Bones

by Edgar Wallace

  MY WILD LIFE AMONGST CANNIBALS

  by

  Augustus Tibbetts, Lieutenant of Houssas

  Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society; Member of the Ethnological Society and Junior Army Service Club.

  Bones had none of these qualifications, save the latter, but as he told himself he’d jolly soon be made a member if his book was a howling success. No sooner had his letters been posted than he changed his mind, and he addressed three and twenty more letters to the publishers, altering the title to:

  THE TYRANNY OF THE WILDS

  Being Some Observations on the Habits and Customs

  of Savage Peoples

  by

  Augustus Tibbetts, (Lt.)

  With a Foreword by Captain Patrick Hamilton.

  “You wouldn’t mind writing a foreword, dear old fellow?” he asked.

  “Charmed,” said Hamilton. “Have you a particular preference for any form?”

  “Just please yourself, sir,” said a delighted Bones, so Hamilton covered two sheets of foolscap with an appreciation which began: “The audacity of the author of this singularly uninformed work is to be admired without necessarily being imitated. Two months’ residence in a land which offered many opportunities for acquiring inaccurate data, has resulted in a work which must stand for all time as a monument of murderous effort,” etc.

  Bones read the appreciation very carefully.

  “Dear old sport,” he said, a little troubled, as he reached the end, “this is almost uncomplimentary.”

  You couldn’t depress Bones or turn him from his set purpose. He scribed away, occupying his leisure moments with his great work. His normal correspondence suffered cruelly, but Bones was relentless. Hamilton sent him north to collect the hut tax, and at first Bones resented this order, believing that it was specially designed to hamper him.

  “Of course, sir,” he said, “I’ll obey you, if you order me in accordance with regulations an’ all that sort of rot, but believe me, sir, you’re doin’ an injury to literature. Unborn generations, sir, will demand an explanation–”

  “Get out!” said Hamilton crossly.

  Bones found his trip a blessing that had been well disguised. There were many points of interest on which he required first-hand information. He carried with him to the Zaire large exercise books on which he had pasted such pregnant labels as “Native Customs,” “Dances,” “Ju-jus,” “Ancient Legends,” “Folk-lore,” etc. They were mostly blank, and represented projected chapters of his great work.

  All might have been well with Bones. More virgin pages might easily have been covered with his sprawling writing and the book itself, converted into honest print, have found its way, in the course of time, into the tuppenny boxes of the Farringdon book-mart, sharing its soiled magnificence with the work of the best of us, but on his way Bones had a brilliant inspiration. There was a chapter he had not thought of, a chapter heading which had not been born to his mind until that flashing moment of genius.

  Upon yet another exercise book, he pasted the label of a chapter which was to eclipse all others in interest. Behold then, this enticing announcement, boldly printed and ruled about with double lines:

  THE SOUL OF THE NATIVE WOMAN

  It was a fine chapter title. It was sonorous, it had dignity, it was full of possibilities. “The Soul of the Native Woman,” repeated Bones, in an ecstasy of self-admiration, and having chosen his subject he proceeded to find out something about it.

  Now, about this time, Bosambo of the Ochori might, had he wished and had he the literary quality, have written many books about women, if for no other reason than because of a certain girl named D’riti.

  She was a woman of fifteen, grown to a splendid figure, with a proud head and a chin that tilted in contempt, for she was the daughter of Bosambo’s chief counsellor, granddaughter of an Ochori king, and ambitious to be wife of Bosambo himself.

  “This is a mad thing,” said Bosambo when her father offered the suggestion, “for, as you know, T’meli, I have one wife who is a thousand wives to me.”

  “Lord, I will be ten thousand,” said D’riti, present at the interview and bold; “also, Lord, it was predicted at my birth that I should marry a king and the greater than a king.”

  “That is me,” said Bosambo, who was without modesty, “yet, it cannot be.”

