Bones of the River

by Edgar Wallace

  “I did,” said Bones calmly, “and the dear old johnnies quite understood what I meant. After all, you don’t have to spell to discover the source of the Nile, dear old thing. You haven’t to be a jolly old whale on grammar to trace the source of the Congo. Many of us explorers–”

  “Shut up about ‘us’,” said Hamilton. “And, talking of exploring, I shall want you to explore–”

  “Don’t tell me that that pay sheet is wrong again, dear old officer,” said Bones sternly. “If it is, it is your doing.” He pointed an accusing finger at his superior. “I’ve been through it six times, and I made the same result every time. If it is wrong, there is foul play somewhere – jolly foul!”

  That the conversation should not drift to the horrid subject of work, he produced a letter he had received that morning. It was from a Fellow of the Society, and a very learned fellow indeed.

  “Dear Mr Tibbetts,” the letter ran, “I was very interested in your interesting paper on the ethnological peculiarities of the Bantu tribes, which I had the pleasure of revising for publication –”

  “I knew somebody corrected the spelling,” murmured Hamilton.

  “I wonder if you will ever have an opportunity of giving us more information on the subject of the lakes in your country, some of which, I believe, have never been explored. Particularly am I anxious to know more on the subject of one lake, Bura-Ladi, about which many stories are in existence.”

  Sanders looked up quickly. There were in his territory many unexplored patches, and Bura-Ladi was one of these. This small, still lake lay in a depression that was popularly supposed to be bottomless. No fish were found therein. Fishermen avoided it; even the beasts in the forest never came down to drink at its margin, and the earth around it was bare for a quarter of a mile.

  Sanders had seen the place twice: a lonely, sinister spot.

  “There will be a chance for you, Bones, and in the very near future,” said Sanders. “You have never seen the lake?”

  “I haven’t, for the matter of that,” said Hamilton, and Bones uttered an impatient tut-tut.

  “Dear old Ham,” he said gently, “the jolly old Commissioner is discussing this matter with me, dear old thing. Don’t be peeved; I can quite understand it, old Ham, but this is a matter of science.”

  “So was your last essay,” said Hamilton significantly, and Bones coughed.

  “That, old sir, was pure fantasy, old officer. A little jeu d’esprit in the style of the late Lewis Carrots – Alice’s Wonderful Land. Perhaps you haven’t read the book, dear old soldier. If you haven’t you ought to get it straight away; it is horribly amusing.”

  “I think you told the misguided and gullible editor of the Guildford Times that you had discovered a new kind of okapi with two tails,” said Hamilton remorselessly. “And – correct me if I’m wrong – you said that in the Forest of Dreams you had come upon a new monkey family that wore clothes. As the nearest Italian organ-grinder is some three thousand miles away, I take leave to describe you as an ingenious prevaricator. Now, the point is, Bones, what novelty are you going to find in Bura-Ladi?”

  “It is queer,” Sanders broke in thoughtfully. “Do you know the temperature of the lake is about twelve degrees higher than the temperature of the river? In the rainy season, when one can get a cold spell, I’ve seen the lake steaming. No native will live within twenty miles of the place. They say there is neither fish nor crocodile in its waters. I’ve been making up my mind for eight years to make a very thorough exploration. And now, Bones,” he said with a smile, “you’ve taken the job out of my hands.”

  Hamilton sniffed. “And he’ll find more in ten minutes than Darwin would have discovered in twenty years. After all, a little imagination is a great help.”

  Bones reached out and gripped the unwilling hand of his senior.

  “Thank you, dear old Ham,” he said gratefully. “That’s just what I’ve got. You’ve been a jolly long time finding out my good points, but better late than never, dear old sir and officer, better late than never!”

  A month later, when Sanders went up river on his taxation palaver, he dropped Lieutenant Tibbetts at the point where the river comes nearest to the lake.

  “And, Bones!”

  Hamilton leant over the side of the Zaire as the canoe was pulling away.

  “No funny stories, Bones! No discovery of prehistoric animals frisking in the depths of the lake. Science, Bones – pure science!”

  Bones smiled pityingly. He found it easier to smile pityingly than to think of an appropriate retort.

  The day he reached the edge of the lake there came a man and woman overland.

  “Here we will stay, Kimi, until M’suru returns, for he will not follow us here owing to ghosts.”

  Bones knew nothing of this.

  * * *

  There came a letter to headquarters by messenger.

