Bones of the River by Edgar Wallace

the great wind, when villages and cities were levelled and great gum-trees were plucked up by the roots as though they were corn-stalks.
    Yet for all his magic and aloofness, Ogonobo was no ascetic. He had taken to himself many wives, and each he had put away because none bore him children. Then he found a fisher girl of no great account and took her into his hut, and she gave him M’mina, a straight-backed, grave-eyed daughter. Some say one thing and some say another about this miracle of a daughter who came to Ogonobo in his old age. Such is the Akasava love for scandal. That his wife had many lovers is true, but what woman of the Akasava is without lovers? Do they not say, “This day I have married a woman who has three husbands” at every wedding feast? Be that as it may, M’mina was a fact, and when old Ogonobo sold his wife to a petty chief this M’mina became the supreme woman of his house, tended his small garden, crushed his corn and cooked for him.
    Such men as saw her, hunters who strayed into the ghost forest led by their quarry, feared her. One brought a story that he had seen M’mina sitting on the ground surrounded by thousands of parrots that squawked and chattered to her. And another had seen her in the company of many little birds that came to her when she whistled. It is certain that M’mina was a great charmer of birds, and at her whistle even the fierce hawks stooped and came with a beating of wings to her feet. This was her own peculiar magic.
    Incidentally the spirit of the forest came to her, and she communed with devils. One day she came to the old man, her father, and told him.
    “Ogonobo,” she said, “I saw a little yellow devil sitting under the Tree of the World. He had red eyes, and from his knees grew two hands that pinched me as I passed.”
    Ogonobo said nothing. He took a long and pliant length of hippo-hide, and he flogged her until he could flog her no more,
    “Now, woman,” said he, “see no more devils.”
    M’mina went through the days that followed as though nothing had happened. She slept in a small hut at the back of her father’s house, and one night, having a pain in his head, he went to call her that she might boil water for him. She was not on her bed, and, spying, he saw her slip from the forest in the dawn hour and go straight to her hut. He watched her three nights in succession, and every night she went away into the forest and came back with the dawn.
    Then he spoke to her. “Woman,” he said, “if you have a lover, let him come to me. But if you go in the night to speak to devils, that is bad. For a lover can give you nothing but life, but devils bring trouble. Tell me now, M’mina, which is true?”
    “Lord, I go to see devils and one who is greater than all. For he lives in a tree and fire comes from his eyes when he speaks, and one day he will take me into his hut and we shall be happy.”
    Ogonobo went in search of his thong, and this time the flogging was severe.
    “You shall bring no sons of devils into my house, woman,” said Ogonobo breathlessly, for he was an old man.
    M’mina got up from the floor, rubbing her whealed thighs. Her dark, grave eyes searched the old man’s face, and she said: “This night your arm shall die.”
    “This day my arm is strong,” said Ogonobo, and thrashed her again. In this primitive manner did he wage war against the illusions which solitude and a too prolonged austerity might bring to an imaginative mind.
    He was sitting before his hut eating his dinner as the sun was setting, and M’mina was crushing corn in a big stone pestle. As the sun touched the trees, the bowl fell from Ogonobo’s hand, and when he tried to pick it up his right arm refused to obey. From shoulder to fingertip he was paralysed.
    “Woman, come here,” he said, and the girl obeyed, standing before him, silent and watchful.
    “My arm is dead, as you promised. Now I see that you are a great witch, and I am afraid. Touch my arm and make