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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Bones, Being Further Adventures in," Edgar Wallace continues his exploration of the gritty underbelly of society through the adventures of the enigmatic and resourceful detective, Bones. Wallace's quintessential literary style combines sharp dialogue, vivid characterization, and suspenseful plotting, making it a hallmark of early 20th-century crime fiction. Set against the backdrop of London's bustling streets, the narratives reflect the societal tensions and burgeoning crime wave of the time, revealing a world where morality is often blurred and justice is an elusive concept. Through bone-chilling twists and turns, Wallace invites readers to delve deeper into the psyche of his characters, offering a lens through which to examine human nature in the face of adversity. Edgar Wallace, a prolific author and journalist of the early 1900s, drew inspiration from his diverse experiences and his keen observations of Victorian and Edwardian society. His ability to weave complex narratives filled with colorful characters exemplifies his commitment to both entertainment and social commentary. Wallace's own encounters with crime and the darker aspects of life fueled his fascination with detective stories, paving the way for this riveting collection that showcases his unique storytelling prowess. "Bones, Being Further Adventures in" is a must-read for enthusiasts of crime literature and fans of classic detective fiction. Wallace's brilliant storytelling and knack for creating suspenseful scenarios not only captivate the reader but also encourage critical reflection on moral ambiguity and societal injustices. Unravel the mysteries within and experience the thrill of Bones' escapades in this captivating continuation of Edgar Wallace's literary legacy. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Bones, Being Further Adventures in
Table of Contents
Introduction
A blundering yet brave young officer learns what authority demands—and costs—as he is tested by river, ritual, and responsibility in a colonial outpost where mirth and peril keep uneasy company.
Edgar Wallace’s Bones: Being Further Adventures in Mr Commissioner Sanders’ country belongs to the early twentieth‑century British adventure tradition, set in a fictionalized West African river district administered under imperial rule. First published in the 1910s, it forms part of Wallace’s broader Sanders cycle, whose linked tales explore governance at the margins of empire. The book blends comic character study with frontier incident, presenting a world of patrol launches, court palavers, and improvised justice. Within this frame, Wallace writes with a popular storyteller’s urgency, delivering episodes that move quickly while sketching an environment where procedure, personality, and weather can change the course of a day.
The premise centers on Lieutenant Augustus “Bones” Tibbetts, a junior official whose enthusiasm, naivety, and courage collide as he serves under the seasoned Commissioner Sanders. Readers encounter Bones at work—learning rules, misreading signals, attempting bold solutions, and discovering limits—within a sequence of self‑contained adventures that accumulate into a portrait of growth. The experience is episodic and brisk, alternating lighthearted blunders with moments of danger. The mood is jaunty but alert to risk, and the narrative voice balances wry amusement with an eye for procedural detail, offering the pleasures of character comedy wrapped in patrol‑boat suspense.
Stylistically, Wallace favors short scenes, quick reversals, and dialogue that nudges the action forward, creating a rhythm that feels like magazine fiction shaped into a cohesive volume. The storytelling prizes momentum and incident over introspection, yet Bones’s temperament—eager, theatrical, and oddly principled—provides a throughline that anchors the shifting situations. The West African setting functions both as stage and pressure system: geography concentrates conflict along the river, weather and distance complicate decisions, and the administration’s limited resources introduce stakes that amplify even small errors. The result is a kinetic reading experience that mixes levity with a persistent sense of the unforeseen.
Several themes surface without heavy exposition: apprenticeship and authority, the friction between written law and improvised order, and the spectacle of confidence tested by complexity. Bones’s comic persona frames a more serious inquiry into how institutions mold—or fail to mold—young officials when consequences arrive faster than instructions. The book also reflects the assumptions of its time, especially in its imperial viewpoint and depictions of African characters and cultures. These portrayals follow early twentieth‑century British popular conventions and warrant critical attention from contemporary readers who seek to understand both the narrative’s craft and its ideological framing.