  “Dear sir dear sir and Exerlency” (wrote Bones) “I have the hounour to report that I reached I reached Lake Boorar-Ladi at eleven at eleven oclock this morning morning. I have made a Camp on the North side. Dear sir the most extreordinry thing has happened the most extery extro extronary thing has happend. There has been a vulcanic eruption! At nine oclock tonight there was a tarrific noise in the lake the lake! It came from the derection of the lake the lake. On preceding to the spot I found the waters in a state of great upheval upheeval and by the light of the moon I saw that an ireland had appeared in the middle of the lake. The ireland was smoking steamishly. It was nearly a hundread yards in lenth length. Owing to absence of nessessary transport (canoe raft etc.) I was unable to make close investeragation. This morning another tarrific explosion occured and the ireland disappeared.”

  “I hope he means ‘island,’” said Sanders, “but we have no volcanic patches in this territory. Now, if we were near Kilamansaro–”

  “I imagine Bones is preparing his report for his unfortunate college,” said Hamilton drily.

  But in the night Sanders was wakened by the sergeant of the guard.

  “Lord, the beater of the lokali says that there is bad trouble by the hot lake, and that Tibbetti has fought M’suru and has been taken prisoner.”

  A few minutes later Sanders knocked at the door of Hamilton’s bedroom.

  “The Zaire leaves at daybreak,” he said.

  * * *

  A spy came to M’suru with news of the fugitives.

  “They have made a hut near the Lake of Devils,” he said. “Also, M’suru, there have been terrible happenings, for land came up from the water and then went down again.”

  M’suru had some difficulty in persuading his followers to continue with him, but at last the terror he could inspire overcame their fear of the unknown and they went on, and as the sun was setting their fearful eyes rested on the sombre scene.

  In a vast desert of yellow earth the lake lay blood-red in the dying light of the sun. lt was shaped like an egg, and on the narrower end a misty blue haze rested.

  “O ko, this is bad!” said M’suru in dismay, and pointed.

  On the farther shore his sharp eyes had seen the moored canoe, and on the slope above the tiny green tent that marked the tent of Lieutenant Tibbetts.

  “Sandi!” said one of M’suru’s men, and the chief snarled round at him.

  “You are a fool,” he said, “for Sandi is on his big ship. Therefore this must be a trader. Show me where Kimi and the man live.”

  The spy pointed to a far green belt, and M’suru grunted his satisfaction.

  In the hour before the dawn he reached the hut, and not all the magic of the Ghost Spear availed Mabidini. Him they crucified to a tree. Kimi died earlier and more mercifully. Bones, in the frenzy of exploration, heard the shrieks and went, revolver in hand, to discover the cause.

  “I see you, Mabidini!”

  M’suru was frothing at the mouth as he howled his hate at the dying man. He heard a shout behind him and turned, his spear poised.

  Twice Bones fired and twice mi
ssed. The second shot struck the tortured Mabidini and passed him out of the world. Then, in a frenzy of fear, one of M’suru’s men threw a spear. The point caught the bough of a bush, but the ironwood handle, spinning round, struck Bones in the throat, and he stumbled, gasping.

  For a second M’suru hesitated, his spear raised, and then the knowledge that the white man would not be alone decided him. He flew down the slope toward the lake, his followers behind him. Far away to the left he saw the red tarboshes of two Houssas. They were at such a distance that he could safely make for the camp where the canoe was moored.

  He saw the soldiers running, heard the wrathful yell of Bones racing behind, and made his decision. He was in the canoe, hacking with his razor-sharp hunting spear at the native rope that bound it.

  “Shoot!” roared Bones.

  The Houssas dropped to their knees, and two bullets struck the water left and right of the racing canoe.

  M’suru was steering for the opposite bank, and Bones knew enough of native marksmanship to hope that anything but a chance bullet would catch the flying murderer.

  “Cease fire,” he ordered as the breathless soldiery came up to him. M’suru would keep.

  “Go back to a little hut by the trees and bury a woman; also take down Mabidini of the Ochori, who is fastened by a spear to a tree,” he said, and, when the men’s backs were turned, watched the canoe.

  It had reached the centre of the lake, and the paddles were moving more leisurely.

  “You nasty fellow,” said Bones, and said no more, staring open-mouthed at what he saw.

  The surface of the lake had become strangely agitated. Great waves were sweeping outward toward the shores, and in the middle there appeared a dark mass, which must have been at least two hundred feet in length.

  The men in the canoe were at the western end of the amazing upheaval, and M’suru, seeing the thing, changed his course.

  He saw more than Bones, for suddenly the canoe turned and came back toward the camp, the paddlers working frantically.

  And then there came up from the depths of the lake a great spade-shaped head. It rose higher and higher at the end of a neck that seemed thin in comparison. Towering over the canoe, the head darted down with incredible swiftness. There was a huge splash. Bones, frozen with horror, saw the head moving about in the water, as the bill of a duck moves when feeding. Another second, and the island had disappeared, and only two fragments of the canoe broke the smooth expanse of water.

