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Updated: June 6, 2025
He wagged his head when Bosambo had finished his recital, did this general of twenty-one. "You're a jolly old sportsman, Bosambo," he said very seriously, "and you're in the dooce of a hole, if you only knew it. But you trust old Bones he'll see you through. By Gad!" Bosambo, bewildered but resourceful, hearing, without understanding, replied: "I be fine feller, sah!"
"This I know of N'bosini," said the sergeant, "that all men along this river believe in it; all save Bosambo of the Ochori who, as is well known, believes in nothing, since he is a follower of the Prophet and the one God." Mahomet Ali salaamed devoutly.
"Did you lose anything?" asked Hamilton ungraciously. Bones thought. "Now you come to mention it," he said slowly, "I did lose quite a lot of things, but dear old Bosambo wouldn't play a dirty trick on a pal. I know Bosambo." "If there is one thing more evident than another," said Hamilton, "it is that you do not know Bosambo."
"Is it a large city?" he asked suddenly. "Larger than the whole of the Ochori," answered Bosambo impressively. "And tell me this, Bosambo, what manner of houses are these which stand in the city of the N'bosini?" "Larger than kings' huts," said Bosambo. "Of stone?" "Lord, of rock, so that they are like mountains," replied Bosambo. Bones shut his book and got up.
The messenger carried the word back to M'bisibi and the council of the chiefs and the eldermen who sat in the palaver house, and old as he was and wise by all standards, M'bisibi shivered, for, as he explained, that which Bosambo said would he do. For this is peculiar to no race or colour, that old men love life dearer than young.
"Get me food," said the imperious stranger, "after, you shall make a bed for me in your inner room, and sit before this house that none may disturb me, for it is to my high purpose that no word shall go to M'ilitani that I stay in your territory." "M'gani, I am your dog," said Bosambo, and stole forth from the hut like a thief to obey.
Tell him also that great evil will come to this land, to his land and to mine, to his wife and the wives of his counsellors, and to his children and theirs, unless we make an end to certain devils." Bosambo, chin on clenched fist, looked thoughtfully at the other.
"Lord," said he humbly, "now is the prophecy fulfilled, for it was said by the great Idoosi, 'You shall come to a land where the barbarian rules, and he shall be to you as a brother!" "Nigger," said Bosambo in his vile English yet with a certain hauteur, "you shall dig 'um tunnel you no cheek 'um, no chat 'um, you lib for dear tunnel one time."
Thus, subtly, was Bosambo saddled with all responsibility in the matter. Hamilton's parting injunction to Bones had been: "Be immensely civil to Bosambo, because he is rather sore with you and he is a very useful man." Regarding him, as he did, as the final authority upon the N'bosini, Bones made elaborate preparations to carry out his chief's commands.
On the first day following the tax palaver Bosambo went down the river with four canoes, each canoe painted beautifully with camwood and gum, and with twenty-four paddlers. It was by a fluke that he missed Sanders. As it happened, the Commissioner had come back to the big river to collect the evidence of the murdered woman's brother who was a petty headman of an Isisi fishing village.
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