Read today, Bones invites two complementary approaches. As genre history, it showcases how serialized adventure refined a template of episodic trials, dependable settings, and recurring figures to satisfy a mass audience. As cultural document, it reveals how humor and authority were intertwined in stories that naturalized imperial presence. The text rewards readers interested in narrative mechanics—timing, escalation, comic relief—while also prompting questions about representation, power, and the ethical imagination of an era. Engaging with it critically allows one to appreciate Wallace’s pacing and character work without overlooking the limits and biases embedded in the material.
For newcomers, the book offers an accessible entry to the Sanders cycle: a procession of riverine vignettes in which a well‑meaning novice grapples with duty, learns from missteps, and occasionally surprises even his mentors. The tone stays buoyant, the stakes tangible, and the scenes compact, making it a brisk companion for readers of classic popular fiction. Those who value character‑driven adventure will find wit and momentum; those drawn to historical contexts will encounter a text that illuminates the narrative energies and blind spots of its period. Approached with curiosity and care, Bones remains lively, revealing, and instructive.
Synopsis (Selection)
Bones, Being Further Adventures in by Edgar Wallace continues the sequence of linked tales set in a British West African protectorate. The narrative follows the colonial administration’s daily work along a great river, pairing practical governance with episodes of danger and humor. Commissioner Sanders maintains order among diverse river states, assisted by Captain Hamilton of the Houssa police and Lieutenant Augustus Tibbetts, nicknamed "Bones." Bones’s impetuous energy and good intentions place him at the center of many incidents, while Bosambo of the Ochori—an influential local leader—appears as a pivotal intermediary. The book unfolds as a series of connected adventures that gradually chart Bones’s responsibilities and development.
After a brief reintroduction to Sanders’s methods and the river’s politics, the story places Bones under Hamilton’s watchful guidance. Patrols on the steamer Zaire frame much of the action, carrying orders, traders, and messages between towns. Each stop presents the administration with distinct customs, alliances, and grievances. Bones attempts to master official routines while learning the nuances that written regulations do not capture. Sanders sets clear expectations, Hamilton enforces them in the field, and Bones tests them in practice. Through these early chapters, the book outlines the patterns of lawkeeping, the significance of ritual and rank, and the balance that sustains relative peace.
The first notable episodes show Bones deployed on seemingly simple missions that reveal the complexity of local diplomacy. A dispute about tribute or tolls becomes an exercise in listening, as Bones confronts the limits of literal orders in communities shaped by precedent and pride. Minor mistakes—often rooted in haste—threaten to escalate until he adapts his approach. Support arrives in the form of Hamilton’s calm intervention or Bosambo’s insight. The narrative emphasizes process: convening councils, hearing elders, and signaling firmness without force. These early lessons establish the tone of the book, where small choices on a riverbank can avert larger conflicts later.
Trade emerges as a central concern, touching everything from market days to transport monopolies. Bones encounters itinerant dealers and resident traders, some operating within the law and others exploiting loopholes. Currency, credit, and barter compete, with copper rods, salt, and imported goods shaping value. In one thread, Bones’s enthusiasm for tidying the flow of commerce collides with practical realities and unintended side effects. Sanders uses these cases to underline principles of fair dealing and the dangers of abrupt change. The river’s economy proves a living system, sensitive to rumor and scarcity, and the administration’s role is shown as stabilizing rather than remaking it.
Rumor and belief play active roles in the mid-river states, and Wallace places Bones against challenges where superstition intersects with authority. A rain-maker, a healer with influence, or a secret society can sway crowds more quickly than proclamations. Bones’s preference for straightforward orders must adjust to symbols and ceremonies that carry political meaning. Bosambo’s counsel helps translate, while Hamilton ensures the police remain a last resort. The narrative avoids outright confrontation in favor of careful stagecraft: timed visits, visible respect, and measured responses. These chapters highlight how stories—true or false—travel faster than boats and how messages must be crafted for multiple audiences.
Patricia Hamilton’s arrival introduces a domestic and social counterpoint to patrol life. Her presence recalibrates the rhythm of headquarters, emphasizing decorum, hospitality, and the softer arts of persuasion. Bones, eager to impress, channels his restless energy into gestures of courtesy that occasionally overshoot the mark. Patricia’s perspective refines the group’s approach to visitors and petitioners, complementing Sanders’s policy focus and Hamilton’s field instincts. Without altering the chain of command, she creates a space where conversations can proceed before they harden into disputes. This thread adds dimension to Bones’s character, showing how attention to tone and setting can support the work of governance.
