Africa, West -- Fiction; British -- Africa -- Fiction
Wanted,--on a warrant issued by H.E. the President of Liberia,
Bosambo Krooboy, who escaped from the penal settlement near
Monrovia, after killing a guard. He is believed to be making for
your country.
A description followed.
Sanders put the document away with other such notices--they were not
infrequent in their occurrence--and gave his mind to the eternal problem
of the Ochori.
Now, as ever, the Ochori people were in sad trouble. There is no other
tribe in the whole of Africa that is as defenceless as the poor Ochori.
The Fingoes, slaves as they are by name and tradition, were ferocious as
the Masai, compared with the Ochori.
Sanders was a little impatient, and a deputation of three, who had
journeyed down to headquarters to lay the grievances of the people
before him, found him unsympathetic.
He interviewed them on his verandah.
"Master, no man leaves us in peace," said one. "Isisi folk, N'Gombi
people from far-away countries, they come to us demanding this and that,
and we give, being afraid."
"Afraid of what?" asked Sanders wearily.
"We fear death and pain, also burning and the taking of our women," said
the other.
"Who is chief of you?" asked Sanders, wilfully ignorant.
"I am chief lord," said an elderly man, clad in a leopard skin.
"Go back to your people, chief, if indeed chief you are, and not some
old woman without shame; go back and bear with you a fetish--a most
powerful fetish--which shall be, as me, watching your interest and
protecting you. This fetish you shall plant on the edge of your village
that faces the sun at noon. You shall mark the place where it shall be
planted, and at midnight, with proper ceremony, and the sacrifice of a
young goat, you shall set my fetish in its place. And after that
whosoever ill-treats you or robs you shall do so at some risk."
Sanders said this very solemnly, and the men of the deputation were duly
impressed. More impressed were they when, before starting on their
homeward journey, Sanders placed in their hands a stout pole, to the end
of which was attached a flat board inscribed with certain marks.
They carried their trophy six days' journey through the forest, then
four days' journey by canoe along the Little River, until they came to
Ochori. There, by the light of the moon, with the sacrifice of two goats
(to make sure), the pole was planted so that the board inscribed with
mystic characters would face the sun at noon.
News travels fast in the back lands, and it came to the villages
throughout the Isisi and the Akasava country that the Ochori were
particularly protected by white magic. Protected they had always been,
and many men had died at the white man's hand because the temptation to
kill the Ochori folk had proved irresistible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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