"Bones": Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' CountryWallace, Edgar
History
"Bones": Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country
Wallace, Edgar
Africa -- History -- 1884-1918 -- Fiction; Great Britain -- Colonies -- Africa -- Administration -- Fiction; Short stories, English
Tukili saw the girl and desired her, and that which Tukili desired he
took. She offered little opposition to being carried away to the Isisi
city when she discovered that her life would be spared, and possibly was
no worse off in the harem of Tukili than she would have been in the hut
of the poor fisherman for whom her father had designed her. A few years
before, such an incident would have passed almost unnoticed.
The Ochori were so used to being robbed of women and of goats, so meek
in their acceptance of wrongs that would have set the spears of any
other nation shining, that they would have accepted the degradation and
preserved a sense of thankfulness that the robber had limited his
raiding to one girl, and that a maid. But with the coming of Bosambo
there had arrived a new spirit in the Ochori. They had learnt their
strength, incidentally they had learnt their rights. The father of the
girl went hot-foot to his over-chief, Notiki, and covered himself with
ashes at the door of the chief's hut.
"This is a bad palaver," said Notiki, "and since Bosambo has deserted us
and is making our marrows like water that we should build him a road,
and there is none in this land whom I may call chief or who may speak
with authority, it seems by my age and by relationship to the kings of
this land, I must do that which is desirable."
So he gathered together two thousand men who were working on the road
and were very pleased indeed to carry something lighter than rocks and
felled trees, and with these spears he marched into the Isisi forest,
burning and slaying whenever he came upon a little village which offered
no opposition. Thus he took to himself the air and title of conqueror
with as little excuse as a flamboyant general ever had.
Had it occurred on the river, this warlike expedition must have
attracted the attention of Sanders. The natural roadway of the territory
is a waterway. It is only when operations are begun against the internal
tribes who inhabit the bush, and whose armies can move under the cloak
of the forest (and none wiser) that Sanders found himself at a
disadvantage.
Tukili himself heard nothing of the army that was being led against him
until it was within a day's march of his gates. Then he sallied forth
with a force skilled in warfare and practised in the hunt. The combat
lasted exactly ten minutes and all that was left of Notiki's spears made
the best of their way homeward, avoiding, as far as possible, those
villages which they had visited en route with such disastrous results to
the unfortunate inhabitants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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