A larger challenge gathers from routine reports: lean harvests upriver, cross-border raiding, and chiefs testing boundaries. When Sanders is drawn elsewhere, Hamilton and Bones take on broader duties, managing patrol schedules and communications while maintaining markets. Bones must translate guidance into action, assemble small expeditions, and weigh firmness against flexibility. The steamer Zaire becomes a mobile office, ferrying envoys and witnesses, while Bosambo’s networks supply local intelligence. The book stages a series of decisions where timing matters more than force. By leveraging ceremony, quick repairs to damaged trust, and visible readiness, the administration steers the crisis away from an open clash.
Subsequent episodes present Bones facing more intricate problems: banditry along a tributary, a smuggling chain hidden in legitimate trade, and a contested succession that threatens to unsettle neighboring towns. Each situation tests whether he can anticipate second-order effects. He grows more adept at convening councils, keeping written records, and following protocols that preserve face for all parties. The Houssa police appear not merely as a deterrent but as a framework for orderly outcomes. Throughout, Sanders’s directives shape policy, while Hamilton’s example guides execution. Bones begins to apply lessons earlier learned, turning enthusiasm into steadier judgment and setting the stage for the final test.
The closing movements draw the book’s threads together, placing Bones, Hamilton, and Bosambo in coordinated action as pressures peak. A carefully arranged meeting, backed by clear lines of authority and quiet preparedness, becomes the fulcrum on which peace rests. Outcomes reaffirm the value of patience, precise language, and proportionate response. Bones earns broader trust not through dramatic heroics but by aligning his zeal with the rhythms of the river and its people. The narrative’s core message is consistent: effective rule depends on understanding, restraint, and timely firmness. The episodic arc concludes with order preserved and a sharper definition of Bones’s evolving role.
Historical Context
Published in 1915, Bones, Being Further Adventures in is set in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country, a fictional British-controlled river basin in West Africa. The implied timeframe spans the late 1890s to the early 1910s, on the eve of the First World War. Its geography evokes the Niger and Cross River systems: mangrove swamps, forested tributaries, and rival chiefdoms such as the Ochori, Isisi, and Akasava. Authority radiates from a riverside station where Sanders, assisted by Captain Hamilton and the young subaltern Augustus Tibbetts ('Bones'), deploys a small gunboat and African constabulary to collect revenue, adjudicate disputes, suppress raiding, and police trade. The setting mirrors British colonial administration in Nigeria and adjacent territories.
Historically, the book's political geography stems from the Scramble for Africa formalized at the Berlin Conference (November 1884–February 1885), convened by Otto von Bismarck. Powers recognized spheres of influence and free navigation on the Congo and Niger, enabling the Royal Niger Company and other firms to consolidate inland treaties. Borders fixed British interests between French Dahomey (Benin) and German Kamerun (Cameroon), with the Gold Coast (Ghana) to the west. The novel's mosaic of small polities under distant imperial authority reflects these partition lines and the doctrine of 'effective occupation' that legitimated river stations, treaty-making with chiefs, and armed patrols to demonstrate control.
From 1886 the Royal Niger Company, directed by Sir George Goldie, held a Crown charter to administer and tax vast stretches of the Niger basin, backed by a company flotilla and the Hausa constabulary. The charter was revoked in 1899; on 1 January 1900 the Protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria were proclaimed. Under High Commissioner Frederick Lugard, campaigns subdued the emirates of Kano and Sokoto (1903) and curtailed the Aro network in the southeast (1901–1902). On 1 January 1914 Lugard amalgamated north and south as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, headquartered in Lagos. The book's commissioners, residents, district courts, and river steamers reproduce this corporate-to-crown administrative evolution.
