The People of the River | Page 8

put dust on my head, yet
you say nothing."
"Why should I speak when you have spoken so much?" asked Otapo
calmly. "I curse the day I ever saw you, M'fashimbi, for my error has
cost me a fishing-net, which was the best in the village, also a new
piece of cloth I bought from a trader; these our lord chief has taken."
"If you had the heart of a man you would have killed Namani, my
husband," she said.
"I have killed myself and lost my net," said Otapo; "also my piece of
cloth."

"You are like a woman," she jeered.
"I could wish that my mother had borne a girl when she bore me," said
Otapo, "then I should not have been disgraced."
She paddled in silence for a while, and then she said of a sudden:
"Let us go to the bank, for I have hidden some treasures of my husband
near this spot."
Otapo turned the head of the canoe to the shore with one long stroke.
As they neared the bank she reached behind her and found a short spear,
such as you use for hunting animals where the grass is thick.
She held it in both hands, laying the point on a level with the second rib
beneath his shoulder blade.
As the prow of the canoe grounded gently on the sandy shore she drove
her spear forward, with all her might. Otapo half rose like a man who
was in doubt whether he would rise or not, then he tumbled languidly
into the shallow water.
M'fashimbi waded to the shore, first securing the canoe, then she
guided the body to land, and exerting all her strength, drew it to a place
beneath some trees.
"Otapo, you are dead," she said to the figure, "and you are better dead
than living, for by your death you shall revenge me, as living you
feared to do."
She took the spear and flung it a few yards farther off from where the
body lay. Then she got into the canoe, washed away such bloodstains
as appeared on its side, and paddled downstream.
In a day's time she came to her father's village, wailing.
She wailed so loud and so long that the village heard her before she
reached the shore and came out to meet her. Her comely body she had

smeared with ashes, about her waist hung long green leaves, which is a
sign of sorrow; but her grief she proclaimed long and loud, and her
father, who was the chief of the village, said to his elders, as with
languid strokes--themselves eloquent of her sorrow--she brought her
canoe to land:
"This woman is either mad or she has suffered some great wrong."
He was soon to learn, for she came running up to the bank towards him
and fell before him, clasping his feet.
"Ewa! Death to my husband, Namani, who has lied about me and
beaten me, O father of fathers!" she cried.
"Woman," said the father, "what is this?"
She told him a story--an outrageous story. Also, which was more
serious, she told a story of the killing of Otapo.
"This man, protecting me, brought me away from my husband, who
beat me," she sobbed, "and my husband followed, and as we sat at a
meal by the bank of the river, behold my husband stabbed him from
behind. Oe ai!"
And she rolled in the dust at her father's feet.
The chief was affected, for he was of superior rank to Namani and,
moreover, held the peace of that district for my lord the Commissioner.
"This is blood and too great a palaver for me," he said, "and, moreover,
you being my daughter, it may be thought that I do not deal justice
fairly as between man and man."
So he embarked on his canoe and made for Isau, where Sanders was.
The Commissioner was recovering from an attack of malarial fever,
and was not pleased to see the chief. Less pleased was he when he
heard the story the "Eloquent Woman" had to tell.

"I will go to the place of killing and see what is to be seen." He went on
board the Zaire, and with steam up the little stern-wheeler made
post-haste for the spot indicated by the woman. He landed where the
marks of the canoe's prow still showed on the soft sand, for hereabouts
the river neither rises nor falls perceptibly in the course of a month.
He followed the woman into the wood, and here he saw all that was
mortal of Otapo; and he saw the spear.
M'fashimbi watched him closely.
"Lord," she said with a whimper, "here it was that Namani slew the
young man Otapo as we sat at food."
Sanders' keen eyes surveyed the