  So they married D’riti to a chief’s son who beat her till one day she broke his thick head with an iron pot, whereupon he sent her back to her father demanding the return of his dowry and the value of his pot.

  She had her following, for she was a dancer of fame and could twist her lithe body into enticing shapes. She might have married again, but she was so scornful of common men that none dare ask for her. Also the incident of the iron pot was not forgotten, and D’riti went swaying through the village – she walked from the hips, gracefully – a straight, brown, girl-woman desired and unasked.

  For she knew men too well to inspire confidence in them. By some weird intuition which certain women of all races acquire, she had probed behind their minds and saw with their eyes, and when she spoke of men, she spoke with a conscious authority, and such men, who were within earshot of her vitriolic comments, squirmed uncomfortably, and called her a woman of shame.

  So matters stood when the Zaire came flashing to the Ochori city and the heart of Bones filled with pleasant anticipation.

  Who was so competent to inform him on the matter of the souls of native women as Bosambo of the Ochori, already a crony of Bones, and admirable, if for no other reason, because he professed an open reverence for his new master? At any rate, after the haggle of tax collection was finished, Bones set about his task.

  “Bosambo,” said he, “men say you are very wise. Now tell me something about the women of the Ochori.”

  Bosambo looked at Bones a little startled.

  “Lord,” said he, “who knows about women? For is it not written in the blessed Sura of the Djin that women and death are beyond understanding?”

  “That may be true,” said Bones, “yet, behold, I make a book full of wise and wonderful things and it would be neither wise nor wonderful if there was no word of women.”

  And he explained very seriously indeed that he desired to know of the soul of native womanhood, of her thoughts and her dreams and her high desires.

  “Lord,” said Bosambo, after a long thought, “go to your ship: presently I will send to you a girl who thinks and speaks with great wisdom – and if she talks with you, you shall learn more things than I can tell you.”

  To the Zaire at sundown came D’riti, a girl of proper height, hollow backed, bare to the waist, with a thin skirting of fine silk cloth which her father had brought from the Coast, wound tightly about her, yet not so tightly that it hampered her swaying, lazy walk. She stood before a disconcerted Bones, one small hand resting on her hip, her chin (as usual) tilted down at him from under lashes uncommonly long for a native.

  Also, this Bones saw, she was gifted with more delicate features than the native woman can boast as a rule. The nose was straight and narrow, the lips full, yet not of the negroid type. She was in fact a pure Ochori woman, and the Ochori are related dimly to the Arabi tribes.

  “Lord, Bosambo the King has sent me to speak about women,” she said simply.

  “Doocidly awkward,” said Bones to himself, and blushed. “O, D’riti,” he stammered, “it is true I wish to speak of women, for I make a book that all white lords will read.”

  “Therefore have I come,” she said. “Now listen, O my lord, whilst I tell you of women, and of all they think, of their love for men and of the strange way they show it. Also of children–”

  “Look here,” said Bones, loudly. “I don’t want any – any – private information, my child–”

  Then realising from her frown that she did not understand him, he returned to Bomongo.

  “Lord, I will say what is to be said,” she remarked, meekly, “for you have a
gentle face and I see that your heart is very pure.”

  Then she began, and Bones listened with open mouth…later he was to feel his hair rise and was to utter gurgling protests, for she spoke with primitive simplicity about things that are never spoken about at all. He tried to check her, but she was not to be checked.

  “Goodness, gracious heavens!” gasped Bones.

  She told him of what women think of men, and of what men think women think of them, and there was a remarkable discrepancy if she spoke the truth. He asked her if she was married.

  “Lord,” she said at last, eyeing him thoughtfully, “it is written that I shall marry one who is greater than chiefs.”

  “I’ll bet you will, too,” thought Bones, sweating.

  At parting she took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. “Lord,” she said softly, “tomorrow when the sun is nearly down, I will come again and tell you more…”

  Bones left before daybreak, having all the material he wanted for his book and more.

  He took his time descending the river, calling at sundry places.