In the 1890s–1910s Britain relied on locally recruited forces to extend and police imperial rule. Lugard's 'Hausa Force,' drawn from Northern Nigerian soldiers and ex-slaves, became the West African Frontier Force (WAAF) in 1897, incorporating the Northern Nigeria Regiment and later the Nigeria Regiment. These troops fought the Aro Expedition (1901–1902), the pacification of Kano and Sokoto (1903), and, during the First World War, the Kamerun campaign (1914–1916) and Togoland (1914). They served with river gunboats and carried modern rifles, Maxim guns, and heliographs. In 1914 the Northern and Southern Nigeria Regiments were combined as the Nigeria Regiment within the WAAF, supported by thousands of African carriers. Bones's service as a young subaltern in a 'Houssa' detachment, and Sanders's reliance on disciplined African ranks led by a few British officers, directly mirror this militarized constabulary system.
Although Britain abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1807, internal slave raiding and pawnship endured inland well into the early twentieth century, especially in the Sokoto Caliphate and in forest zones linked to the Aro oracle. British policy combined treaties, manumission, and coercion to suppress these practices. Ordinances banned slave dealing; patrols intercepted caravans; courts freed dependents. On the rivers, small steamers enforced customs, arms regulations, and anti-raid patrols. Episodes in the book involving the disruption of raids, protection of captives, and the punishment of middlemen echo the legal and military campaigns that sought to end slaving while simultaneously consolidating imperial authority over commerce and movement.
Commercial transformation underpinned the era. From the 1870s to 1914, palm oil and palm kernel exports from the Niger Delta and Cross River regions rose markedly, displacing earlier slave profits. British merchants such as John Holt & Co. and the Niger Company (successor to the Royal Niger Company) established depots, factories, and credit systems along creeks and markets. Currency shifted from manillas and cowries to British coinage; customs and tolls were reorganized, and produce roads were cut inland. The narrative's disputes over canoe tolls, market levies, and monopolies, its preoccupation with smuggling and price-fixing, and Sanders's arbitration of trade routes all reproduce this integration into a global commodity economy.
Indirect rule emerged as the governing doctrine. Lugard's system empowered 'native authorities'—emirs in the north and, controversially, warrant chiefs in many Igbo and Cross River areas—under supervision of residents and district commissioners. It promised economy and respect for custom while extending taxation, courts, and labor demands. The Native Revenue Proclamation (1904) introduced direct taxation in Northern Nigeria; later experiments to extend taxation to Eastern Provinces in the late 1920s contributed to the Aba Women's War (1929). Resistance accompanied its spread: the Ekumeku movement in Anioma (c. 1883–1914) and the Satiru rising near Sokoto (1906) challenged British encroachment. Wallace's portrayal of Bosambo, a British-recognized chief mediating between custom and ordinance, and crises over court jurisdiction, tribute, and road labor, dramatize both the appeal and the friction of indirect rule.
As a political document in disguise, the book naturalizes imperial power yet unintentionally exposes its contradictions. The paternal voice of Sanders and the comic blunders of Bones are instruments of administrative ideology—law as benevolent command, violence as pedagogy—while the reliance on African intermediaries reveals dependency and the fragility of legitimacy. Scenes concerning forced labor, taxation, punitive expeditions, and disarmament index class and racial hierarchies within the colonial service and the subject population. By showing negotiation, deceit, and diplomacy beneath the rhetoric of 'peace,' the narrative registers the coercion underpinning the imperial order and invites a critical reading of the social injustices institutionalized by early twentieth-century colonial governance.
Bones, Being Further Adventures in
First published in The Weekly Tale-Teller, 10 Oct 1914
I
YOU will never know from the perusal of the Blue Book the true inwardness of the happenings in the Ochori country in the spring of the year of Wish. Nor all the facts associated with the disappearance of the Rt. Hon. Joseph Blowter, Secretary of State for the Colonies.
We know (though this is not in the Blue Books) that Bosambo called together all his petty chiefs and his headmen, from one end of the country to the other, and assembled them squatting expectantly at the foot of the little hillock, where sat Bosambo in his robes of office (unauthorized but no less magnificent), their upturned faces charged with pride and confidence, eloquent of the hold this sometime Liberian convict had upon the wayward and fearful folk of the Ochori.
Now no man may call a palaver of all small chiefs unless he notifies the government of his intention, for the government is jealous of self-appointed parliaments, for when men meet together in public conference, however innocent may be its first cause, talk invariably drifts to war, just as when they assemble and talk in private it drifts womanward.
