudi to M'kema, that no man must come to us from the Frenchi land because of the sickness that is there.”
For seven days and seven nights Bones was marooned between bank and bank, sleeping secretly at nights on such middle islands as he met with, and at the end of that time returned to the point of departure. M'kema came down to the beach.
”Lord, you cannot come here,” he said, ”for since you have gone the arms of my young men have healed owing to the magic of their fathers.”
That night, when Bones had decided upon forcing a pa.s.sage to the big river, the relief from the Zaire Zaire fought its way into the village and left him a clear path. Bones went back in triumph to headquarters and narrated his story. fought its way into the village and left him a clear path. Bones went back in triumph to headquarters and narrated his story.
”And there was I, dear old thing, a martyr, so to speak, to jolly old science, standing, as it were, with my back to the wall. I thought of jolly old Jenner”
”Where were you, Bones? I can't quite place your defence,” said Hamilton, peering over a map of the territory. ”Were you in M'kema's village?”
”No, sir, I skipped,” said Bones in triumph. ”I went across the river to”
Hamilton gasped. ”Into the French territory?”
”It's a diplomatic incident, I admit,” said Bones, ”but I can explain to the President exactly the motives which led me to violate the territory of a friendly power or, at least, they were not so friendly either, if you'd seen the 'Pet.i.t Parisienne' that came out by the marl”
”But you were in the French village? That is all I want to know,” said Hamilton with deadly quiet.
”I certainly was, old thing.”
”Come with me,” said Hamilton.
He led the way to Bones' hut and opened the door.
”Get in, and don't come near us for a month,” he said. ”You're isolated!”
”But, dear old thing, I'm Health Officer!”
”Tell the microbes,” said Hamilton.
And isolated Bones remained. Every morning Hamilton came with a large garden syringe, and sprayed the ground and the roof thereof with an evil-smelling mixture. And, crowning infamy of all, he insisted upon handing the unfortunate Bones his meals through the window at the end of a long bamboo pole.
The Health Officer had come out of isolation, and had ceased to take the slightest interest in medical science, devoting his spare time to a new architectural correspondence course, when M'kema, summoned to headquarters, appeared under escort and in irons, to answer for his sins.
”Lord, Tibbetti did a great evil, for he took our people, who were well, and made them sick. Because their arms hurt them terribly they tried to chop him.”
Sanders listened, sitting in his low chair, his chin on his fist.
”You are an old man and a fool,” he said. ”For did not the sickness come to the Isisi? And did not the villagers have their mourning all except yours, M'kema, because of the magic which Tibbetti had put into their arms? Now, you are well, and the other villagers have their dead. How do you account for that, M'kema?”
M'kema shook his head. ”Lord,” he said, ”it was not by the magic of Tibbetti, for he made us ill. We are well people, and the sickness pa.s.sed us because we followed the practice of our fathers, and took into the forest a woman who was very old and silly, and, putting out her eyes, left her to the beasts. There is no other magic like this.”