  At Ikan he tied up the Zaire for the night, and whilst his men were carrying the wood aboard, he settled himself to put down the gist of his discoveries. In the midst of his labours came Abiboo.

  “Lord,” said he, “there has just come by a fast canoe the woman who spoke with you last night.”

  “Jumping Moses!” said Bones, turning pale, “say to this woman that I am gone–”

  But the woman came round the corner of the deck-house, shyly, yet with a certain confidence.

  “Lord,” she said, “behold I am here, your poor slave; there are wonderful things about women which I have not told you–”

  “O, D’riti!” said Bones in despair, “I know all things, and it is not lawful that you should follow me so far from your home lest evil be said of you.”

  He sent her to the hut of the chief’s wife – M’lini-fo-bini of Ikan – with instructions that she was to be returned to her home on the following morning. Then he went back to his work, but found it strangely distasteful. He left nothing to chance the next day.

  With the dawn he slipped down the river at full speed, never so much as halting till day began to fail, and he was a short day’s journey from headquarters.

  “Anyhow, the poor dear won’t overtake me today,” he said – only to find the “poor dear” had stowed herself away on the steamer in the night behind a pile of wood.

  “It’s very awkward,” said Hamilton, and coughed.

  Bones looked at his chief pathetically.

  “It’s doocid awkward, sir?” he agreed dismally.

  “You say she won’t go back?”

  Bones shook his head.

  “She said I’m the moon and the sun an’ all sorts of rotten things to her, sir,” he groaned and wiped his forehead.

  “Send her to me,” said Hamilton.

  “Be kind to her, sir,” pleaded the miserable Bones. “After all, sir, the poor girl seems to be fond of me, sir – the human heart, sir – I don’t know why she should take a fancy to me.”

  “That’s what I want to know,” said Hamilton, briefly, “if she is mad, I’ll send her to the mission hospital along the Coast.”

  “You’ve a hard and bitter heart,” said Bones, sadly.

  D’riti came ready to flash her anger and eloquence at Hamilton; on the verge of defiance.

  “D’riti,” said Hamilton, “tomorrow I send you back to your people.”

  “Lord, I stay with Tibbetti who loves women and is happy to talk of them. Also some day I shall be his wife, for this is foretold.” She shot a tender glance at poor Bones.

  “That cannot be,” said Hamilton calmly, “for Tibbetti has three wives, and they are old and fierce–”

  “Oh, lord!” wailed Bones.

  “And they would beat you and make you carry wood and water,” Hamilton said; he saw the look of apprehension steal into the girl’s face. “And more than this, D’riti, the Lord Tibbetti is mad when the moon is in full, he foams at the mouth and bites, uttering awful noises.”

  “Oh, dirty trick!” almost sobbed Bones.

  “Go, therefore, D’riti,” said Hamilton, “and I will give you a piece of fine cloth, and beads of many colours.”

  It is a matter of history that D’riti went.

  “I don’t know what you think of me, sir,” said Bones, humbly, “of course I couldn’t get rid of her–”

  “You didn’t try,” said Hamilton, searching his pockets for his pipe. “You could have made her drop you like a shot.”

  “How, sir?”

  “Stuck your finger in her eye,” said Hamilton, and Bones swallowed hard.

  THE STRANGER WHO WALKED BY NIGHT

  Since the day when Lieutenant Francis Augustus Tibbetts rescued from the sacrificial trees the small brown baby whom he afterwards christened Henry Hamilton Bones, the interests of that young officer were to a very large extent extremely concentrated upon that absorbing problem which a famous journal once popularised, “What shall we do with our boys?”

  As to the exact nature of the communications which Bones made to England upon the subject, what hairbreadth escapes and desperate adventure he detailed with that facile pen of his, who shall say?

  It is unfortunate that Hamilton’s sister – that innocent purveyor of home news – had no glimpse of the correspondence, and that other recipients of his confidence are not in touch with the writer of the chronicles. Whatever he wrote, with what fervour he described his wanderings in the forest no one knows, but certainly he wrote to some purpose.