  * * *

  “I knew that you’d see an ichthyosaurus,” said Hamilton. “Bones, you’re incorrigible! You had two fellows there who could have corroborated your yarn, and what did you do with ’em? Sent them away! Oh, Bones, Bones!”

  Lieutenant Tibbetts groaned in the agony of his soul.

  “My dear old officer… I saw it! A hundred yards long, old officer… I wasn’t dreaming.” He was almost in tears.

  The Zaire had pushed her way through the weed-grown river, and lay under the sloping bank of the lake. Sanders had listened in silence to the narrative of his subordinate.

  “Bones, I believe you,” he said, to Hamilton’s amazement.

  “You believe it, sir?”

  Sanders nodded. “Such things have been seen in the volcanic areas in East Africa…it is possible.”

  He had intended returning immediately he had discovered that the garbled story of Bones’ capture was untrue – to what watchful tribesman he owed the warning he never discovered. But now he decided to wait, and again, to Hamilton’s surprise, had the Zaire taken back to the Little River.

  “But surely, sir – ” began Hamilton.

  “You never know,” said Sanders.

  He spent the night with Hamilton, filling a small iron water-tank with a variety of explosives, and the Captain of Houssas warmed to his task. In the early morning Hamilton fixed a time fuse, and the tank, balanced on the steamer’s foredeck, was ready to drop as the Zaire moved slowly to midstream.

  “Take the starboard gun, Bones,” said Sanders, and Bones crouched at the Hotchkiss, his finger on the brass trigger.

  “I don’t know whether I’m dreaming,” said Hamilton, “but I certainly feel that Bones is going to owe us an apology after this!”

  Sanders swung the Zaire to midstream, and, jamming over the telegraph to full speed, gave a signal to the Houssas in the bow. The tank dropped with a splash as the Zaire swung round and headed for the river, her stern wheel revolving furiously. They reached the weed-grown river mouth and slowed.

  “That will do,” said Sanders, watch in hand, and stopped the engines.

  “Bones!” whispered his superior. “You’ve fooled the Commissioner!”

  At that moment there was a quivering thud of sound – a white geyser of water leapt up in the centre of the lake, and – that was all.

  “Nothing!” said Hamilton.

  The word was hardly out of his mouth when the waters of the lake began to rock and toss, and out of the depths arose that horrible spade-shaped head. Higher and higher the neck emerged.

  “Bang!”

  The Hotchkiss spat viciously, and somewhere near the fearful head a blue-black ball of smoke came into being. When it had gone there was no head – nothing but the boiling, bubbling waters and the flash of a great, dead-white surface like the belly of a fish.

  “I wouldn’t write about this if I were you, Bones,” said Sanders later.

  “Dear old sir,” confessed Bones, “my jolly old hand is too shaky to write – I’m stickin’ to the dinkey little monkeys with pants.”

  Endnotes

  [Note: Where supported by the reading device, access keys are 1-9, and then a,b etc. where needed (sometimes also requiring Ctrl, Alt, Cmd etc.)]

  [1] Letter.

  [2] Doughty.

  [3] “Mystery” and “secret” are synonymous terms in the Lamongo tongue.

  [4] There are patches of land on the river, in which the germs of lockjaw abound.

  [5] Teeth = ivory tusks.

  [6] = one hundred: that is, every hundred paces.

  Series Information

  Dates given are for year of first publication.

  'Lieutenant Bones' Series

  These Titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. Bones 1915

  2. The Keepers of the King's Peace 1917

  3. Bones in London 1921

  4. Bones of the River 1923

  Refer also to the 'Sanders' Series

  'Educated Evans' Series

  These Titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. Educated Evans 1924

  2. More Educated Evans 1926

  3. Good Evans Also: 'The Educated Man' 1921

  'The Four Just Men' Series

  These Titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. The Four Just Men 1905

  2. The Council of Justice 1908

  3. The Just Men of Cordova 1917

  4. The Law of the Four Just Men 1921

  5. The Three Just Men 1926

  6. Again, the Three Just Men Also: 'The Law of the Three Just Men' 1977

  'Mr. J.G. Reeder' Series

  These Titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. Room 13 1924

  2. The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder Also: 'The Murder Book of Mr. J.G. Reeder' 1925

  3. Terror Keeper 1927

  4. Red Aces 1929

  5. Mr. J.G. Reeder Returns 1932

  'Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Series

  These Titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. Sanders of the River 1911

  2. The People of the River 1912

  3. The River of Stars 1913

  4. Bosambo of the River 1914

  5. The Keepers of the King's Peace 1917

  6. Sandi the Kingmaker 1922

  5. Sanders Also: 'Mr. Commissioner Sanders' 1926

  5. Again Sanders 1928
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  Synopses - All Titles

  Published by House of Stratus

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