Bones of the River by Edgar Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

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 had rapped out the story of his mission, and locked shields 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 passage to the big river, the relief from the Zaire 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 ‘Petit 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,