  “What the dickens are all these parcels that have come for you for?” demanded his superior officer, eyeing with disfavour a mountain of brown paper packages be-sealed, be-stringed, and be-stamped.

  Bones, smoking his pipe, turned them over.

  “I don’t know for certain,” he said, carefully; “but I shouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t clothes, dear old officer.”

  “Clothes?”

  “For Henry,” explained Bones, and cutting the string of one and tearing away its covering revealed a little mountain of snowy garments. Bones turned them over one by one.

  “For Henry,” he repeated. “Could you tell me, sir, what these things are for?”

  He held up a garment white and small and frilly.

  “No, sir, I can’t,” said Hamilton stiffly, “unless like the ass that you are you have forgotten to mention to your friends that Henry is a gentleman child.”

  Bones looked up at the blue sky and scratched his chin.

  “I may have called him ‘her’,” he confessed.

  There were, to be exact, sixteen parcels and each contained at least one such garment, and in addition a very warm shawl, “which,” said Hamilton, “will be immensely useful when it snows.”

  With the aid of his orderly, Bones sorted out the wardrobe and the playthings (including many volumes of the Oh-look-at-the-rat-on-the-mat-where-is-the-cat? variety), and these he carried to his hut with such dignity as he could summon.

  That evening, Hamilton paid his subordinate a visit. Henry, pleasingly arrayed in a pair of the misdirected garments with a large bonnet on his head, and seated on the floor of the quarters contentedly chewing Bones’ watch, the whilst Bones, accompanying himself with his banjo, was singing a song which was chiefly remarkable for the fact that he was ignorant of the tune and somewhat hazy concerning the words.

  Did you ever take a tum-ty up the Nile,

  Did you ever dumty dumty in a camp,

  Or dumpty dumpty on m— m—

  Or play it in a dumty dumty swamp.

  He rose, and saluted his senior, as Hamilton came in.

  “Exactly what is going to happen when Sanders comes back?” asked Hamilton, and the face of Bones fell.

  “Happen, sir? I don’t take you, sir – what could happen – to whom, sir?”

  “To Henry,” said Hamilton.

  Henry looked up at that moment with a seraphic sm
ile.

  “Isn’t he wonderful, sir?” asked Bones in hushed ecstasy. “You won’t believe what I’m going to tell you, sir – you’re such a jolly old sceptic, sir – but Henry knows me – positively recognises me! And when you remember that he’s only four months old – why, it’s unbelievable.”

  “But what will you do when Sanders comes – really, Bones, I don’t know whether I ought to allow this as it is.”

  “If exception is taken to Henry, sir,” said Bones firmly, “I resign my commission; if a gentleman is allowed to keep a dog, sir, he is surely allowed to keep a baby. Between Henry and me, sir, there is a bond stronger than steel. I may be an ass, sir, I may even be a goop, but come between me an’ my child an’ all my motherly instincts – if you’ll pardon the paradox – all my paternal – that’s the word – instincts are aroused, and I will fight like a tiger, sir–”

  “What a devil you are for jaw,” said Hamilton; “anyway, I’ve warned you. Sanders is due in a month.”

  “Henry will be five,” murmured Bones.

  “Oh, blow Henry!” said Hamilton.

  Bones rose and pointed to the door.

  “May I ask you, sir,” he said, “not to use that language before the child? I hate to speak to you like this, sir, but I have a responsible –”

  He dodged out of the open door and the loaf of bread which Hamilton had thrown struck the lintel and rolled back to Henry’s eager hands.

  The two men walked up and down the parade ground whilst Fa’ma, the wife of Ahmet, carried the child to her quarters where he slept.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got to separate you from your child,” said Hamilton; “there is some curious business going on in the Lombobo, and a stranger who walks by night, of which Ahmet the Spy writes somewhat confusingly.”

  Bones glanced round in some apprehension.