And since a million and odd square miles of territory may only be governed by a handful of ragged soldiers so long as there is no concerted action against authority, extemporized and spontaneous palavers are severely discouraged.
But Bosambo was too cheery and optimistic a man to doubt that his action would incur the censorship of his lord, and, moreover, he was so filled with his own high plans and so warm and generous at heart at the thought of the benefits he might be conferring upon his patron that the illegality of the meeting did not occur to him, or if it occurred was dismissed as too preposterous for consideration.
And so there had come by the forest paths, by canoe, from fishing villages, from far-off agricultural lands near by the great mountains, from timber cuttings in the lower forest, higher chiefs and little chiefs, headmen and lesser headmen, till they made a respectable crowd, too vast for the comfort of the Ochori elders who must needs provide them with food and lodgings.
"Noble chiefs of the Ochori," began Bosambo, and Notiki nudged his neighbour with a sharp elbow, for Notiki was an old man of forty-three, and thin.
"Our lord desires us to give him something," he said.
He was a bitter man this Notiki, a relative of former chiefs of the Ochori, and now no more than over-head of four villages.
"Wa!" said his neighbour, with his shining face turned to Bosambo.
Notiki grunted but said no more.
"I have assembled you here," said Bosambo, "because I love to see you, and because it is good that I should meet those who are in authority under me[1q] to administer the laws which the King my master has set for your guidance."
Word for word it was a paraphrase of an address which Sanders himself had delivered three months ago. His audience may have forgotten the fact, but Notiki at least recognized the plagiarism and said "Oh, ho!" under his breath and made a scornful noise.
"Now I must go from you," said Bosambo.
There was a little chorus of dismay, but Notiki's voice did not swell the volume.
"The King has called me to the coast, and for the space of two moons I shall be as dead to you, though my fetish will watch you and my spirit will walk these streets every night with big ears to listen to evil talk, and great big eyes to see the hearts of men. Yea, from this city to the very end of my dominions over to Kalala." His accusing eyes fixed Notiki, and the thin man wriggled uncomfortably.
"This man is a devil," he muttered under his breath, "he hears and sees all things."
"And if you ask me why I go," Bosambo went on, "I tell you this: swearing you all to secrecy that this word shall not go beyond your huts" (there were some two thousand people present to share the mystery), "my lord Sandi has great need of me. For who of us is so wise that he can look into the heart and understand the sorrow-call which goes from brother to brother and from blood to blood. I say no more save my lord desires me, and since I am the King of the Ochori, a nation great amongst all nations, must I go down to the coast like a dog or like the headman of a fisher-village?"
He paused dramatically, and there was a faint—a very faint —murmur which he might interpret as an expression of his people's wish that he should travel in a state bordering upon magnificence.
Faint indeed was that murmur, because there was a hint of taxation in the business, a promise of levies to be extracted from an unwilling peasantry; a suggestion of lazy men leaving the comfortable shade of their huts to hurry perspiring in the forest that gum and rubber and similar offerings should be laid at the complacent feet of their overlord.
Bosambo heard the murmur and marked its horrid lack of heartiness and was in no sense put out of countenance.
"As you say," said he approvingly, "it is proper that I should journey to my lord and to the strange people beyond the coast—to the land where even slaves wear trousers—carrying with me most wonderful presents that the name of the Ochori shall be as thunder upon the waters and even great kings shall speak in pride of you," he paused again.
Now it was a dead silence which greeted his peroration. Notably unenthusiastic was this gathering, twiddling its toes and blandly avoiding his eye. Two moons before he had extracted something more than his tribute —a tribute which was the prerogative of government.
Yet then, as Notiki said under his breath, or openly, or by innuendo as the sentiment of his company demanded, four and twenty canoes laden with the fruits of taxation had come to the Ochori city, and five only of those partly filled had paddled down to headquarters to carry the Ochori tribute to the overlord of the land.
"I will bring back with me new things[2q]," said Bosambo enticingly; "strange devil boxes, large magics which will entrance you, things that no common man has seen, such as I and Sandi alone know in all this land. Go now, I tell thee, to your people in this country, telling them all that I have spoken to you, and when the moon is in a certain quarter they will come in joy bearing presents in both hands, and these ye shall bring to me."
