Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 53: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Leak in the Jungle Trade a wicked smile of triumph, for he not only outbid his gigantic rival, but pawned his future wage-slips for an alarm-clock, or what Ogo called, ‘“‘One dem ting-a-ling- tings what done tell you when de mornin’ is come,” and a harmonica. Meanwhile the interested circle of mam- mies and negroes had split up into two fac- tions and Tiny’s faction had set up the wailing and shrieking that had brought us from the house. That’s the way with them —you think some one is being killed, only to discover that it is some frivolous quarrel. When Mr. Marshall appeared, he at once became the high court of appeal. He gave the girl to Mohara, though stipulating that he was not to marry her until he had paid over the clock and harmonica, for Mr. Mar- shall knew that once Mohara got the girl he would forget the obligations, which would make more “‘mammy palaver,” and that’s a thing you get to hate in Africa more than you hate fever. “Y’d rather make up Tiny’s shortage myself than see the girl go to that slab- footed, slovenly, wheezing Mohara, who has two wives already,” I said. ‘““What beats me,” said Mr. Marshall thoughtfully, ‘‘is where Mohara gets all that stuff. There was a pot of that last shipment of pomatum in his pile on the sand and to the best of my belief I have not noticed any pomatum charged up to his wage-account. I’ve been suspecting that gentleman all along, but didn’t like to let my feelings do an injustice.” sin MR. MARSHALL surprised me. That I should be his intimate com- panion for many months without suspecting this antagonism to the clerk—I had the feeling myself against Mohara— sort of depressed me with a sense of shut- outness. But Mr. Marshall explained. ‘“You will perhaps take the station over after me and it does not give a native a chance when you blacklist him at the start; besides, you’d find him out. That man gets on my nerves!” he suddenly flung out. ‘His shuffling carpet-slippers, shifty eyes and whining Christianity jar me in- tensely. But I wouldn’t be unfair, so I sat down on myself.” That was Mr. Marshall all over and that was how he got along so well with the sav- ages—by being absolutely fair and patient with them. I asked him why he didn’t ex- 999 change Mohara with another agent or send him down to the Agent General. In an- swer he told me a curious history. We had got back to the chop-room, where we fortified ourselves with a bottle of, fizz against the malarial mists that drifted like vaporous ghosts over the compound after dark. Mohara was a political asset at Igobo. To my surprise, I learned that the clerk was twin brother to the fanatical Emir of INorin—the fierce, turbaned, swarthy old warrior who came every third moon with his ruffian retinue for his lien of thirty bags of salt, which the Company paid him for their trade treaty. It seemed impossi- ble that Mohara could be brother to such a fine-looking man. Mr. Marshall ex- plained how one brother had led the out- door, strenuous life of his forefathers, fight- ing, raiding and ‘‘razziaing,’ until the Company put him on their pension list; whereas Mohara had become semi-civilized, Christianized, dogmatized and _ trade- ginized. It seems that when the twins were born, the late Emir, following the custom of the country, ordered one of the babes thrown into the execution pond, that being the simplest way to avoid future dissensions consequent on two claimants to the Emir- alty. But there was in Ilorin at the time a political officer of the Company in dis- guise. He bribed one of the harem attend- ants to steal the baby, whom he sent down river, thence to the coast mission-school. There the baby Mohara so thrived on the gin-bottle, filled with innocent goat’s milk, and took so readily to collects and cate- chisms that he became the pride of the mission and eventually came into the Com- pany’s service. About this time the old Emir of Ilorin died, and the present peppery Haj Ahmed ascended the Emiralty. Being caught on a fanatical wave of Mohammedanism that blew from the east on the fall of Khartum, he started out at once to drive the whites from the Niger. The Company sent up a machine-gun and brought forward Mohara as a rival claimant for the Emiralty. Haj Ahmed quickly signed a peace com- pact and the Company sent Mohara to Igobo as a sort of threat to hold over his brother. But, curiously enough, the fiery Emir developed a kind of pride in his brother’s civilization bluff, so that Mohara’s presence at Igobo helped to keep things quiet. CO MICLOOKS ©