"But, lord!" it was the bold Notiki who stood in protest, "what shall happen to such of us headmen who come without gifts in our hands for your lordship, saying 'Our people are stubborn and will give nothing'?"
"Who knows?" was all the satisfaction he got from Bosambo, with the additional significant hint, "I shall not blame you, knowing that it is not because of your fault but because your people do not love you, and because they desire another chief over them. The palaver is finished."
Finished it was, so far as Bosambo was concerned. He called a council of his headmen that night in his hut.
Bosambo made his preparations at leisure. There was much to avoid before he took his temporary farewell of the tribe. Not the least to be counted amongst those things to be done was the extraction, to its uttermost possibility, of the levy which he had quite improperly instituted.
And of the things to avoid, none was more urgent or called for greater thought than the necessity for so timing his movements that he did not come upon Sanders or drift within the range of his visible and audible influence.
Here fortune may have been with Bosambo, but it is more likely that he had carefully thought out every detail of his scheme. Sanders at the moment was collecting hut tax along the Kisai river and there was also, as Bosambo well knew, a murder trial of great complexity waiting for his decision at Ikan. A headman was suspected of murdering his chief wife, and the only evidence against him was that of the under wives to whom she displayed much hauteur and arrogance.
The people of the Ochori might be shocked at the exorbitant demands which their lord put upon them, but they were too wise to deny him his wishes. There had been a time in the history of the Ochori when demands were far heavier, and made with great insolence by a people who bore the reputation of being immensely fearful. It had come to be a by-word of the people when they discussed their lord with greater freedom than he could have wished, the tyranny of Bosambo was better than the tyranny of Akasava.
Amongst the Ochori chiefs, greater and lesser, only one was conspicuous by his failure to carry proper offerings to his lord. When all the gifts were laid on sheets of native cloth in the great space before Bosambo's hut, Notiki's sheet was missing and with good reason as he sent his son to explain.
"Lord," said this youth, lank and wild, "my father has collected for you many beautiful things, such as gum and rubber and the teeth of elephants. Now he would have brought these and laid them at your lovely feet, but the roads through the forest are very evil, and there have been floods in the northern country and he cannot pass the streams. Also the paths through the forest are thick and tangled and my father fears for his carriers."
Bosambo looked at him, thoughtfully.
"Go back to your father, N'gobi," he said gently, "and tell him that though there come no presents from him to me, I, his master and chief, knowing he loves me, understand all things well."
N'gobi brightened visibly. He had been ready to bolt, understanding something of Bosambo's dexterity with a stick and fearing that the chief would loose upon him the vengeance his father had called down upon his own hoary head.
"Of the evil roads I know," said Bosambo; "now this you shall say to your father: Bosambo the chief goes away from this city and upon a long journey; for two moons he will be away doing the business of his cousin and friend Sandi. And when my lord Bim-bi has bitten once at the third moon I will come back and I will visit your father. But because the roads are bad," he went on, "and the floods come even in this dry season," he said significantly, "and the forest is so entangled that he cannot bring his presents, sending only the son of his wife to me, he shall make against my coming such a road as shall be in width, the distance between the King's hut and the hut of the King's wife; and he shall clear from this road all there are of trees, and he shall bridge the strong stream and dig pits for the floods. And to this end he shall take every man of his kingdom and set them to labour, and as they work they shall sing a song which goes:
"We are doing Notiki's work, The work Notiki set us to do, Rather than send to the lord his King The presents which Bosambo demanded.
"The palaver is finished."
This is the history, or the beginning of the history, of the straight road which cuts through the heart of the Ochori country from the edge of the river by the cataracts, even to the mountains of the great King, a road famous throughout Africa and imperishably associated with Bosambo's name—this by the way.
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. The Zaire came into the river almost as the last of Bosambo's canoes went round the bend out of sight, and since a legend existed on the river, a legend for the inception of which Bosambo himself was mainly responsible, that he was in some way related to Mr. Commissioner Sanders, no man spoke of Bosambo's passing.
The chief came to headquarters on the third day after his departure from his city. His subsequent movements are somewhat obscure, even to Sanders, who has been at some pains to trace them.
